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Glancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent
of shipping already writhing with the approaching terror;
one ship passing behind another, another coming round from
broadside to end on, steamships whistling and giving off
volumes of steam, sails being let out, launches rushing hither
and thither. He was so fascinated by this and by the creeping
danger away to the left that he had no eyes for anything
seaward. And then a swift movement of the steamboat (she
had suddenly come round to avoid being run down) flung
him headlong from the seat upon which he was standing.
There was a shouting all about him, a trampling of feet, and
a cheer that seemed to be answered faintly. The steamboat
lurched and rolled him over upon his hands.
He sprang to his feet and saw to starboard, and not a
hundred yards from their heeling, pitching boat, a vast iron
bulk like the blade of a plough tearing through the water,
tossing it on either side in huge waves of foam that leaped
towards the steamer, flinging her paddles helplessly in the
air, and then sucking her deck down almost to the waterline.
A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment.
When his eyes were clear again he saw the monster had
passed and was rushing landward. Big iron upperworks rose
out of this headlong structure, and from that twin funnels
projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire. It was the
torpedo ram, THUNDER CHILD, steaming headlong, coming to
the rescue of the threatened shipping.
Keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the
bulwarks, my brother looked past this charging leviathan at
the Martians again, and he saw the three of them now close
together, and standing so far out to sea that their tripod
supports were almost entirely submerged. Thus sunken, and
seen in remote perspective, they appeared far less formidable
than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was
pitching so helplessly. It would seem they were regarding
this new antagonist with astonishment. To their intelligence,
it may be, the giant was even such another as themselves.
The THUNDER CHILD fired no gun, but simply drove full speed
towards them. It was probably her not firing that enabled
her to get so near the enemy as she did. They did not know
what to make of her. One shell, and they would have sent
her to the bottom forthwith with the Heat-Ray.
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