Note 86 — Chapter XI

A free negro, with whom I had been acquainted whilst I resided at this place, and who came to see me when I removed to Itamaraca, told me, with much horror pictured in his countenance, of the fate of a man who had worked for me. He said that this person occasionally became a lobos homem, a wolf man. I asked him to explain, when he said that the man was at times transformed into an animal of the size of a calf, with the figure of a dog; that he left his home at midnight in this metamorphosed state, and ran about with the violence of a mad dog, and that he attacked any one whom he might chance to meet. The black man was perfectly persuaded of the correctness of his own statement, when he related having, with his brother-in-law and his sister, met this uncommon beast, near to their own cottages. I suppose it was some large dog which prowled about to satisfy his hunger in the neighbourhood of these habitations; but no, the man was persuaded that it was poor Miguel.