the dead the Martians had consumed, there was
not a living thing in the pit.

I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the machinery
had gone. Save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one
corner, certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the
skeletons of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in
the sand.

Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the
mound of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me, to the
north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The
pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish
afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My chance of
escape had come. I began to tremble.

I hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate
resolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently, I scrambled to
the top of the mound in which I had been buried so long.

I looked about again. To the northward, too, no Martian was
visible.

When I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been
a straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed
with abundant shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of smashed
brickwork, clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red
cactus-shaped plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth
to dispute their footing. The trees near me were dead and brown, but
further a network of red thread scaled the still living stems.

The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been
burned; their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed
windows and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their
roofless rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling
for its refuse. A number of other birds hopped about among the ruins.
Far away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces
of men there were none.

The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly
bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed
that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh!
the sweetness of the air!

CHAPTER SIX

THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS

For some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my
safety. Within that noisome den from which I had emerged I had
thought with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security. I had
not realised what had been happening to the world, had