" said the gunner. "I ain't an
ornamental soldier, but I've a good deal of cosmic kinetic optimism, and
it's the cosmic kinetic optimist what comes through. Now these Wenuses
don't want to wipe _us_ all out. It's the women they want to
exterminate. They want to collar the men, and you'll see that after a
bit they'll begin catching us, picking the best, and feeding us up in
cages and men-coops."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed; "but you _are_ a man of genius indeed," and
I flung my arms around his neck.

"Steady on!" he said; "don't be so--what is it?--ebullient."

"And what then?" I asked, when my emotion had somewhat subsided.

"Then," said he, "the others must be wary. You and I are mean little
cusses: we shall get off. They won't want _us_. And what do we do? Take
to the drains!" He looked at me triumphantly.

Quailing before his glory of intellect, I fainted.

"Are you sure?" I managed to gasp, on recovering consciousness.

"Yes," he said, "sewer. The drains are the places for you and me. Then
we shall play cricket--a narrow drain makes a wonderful pitch--and read
the good books--not poetry swipes, and stuff like that, but good books.
That's where men like you come in. Your books are the sort: _The Time
Machine_, and _Round the World in Eighty Days, The Wonderful Wisit_, and
_From the Earth to the Moon_, and----"

"Stop!" I cried, nettled at his stupidity. "You are confusing another
author and myself."

"Was I?" he said, "that's rum, but I always mix you up with the man you
admire so much--Jools Werne. And," he added with a sly look, "you _do_
admire him, don't you?"

In a flash I saw the man plain. He was a critic. I knew my duty at once:
I must kill him. I did not want to kill him, because I had already
killed enough--the curate in the last book, and the Examiner and the
landlord of the "Dog and Measles" in this,--but an author alone with a
critic in deserted London! What else could I do?

He seemed to divine my thought.

"There's some immature champagne in the cellar," he said.

"No," I replied, thinking aloud; "too slow, too slow."

He endeavoured to pacify me.

"Let me teach you a game," he said.

He taught me one--he taught me several. We began with "Spadille," we
ended with "Halma" and "Snap," for parliament points. That is to say,
instead of counters we used M.Ps. Grotesque and foolish as this will
seem to the sober reader, it is absolutely true. Strange mind of man!
that, with our species b