30 September.—When we met in Dr. Seward’s
study two hours after dinner, which had been at six
o’clock, we unconsciously formed a sort of board
or committee. Professor Van Helsing took the
head of the table, to which Dr. Seward motioned him
as he came into the room. He made me sit next
to him on his right, and asked me to act as secretary.
Jonathan sat next to me. Opposite us were Lord
Godalming, Dr. Seward, and Mr. Morris, Lord Godalming
being next the Professor, and Dr. Seward in the centre.
The Professor said, “I may, I suppose, take
it that we are all acquainted with the facts that
are in these papers.” We all expressed
assent, and he went on, “Then it were, I think,
good that I tell you something of the kind of enemy
with which we have to deal. I shall then make
known to you something of the history of this man,
which has been ascertained for me. So we then
can discuss how we shall act, and can take our measure
according.
“There are such beings as vampires, some of
us have evidence that they exist. Even had we
not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings
and the records of the past give proof enough for sane
peoples. I admit that at the first I was sceptic.
Were it not that through long years I have trained
myself to keep an open mind, I could not have believed
until such time as that fact thunder on my ear.
’See! See! I prove, I prove.’
Alas! Had I known at first what now I know,
nay, had I even guess at him, one so precious life
had been spared to many of us who did love her.
But that is gone, and we must so work, that other
poor souls perish not, whilst we can save. The
nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once.
He is only stronger, and being stronger, have yet
more power to work evil. This vampire which
is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as
twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for
his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the
aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply,
the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he
can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute,
and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the
heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct
the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can
command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl,
and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf,
he can grow and become small; and he can at times
vanish and come unknown. How then are we to begin
our strike to destroy him? How shall we find
his where, and having found it, how can we destroy?
My friends, this is much, it is a terrible task that
we undertake, and there may be consequence to make
the brave shudder. For if we fail in this our
fight he must surely win, and then where end we?
Life is nothings, I heed him not. But to fail
here, is not mere life or death. It is that
we become as him, that we henceforward become foul
