The Wanderings of a Spiritualist by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Author:Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [DOYLE, SIR ARTHUR CONAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Parts Edition 75 of 80 by Delphi Classics
Publisher: Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
Published: 2017-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII

Dangerous fog. — The six photographers. — Comic advertisements. — Beauties of Auckland. — A Christian clergyman. — Shadows in our American relations. — The Gallipoli Stone. — Stevenson and the Germans. — Position of De Rougemont. — Mr. Clement Wragge. — Atlantean theories. — A strange psychic. — Wellington the windy. — A literary Oasis. — A Maori Seance. — Presentation.

My voyage to New Zealand in the Maheno was pleasant and uneventful, giving me four days in which to arrange my papers and look over the many manuscripts which mediums, or, more often, would-be mediums, had discharged at me as I passed. Dr. Bean, my Theosophic friend, who had been somewhat perturbed by my view that his people were really the officers of our movement who had deserted their army, formed an officers’ corps, and so taken the money and brains and leadership away from the struggling masses, was waiting on the Sydney Quay, and gave me twelve books upon his subject to mend my wicked ways, so that I was equipped for a voyage round the world. I needed something, since I had left my wife and family behind me in Manly, feeling that the rapid journey through New Zealand would be too severe for them. In Mr. Carlyle Smythe, however, I had an admirable “ cobber/’ to use the pal phrase of the Australian soldier.

Mr. Smythe had only one defect as a comrade, and that was his conversation in a fog. It was of a distinctly depressing character, as I had occasion to learn when we ran into very thick weather among the rocky islands which make navigation so difficult to the north of Auckland. Between the screams of the siren I would hear a still small voice in the bunk above me.

“ We are now somewhere near the Three Kings. It is an isolated group of rocks celebrated for the wreck of the Elingamite, which went ashore on just such a morning as this.” (Whoo-ee! remarked the foghorn). “ They were nearly starved, but kept themselves alive by fish which were caught by improvised lines made from the ladies’ stay-laces. Many of them died.”

I lay digesting this and staring at the fog which crawled all round the port hole. Presently he was off again.

“ You can’t anchor here, and there is no use stopping her, for the currents run hard and she would drift on to one of the ledges which would rip the side out of her.” (Whoo-ee! repeated the foghorn). “ The islands are perpendicular with deep water up to the rocks, so you never know they are there until you hit them, and then, of course, there is no reef to hold you up.” (Whoo-ee!) “ Close by here is the place where the Wairarapa went down with all hands a few years ago. It was just such a day as this when she struck the Great Barrier “

177

m It was about this time that I decided to go on deck. Captain

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