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An insane resolve possessed me. I would die and end it.
And I would save myself even the trouble of killing myself.
I marched on recklessly towards this Titan, and then, as I
drew nearer and the light grew, I saw that a multitude of
black birds was circling and clustering about the hood. At
that my heart gave a bound, and I began running along
the road.
I hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund's
Terrace (I waded breast-high across a torrent of water that
was rushing down from the waterworks towards the Albert
Road), and emerged upon the grass before the rising of the
sun. Great mounds had been heaped about the crest of the
hill, making a huge redoubt of it--it was the final and
largest place the Martians had made--and from behind
these heaps there rose a thin smoke against the sky. Against
the sky line an eager dog ran and disappeared. The thought
that had flashed into my mind grew real, grew credible. I felt
no fear, only a wild, trembling exultation, as I ran up the hill
towards the motionless monster. Out of the hood hung
lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds pecked and
tore.
In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart
and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt
was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines
here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange
shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned
war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines,
and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in
a row, were the Martians--DEAD!--slain by the putrefactive
and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all
man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God,
in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.
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