Again, the following story went round among the Toradjas not so very many years ago.  The thing happened at Soemara, on the Gulf of Tomori.  It was evening and some men sat chatting with a certain Hadji Mohammad.  When it had grown dark, one of the men went out of the house for something or other.  A little while afterwards one of the company thought he saw a stag’s antlers standing out sharp and clear against the bright evening sky.  So Hadji Mohammad raised his gun and fired.  A minute or two afterwards back comes the man who had gone out, and says he to Hadji Mohammad, “You shot at me and hit me.  You must pay me a fine.”  They searched him but found no wound on him anywhere.  Then they knew that he was a were-wolf who had turned himself into a stag and had healed the bullet-wound by licking it.  However, the bullet had found its billet, for two days afterwards he was a dead man.[765]

[Were-wolves in the Egyptian Sudan.]

In Sennar, a province of the Egyptian Sudan, the Hammeg and Fungi enjoy the reputation of being powerful magicians who can turn themselves into hyaenas and in that guise scour the country at night, howling and gorging themselves.  But by day they are men again.  It is very dangerous to shoot at such human hyaenas by night.  On the Jebel Bela mountain a soldier once shot at a hyaena and hit it, but it dragged itself off, bleeding, in the darkness and escaped.  Next morning he followed up the trail of blood and it led him straight to the hut of a man who was everywhere known for a wizard.  Nothing of the hyaena was to be seen, but the man himself was laid up in the house with a fresh wound and died soon afterwards.  And the soldier did not long survive him.[766]

[The were-wolf story in Petronius.]

But the classical example of these stories is an old Roman tale told by Petronius.  It is put in the mouth of one Niceros.  Late at night he left the town to visit a friend of his, a widow, who lived at a farm five miles down the road.  He was accompanied by a soldier, who lodged in the same house, a man of Herculean build.  When they set out it was near dawn, but the moon shone as bright as day.  Passing through the outskirts of the town, they came amongst the tombs, which lined the highroad for some distance.  There the soldier made an excuse for retiring behind a monument, and Niceros sat down to wait for him, humming a tune and counting the tombstones to pass the time.  In a little he looked round for his companion, and saw a sight which froze him with horror.  The soldier had stripped off his clothes to the last rag and laid them at the side of the highway.  Then he performed a certain ceremony over them, and immediately was changed into a wolf, and ran howling into the forest.  When Niceros had recovered himself a little, he went to pick up the clothes, but found that they were turned to stone.  More dead than alive, he drew his sword, and, striking at every shadow cast by the tombstones on the moonlit road, he tottered