We all overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence

The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that din- ner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife’s sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its silver and glass table fur- niture—for in those days even philosophical writers had many little luxuries—the crimson- purple wine in my glass, are photo- graphically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy’s rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.

So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. “We will peck them to death to- morrow, my dear.”

I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days.

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