All this time the shackled Martian had lain on his back where we had
left him bound. What his feeling must have been may be imagined. At
times, I caught a glimpse of his eyes, wildly rolling and exhibiting,
when he saw that the victory was in our hands, the first indications of
fear and terror shaking his soul that had yet appeared.

"That fellow is afraid at last," I said to Mr. Edison.

"Well, I should think he ought to be afraid," was the reply.

"So he ought, but if I am not mistaken this fear of his may be the
beginning of a new discovery for us."

"How so?" asked Mr. Edison.

"In this way. When once he fears our power, and perceives that there
would be no hope of contending against us, even if he were at liberty,
he will respect us. This change in his mental attitude may tend to make
him communicative. I do not see why we should despair of learning his
language from him, and having done that, he will serve as our guide and
interpreter, and will be of incalculable advantage to us when we have
arrived at Mars."

"Capital! Capital!" said Mr. Edison. "We must concentrate the linguistic
genius of our company upon that problem at once."

In the meantime some of the skulkers whose flight I have referred to
began to return, crestfallen, but rejoicing in the disappearance of the
danger. Several of them, I am ashamed to say, had been army officers.
Yet possibly some excuse could be made for the terror by which they had
been overcome. No man has a right to hold his fellow beings to account
for the line of conduct they may pursue under circumstances which are
not only entirely unexampled in their experience, but almost beyond the
power of the imagination to picture.

Paralyzing terror had evidently seized them with the sudden
comprehension of the unprecedented singularity of their situation.
Millions of miles away from the earth, confronted on an asteroid by
these diabolical monsters from a maleficent planet, who were on the
point of destroying them with a strange torment of death--perhaps it was
really more than human nature, deprived of the support of human
surroundings, could be expected to bear.

Those who, as already described, had run with so great a speed that they
were projected, all unwilling, into space, rising in elliptical orbits
from the surface of the planet, describing great curves in what might be
denominated its sky, and then coming back again to the little globe on
another side, were so filled with