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.
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