nto the metal
paving by the waterway, moving to and fro as though in confusion, with
a babel of hissing cries. It was not until Randall and Lanier were
running down the descending incline of the great arched bridge,
though, that the lights and shouts of their pursuers began to move up
on that bridge after them.

* * * * *

Running off the bridge's smooth way, the two found themselves
stumbling on through the darkness over more metal paving, and then
over soft ground. There were no lights or buildings or sounds of any
sort on this farther side of the great waterway. A tall dark wall
seemed suddenly to loom up out of the darkness some distance ahead of
the two.

"The crimson jungle!" Randall cried. "The jungles we glimpsed from the
city! It's a chance to hide!"

They raced toward the protecting blackness of that wall of vegetation.
They reached it, flung themselves inside, just as the pursuing
Martians, a mass of running crocodilian shapes and of great racing
centipede-machines, swept up over the bridge's arch behind. A moment
the two halted in the thick vegetation's shelter, gasping for breath,
then were moving forward through the jungle's denser darkness.

Thick about them and far above them towered the masses of strange
trees and plant life through which they made their way. Randall could
see but dimly the nature of these plant-forms, but could make out that
they were grotesque and unearthly in appearance, all leafless, and
with masses of thin tendrils branching from them instead of leaves. He
realized that it was only beside the arid planet's great canals that
this profusion of plant life had sufficient moisture for existence,
and that it was the broad bands of jungle bordering the canals that
had made the latter visible to earth's astronomers.

* * * * *

Lanier and he halted for a moment to listen. The thick jungle about
them seemed quite silent. But from behind there came through it a
vague tumult of hissing calls; and then, as they glimpsed red flashes
far behind, they heard the crashing of great masses of the leafless
trees.

"The rays!" whispered Lanier. "They're beating through the jungle with
them and the centipede-machines after us!"

They paused no more, but pushed on through the thick growths with
renewed urgency. Now and then, as they passed through small clearings,
Randall glimpsed overhead the fast-moving nearer moon and slower
sa