" There was no humbug about him. He believed that when war
_was_ necessary it had to _be_ war--and the sooner it was over the
better for everybody concerned.
The small arms consisted of a couple of heavy ten-bore elephant guns
carrying three-ounce melinite shells; a dozen rifles and fowling-pieces
of different makes of which three, a single and a double-barrelled rifle
and a double-barrelled shot-gun, belonged to her Ladyship, as well as a
dainty brace of revolvers, one of half a dozen braces of various
calibres which completed the minor armament of the _Astronef_.
The guns were got up and mounted while the attraction of the planet was
comparatively feeble, and the weapons themselves therefore of very
little weight. On the surface of the earth a score of men could not have
done the work, but on board the _Astronef_, suspended in Space, her crew
of three found the work easy. Zaidie herself picked up a Maxim and
carried it about as though it were a toy sewing-machine.
"Now I think we can go down," said Redgrave, when everything had been
put in position as far as possible. "I wonder whether we shall find the
atmosphere of Mars suitable for terrestrial lungs. It will be rather
awkward if it isn't."
A very slight exertion of repulsive force was sufficient to detach the
_Astronef_ from the body of Phobos.
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