The Wolf 325 



had come up, and the growling and snarling became furi- 

 ous. How much I wished for light, in order to witness 

 the battle that seemed likely to ensue. For a time there 

 seemed to be individual combats ; but there was no gen- 

 eral engagement, and soon all became still as before. 

 Again we waited, looking out for more than half an hour, 

 when the horses began pulling and plunging violently; 

 but we could see nothing. The men now blew up the 

 embers, and in a few minutes the bushes burst into a 

 blaze, and then I saw a group of eight or ten wolves 

 within fifteen paces, and others beyond. In a moment I 

 gave them the contents of both barrels, the others fired at 

 the same instant, and the pack set up a frightful howl and 

 scampered off." Atkinson found eight dead bodies next 

 morning, and the bloody trails of many wounded that had 

 gone off. 



How would this party have fared if instead of warm 

 weather, and the presence of a pack that merely desired to 

 gratify their taste for horse flesh, and showed their willing- 

 ness to brave fire and rifle-balls to this end, the steppe had 

 been snowy and the animals starving? There seems to 

 be no more doubt that a considerable detachment of 

 Russian infantry was destroyed by wolves about fifty years 

 ago in the passes of the Ural Mountains, than there is 

 that the dragoon by whom Wellington sent his despatch 

 after the battle of Albuera was eaten, together with his 

 horse. " Daring as the wolf was in olden times," says 

 Lloyd, speaking of that found in Scandinavia, " he has lost 

 nothing of his audacity at the present day." In proof of 

 which he collects from newspapers, parish registers, oiri- 



