ition for use.

How had these creatures got there?

"Why, that is easy enough to account for," I said, as a sudden
recollection flashed into my mind. "Don't you remember the report of the
astronomers more than six months ago, at the end of the conference in
Washington, that something would seem to indicate the departure of a new
expedition from Mars had been noticed by them? We have heard nothing of
that expedition since. We know that it did not reach the earth. It must
have fallen foul of this asteroid, run upon this rock in the ocean of
space and been wrecked here."

"We've got 'em, then," shouted our electric steersman, who had been a
workman in Mr. Edison's laboratory and had unlimited confidence in his
chief.

The electrical ships were immediately instructed by signal to slow down,
an operation that was easily affected through the electrical repulsion
of the asteroid.

The nearer we got the more terrifying was the appearance of the gigantic
creatures who were riding upon the little world before us like castaway
sailors upon a block of ice. Like men, and yet not like men, combining
the human and the beast in their appearance, it required a steady nerve
to look at them. If we had not known their malignity and their power to
work evil, it would have been different, but in our eyes their moral
character shone through their physical aspect and thus rendered them
more terrible than they would otherwise have been.

When we first saw them their appearance was most forlorn, and their
attitudes indicated only despair and desperation, but as they caught
sight of us their malign power of intellect instantly penetrated the
mystery, and they recognized us for what we were.

Their despair immediately gave place to reawakened malevolence. On the
instant they were astir, with such heart-chilling movements as those
that characterize a venomous serpent preparing to strike.

Not imagining that they would be in a position to make serious
resistance, we had been somewhat incautious in approaching.

Suddenly there was a quicker movement than usual among the Martians, a
swift adjustment of that one of their engines of war which, as already
noticed, seemed to be practically uninjured, then there darted from it
and alighted upon one of the foremost ships, a dazzling lightning stroke
a mile in length, at whose touch the metallic sides of the car curled
and withered and, licked for a moment by what seemed lambent flames,
collapsed