How are we going to talk to him?
Are you all ready, Andrew ?" "Yes, my Lord, all ready," replied the old Yorkshireman, dropping his huge, hairy hand on the breech of the Maxim.
"Very well, then, shoot the moment you see them doing anything suspicious, and don't let any one except his Royal Highness come nearer than a hundred yards." As he said this Redgrave went to the door, from which the gangway steps had been lowered, and, in reply to a singularly expressive gesture from the huge Martian, who seemed to stand nearly nine feet high, he beckoned to him to come up on to the deck.
As he mounted the steps the crowd closed round the _Astronef_ and the Martian air-ship; but, as though in obedience to orders which had already been given, they kept at a respectful distance of a little over a hundred yards away from the strange vessel which had wrought such havoc with their fleet.

When the Martian reached the deck, Redgrave held out his hand and the giant recoiled, as a man on earth might have done if, instead of the open palm, he had seen a clenched hand gripping a knife.
"Take care, Lenox," exclaimed Zaidie, taking a couple of steps towards him, with her right hand on the butt of one of her revolvers.

The movement brought her close to the open door, and in full view of the crowd outside.
If a seraph had come on earth and presented itself thus before a throng of human beings, there might have happened some such miracle as was wrought when the swarm of Martians beheld the strange beauty of this radiant daughter of the earth.
As it seemed to the space-voyagers, when they discussed it afterwards, ages of purely utilitarian civilisation had brought all conditions of Martian life up--or down--to the same level.

There was no apparent difference between the males and females in stature; their faces were all the same, with features of mathematical regularity, pale skin, bloodless cheeks, and an expression, if such it could be called, utterly devoid of emotion.
But still these creatures were human, or at least their forefathers had been.

Hearts beat in their breasts, blood of a sort still flowed through their veins, and so the magic of this marvellous vision instantly awoke the long-slumbering elementary instincts of a bygone age.