Werwolves

wer of assuming; and it may be of some interest to inquire briefly into the varyi

ce of magic; many who have travelled in this country have assured me that there is a very great amount of truth in this assertion; and tha

osis is usually dependent on the hour of the day, and gen

o say, as a divine being that has the welfare of the Kandh nation especially at heart. It is communed with at home, but more particularly in the wild dreariness of the jungle, where, on the condition that the prayers of its devotees are sufficiently concentrated and in earnest, it confers-

tations took place. As the jungle was universally held to be haunted I met no one; and in spite of my dread of the snakes, big cats, wild boars, scorpions, and other poisonous vermin with which the place was swarming, arrived without mishap at the place that had

came gallivanting along the narrow path through the brushw

changed; the light of laughter died from his eyes, his lips straightened, his

had been light-the sky, like all Indian skies at that season, one blaze of moonbeams and stars; but now it gradually grew dark. An unnatural, awe-inspiring shade seemed to swoop down from the far distant mountains and to hush into breathless silence everything it touched. Not a bird sang, not an insect ticked, not a leaf st

r-all my fears had been of malicious natives and tigers; they now, however, changed, and I was confronted with a dread of what I

painfully susceptible to a sensation of excessive coldness, which insti

A column-only a column, though the suggestion conveyed to me by the column was nasty-nasty with a nastiness that baffles description. I looked at the native, and the expression in his eyes and mouth assured me he saw more-a very great deal more. For some seconds he only gasped; then, by degrees, the rolling of his eyes and twitching of his lips ceased. He stretched out a hand and made some sign on the ground. Then he produced a string of beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and quivered with terror. I then saw a stream of red light steal from the base of the column and dart like forked lightning to the beads, which instantly shone a luminous red. The native now picked them up, and, putting them round his neck, clapped the palms of his hands vigorously togethe

ancy it wished to play with me a little first-to let me think I was going to escape, and then, when it had got all the amusement possible out of me, just to give a little sprint and haul me over. Perhaps it was my anger at such undignified treatment of the human race that gave a kind of sting to my running, for I certainly got over the ground at twice the speed I had ever done before, or ever thought myself capable of doing. At times my limbs were on the verge of mutiny, but I forced them onward, and though my lungs seemed bursting, I never paused. At last a clearing was reached and the kulpa-tree stood fully revealed. I glanced at once at the trunk. The lowest branch of any size was some eight feet from the ground. . . . Could I reach it? Summoning up all my efforts for this final, and in all probability fatal, rush, I hurled myself fo

overed on the floor of their hut in the morning. Evidence pointed to their having been killed by a tiger; and as they had been the

n the first heaven, is said to have been one of the fourteen remarkable things turned up by the churning of the ocean by the gods and demons; and the name of Ram and his consort Seeter are written on the silvery trunks

written in Sanskrit characters, and apparently by some supernatural hand; that is to say, there was a softness in the impression, as if the finger of some supernatural being had traced

ear as it had appeared to him, a mere column of crimson light (crimson on account of its association with Black Magic); whilst to those who were not in any way clairvoyant it would remain entirely invisible. The young Kandh had prayed for the property of lycanthropy solely as a means of revenge on those whom he imagined had wronged him; and as a wer-tiger he was ab

sychic feats accomplished by these tribesmen. The wer-tiger is not confined to the Kandhs: it is met with in Malaysia, in the gorgeous tropical forests of Java and Sumatra, where it is feared

cut off any portions of the body-usually the breasts and thighs-they fancy most for eating, and then mutilate the rest with the signia of their society, i.e., long and deep scratchings, which are made either with the claws of a leopard or some other beast, or with sharp iron nails. Whole districts are often put in a state of panic by these marauders, who, retiring to their retreat in the heart of some little known, vast, and almost impenetrable forest, successfully defy capture. But the fact of there being pseudo-wer-leopards by no means disposes of the fact that there are genuine ones, any more than the fact that th

t either of the Occult Powers in general or of some particular local phantasm. In other branches of lycanthropy, viz., that of the wer-tiger an

I have no hesitation in saying that the occult power from which all lycanthropy proceeds, whether in the form of a wolf, tiger, leopard, or an

which property (vide the case of the Kandhs) would give them the additional pleasure of executing vengeance in their own person. On the other hand, I have heard that the form of a jaguar is the form most commonly assumed by spirits in Arawak, particularly by those invoked at séances. Hence it is extremely difficult to arrive

mong certain tribes of the natives

wak. Van Hielen paused, and was marvelling how anyone could choose to live in so outlandish and lonely a spot, when a shrill scream, followed by a series of violent guttural ejaculations, came from the interior of the building, and the next moment a little boy-some seven or eight years of age-

with arrows in the market-place last year, and my only regret is that she wasn't put out of the way ten years sooner. Ah! there's that wicked girl Yarakna-she's been hiding from me all the day. I must punish her, too!" and before Van Hielen could speak the indignant parent waddled off-with surprising swiftness for one of her vast proportions-and r

for you my poor back would have been beaten to a tonka bean. My brother and

on that marred the otherwise pretty features of the child. "Remember, she is

s the spirit of the woods. We work for her-not for this o

Hielen said in amazeme

ir heads, and scarlet panicles of the Fouquiera splendens for their clothes. My brother and I will go to her to-night when the old woman is sleeping. Where? Ah! we do not tell anyone that.

tiptoeing softly towards the trees, fall on their hands and knees and crawl along a tiny, deviating path. Hardly knowing what he was doing, but impelled by a force he could not resist, Van Hielen followed them. It was a delicious night-at that time of year every night in Arawak is delicious-and Van Hielen, who was very simple in his love of nature, imbibed delight through every pore in his body. As he trod gently along, pushing first this branch and then that out of the way, and sto

under some charm which had lulled to sleep all sense of insecurity. It was true he was armed, but of what avail is a rifle against the unex

im darkened till it was as much as he could do to grope along. Still he was not afraid. The thought of that elfish little maiden with the luminous eyes crawling along in front of him inspired him with extraordinary confidence and he plunged on, anxious only to catch another glimpse of her and see the play out. Once his progress was interrupted by something hot and leathery, that pushed him nearly off his feet and puffed rudely in his face. It was on the tip of his tongue to give vent to his ruffled feelings in forcible language, but the knowledge that this would assuredly warn the children of his proximity kept him quiet, and he contented himself with striking a vigoro

ght, falling on its white and pink petals, threw into relief all the exquisite delicacy of their composition, and gave to them a glow which could only have been rivalled in Elysium. Indeed, the whole sc

ldren and he noiselessly slip

, strangely musical, and strangely suggestive of the babbling of brook water over stones and pebbles. When they had finished their incantation, they got up, and running to some bushes, returned in a few seconds with their arms full of flowers, which they

en small; nearer and then more distant. The plot of ground in front of which the children knelt played all manner of pranks-pranks Van Hielen did not at all like. It moved round and round-faster and faster, until it eventually became a whirlpool; which suddenly reversed and assumed the appearance of a pyramid revolving on its apex. Quicker and quicker it spun round-closer and closer it drew; until, without warning, it suddenly stopped and disappeared; whilst its place was taken by an oddly shaped bulge in the ground, which, swaying backward and forward, increased and increased in stature, till it attained the height of some seven or eight feet. Van Hielen could not compare this with anything he had ever seen. It was monstrous but shapeless-a mere mass of irregular lumps, a dull leadish white, and vibrating horribly in the moonlight. He thought of the children; but where they had stood he saw only two greenish-yellow spheres that, twirling round and round, suddenly approach

nd then, more in a dream than awake, he mechanically sho

s an exhilarating freshness in the air that made Van Hielen keenly sensitive to the ambitious demands of a newly awakened stomach. Opposite him was the hut of the old woman, the entrance somewhat clumsily blocke

ned attentively. Some big animal-a hound most pr

it a dog or was it--? His heart turned sick within him at the bare thought. Again he listened at the threshold, and agai

utting his shoulder to the door, burst it open. A flood of daylight rushed in, and he saw before him on the floor the mutilated and half-eaten remains of a woman, and-did his e

small mouths and slender hands smeared

TNO

material body. Elementals are a genus of a