 occur to me to draw back. We
resumed our places, and Dr. Van Helsing went on with a sort of cheerfulness
which showed that the serious work had begun. It was to be taken as gravely, and
in as businesslike a way, as any other transaction of life: -
    »Well, you know what we have to contend against; but we, too, are not
without strength. We have on our side power of combination - a power denied to
the vampire kind; we have resources of science; we are free to act and think;
and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally. In fact, so far as our
powers extend, they are unfettered, and we are free to use them. We have
self-devotion in a cause, and an end to achieve which is not a selfish one.
These things are much.
    Now let us see how far the general powers arrayed against us are restrict,
and how the individual cannot. In fine, let us consider the limitations of the
vampire in general, and of this one in particular.
    All we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions. These do not at the
first appear much, when the matter is one of life and death - nay, of more than
either life or death. Yet must we be satisfied; in the first place because we
have to be - no other means is at our control - and secondly, because, after
all, these things - tradition and superstition - are everything. Does not the
belief in vampires rest for others - though not, alas! for us - on them? A year
ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst of our
scientific, sceptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century? We even scouted a
belief that we saw justified under our very eyes. Take it, then, that the
vampire, and the belief in his limitations and his cure, rest for the moment on
the same base. For, let me tell you, he is known everywhere that men have been.
In old Greece, in old Rome; he flourish in Germany all over, in France, in
India, even in the Chersonese; and in China, so far from us in all ways, there
even is he, and the peoples fear him at this day. He have follow the wake of the
berserker Icelander, the devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon, the Magyar. So
far, then, we have all we may act upon; and let me tell you that very
