denly from the ships, and from various points on the ground beneath,
there rose high in the air, and carried by invisible currents in every
direction, immense volumes of black smoke, or vapor, which blotted out
of sight everything below them!

South, north, west and east, the curtain of blackness rapidly spread,
until the whole face of the planet as far as our eyes could reach, and
the airships thronging under us, were all concealed from sight!

Mars had played the game of the cuttlefish, which when pursued by its
enemies darkens the water behind it by a sudden outgush of inky fluid
and thus escapes the eye of its foe.

The eyes of man had never beheld such a spectacle!

Where a few minutes before the sunny face of a beautiful and populous
planet had been shining beneath us, there was now to be seen nothing but
black, billowing clouds, swelling up everywhere like the mouse-colored
smoke that pours from a great transatlantic liner when fresh coal has
just been heaped upon her fires.

In some places the smoke spouted upward in huge jets to the height of
several miles; elsewhere it eddied in vast whirlpools of inky blackness.

Not a glimpse of the hidden world beneath us was anywhere to be seen.

Mars had put on its war mask, and fearful indeed was the aspect of it!

After the first pause of surprise the squadron quickly backed away into
the sky, rising rapidly, because, from one of the swirling eddies
beneath us the smoke began suddenly to pile itself up in an enormous
aerial mountain, whose peaks shot higher and higher, with apparently
increasing velocity, until they seemed about to engulf us with their
tumbling ebon masses.

Unaware what the nature of this mysterious smoke might be, and fearing
that it was something more than a shield for the planet, and might be
destructive to life, we fled before it, as before the onward sweep of a
pestilence.

Directly underneath the flagship, one of the aspiring smoke peaks grew
with most portentous swiftness, and, notwithstanding all our efforts, in
a little while it had enveloped us.

Several of us were standing on the deck of the electrical ship. We were
almost stifled by the smoke, and were compelled to take refuge within
the car, where, until the electric lights had been turned on, darkness
so black that it oppressed the strained eyeballs prevailed.

But in this brief experience, terrifying though it was, we had learned
one thing. The smoke would kill by strangulat