The Mar­ti­ans seem to have cal­cu­la­ted their des­cent with ama­zing subtlety–their mathe­ma­ti­cal lear­ning is evi­dent­ly far in excess of ours–and to have car­ri­ed out their pre­pa­ra­ti­ons with a well-nigh per­fect unani­mi­ty. Had our instru­ments per­mit­ted it, we might have seen the gathe­ring trou­ble far back in the nine­te­enth cen­tu­ry. Men like Schia­pa­rel­li wat­ched the red planet–it is odd, by-the-bye, that for count­less cen­tu­ries Mars has been the star of war–but fai­led to inter­pret the fluc­tua­ting appearan­ces of the mar­kings they map­ped so well. All that time the Mar­ti­ans must have been get­ting ready.
The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approa­ched oppo­si­ti­on, Lavel­le of Java set the wires of the astro­no­mic­al exch­an­ge pal­pi­ta­ting with the ama­zing intel­li­gence of a huge out­break of incan­de­s­cent gas upon the pla­net. It had occur­red towards mid­night of the twelfth; and the spec­tro­scope, to which he had at once resor­ted, indi­ca­ted a mass of fla­ming gas, chief­ly hydro­gen, moving with an enorm­ous velo­ci­ty towards this earth. This jet of fire had beco­me invi­si­ble about a quar­ter past twel­ve. He com­pared it to a colos­sal puff of fla­me sud­den­ly and vio­lent­ly squir­ted out of the pla­net, as fla­ming gases rus­hed out of a gun.