of the thirst and the language that was of bloom and blood laughed, as they told how the captain’s swears exceeded even his usual polyglot, and was more than ever full of picturesque, when on questioning other mariners who were on movement up and down the river that hour, he found that few of them had seen any of fog at all, except where it lay round the wharf.  However, the ship went out on the ebb tide, and was doubtless by morning far down the river mouth.  She was then, when they told us, well out to sea.

“And so, my dear Madam Mina, it is that we have to rest for a time, for our enemy is on the sea, with the fog at his command, on his way to the Danube mouth.  To sail a ship takes time, go she never so quick.  And when we start to go on land more quick, and we meet him there.  Our best hope is to come on him when in the box between sunrise and sunset.  For then he can make no struggle, and we may deal with him as we should.  There are days for us, in which we can make ready our plan.  We know all about where he go.  For we have seen the owner of the ship, who have shown us invoices and all papers that can be.  The box we seek is to be landed in Varna, and to be given to an agent, one Ristics who will there present his credentials.  And so our merchant friend will have done his part.  When he ask if there be any wrong, for that so, he can telegraph and have inquiry made at Varna, we say ‘no,’ for what is to be done is not for police or of the customs.  It must be done by us alone and in our own way.”

When Dr. Van Helsing had done speaking, I asked him if he were certain that the Count had remained on board the ship.  He replied, “We have the best proof of that, your own evidence, when in the hypnotic trance this morning.”

I asked him again if it were really necessary that they should pursue the Count, for oh!  I dread Jonathan leaving me, and I know that he would surely go if the others went.  He answered in growing passion, at first quietly.  As he went on, however, he grew more angry and more forceful, till in the end we could not but see wherein was at least some of that personal dominance which made him so long a master amongst men.

“Yes, it is necessary, necessary, necessary!  For your sake in the first, and then for the sake of humanity.  This monster has done much harm already, in the narrow scope where he find himself, and in the short time when as yet he was only as a body groping his so small measure in darkness and not knowing.  All this have I told these others.  You, my dear Madam Mina, will learn it in the phonograph of my friend John, or in that of your husband.  I have told them how the measure of leaving his own barren land, barren of peoples, and coming to a new land where life of man teems till they are like the multitude of standing corn, was the work of centuries.  Were another of the Undead, like him, to try to do what he has done, perhaps not all the centuries of