England, but “we were bivouacking late one night near Coquimbo in Chile, when my servant, noticing that one of the horses was very restive went to see what was the matter, and fancying he could detect something, suddenly put his hand on the beast’s withers, and secured the vampire.” (Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World, p. 22.)
Travellers say the wounds inflicted by these bats are similar in character to a cut from a sharp razor when shaving. A portion of the skin is taken off, and a large number of severed capillary vessels being thus exposed, a constant flow of blood is maintained. From this source the blood is drawn through the exceedingly small gullet of the bat into the intestine-like stomach, whence it is, probably, gradually drawn off during the slow progress of digestion, while the animal sated with food, is hanging in a state of torpidity from the roof of its cave or from the inner side of a hollow tree.
This is exactly the Vampire who with his sharp white teeth bites the neck of his victim and sucks the blood from the wounds he has made, gorging himself, like some great human leech, until he is replete and full, when he retires to his grave to repose, lethargic and inert until such time as he shall again sally forth to quench his lust at the veins of some sleek and sanguine juvenal.
Notes to Chapter II.
- 1 Apocalypse, xxi, 8: “But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, they shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” Also, xxii, 15: “Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and unchaste, and murderers, and servers of idols, and everyone that loveth and maketh a lie.”
- 2 The House of Souls, London, 1906, pp. 113–118.
- 3 Scotch Historical Society, xxv, p. 348.
- 4 A Prodigious and Tragicall History of the Arraignment … of six Witches at Maidstone … by H. F. Gent, 1652, p. 7.
- 5 A Full and True Relation of the Tryal, Condemnation, and Execution of Ann Foster, 1674, p. 8.
- 6 The Iliad of Homer, “Rendered into English Blank Verse. By Edward Earl of Derby.” John Murray, 1864. Vol. II, Book xxiii, ll. 82–119.
- 7 Choephorae, 429–433.
- 8 One may compare the corresponding passage in the Antigone of Alfieri:
Emone, ah! tutto io sento,
Tutto l’amor, che a te portava: io sento
Il dolor tutto, a cui ti lascio.
