distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest
projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and
at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I
was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way
in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while
Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us.

That night another invisible missile started on its way to the
earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the
first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness,
with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I
had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute
gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy
watched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and
walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw
and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.

He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars,
and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were
signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a
heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in
progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic
evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.

"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to
one," he said.

Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after
about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a
flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on
earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing
caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust,
visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey,
fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's
atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.

Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and
popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the
volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical _Punch_, I remember,
made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And, all
unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew
earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the
empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day