The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still
remained in London.

"One night last week," he said, "some fools got the electric light
in order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze,
crowded with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and
shouting till dawn.  A man who was there told me.  And as the day came
they became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham
and looking down at them.  Heaven knows how long he had been there.
It must have given some of them a nasty turn.  He came down the road
towards them, and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened
to run away."

Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!

From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his
grandiose plans again.  He grew enthusiastic.  He talked so eloquently
of the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than
half believed in him again.  But now that I was beginning to
understand something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid
on doing nothing precipitately.  And I noted that now there was no
question that he personally was to capture and fight the great
machine.