But it was too late. Thrusting out a skinny hand, the hag scratched Peter on the ankle with the long curved, poisonous nail of her forefinger. Then, with an evil smile on her lips, she turned over on her back, and expired. And before Peter could be got home he, too, was dead.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WERWOLF IN RUSSIA AND SIBERIA
THE ideal home of all things weird and uncanny—is cold, grey, gaunt, and giant Russia. Nowhere is the werwolf so much in evidence to-day as in the land of the Czar, where all the primitive conditions favourable to such anomalies, still exist, and where they have undergone but little change in the last ten thousand years.
A thinly-populated country—vast stretches of wild uncultivated land, full of dense forests, rich in trees most favourable to Elementals, and watered by deep, silent tarns, and stealthily moving streams,—its very atmosphere is impregnated with lycanthropy.
At the base of giant firs and poplars, or poking out their heads impudently, from amidst brambles and ferns, are werwolf flowers—flowers with all the characteristics of those found in Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula, but of a greater variety. There are, for example, in addition to the white, yellow, and red species, those of a bluish-white hue, that emit a glow at night like the phosphorescent glow emanating from decaying animal and vegetable matter; and those of a brilliant orange, covered with black, protruding spots, suggestive of some particularly offensive disease, that show a marked preference for damp places, and are specially to be met with growing in the slime and mud at the edge of a pool, or in the soft, rotten mould of morasses.
Werwolves haunt the plains, too—the great barren, undulating deserts that roll up to the foot of the Urals, Caucasus, Altai, Yablonoi, and Stanovoi Mountains—and the Tundras along the shores of the Arctic Ocean—dreary swamps in summer and ice-covered wastes in winter. Here, at night, they wander over the rough, stony, arid ground, picking their way surreptitiously through the scant vegetation, and avoiding all frequented localities; pausing, every now and then, to slake their thirst in deep sunk wells, or to listen for the sounds of quarry. Hazel hen, swans, duck, geese, squirrels, hares, elk, reindeer, roes, fallowdeer, and wild sheep, all are food to the werwolf, though nothing is so heartily appreciated by it as fat tender children or young and plump women.
In its nocturnal ramblings the werwolf often encounters enemies—bears, wolves, and panthers—with which it struggles for dominion—dominion of forest, plain and mountain; and when the combat ends to its disadvantage, its metamorphosed corpse is at once devoured by its conqueror.
