Page:The Great Secret.djvu/283

Rh and making the deep and wide cut, buried his face within the bloody gash, like a savage wolf, and drank greedily while he clasped the quivering body in his arms.

Vengeance and destruction are fixed laws of Nature, and until the earth is swept clear of tyrants, with their accumulations of wrong scattered, the oppressed cry out for blood.

"Ours is a noble Cause, for we are the retributive ministers of countless hordes of martyrs. I have gained nothing personal by my efforts. My father and mother fell willing victims to the Cause for which they educated me from my birth. What money I have made has been spent upon it. The fortune of the woman whom I married for that alone, was flung into the general coffers. She also became a victim, for I spared her no more than I did others, than I have done myself.

"I slew my comrades, it is true, but only because I thought my own life of more value to the Cause than theirs, not that I wished life for itself.

"I am no traitor; put me in the van where death is, so that I may do my share, and die like a true brother and a man, as Samson did when he avenged himself on the Philistines."

Dr Fernandez lay in the open boat, raving mad. He imagined that he was pleading for his character before his own comrades, and that he had been accused.

"Who are these who charge me? Anatole who lost the most valuable prize that I ever won for the Cause? Eugene who broke her oath and left us for Anatole. The baron, the count, the prince—what a crowd of false witnesses to accuse me, when it should be Anatole, the weak and boasting traitor.