off Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in em. Not a Martian
in em, but men men who have learned the way how. It may be in my time,
even those men. Fancy having one of them lovely things, with its
Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control! What would it
matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the run, after a
bust like that? I reckon the Martians ll open their beautiful eyes!
Can t you see them, man? Can t you see them hurrying, hurrying puffing
and blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? Something
out of gear in every case. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just as they
are fumbling over it, _swish_ comes the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has
come back to his own.
For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the tone of
assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my mind. I
believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny and in
the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader who thinks
me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position, reading steadily
with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine, crouching fearfully
in the bushes and listening, distracted by apprehension. We talked in
this manner through the early morning time, and later crept out of the
bushes, and, after scanning the sky for Martians, hurried precipitately
to the house on Putney Hill where he had made his lair. It was the coal
cellar of the place, and when I saw the work he had spent a week
upon it was a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to
reach to the main drain on Putney Hill I had my first inkling of the
gulf between his dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have dug in
a day. But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that
morning until past midday at his digging. We had a garden barrow and
shot the earth we removed against the kitchen range. We refreshed
ourselves with a tin of mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring
pantry. I found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the
world in this steady labour. As we worked, I turned his project over in
my mind, and presently objections and doubts began to arise; but I
worked there all the morning, so glad was I to find myself with a
purpose again. After working an hour I began to speculate on the
distance one had to go before the cloaca was reached, the chances we
had of missing it altogether. My immediate trouble was why we should
dig this long tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at
once down one of the manholes, and work back to the house. It seemed to
me, too, that the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a
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