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sensibly. I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of

despondent wretchedness. My mind ran on eating. I thought I had

become deaf, for the noises of movement I had been accustomed to hear

from the pit had ceased absolutely. I did not feel strong enough to

crawl noiselessly to the peephole, or I would have gone there.



On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance

of alarming the Martians, I attacked the creaking rain-water pump that

stood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and

tainted rain water. I was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened

by the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the noise of my

pumping.



During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought much

of the curate and of the manner of his death.



On the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and

thought disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of

escape. Whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death

of the curate, or of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, I felt a

keen pain that urged me to drink again and again. The light that came

into the scullery was no longer grey, but red. To my disordered

imagination it seemed the colour of blood.



On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised

to find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across

the hole in the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a

crimson-coloured obscurity.



It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious, familiar

sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and, listening, identified it as

the snuffing and scratching of a dog. Going into the kitchen, I saw a

dog's nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds. This

greatly surprised me. At the scent of me he barked shortly.



I thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I

should be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him; and in any case, it

would be advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the

attention of the Martians.



I crept forward, saying "Good dog!" very softly; but he suddenly

withdrew his head and disappeared.



I listened--I was not deaf--but certainly the pit was still. I

heard a sound like the flutter of a bird's wings, and a hoarse

croaking, but that was all.



For a long while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to

move aside the red plants that obscured it. Once or twice I heard a

faint pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither

on the sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds, but

that was all. At length, encouraged by the silence, I looked out.



Except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought

over the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed, there was

not a living thing in the pit.



I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the machinery

had gone. Save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one

corner, certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the

skeletons of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in

the sand.



Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the

mound of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me, to the

north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The

pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish

afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My chance of

escape had come. I began to tremble.



I hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate

resolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently, I scrambled to

the top of the mound in which I had been buried so long.



I looked about again. To the northward, too, no Martian was

visible.



When I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been

a straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed

with abundant shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of smashed

brickwork, clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red

cactus-shaped plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth

to dispute their footing. The trees near me were dead and brown, but

further a network of red thread scaled the still living stems.



The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been

burned; their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed

windows and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their

roofless rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling

for its refuse. A number of other birds hopped about among the ruins.

Far away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces

of men there were none.



The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly

bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed

that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh!

the sweetness of the air!