The planchette hesitated a while then wrote rapidly and
stopped. Jacobsen took up the paper and began to read the answer
aloud--"To A, B the D, and B the C, the most remarkable things
will happen that have happened to men living in the world."

"That must mean me, Bickley the doctor and Bastin the
clergyman," I said, laughing.

Jacobsen paid no attention, for he was reading what followed.
As he did so I saw his face turn white and his eyes begin to
start from his head. Then suddenly he tore the paper in pieces
which he thrust into his pocket. Lifting his great fist he
uttered some Danish oath and with a single blow smashed the
planchette to fragments, after which he strode away, leaving me
astonished and somewhat disturbed. When I met him the next
morning I asked him what was on the paper.

"Oh!" he said quietly, "something I should not like you too-
proper English gentlemens to see. Something not nice. You
understand. Those spirits not always good; they do that kind of
thing sometimes. That's why I broke up this planchette."

Then he began to talk of something else and there the matter
ended.

I should have said that, principally with a view to putting
themselves in a position to confute each other, ever since we had
started from Marseilles both Bastin and Bickley spent a number of
hours each day in assiduous study of the language of the South
Sea Islands. It became a kind of competition between them as to