"Herbert George Wells. The War of the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора

panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and
pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped
the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.

Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely
imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar
V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of
brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike
lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon
groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in
a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness
of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the
earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense
eyes--were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and
monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown
skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedi-
ous movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first en-
counter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and
dread.

Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the
brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like
the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar
thick cry, and forthwith another of these creatures appeared
darkly in the deep shadow of the aperture.

I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of
trees, perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly
and stumbling, for I could not avert my face from these
things.

There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I
stopped, panting, and waited further developments. The
common round the sand pits was dotted with people, stand-
ing like myself in a half-fascinated terror, staring at these
creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit
in which they lay. And then, with a renewed horror, I saw a
round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the
pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but
showing as a little black object against the hot western sun.
Now he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed
to slip back until only his head was visible. Suddenly he van-
ished, and I could have fancied a faint shriek had reached
me. I had a momentary impulse to go back and help him
that my fears overruled.

Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep
pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had
made. Anyone coming along the road from Chobham or Wo-
king would have been amazed at the sight--a dwindling mul-