to the pit. I was sitting below, huddled up, listening with all my
ears. He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that we were
observed, crouched in a spasm of terror. He came sliding down the
rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate,
gesticulating, and for a moment I shared his panic. His gesture
suggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my
curiosity gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and
clambered up to it. At first I could see no reason for his frantic
behaviour. The twilight had now come, the stars were little and faint,
but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that came from
the aluminium-making. The whole picture was a flickering scheme of
green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely trying to the
eyes. Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it not at all. The
sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the mound of blue-green
powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a fighting-machine, with
its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, stood across the corner
of the pit. And then, amid the clangour of the machinery, came a
drifting suspicion of human voices, that I entertained at first only to
dismiss.
I crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying myself
now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a Martian. As
the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of his integument
and the brightness of his eyes. And suddenly I heard a yell, and saw a
long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the machine to the little
cage that hunched upon its back. Then something something struggling
violently was lifted high against the sky, a black, vague enigma
against the starlight; and as this black object came down again, I saw
by the green brightness that it was a man. For an instant he was
clearly visible. He was a stout, ruddy, middle-aged man, well dressed;
three days before, he must have been walking the world, a man of
considerable consequence. I could see his staring eyes and gleams of
light on his studs and watch chain. He vanished behind the mound, and
for a moment there was silence. And then began a shrieking and a
sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians.
I slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands over my
ears, and bolted into the scullery. The curate, who had been crouching
silently with his arms over his head, looked up as I passed, cried out
quite loudly at my desertion of him, and came running after me.
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