The curate had possession of the slit when the first men were
brought to the pit.  I was sitting below, huddled up, listening with
all my ears.  He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that
we were observed, crouched in a spasm of terror.  He came sliding down
the rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate,
gesticulating, and for a moment I shared his panic.  His gesture
suggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my
curiosity gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and
clambered up to it.  At first I could see no reason for his frantic
behaviour.  The twilight had now come, the stars were little and
faint, but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that
came from the aluminium-making.  The whole picture was a flickering
scheme of green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely
trying to the eyes.  Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it
not at all.  The sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the
mound of blue-green powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a
fighting-machine, with its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated,
stood across the corner of the pit.  And then, amid the clangour of
the machinery, came a drifting suspicion of human voices, that I
entertained at first only to dismiss.