"Blimy! yes," he replied; "I'm fairly--what is it?--eupeptic." "It's all over with mankind," I muttered. "It _is_ all over," he replied. "The Wenuses 'ave only lost one Crinoline, just one, and they keep on coming; they're falling somewhere every night. Nothing's to be done. We're beat!" I made no answer. I sat staring, pulverised by the colossal intellectuality of this untutored private. He had attended only three of my lectures, and had never taken any notes. "This isn't a war," he resumed; "it never was a war. These 'ere Wenuses they wants to be Mas, that's the long and the short of it. Only----" "Yes?" I said, more than ever impressed by the man's pyramidal intuition. "They can't stand the climate. They're too--what is it?--exotic." We sat staring at each other. "And what will they do?" I humbly asked, grovelling unscientifically at his feet. "That's what I've been thinking," said the gunner. "I ain't an ornamental soldier, but I've a good deal of cosmic kinetic optimism, and it's the cosmic kinetic optimist what comes through. Now these Wenuses don't want to wipe _us_ all out. It's the women they want to exterminate. They want to collar the men, and you'll see that after a bit they'll begin catching us, picking the best, and feeding us up in cages and men-coops." "Good heavens!" I exclaimed; "but you _are_ a man of genius indeed," and I flung my arms around his neck. "Steady on!" he said; "don't be so--what is it?--ebullient." "And what then?" I asked, when my emotion had somewhat subsided. "Then," said he, "the others must be wary. You and I are mean little cusses: we shall get off. They won't want _us_. And what do we do? Take to the drains!" He looked at me triumphantly. Quailing before his glory of intellect, I fainted. "Are you sure?" I managed to gasp, on recovering consciousness. "Yes," he said, "sewer. The drains are the places for you and me. Then we shall play cricket--a narrow drain makes a wonderful pitch--and read the good books--not poetry swipes, and stuff like that, but good books. That's where men like you come in. Your books are the sort: _The Time Machine_, and _Round the World in Eighty Days, The Wonderful Wisit_, and _From the Earth to the Moon_, and----" "Stop!" I cried, nettled at his stupidity. "You are confusing another author and myself." "Was I?" he said, "that's rum, but I always mix you up with the man you admire so much--Jools Werne. And," he added with a sly look, "you _do_ admire him, don't you?" In a flash I saw the man plain. He was a critic. I knew my duty at once: I must kill him. I did not want to kill him, because I had already killed enough--the curate in the last book, and the Examiner and the landlord of the "Dog and Measles" in this,--but an author alone with a critic in deserted London! What else could I do? He seemed to divine my thought. "There's some immature champagne in the cellar," he said. "No," I replied, thinking aloud; "too slow, too slow."