‘When I’M a Duchess,’ she said to herself, (not in a very hopeful tone though), ‘I won’t have any pepper in my kitchen AT ALL. Soup does very well without—Maybe it’s always pepper that makes people hot-tempered,’ she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new kind of rule, ‘and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn’t be so stingy about it, you know—’
She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a little startled when she heard her voice close to her ear. ‘You’re thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can’t tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.’
‘Perhaps it hasn’t one,’ Alice ventured to remark.
‘Tut, tut, child!’ said the Duchess. ‘Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.’ And she squeezed herself up closer to Alice’s side as she spoke.
Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was VERY ugly; and secondly, because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice’s shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. However, she did not like to be rude, so she bore it as well as she could.
‘The game’s going on rather better now,’ she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little.
”Tis so,’ said the Duchess: ‘and the moral of that is—”Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round!”‘
‘Somebody said,’ Alice whispered, ‘that it’s done by everybody minding their own business!’
Cristi G.
For a moment I heeded nothing of the heat, forgot the patent need of self-preservation. I splashed through the tumultuous water, pushing aside a man in black to do so, until I could see round the bend.
Cristi G.
Half a dozen deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the confusion of the waves. The fallen Martian came into sight downstream, lying across the river, and for the most part submerged.
Cristi G.
Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through the tumultuously whirling wisps I could see, intermittently and vaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash and spray of mud and froth into the air.
Cristi G.
Enormous quantities of a ruddy-brown fluid were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine. My attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious yelling,
Cristi G.
The tentacles swayed and struck like living arms, and, save for the helpless purposelessness of these movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for its life amid the waves.
Cristi G.
like that of the thing called a siren in our manufacturing towns. A man, knee-deep near the towing path, shouted inaudibly to me and pointed. Looking back, I saw the other Martians advancing with gigantic strides down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey.
Cristi G.
The Shepperton guns spoke this time unavailingly. At that I ducked at once under water, and, holding my breath until movement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead under the surface as long as I could.