The medium went outside the hut and closed the wooden shutters. Instantly we were plunged into impenetrable dark. I could just see the circle of strained faces as he reëntered, closed the door, and bolted it. I had not known that a séance would be like this. “Take hold of hands,” he commanded, and I grasped that of the judge on my right and, on my left, the horny palm of the sailor.
“Don’t be afraid, little girl,” whispered the “gob.” “This is going to be good.”
Then the phonograph began to play, and to my overstrained nerves the ordinary xylophone record, put on with a soft needle and some attachment which made it repeat for half an hour, sounded like a far-off echo of the jungle days which this son of the African tribes was trying to reproduce. He had seated himself on a stool with his back to the wall before us and half a dozen long megaphones at his feet.
“Watch the horns,” he drawled in a sing-song voice. “Ebenezer is a long time coming.”
But I could not see them now; I could see nothing. Only a white blur marked the place where his body might still be; I could not swear to it. Then a voice began to sing with the phonograph, an unmistakable negro voice, rising and wailing with a maudlin sentimental cadence, without pause and without words. I wanted to scream out, “Stop singing! Stop that music! I can’t think.” And then I had just wit enough left to realize that that was precisely what he wanted—we were being hypnotized. I felt my mind oozing out into the blackness and only knew, because of the tightened grip on my hands of the judge and of the sailor, that my body was left behind. Something touched me on the shoulder.
“Look out, there’s the horn! Don’t you see it?” Some one whispered.
I strained my eyes above my head, but I could see nothing.
“There it goes!” This was the judge’s excited comment.
Still I could see nothing. The medium continued to sing.
“It’s flying around the room,” breathed the captain.