CHAPTER XII.
ON THE STERILE CLIFFS.
Morning, grim, grey and dreary, yet decidedly in tone with the general surroundings, broke over this land of sterile grandness and desolation, this barrier land, which stood like a gate to that mysterious south—the home of perpetual ice and snow.
Dr Fernandez and his five friends had lain all through the hours of darkness in a state of fatigue and misery which banished sleep. They were cold, wet and wretched in the extreme, while every bone ached with the battering they had received in the ship and amongst the surf. They had seen the glare of the explosion and felt the rock tremble under them, but they had been too exhausted to lift their heads and look around them. Now, however, the dread reality of their position had to be faced.
The three titled female Anarchists were piteous objects, divested of their paint and powder, with their draggled tresses and saturated robes; yet although they might be capricious and fanciful when plenty reigned, they had too often endured hardships to become dead loads on the hands of their comrades. This was well for them, for, with the exception of the reckless and gallant Anatole, the other two were proof against any such
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