CHAPTER XV.
FLOTSAM.
Dr Fernandez led his little party over the snow-covered cliffs down to where the wide and sheltered fjord opened a passage inland from the tempestuous ocean.
They were all hungry, faint and exhausted, yet they were forced to make a long fast, and to the credit of the three women, they did not murmur, as the Israelites did in the wilderness. They had sacrificed others, they had suffered in former days justly and unjustly for their crimes or for their principles, therefore they did not complain over this harsh decree of Fate.
It seems a strange link that of murder to bind men and women together in the holy bonds of fraternity, and yet these three men and three women, with all their individual vices and vanities, were loyal and true to their crimson cause. They had cast aside all the prejudices of society in favour of honesty and virtue, except honesty regarding their bond towards each other. Their individual habits and innate inclinations were their own to indulge in or refrain from as it pleased them best, so long as these habits did not endanger or interfere with the sacred cause of destruction. They had abjured the creeds and beliefs of their infancy as super-
