Then Redgrave pressed the button once and she stopped.

Another signal set the propellers in motion, and as she sprang forward across the circle formed by the Martian air-ships, they looked down and saw that the place which they had just left was occupied by a thick greenish-yellow cloud.
"Look, Lenox, what on earth is that ?" exclaimed Zaidie, pointing down to it.
"What on Mars would be nearer the point, dear," he said, with what she thought a somewhat vicious laugh.

"That, I'm afraid, means anything but a friendly reception for us.

That cloud is one of two things--it's the smoke of the explosion of twenty or thirty shells, or else it's made of gases intended to either poison us or make us insensible, so that they can take possession of the ship.

In either case I should say that the Martians are not what we should call gentlemen." "I should think not," she said angrily.