twilight.

'The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away
to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the
wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of
wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a
gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving
and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was
a thick incrustation of salt--pink under the lurid sky. There was a
sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing
very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of
mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied
than it is now.

'Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a
thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into
the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The
sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself
more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that,
quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving
slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous
crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table,
with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws
swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling,
and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic
front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses,
and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see
the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it
moved.