The mutineers had only been on the world four months when they suddenly disappeared from the community, and none too soon, or they would have added a fresh link to the already long chain of their sins by causing the crime of murder to be introduced, for more than one had sworn to kill them, and these vengeful victims sought for them high and low, in all communities, but they seemed to have vanished from the face of the world. Meanwhile the planet was drifting more and more from its course, going no one knew whither—apparently attracted by a stronger force than the sun, the climate getting worse and worse. Fogs were now of daily occurrence, and the diminution of the sun’s rays affected the whole world most seriously. There was no longer the great difference between the heat of the day and that of the night, and there was very little circulation in the atmosphere. The vapours rising up from the earth and water now hung over the globe in a thick and impenetrable mist, clouds remained almost stationary, and through the thick, foggy air was not a breath of wind; the heat from the warmer portions of the globe was not wafted to the cooler, and _vice versâ_, in order to produce a temperate average from their distribution. And the fœtid vapours emanating from the earth and sea, and all the dead and dying life in and on them, and from the living people, were not destroyed, or blown away, and in some cases the inhabitants died like flies,—by hundreds. And as the weeks and months sped on matters grew ever worse, for the air became more and more dense and stationary. Sound became gradually more subdued and at last ceased, and there settled on the whole world a chilling, numbing cold, nipping the already paralysed limbs. The clouds, unable to perform their functions, condensed less and less, as the sun, the source of heat, grew more and more distant, till at last the air—the world’s scavenger—finally refused to absorb and disperse the now dreadful emanations from the animal, vegetable and other matter, by its capillary attraction, and life became almost intolerable, only possible to the very strong and vigorous, for the climatic conditions were changing faster than it was possible for life of any kind to adapt itself to them. Work was impossible, yet folk must live, and the stronger snatched the food from dying lips to keep life going, and a second later it would again be snatched away, clutched convulsively and lost, the exertion, feeble though it was, being fatal, and the victorious one would roll over inert as his own victim had done a moment before.