BOOK TWO: THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS
CHAPTER 7: THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL
(continued)
"After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn
before-- Just imagine this: four or five of their fighting
machines suddenly starting off--Heat-Rays right and left, and
not a Martian in 'em. Not a Martian in 'em, but men--men
who have learned the way how. It may be in my time, even--those
men. Fancy having one of them lovely things, with its
Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control! What
would it matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of
the run, after a bust like that? I reckon the Martians'll open
their beautiful eyes! Can't you see them, man? Can't you see
them hurrying, hurrying--puffing and blowing and hooting to
their other mechanical affairs? Something out of gear in every
case. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just as they are fumbling over it, SWISH comes the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man
has come back to his own."
For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman,
and the tone of assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my mind. I believed unhesitatingly both
in his forecast of human destiny and in the practicability of
his astonishing scheme, and the reader who thinks me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position, reading
steadily with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine,
crouching fearfully in the bushes and listening, distracted
by apprehension. We talked in this manner through the early
morning time, and later crept out of the bushes, and, after
scanning the sky for Martians, hurried precipitately to the
house on Putney Hill where he had made his lair. It was the
coal cellar of the place, and when I saw the work he had
spent a week upon--it was a burrow scarcely ten yards
long, which he designed to reach to the main drain on
Putney Hill--I had my first inkling of the gulf between his
dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have dug in a
day. But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all
that morning until past midday at his digging. We had a
garden barrow and shot the earth we removed against the
kitchen range. We refreshed ourselves with a tin of mock-turtle
soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry. I
found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the
world in this steady labour. As we worked, I turned his
project over in my mind, and presently objections and
doubts began to arise; but I worked there all the morning,
so glad was I to find myself with a purpose again. After
working an hour I began to speculate on the distance one
had to go before the cloaca was reached, the chances we had
of missing it altogether. My immediate trouble was why
we should dig this long tunnel, when it was possible to get
into the drain at once down one of the manholes, and work
back to the house. It seemed to me, too, that the house was
inconveniently chosen, and required a needless length of
tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these things, the
artilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me.
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