"Bram Stoker - Dracula" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated endlessly,
and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare.
Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in
the darkness around us I could watch the driver's motions.
He went rapidly to where the blue flame arose, it must have
been very faint, for it did not seem to illumine the place
around it at all, and gathering a few stones, formed them
into some device.

Once there appeared a strange optical effect.
When he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it,
for I could see its ghostly flicker all the same.
This startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, I took
it that my eyes deceived me straining through the darkness.
Then for a time there were no blue flames, and we sped onwards
through the gloom, with the howling of the wolves around us,
as though they were following in a moving circle.

At last there came a time when the driver went further afield than
he had yet gone, and during his absence, the horses began to tremble
worse than ever and to snort and scream with fright. I could not see
any cause for it, for the howling of the wolves had ceased altogether.
But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind
the 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 the 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 disappeared. This was all so strange and uncanny