The War of The Worlds by H. G. Wells chapter 3 and 4

a man. I know I did. But looking I presently saw something stirring within the shadowgreyish wavelike movements one above another and then two shining discs like eyes. Then something resembling 
a little grey snake about the thickness of a walkingstick coiled up out of the middle andwriggled in the air and then another.
A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman behind. I half turned keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still from which other tentacles were now projecting and began pushing my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backward. I saw the shop assistant struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself alone and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder and ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood petrified and staring. A big greyish rounded shape the size perhaps of a
bear was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder.
As it rose up and caught the light it shone like wet
leather. Two large darkcoloured eyes were regarding
me steadily. It was rounded and had one might say
a face. There was a mouth under the eyes the lipless
brim of which trembled and dropped saliva. The body
expanded and contracted as the creature made violent
efforts to breathe. One tentacle gripped the edge of the
cylinder another swayed in the air. Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of their appear ance. The peculiar Vshaped mouth the incessant trembling of this mouth the absence of a chin the violent breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere the groups of tentacles the oily brown skin the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater force of gravity of the earthabove all the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyesproduced a feeling of sickness and loathing. Even at this first meeting I was overcome with disgust and dread.
Suddenly the monster vanished. It had fallen over the edge of the cylinder into the pit with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry and immediately another of these creatures appeared in the deep shadow of the
open cylinder.
At that I regained my power of movement. I turned and running madly made for the first group of trees perhaps a hundred yards away. There I stopped pant ing and waited further developments. The common round the sandpits was dotted with people standing like myself in halffascinated terror staring at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which these creatures lay. And then with a renewed horror I saw a round black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit. It was the head of the shop assistant who had fallen in showing as a little black object against the hot western sky. Now he got his shoulder and knee up and again he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible. Suddenly he vanished and a faint scream reached me.
Everything then was quite invisible hidden by the deep pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming along the road would have been amazed at the sighta crowd gradu ally growing smaller of perhaps a hundred people standing in a great irregular circle in ditches behind bushes and trees behind gates and hedges saying little to one another and staring staring hard at nothing. but a few heaps of sand.