indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their
bodies. And, in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that such
mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able to
dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.
But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning
was dead against the chances of the invaders. With wine and food, the
confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I
grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.
They have done a foolish thing, said I, fingering my wineglass. They
are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror. Perhaps they
expected to find no living things certainly no intelligent living
things.
A shell in the pit, said I, if the worst comes to the worst, will
kill them all.
The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive
powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table with
extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife s sweet anxious face
peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its
silver and glass table furniture for in those days even philosophical
writers had many little luxuries the crimson-purple wine in my glass,
are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts
with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy s rashness, and denouncing the
short-sighted timidity of the Martians.
So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his
nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in
want of animal food. We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.
I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat
for very many strange and terrible days.
VIII.
FRIDAY NIGHT.
27