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1While I was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight, and noting each strange detail of their form, the
2curate reminded me of his presence by pulling violently at my arm. I turned to a scowling face, and silent, eloquent
3lips. He wanted the slit, which permitted only one of us to peep through; and so I had to forego watching them for a
4time while he enjoyed that privilege. When I looked again, the busy handling-machine had already put together several of
5the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the cylinder into a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own; and
6down on the left a busy little digging mechanism had come into view, emitting jets of green vapour and working its way
7round the pit, excavating and embanking in a methodical and discriminating manner. This it was which had caused the
8regular beating noise, and the rhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge quivering. It piped and whistled as it
9worked. So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all. III. THE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT. The
10arrival of a second fighting-machine drove us from our peephole into the scullery, for we feared that from his elevation
11the Martian might see down upon us behind our barrier. At a later date we began to feel less in danger of their eyes,
12for to an eye in the dazzle of the sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank blackness, but at first the
13slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery in heart-throbbing retreat. Yet terrible as was the danger
14we incurred, the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible. And I recall now with a sort of wonder that, in
15spite of the infinite danger in which we were between starvation and a still more terrible death, we could yet struggle
16bitterly for that horrible privilege of sight. We would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between eagerness and
17the dread of making a noise, and strike each other, and thrust and kick, within a few inches of exposure. The fact is
18that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only
19accentuated the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to hate the curate's trick of helpless exclamation, his
20stupid rigidity of mind. His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I made to think out a line of action, and
21drove me at times, thus pent up and intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. He was as lacking in restraint as a
22silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and I verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life
23thought his weak tears in some way efficacious. And I would sit in the darkness unable to keep my mind off him by reason
24of his importunities. He ate more than I did, and it was in vain I pointed out that our only chance of life was to stop
25in the house until the Martians had done with their pit, that in that long patience a time might presently come when we
26should need food. He ate and drank impulsively in heavy meals at long intervals. He slept little. As the days wore on,
27his utter carelessness of any consideration so intensified our distress and danger that I had, much as I loathed doing
28it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows. That brought him to reason for a time. But he was one of those weak
29creatures, void of pride, timorous, anæmic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who face neither God nor man, who
30face not even themselves. It is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I set them down that my story
31may lack nothing. Those who have escaped the dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash of rage
32in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what is wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to
33tortured men. But those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to elemental things, will have a
34wider charity. And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers, snatched food and drink, and gripping
35hands and blows, without, in the pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the unfamiliar routine
36of the Martians in the pit. Let me return to those first new experiences of mine. After a long time I ventured back to
37the peephole, to find that the new-comers had been reinforced by the occupants of no fewer than three of the
38fighting-machines. These last had brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an orderly manner about the
39cylinder. The second handling-machine was now completed, and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the big
40machine had brought. This was a body resembling a milk can in its general form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped
41receptacle, and from which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin below. The oscillatory motion was
42imparted to this by one tentacle of the handling-machine. With two spatulate hands the handling-machine was digging out
43and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped receptacle above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door
44and removed rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the machine. Another steely tentacle directed the
45powder from the basin along a ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me by the mound of bluish dust.
46From this unseen receiver a little thread of green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air. As I looked, the
47handling-machine, with a faint and musical clinking, extended, telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment
48before a mere blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. In another second it had lifted a bar
49of white aluminium into sight, untarnished as yet, and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a growing stack of bars
50that stood at the side of the pit. Between sunset and starlight this dexterous machine must have made more than a
51hundred such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust rose steadily until it topped the side of the pit.
52The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their
53masters was acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter were indeed the living of the two
54things. The curate had possession of the slit when the first men were brought to the pit. I was sitting below, huddled
55up, listening with all my ears. He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that we were observed, crouched in a
56spasm of terror. He came sliding down the rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate, gesticulating, and
57for a moment I shared his panic. His gesture suggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my curiosity
58gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and clambered up to it. At first I could see no reason for his
59frantic behaviour. The twilight had now come, the stars were little and faint, but the pit was illuminated by the
60flickering green fire that came from the aluminium-making. The whole picture was a flickering scheme of green gleams and
61shifting rusty black shadows, strangely trying to the eyes. Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it not at
62all. The sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the mound of blue-green powder had risen to cover them from
63sight, and a fighting-machine, with its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, stood across the corner of the pit.
64And then, amid the clangour of the machinery, came a drifting suspicion of human voices, that I entertained at first
65only to dismiss.
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