athsome search. All were now nearly in the same
predicament: agony and despair reigned throughout, to the exclusion of a
single beam of hope of any one ever again visiting the haunts of man. At
Christie's side a woman ceased to groan; an intermission of agony was a
circumstance, and the only circumstance to be remarked. The thought
struck him she was dead; he laid his hand upon her mouth to be assured
of the fact; she was no more! The dead body was a talisman in the temple
of misery--in a short time, that body was gone!

The Rubicon of the strongest of natural prejudices was passed, with the
goading furies of hunger and despair behind. A prejudice overcome is an
acquisition of liberty, though it may be for evil. The death of the
woman had saved them all from death; but the efficacy of the salvation
would postpone a similar course of relief. Christie saw the predicament
of his friends, and proposed in the hollow, husky voice of starvation,
that one of their number should die by lot, and that then, having
recovered strength, they should proceed to the mountain pass and procure
victims.

This oration was received with _groans_, meant to be of applause. The
lot of death fell on another woman, who was sacrificed to the prevailing
demon. A consequent recovery of strength now fitted the survivors for
their dreadful task. They proceeded to the mountain pass, headed by
Christie, and killed a traveller, by knocking him on the head with a
hammer, and then removed him to the cavern, where his body was treated in
the same manner as that of the woman on whom the lot of death had
fallen. They repeated this operation whenever their hunger returned;
making no selection of their victims, unless when there was a choice
between a foot-passenger and a horseman--the latter of whom, always
preferred for the sake of his horse, was dragged from his seat with a
large iron hook, fixed to the end of a pole--an invention of Christie's,
serving afterwards to give him the dreadful name by which he became so
well known. That which hunger at first suggested became afterwards a
matter of choice, if not of fiendish delight. The silent process of
assuaging the pain arising from want subsequently changed into a banquet
of cannibals; the song of rivalry was sounded in dithyrambic measure
over the dead body of the victim, and the corrybantic dance of the
wretches who required to still conscience by noise, or die, was footed
to the wild music which, escaping