"Next day I met one of the niggers who was sent to lend him a hand,
and asked results.
"'Master,' said the nigger, 'Bolter is a devil! He sees at night.
When the sheep ran away to right or left in the dark, he told us where
to follow.'"
"He _heard_ them, I suppose," said I.
"Maybe, but you must be sharp to have sharper senses than these
niggers. Anyhow, that was not Bolter's account of it. When I saw him
and spoke to him he said simply, 'Yes, that when excited or interested
to seek or find anything in obscurity the object became covered with a
dim glow of light, which rendered it visible'. 'But things in a
pocket.' 'That also,' said he. 'Curious isn't it? Probably the
Rontgen rays are implicated therein, eh?'"
"Did you ever read Dr. Gregory's Letters on Animal Magnetism?"
"The cove that invented Gregory's Mixture?"
"Yes."
"Beast he must have been. No, I never read him."
"He says that Major Buckley's hypnotised subjects saw hidden objects
in a blue light--mottoes inside a nut, for example."
"Rontgen rays, for a fiver! But Bolter said nothing about seeing
_blue_ light. Well, after three or four seances Bolter used to be
very nervous and unwilling to sleep alone, so I once went with him to
his one-roomed hut. We turned into the same bed. I was awakened
later by a noise and movement in the room. Found the door open; the
full moon streaming in, making light like day, and the place full of
great big black dogs--well, anyhow there were four or five! They were
romping about, seemingly playing. One jumped on the bed, another
rubbed his muzzle on mine! (the bed was low, and I slept outside).
Now I never had anything but love for dogs of any kind, and as--n'est-
ce pas?--love casts out fear, I simply got up, turned them all out,
shut the door, and turned in again myself. Of course my idea was that
they were flesh and blood, and I allude to physical fear.
"I slept, but was anew awakened by a ghastly feeling that the blanket
was being dragged and creeping off the bed. I pulled it up again, but
anew began the slow movement of descent.
"Rather surprised, I pulled it up afresh and held it, and must have
dozed off, as I suppose. Awoke, to feel it being pulled again; it was
slipping, slipping, and then with a sudden, violent jerk it was thrown
on the floor. Il faut dire that during all this I had glanced several
times at Bolter, who seemed profoundly asleep. But now alarmed I
tried to wake him. In vain, he slept like the dead; his face, always
a pasty white, now like marble in the moonlight. After some
hesitation I put the blanket back on the bed and held it fast. The
pulling at once began and increased in strength, and I, by this time
thoroughly alarmed, put all my strength against it, and hung on like
grim death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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