“About half an hour after the glory reached us, and as on all sides the country shone in spectral illumination, a great mass, decrepitating with minute explosions along its oncoming side, plunged down upon the noble amphitheatre of glass.  A dreadful sound of crashing stone followed, and then, rapidly fired from the aerial batteries, came still more of the dark, half ignited bodies, bathed in hurrying streams of evanescent blades, and splinters of light.

“And now the destructive bombardment had really begun.  The celestial downpour increased, the valley below us sent upward the detonations of exploding meteorites and the harsh reverberating crash and overthrow of glass fabrics.  The lights of the city were brokenly extinguished and the pitiless hail of ruin continued with increasing fierceness.

“It was an awful, glorious scene.  The vault of the sky emptying itself in an avalanche of flame, while from within the wide stream of projectiles, collisions caused by some accident of deflection originated interior spots of sudden blazing light.  The irregular and separated shocks of sound from the falling city now ran together in a continuous roar of dislocated and broken walls, towers, parapets and citadels.  Coruscations sprang out from the yet heated masses, accumulating on the ground, as they became incessantly struck by new accessions.  The ground trembled with ceaseless fulminations and impingement, the atmosphere seemed saturated with sulphurous odors, and the panoramic flow of fluctuating splendor shed a day-like brightness upon the upturned faces of the startled and stupefied multitude.

“All night long the invasion continued.  The area of destruction, exactly as the astronomers had defined it, was confined to the long elliptical basin in which Scandor lay.  Beyond it hardly a branch upon the trees was broken, though occasional erratic bombs shot over us and fell miles away along the borders of the canals.

“As the morning dawned, the shower discontinued, a few laggards fell in scattering confusion over the prostrate city, and the sun climbing the eastern sky sent its peaceful reassuring light upon a cairn-like heap of desolation.  The chilled surface of the fallen meteorites were broken up by areas of glowing cinder-like surfaces.  The glittering and opaline city of glass, the City of Scandor, capital of the Martian world, was buried beneath the scorching and stony fragments of a minor comet, or some diminished and wandering meteor train which suddenly issuing from the unknown depths of space had descended with mathematical precision upon the treasure city of the planet.

“The Martian legions remained on the hilltops, sombered and silent.  The awful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed their spirit, and they looked into each other’s faces with bewilderment.

“I had stayed with Alca throughout the night, and I now turning to him said: 

“’Let us go!  What can we do here?  Let us walk away for awhile.  I am dizzy with terror.’