The occasional howling of the Martians had ceased; they took up
their positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders in absolute
silence.  It was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns.  Never
since the devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so
still.  To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had
precisely the same effect--the Martians seemed in solitary possession
of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the
stars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from St.
George's Hill and the woods of Painshill.