jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light I saw
around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues,
with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more
terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled.
For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of fear. It is only when a man
feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand
their true import.
All at once the wolves began to howl as though the moonlight had had
some peculiar effect on them. The horses jumped about and reared, and
looked helplessly round with eyes that rolled in a way painful to see;
but the living ring of terror encompassed them on every side; and they
had perforce to remain within it. I called to the coachman to come, for
it seemed to me that our only chance was to try to break out through the
ring and to aid his approach. I shouted and beat the side of the
caleche, hoping by the noise to scare the wolves from that side, so as
to give him a chance of reaching the trap. How he came there, I know
not, but I heard his voice raised in a tone of imperious command, and
looking towards the sound, saw him stand in the roadway. As he swept his
long arms, as though brushing aside some impalpable obstacle, the wolves
fell back and back further still. Just then a heavy cloud passed across
the face of the moon, so that we were again in darkness.
When I could see again the driver was climbing into the caleche, and the
wolves had disappeared. This was all so strange and uncanny that a
dreadful fear came upon me, and I was afraid to speak or move. The time
seemed interminable as we swept on our way, now in almost complete
darkness, for the rolling clouds obscured the moon. We kept on
ascending, with occasional periods of quick descent, but in the main
always ascending. Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the
driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a
vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light,
and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit
sky.
CHAPTER II
15