[Some years ago I published in a volume of tales called The WrongParadise, a paper styled "My Friend the Beach-comber". This containedgenuine adventures of a kinsman, my oldest and most intimate friend,who has passed much of his life in the Pacific, mainly in a foreigncolony, and in the wild New Hebrides. My friend is a man ofeducation, an artist, and a student of anthropology and ethnology.Engaged on a work of scientific research, he has not committed any ofhis innumerable adventures, warlike or wandering, to print. Thefollowing "yarn" he sent to me lately, in a letter on some points ofnative customs. Of course the description of the Beach-comber, in thebook referred to, is purely fictitious. The yarn of "The ThumblessHand" is here cast in a dialogue, but the whole of the strangeexperience described is given in the words of the narrator. It shouldbe added that, though my friend was present at some amateur seances,in a remote isle of the sea, he is not a spiritualist, never was one,and has no theory to account for what occurred, and no belief in"spooks" of any description. His faith is plighted to the theories ofMr. Darwin, and that is his only superstition. The name of theprincipal character in the yarn is, of course, fictitious. The realname is an old but not a noble one in England.]"Have the natives the custom of walking through fire?" said my friendthe Beach-comber, in answer to a question of mine. "Not that I knowof. In fact the soles of their feet are so thick-skinned that theywould think nothing of it.""Then have they any spiritualistic games, like the Burmans andMaories? I have a lot of yarns about them.""They are too jolly well frightened of bush spirits to invite them totea," said the Beach-comber. "I knew a fellow who got a bit of landmerely by whistling up and down in it at nightfall. {292} They thinkspirits whistle. No, I don't fancy they go in for seances. But weonce had some, we white men, in one of the islands. Not the Oui-ouis"(native name for the French), "real white men. And that led toBolter's row with me.""What about?""Oh, about his young woman. I told her the story; it was thoughtless,and yet I don't know that I was wrong. After all, Bolter could nothave been a comfortable fellow to marry."In this opinion readers of the Beach-comber's narrative will probablyagree, I fancy."Bad moral character?""Not that I know of. Queer fish; kept queer company. Even if she wasever so fond of dogs, I don't think a girl would have cared forBolter's kennel. Not in her bedroom anyway.""But she could surely have got him to keep them outside, however doggyhe was?""He was not doggy a bit. I don't know that Bolter ever saw the blackdogs himself. He certainly never told me so. It is that beastlyThumbless Hand, no woman could have stood it, not to mention thechance of catching cold when it pulled the blankets off.""What on earth are you talking about? I can understand a man attendedby black dogs that nobody sees but himself. The Catholics tell it ofJohn Knox, and of another Reformer, a fellow called Smeaton.Moreover, it is common in delirium tremens. But you say Bolter didn'tsee the dogs?""No, not so far as he told me, but I did, and other fellows, when withBolter. Bolter was asleep; he didn't see anything. Also the Hand,which was a good deal worse. I don't know if he ever saw it. But hewas jolly nervous, and he had heard of it."The habits of the Beach-comber are absolutely temperate, otherwise myastonishment would have been less, and I should have regarded allthese phenomena as subjective."Tell me about it all, old cock," I said."I'm sure I told you last time I was at home.""Never; my memory for yarns is only too good. I hate a chestnut.""Well, here goes! Mind you I don't profess to explain the thing; onlyI don't think I did wrong in telling the young woman, for, however youaccount for it, it was not nice.""A good many years ago there came to the island, as a clerk, un nommeBolter, English or Jew.""His name is not Jewish.""No, and I really don't know about his breed. The most curious thingabout his appearance was his eyes: they were large, black, and had apeculiar dull dead lustre.""Did they shine in the dark? I knew a fellow at Oxford whose eyesdid. Chairs ran after him.""I never noticed; I don't remember. 'Psychically,' as yousuperstitious muffs call it, Bolter was still more queer. At thattime we were all gone on spirit-rapping. Bolter turned out a greatacquisition, 'medium,' or what not. Mind you, I'm not saying Bolterwas straight. In the dark he'd tell you what you had in your hand,exact time of your watch, and so on. I didn't take stock in this, andone night brought some photographs with me, and asked for adescription of them. This he gave correctly, winding up by saying,'The one nearest your body is that of ---'"Here my friend named a person well known to both of us, whose name Iprefer not to introduce here. This person, I may add, had never beenin or near the island, and was totally unknown to Bolter."Of course," my friend went on, "the photographs were all the timeinside my pocket. Now, really, Bolter had some mystic power of seeingin the dark.""Hyperaesthesia!" said I."Hypercriticism!" said the Beach-comber."What happened next _might_ be hyperaesthesia--I suppose you meanabnormal intensity of the senses--but how could hyperaesthesia seethrough a tweed coat and lining?""Well, what happened next?""Bolter's firm used to get sheep by every mail from ---, and send themregularly to their station, six miles off. One time they landed latein the afternoon, and yet were foolishly sent off, Bolter in charge.I said at the time he would lose half the lot, as it would be darklong before he could reach the station. He didn't lose them!"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 whereto follow.'""He _heard_ them, I suppose," said I."Maybe, but you must be sharp to have sharper senses than theseniggers. Anyhow, that was not Bolter's account of it. When I saw himand spoke to him he said simply, 'Yes, that when excited or interestedto seek or find anything in obscurity the object became covered with adim glow of light, which rendered it visible'. 'But things in apocket.' 'That also,' said he. 'Curious isn't it? Probably theRontgen 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 objectsin 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 bevery nervous and unwilling to sleep alone, so I once went with him tohis one-roomed hut. We turned into the same bed. I was awakenedlater by a noise and movement in the room. Found the door open; thefull moon streaming in, making light like day, and the place full ofgreat big black dogs--well, anyhow there were four or five! They wereromping about, seemingly playing. One jumped on the bed, anotherrubbed 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 thatthey were flesh and blood, and I allude to physical fear."I slept, but was anew awakened by a ghastly feeling that the blanketwas being dragged and creeping off the bed. I pulled it up again, butanew began the slow movement of descent."Rather surprised, I pulled it up afresh and held it, and must havedozed off, as I suppose. Awoke, to feel it being pulled again; it wasslipping, slipping, and then with a sudden, violent jerk it was thrownon the floor. Il faut dire that during all this I had glanced severaltimes at Bolter, who seemed profoundly asleep. But now alarmed Itried to wake him. In vain, he slept like the dead; his face, alwaysa pasty white, now like marble in the moonlight. After somehesitation I put the blanket back on the bed and held it fast. Thepulling at once began and increased in strength, and I, by this timethoroughly alarmed, put all my strength against it, and hung on likegrim death."To get a better hold I had taken a turn over my head (or perhapssimply to hide), when suddenly I felt a pressure outside on my body,and a movement like fingers--they gradually approached my head. Madwith fear I chucked off the blanket, grasped a Hand, gazed on it forone moment in silent horror, and threw it away! No wonder, it wasattached to no arm or body, it was hairy and dark coloured, thefingers were short, blunt, with long, claw-like nails, and it wasminus a thumb! Too frightened to get up I had to stop in bed, and, Isuppose, fell to sleep again, after fresh vain attempts to awakenBolter. Next morning I told him about it. He said several men whohad thus passed the night with him had seen this hand. 'But,' addedhe, 'it's lucky you didn't have the big black dogs also.' Tableau!"I was to have slept again with him next night to look further intothe matter, but a friend of his came from --- that day, so I could notrenew the experiment, as I had fully determined to do. By-the-bye, Iwas troubled for months after by the same feeling that the clotheswere being pulled off the bed."And that's the yarn of the Black Dogs and the Thumbless Hand.""I think," said I, "that you did no harm in telling Bolter's youngwoman.""I never thought of it when I told her, or of her interest in thekennel; but, by George, she soon broke off her engagement.""Did you know Manning, the Pakeha Maori, the fellow who wrote Old NewZealand?""No, what about him?""He did not put it in his book, but he told the same yarn, without thedogs, as having happened to himself. He saw the whole arm, and _thehand was leprous_.""Ugh!" said the Beach-comber."Next morning he was obliged to view the body of an old Maori, who hadbeen murdered in his garden the night before. That old man's hand wasthe hand he saw. I know a room in an old house in England whereplucking off the bed-clothes goes on, every now and then, and has goneon as long as the present occupants have been there. But I only heardlately, and _they_ only heard from me, that the same thing used tooccur, in the same room and no other, in the last generation, whenanother family lived there.""Anybody see anything?""No, only footsteps are heard creeping up, before the twitches comeoff.""And what do the people do?""Nothing! We set a camera once to photograph the spook. He did notsit.""It's rum!" said the Beach-comber. "But mind you, as to spooks, Idon't believe a word of it." {299}
