Those shut out beat frenziedly upon them; dragged themselves close to the base of the battlements, cowered there or crept along them seeking some hole in which to hide.
With a slow lowering of its height the Thing advanced.

Now its form was that of a spindle a full mile in length on whose bulging center we three stood.
A hundred feet from the outer wall we halted.

We looked down upon it not more than fifty feet above its broad top.

Hundreds of the soldiers were crouching behind the parapets, companies of archers with great bows poised, arrows at their cheeks, scores of leather jerkined men with stands of javelins at their right hands, spearsmen and men with long, thonged slings.
Set at intervals were squat, powerful engines of wood and metal beside which were heaps of huge, rounded boulders.

Catapults I knew them to be and around each swarmed a knot of soldiers, fixing the great stones in place, drawing back the thick ropes that, loosened, would hurl forth the projectiles.