That night, as we lurked in the scullery, balanced between our horror
and the terrible fascination this peeping had, although I felt an
urgent need of action I tried in vain to conceive some plan of escape;
but afterwards, during the second day, I was able to consider our
position with great clearness. The curate, I found, was quite incapable
of discussion; this new and culminating atrocity had robbed him of all
vestiges of reason or forethought. Practically he had already sunk to
the level of an animal. But as the saying goes, I gripped myself with
both hands. It grew upon my mind, once I could face the facts, that
terrible as our position was, there was as yet no justification for
absolute despair. Our chief chance lay in the possibility of the
Martians making the pit nothing more than a temporary encampment. Or
even if they kept it permanently, they might not consider it necessary
to guard it, and a chance of escape might be afforded us. I also
weighed very carefully the possibility of our digging a way out in a
direction away from the pit, but the chances of our emerging within
sight of some sentinel fighting-machine seemed at first too great. And
I should have had to do all the digging myself. The curate would
certainly have failed me.
It was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that I saw the
lad killed. It was the only occasion on which I actually saw the
Martians feed. After that experience I avoided the hole in the wall for
the better part of a day. I went into the scullery, removed the door,
and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as possible;
but when I had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the loose earth
collapsed noisily, and I did not dare continue. I lost heart, and lay
down on the scullery floor for a long time, having no spirit even to
move. And after that I abandoned altogether the idea of escaping by
excavation.
It says much for the impression the Martians had made upon me that at
first I entertained little or no hope of our escape being brought about
by their overthrow through any human effort. But on the fourth or fifth
night I heard a sound like heavy guns.
It was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly. The
Martians had taken away the excavating-machine, and, save for a
fighting-machine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a
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