'No,' she said, as if I had jarred with her
gravity, but I was resolved to end that gravity, and make her
run--no one can be very gray and sad who is out of breath--and when
she stumbled I ran with my hand beneath her arm. We ran down past
a couple of men, who turned back staring in astonishment at my
behaviour--they must have recognised my face. And half way down
the slope came a tumult in the air, clang-clank, clang-clank, and
we stopped, and presently over the hill-crest those war things came
flying one behind the other."
The man seemed hesitating on the verge of a description.
"What were they like?" I asked.
"They had never fought," he said. "They were just like our
ironclads are nowadays; they had never fought. No one knew what
they might do, with excited men inside them; few even cared to
speculate. They were great driving things shaped like spear-heads
without a shaft, with a propeller in the place of the shaft."
"Steel?"
"Not steel."
"Aluminum?"
"No, no, nothing of that sort. An alloy that was very
common--as common as brass, for example. It was called--let me
see--" He squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "I
am forgetting everything," he said.
"And they carried guns?"
"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the
guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and
rammed with the beak.
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