vulnerability

A Martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff with a jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashed all the windows it touched, and scalded the curate’s hand as he fled out of the front room. When at last we crept across the ...

It was given him—neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman’s monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his tr...

There in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me reeling back. He gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him. So heavy was the stress of the storm just at this place that I had the h...

But the instant she had disappeared he pulled me, suddenly and forcibly, into the dining-room and closed the door. Then, for the first time in my life, I saw Van Helsing break down. He raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair, and then beat his...

One day, at dinner, this malicious little cub was so nettled with something I had said to him, that, raising himself upon the frame of her majesty’s chair, he took me up by the middle, as I was sitting down, not thinking any harm, and let me drop into a large ...

It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes. When I realised this, I hurriedly slipped off...

She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her face, came across the room to him. A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay there like a trampled flower. I think I should never have known it if you had not kiss...

Go on!” Then my brother’s attention was distracted by a bearded, eagle-faced man lugging a small handbag, which split even as my brother’s eyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to break up into separate coins as it struck the ground....

The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp...

The hood bulged, flashed, was whirled off in a dozen tattered fragments of red flesh and glittering metal. “Hit!” shouted I, with something between a scream and a cheer. I heard answering shouts from the people in the water about me.

I cannot leave her, and I am alone, save for the sleeping servants, whom some one has drugged. I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window. The air seems full of specks, floating and circling in the draught from the win...

Later, we may have to take the others into our confidence”; then he stopped, so I waited; he went on:-- “Madam Mina, our poor, dear Madam Mina is changing.” A cold shiver ran through me to find my worst fears thus endorsed. Van Helsing continued:-- “With the s...

Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip’s seat. The involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to l...

I looked at little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought. “Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I could find...

I had a notion, more from intuition than anything else, that he said to me, "We are lost." I took out my notebook, from which under the most desperate circumstances I never parted, and wrote a few words as legibly as I could: "Take in sail." With a deep sigh h...