"Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine-tree) swinging and rattling about it's strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about. Puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone."

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For those not familiar, the camera looking thing is the heat ray; a devastating ghostly looking beam that can instantly set a man on fire, and the large tube, seen better on the tripod further away, launches the black smoke.
In the book it is used by the Martians after they discover men can be dangerous to simply gas mankind into submission.

Forgive any spelling mistakes, I typed it out by hand from the book.
A friend of mine was telling me about how she'd just listened to the Jeff Wayne version of War of The Worlds. I decided to listen too and eventually to read the book. I read that description and this was the result.

Also, I know the tripod nearest has no right leg. -It does, it's just perfectly behind it's left one >.>