Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/50

34 But it was on my Artillery that I placed my chief reliance. The odds were extreme, but with the rapid fire attainable by our guns, and their great range, I trusted to destroy a considerable number of the first comers and make a rampart of their corpses.

I turned once more to the men. "Now men," said I, "reserve your fire. Let the guns do the work till the enemy is within 500 yards, then each of you pick off his machine, and drive his bullet well into the centre of the boiler."

I turned my back on them and mounted the rampart, and with glass to my eye scanned intently the advancing host. Gell was beside me and we watched in silence. We could detect the outlines of the engines, though they were still some three miles off, (Gell's party had over-estimated their speed) and could see that many of them were of varied form, and furnished with appliances different to anything we had seen before, but each no doubt for its own deadly purpose. How long we gazed I know not, but the enemy seemed to be advancing less rapidly though no less steadily than before;