"stoker-dracula-168" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as
we swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery
snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered
with a white blanket. The keen wind still carried the howling of the
dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way. The baying of
the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing
round on us from every side. I grew dreadfully afraid, and the
horses shared my fear. The driver, however, was not in the least
disturbed; he kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not
see anything through the darkness.

Suddenly, away on our left, I saw a faint flickering blue flame. The
driver saw it at the same moment; he at once checked the horses and,
jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness. I did not know
what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer, but
while I wondered the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a
word took his seat, and we resumed our journey. I think I must have
fallen asleep and kept dreaming 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 under stand 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