The fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the
house we had first visited.  The building had vanished, completely
smashed, pulverised, and dispersed by the blow.  The cylinder lay now
far beneath the original foundations--deep in a hole, already vastly
larger than the pit I had looked into at Woking.  The earth all round
it had splashed under that tremendous impact--"splashed" is the only
word--and lay in heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent
houses.  It had behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a
hammer.  Our house had collapsed backward; the front portion, even on
the ground floor, had been destroyed completely; by a chance the
kitchen and scullery had escaped, and stood buried now under soil and
ruins, closed in by tons of earth on every side save towards the
cylinder.  Over that aspect we hung now on the very edge of the great
circular pit the Martians were engaged in making.  The heavy beating
sound was evidently just behind us, and ever and again a bright green
vapour drove up like a veil across our peephole.