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Except in the corner , where a multitude of crows hopped and fought over the skeletons of 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 ! VI . 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 not anticipated this startling vision of unfamiliar things . I had expected to see Sheen in ruins — I found about me the landscape , weird and lurid , of another planet .
Назад Сторінка 94 з 121 Сторінка 94 з 121 Вперед Читайте далі з перекладом Створіть безкоштовний акаунт: 7 днів Pro, далі 20 перекладів слів на день або платний тариф.
