“He was not doggy a bit. I don’t know that Bolter ever saw the black dogs himself. He certainly never told me so. It is that beastly Thumbless Hand, no woman could have stood it, not to mention the chance of catching cold when it pulled the blankets off.”
“What on earth are you talking about? I can understand a man attended by black dogs that nobody sees but himself. The Catholics tell it of John Knox, and of another Reformer, a fellow called Smeaton. Moreover, it is common in delirium tremens. But you say Bolter didn’t see the dogs?”
“No, not so far as he told me, but I did, and other fellows, when with Bolter. 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 he was jolly nervous, and he had heard of it.”
The habits of the Beach-comber are absolutely temperate, otherwise my astonishment would have been less, and I should have regarded all these 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; only I don’t think I did wrong in telling the young woman, for, however you account for it, it was not nice.”
“A good many years ago there came to the island, as a clerk, un nommé Bolter, English or Jew.”
“His name is not Jewish.”