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artists or the imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon, scarcely realise that living
quality.
CHAPTER TWO 75
I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. The
artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge ended. He
presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading
monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them
here simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have created. They were no more like the
Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the pamphlet would have been
much better without them.
At first, I say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a machine, but as a crablike creature with a
glittering integument, the controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements seeming to be
simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral portion. But then I perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown,
shiny, leathery integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and the true nature of this dexterous
workman dawned upon me. With that realisation my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real
Martians. Already I had had a transient impression of these, and the first nausea no longer obscured my
observation. Moreover, I was concealed and motionless, and under no urgency of action.
They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive. They were huge round
bodies--or, rather, heads--about four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This face had no
nostrils--indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large
dark-coloured eyes, and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body--I scarcely
know how to speak of it--was the single tight tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though
it must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen slender, almost
whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight each. These bunches have since been named rather aptly,
by that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the HANDS. Even as I saw these Martians for the first time
they seemed to be endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased weight
of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have
progressed upon them with some facility.
The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since shown, was almost equally simple. The
greater part of the structure was the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles.
Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the heart and its vessels. The pulmonary
distress caused by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only too evident in the
convulsive movements of the outer skin.
And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem to a human being, all the complex
apparatus of digestion, which makes up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were
heads--merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh,
living blood of other creatures, and INJECTED it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being done, as I
shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not
endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases
from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal. . . .
The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think that we should
remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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