Presently we heard sounds of altercation, and Bickley emerged looking very red in the face, followed by Bastin, who was saying: "Can I help it if something pulled your nose and snatched off your eyeglasses, which anyhow are quite useless to you when there is no light?
Again, is it possible for me, sitting on the other side of that table, to have placed the concertina on your head and made it play the National Anthem, a thing that I have not the slightest idea how to do ?" "Please do not try to explain," snapped Bickley.

"I am perfectly aware that you deceived me somehow, which no doubt you think a good joke." "My dear fellow," I interrupted, "is it possible to imagine old Basil deceiving anyone ?" "Why not," snorted Bickley, "seeing that he deceives himself from one year's end to the other ?" "I think," said Bastin, "that this is an unholy business and that we are both deceived by the devil.

I will have no more to do with it," and he departed to his cabin, probably to say some appropriate prayers.
After this the seances were given up but Jacobsen produced an instrument called a planchette and with difficulty persuaded Bickley to try it, which he did after many precautions.

The thing, a heart-shaped piece of wood mounted on wheels and with a pencil stuck at its narrow end, cantered about the sheet of paper on which it was placed, Bickley, whose hands rested upon it, staring at the roof of the cabin.

Then it began to scribble and after a while stopped still.
"Will the Doctor look ?" said Jacobsen.