The presentation of skulls is but the prelude to a great entertainment. It has been planned for our especial benefit. As a sort of opening chorus and introductory number, we are entertained with the Kia Kia song of welcome as the circle of witnesses to the skull-presentation ceremony breaks up.

The medicine man—who, by the way, is supposed to hold communion with the spirits that every native believes inhabit the jungle—leads in the opening number, which is an ensemble of all the adult males of the kampong. He is attended by two others, who circle around him with heads bowed, rattling castanets made of the great pincers of the crayfish with which the coast abounds. These have a sound which reminds one of the never-to-be forgotten but hard-to-describe warning of the diamond-back crotalus or rattlesnake of America.

The circle breaks up and a dance takes place for our entertainment

They sang for us at the top of their leather lungs

141The medicine man is grotesque with his barbaric adornments. Surmounting his head and securely fastened to his ordinary headdress, is a fish carved of wood, of a light pithy variety. The fish is nearly two feet in length and though its general color is white, the markings representing its fins and eyes are in red. As the man walks it bobs up and down in a funny way as though nodding its approval of the ceremony. While the medicine man and his feather-bedecked attendants perform their dance with extreme gravity, the others who are at some distance in the background, nearer the water’s edge, stride up and down the beach in close formation, singing at the top of their lungs a refrain that seems to be a continuous repetition of perhaps a dozen notes.

They walk briskly ten or twelve yards past the little group of three in the foreground and then reverse, those who had been in the rear now becoming the leaders, and walk an equal distance 142to the other side of the medicine man. Meanwhile, the song goes on and the castanets continue their dry, menacing rattle. We watch them for a space of ten minutes, but after that the dance begins to grow monotonous. The thump of the drums keeps up with mechanical precision the even rhythm of the walking-dance. The performance becomes a bore. While the dance is still in progress we leave the beach to return to the camp. Once warmed up, as they now are, they will continue to dance without interruption for hours. As the older men become fatigued they will drop out and younger ones take their place. When they have rested sufficiently, they will return, and so the dance goes on.

While the men are dancing the women are not idle. The fires are burning brightly in the kampong and over them the girls are roasting fish and sago cakes, while three women are carefully turning the pig that squealed this afternoon, in a pit dug for the purpose of roasting 143him according to their method. The pit is filled with red-hot stones, we find upon examination, and the odor that rises from the place makes us hungry. We begin to wonder how we can refuse to partake of his porkship, for we know that they will surely offer us some of the meat. That pig, like all their others, has been too careless in its diet to suit us as food, no matter how delicious the cooking may smell. In order that we may have some semblance of an excuse to refuse the meat we order Moh to watch the roasting and have our dinner ready to serve the moment the pig is ready for the natives. We can then plead satiety without hurting their feelings.

As it happens, we are able to evade the issue gracefully, for the women take the food to the dancers on the beach, where they line up and receive it upon broad palm-leaves the women provide for the purpose. When all have eaten, the dancing is resumed. A great fire is built on the sand and the dance goes on in its light,—the most savage scene imaginable. Though our 144hosts began the party in our honor, now all are joining in for the sheer pleasure it gives them, with no thought of us.

After our dinner we go down and watch them for an hour before turning in. As the excitement heightens the affair becomes a wild orgy in which all par............