m which we had escaped.

The Martians did not for an instant cease their fire, even when we were
far beyond their reach. With furious persistence they blazed away
through the cloud curtain, and the vivid spikes of lightning shuddered
so swiftly on one another's track that they were like a flaming halo of
electric lances around the frowning helmet of the War Planet.

But after a while they stopped their terrific sparring, and once more
the immense globe assumed the appearance of a vast ball of black smoke
still widely agitated by the recent disturbance, but exhibiting no
opening through which we could discern what was going on beneath.

Evidently the Martians believed they had finished us.

At no time since the beginning of our adventure had it appeared to me
quite so hopeless, reckless and mad as it seemed at present.

We had suffered fearful losses, and yet what had we accomplished? We had
won two fights on the asteroid, it is true, but then we had overwhelming
numbers on our side.

Now we were facing millions on their own ground, and our very first
assault had resulted in a disastrous repulse, with the loss of at least
thirty electric ships and 600 men!

Evidently we could not endure this sort of thing. We must find some
other means of assailing Mars or else give up the attempt.

But the latter was not to be thought. It was no mere question of
self-pride, however, and no consideration of the tremendous interests at
stake, which would compel us to continue our apparently vain attempt.

Our provisions could last only a few days longer. The supply would not
carry us one-quarter of the way back to earth, and we must therefore
remain here and literally conquer or die.

In this extremity a consultation of the principal officers was called
upon the deck of the flagship.

Here the suggestion was made that we should attempt to effect by
strategy what we had failed to do by force.

An old army officer who had served in many wars against the cunning
Indians of the West, Colonel Alonzo Jefferson Smith, was the author of
this suggestion.

"Let us circumvent them," he said. "We can do it in this way. The
chances are that all of the available fighting force of the planet Mars
is now concentrated on this side and in the neighborhood of The Lake of
the Sun.

"Possibly, by some kind of X-ray business, they can only see us dimly
through the clouds, and if we get a little further away they will not be
able to see us at a