squinting intently at the
little world through his glass. "As I live, it moves."

A Martian Appears!

The First Glimpse of the Horrible Inhabitants of the Red Planet.

"Yes, yes!" exclaimed several others, "there are inhabitants upon it,
but what giants!"

"What monsters!"

"Don't you see?" exclaimed an excited savant. "They are the Martians!"

The startling truth burst upon the minds of all. Here upon this little
planetoid were several of the gigantic inhabitants of the world that we
were going to attack. There was more than one man in the flagship who
recognized them well, and who shuddered at the recognition, instinctively
recalling the recent terrible experience of the earth.

Was this an outpost of the warlike Mars?

Around these monstrous enemies we saw several of their engines of
war. Some of these appeared to have been wrecked, but at least one,
as far as we could see, was still in a proper condition for use.

How had these creatures got there?

"Why, that is easy enough to account for," I said, as a sudden
recollection flashed into my mind. "Don't you remember the report of
the astronomers more than six months ago, at the end of the conference
in Washington, that something would seem to indicate the departure of a
new expedition from Mars had been noticed by them? We have heard nothing
of that expedition since. We know that it did not reach the earth. It
must have fallen foul of this asteroid, run upon this rock in the ocean
of space and been wrecked here."

"We've got 'em, then," shouted our electric steersman, who had been
a workman in Mr. Edison's laboratory and had unlimited confidence in
his chief.

Preparing to Land.

The electrical ships were immediately instructed by signal to slow down,
an operation that was easily affected through the electrical repulsion
of the asteroid.

The nearer we got the more terrifying was the appearance of the gigantic
creatures who were riding upon the little world before us like castaway
sailors upon a block of ice. Like men, and yet not like men, combining
the human and the beast in their appearance, it required a steady nerve
to look at them. If we had not known their malignity and their power to
work evil, it would have been different, but in our eyes their moral
character shone through their physical aspect and thus rendered them
more terrible than they would otherwise have been.

The Martians Recognize Us.

When we first saw them their appear