stition, and mocked openly at the idea of their being a God or a Providence watching over the affairs of earth, and yet had embraced with passionate devotion and fervour a superstition as profitless to themselves and injurious to their fellows as the worship of Bowana or the devil.
Their war was against Capital and Power, but they had no desire to rebuild any other structure from the ruins they hoped to make. Their principle was annihilation—to make the surface of the earth a smoking field of destruction, to reduce the world to chaos; but they did not wish to re-create the world that they had destroyed. They were ready to perish in the universal holocaust. Their faith was one of "Nothingness," yet they were as sincere and devoted as any Thug who ever drew his scarf, and would have aided each other to the death.
The devil and his satellites walking over the snow-covered ridges of hell were not more resolute than were these shipwrecked Anarchists to live if possible, and to escape from this land of desolation for the sake of their propaganda; all, save one, looked towards Europe as the theatre of their future actions, and for the present made the cravings of nature subordinate to their mad enthusiasm. They were as mercilessly devout to their cause as ever was the bigot of the Inquisition, priest of Baal, Calvinistic reformer, or pitiless scientist in the pursuit of knowledge, as devoutly mad, as mankind ever must be, when he permits himself to be possessed of any single emotion, be it love, hatred, religion, science or patriotism.
They had been but lightly clad at the moment of the shock, for, as we have said, they were at dinner. The women particularly, with their exposed necks and arms,
