"It was a meteor. It was just such a phenomenon as we know of on the
Earth. I felt certain that it was a bolide from space, one of those
fiery visitors of stone and iron that collide occasionally with our
Earth, and that somewhere before us, in the country we were approaching,
it would be found.
"Later a few straggling shooting stars appeared. The languor of fatigue
overcame me, and I slept prostrate on the cushions of the deck as the
murmurous reverberations from the walls of the rock-bound canal rose and
fell, with the cadence of the waves, splashing softly against their
feet.
"I dreamt of the Earth, the pictures naturally recalled, by these
surroundings, of my life on the Hudson River in New York, and it seemed
so real, that I should find myself with you working away in the old
laboratory at Yonkers near the Albany Road. Suddenly I was shaken, and
opening my eyes I beheld the firmament of heaven falling in coruscating
cascades about us. Starting up, I found myself clutching Chapman, who
had called to the pilot to stop the boat. A few of the attendants were
grouped near us, and the loudly suppressed exclamations made me realize
that these visitations were perhaps infrequent upon Mars.
"It was a meteoric shower, like our leonids in November. It rained
pellets or balls of fire, these phosphorescent trains gleaming
spectrally, while a kind of half audible crackling accompanied the fall.
Shooting in irregular shoals or volleys, they would increase and
diminish, and recurrent explosions announced the arrival at the ground
of some meteoric mass.
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