h.

Our passage down the Red Sea was cool and agreeable. Thence we shaped
our course for Ceylon. Here again we stopped a little while to run up
to Kandy and to visit the ruined city of Anarajapura with its great
Buddhist topes that once again gave rise to religious argument between
my two friends. Leaving Ceylon we struck across the Indian Ocean for
Perth in Western Australia.

It was a long voyage, since to save our coal we made most of it
under canvas. However, we were not dull as Captain Astley was a good
companion, and even out of the melancholy Dane, Jacobsen, we had
entertainment. He insisted on holding seances in the cabin, at which the
usual phenomena occurred. The table twisted about, voices were heard and
Jacobsen's accordion wailed out tunes above our heads. These happenings
drove Bickley to a kind of madness, for here were events which he could
not explain. He was convinced that someone was playing tricks upon him,
and devised the most elaborate snares to detect the rogue, entirely
without result.

First he accused Jacobsen, who was very indignant, and then me, who
laughed. In the end Jacobsen and I left the "circle" and the cabin,
which was locked behind us; only Bastin and Bickley remaining there in
the dark. 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 he