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182 felt towards them all the warmth, generosity and friendship, which was the natural reflection of their own charity and pity.

But Dr Fernandez and his evil comrades belonged to a school of genuine haters, but very faithless and treacherous livers.

They received the favour with feigned gratitude, and paid for their passage and board with protestations and amiability, all the while despising these rough fellows and coveting the possession of their property.

They had plotted and discussed the matter in the cavern before going on board, and now only waited a fair opportunity of putting their wicked plots into execution, for they intended nothing less than a repetition of their game on board the Rockhampton. They meant to get the George Washington into their own hands and put the unsuspecting crew to death. Like the pirates of old they believed, in the safety to themselves, of dead men.

True, they were sixteen men to two men and two women; the Anarchists also had none of their favourite compounds handy, which would have made their task easy even against these long odds.

But the doctor was a first-class chemist, and the captain carried a well-stocked medicine chest, so that what could not be done without dynamite might be accomplished by poison.

The sealers had a long voyage before them before they could discharge cargo, a great portion of the South Pacific Ocean to sail over before reaching Cape Horn and the Atlantic. Four long months lay between them and New York city even if the winds were favourable, longer if they chanced to have bad weather.