metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which

gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange

body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen

hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable

suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge

mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of

green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster

swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.

So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the

lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows.

As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the

thunder--"Aloo! Aloo!"--and in another minute it was with its

companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I

have no doubt this Thing in the field was the third of the ten

cylinders they had fired at us from Mars.

For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by

the intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about

in the distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was now beginning,

and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into

clearness again. Now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the

night swallowed them up.

I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. It was some

The War of the Worlds