Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never more can the Count enter there Undead.

When I stepped into the circle where Madam Mina slept, she woke from her sleep and, seeing me, cried out in pain that I had endured too much.

“Come!” she said, “come away from this awful place!  Let us go to meet my husband who is, I know, coming towards us.”  She was looking thin and pale and weak.  But her eyes were pure and glowed with fervour.  I was glad to see her paleness and her illness, for my mind was full of the fresh horror of that ruddy vampire sleep.

And so with trust and hope, and yet full of fear, we go eastward to meet our friends, and him, whom Madam Mina tell me that she know are coming to meet us.

MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL

6 November.—­It was late in the afternoon when the Professor and I took our way towards the east whence I knew Jonathan was coming.  We did not go fast, though the way was steeply downhill, for we had to take heavy rugs and wraps with us.  We dared not face the possibility of being left without warmth in the cold and the snow.  We had to take some of our provisions too, for we were in a perfect desolation, and so far as we could see through the snowfall, there was not even the sign of habitation.  When we had gone about a mile, I was tired with the heavy walking and sat down to rest.  Then we looked back and saw where the clear line of Dracula’s castle cut the sky.  For we were so deep under the hill whereon it was set that the angle of perspective of the Carpathian mountains was far below it.  We saw it in all its grandeur, perched a thousand feet on the summit of a sheer precipice, and with seemingly a great gap between it and the steep of the adjacent mountain on any side.  There was something wild and uncanny about the place.  We could hear the distant howling of wolves.  They were far off, but the sound, even though coming muffled through the deadening snowfall, was full of terror.  I knew from the way Dr. Van Helsing was searching about that he was trying to seek some strategic point, where we would be less exposed in case of attack.  The rough roadway still led downwards.  We could trace it through the drifted snow.

In a little while the Professor signalled to me, so I got up and joined him.  He had found a wonderful spot, a sort of natural hollow in a rock, with an entrance like a doorway between two boulders.  He took me by the hand and drew me in.

“See!” he said, “here you will be in shelter.  And if the wolves do come I can meet them one by one.”

He brought in our furs, and made a snug nest for me, and got out some provisions and forced them upon me.  But I could not eat, to even try to do so was repulsive to me, and much as I would have liked to please him, I could not bring myself to the attempt.  He looked very sad, but did not reproach me.  Taking his field glasses from the case, he stood on the top of the rock, and began to search the horizon.