The third answer was a cleaner guess, but wrong.
He says: 'All this about the tent and boat is excellent, though not outside my knowledge'.... Then he adds, concerning the boat, 'I believe it went along the sands very fast occasionally, but it still wouldn't sail at right angles to the wind as they wanted it.... On the whole it was regarded as a failure, the wheels were too small; and Raymond's "didn't" is quite accepted.'
And Raymond's 'did' would have been as readily accepted and put in the same chapter headed 'Two evidential sittings.'
Contrast these halting scraps to the following (p. 249): 'He wants to tell you that Mr. Myers says that in ten years from now the world will be a different place. He says that about fifty per cent. of the civilised portion of the globe will be either spiritualists or coming into it.'
No hesitation here, but no possible verification either, nor any hint that a hundred per cent. of the uncivilised people of the globe are already spiritualists.
Sir Oliver's imagination does not keep pace with his readiness to fit revelation to fact. After the tent, the water, and the yacht, comes—'rods and things, long rods. Some have got little round things shaking on them like that. And he's got strings, some have got strings. "Strings" isn't the right word, but it will do. Smooth, strong, string-like.'
Of this Sir Oliver says: 'The rod and rings and strings mentioned after the "boat", I don't at present understand. So far as I have ascertained the boys don't understand either at present.' Surely an out-of-door family like this includes at least one fisherman; why not think out who he is and score another bull's-eye to the medium?
A delightful example of Sir Oliver's anxiety to help the medium occurs on page 256:—
O. J. L.: 'Do you remember a bird in our garden?'
(Feda (sotto voce): 'Yes, hopping about').