all
assumed the familiar attitude of a fencer on guard, one foot and arm
advanced, the other foot and arm drawn back, and lunged to right and
left as if they were stabbing something with the long ribs of the
coco-nut leaves which they held in their hands. This manoeuvre they
repeated several times, the orchestra playing all the time. Then they
retreated into the forest, but only to march out again, form in line,
stand on guard, and lunge again and again at the invisible foe. This
appears to have been the whole of the second act of the drama. No
explanation of it is given. We can only conjecture that the band of men,
who seem from their name (_zera markai_) to have represented the ghosts
or spirits of the dead, came to inform the living that the departed
brother or sister had joined the majority, and that any attempt to
rescue him or her would be vain. That perhaps was the meaning of the
solemn pantomime of the lines of actors standing on guard and lunging
again and again towards the spectators. But I must acknowledge that this
is a mere conjecture of my own.[300]

[Sidenote: Blood and hair offered to the dead.]

Be that as it may, when this act of the drama was over, the mourners
took up the body and with weeping and wailing laid it on a wooden
framework resting on four posts at a little distance from the house of
the deceased. Youths who had lately been initiated, and girls who had
attained to puberty, now had the lobes of their ears cut. The blood
streamed down over their faces and bodies and was allowed to drip on the
feet of the corpse as a mark of pity or sorrow.[301] The other relatives
cut their hair and left the shorn locks in a heap under the body. Blood
and hair were probably regarded as offerings made to the departed
kinsman or kinswoman. We saw that the Australian aborigines in like
manner cut themselves and allow the blood to drip on the corpse; and
they also offer their hair to the dead, cutting off parts of their
beards, singeing them, and throwing them on the corpse.[302] Having
placed the body on the stage and deposited their offerings of hair under
it, the relatives took some large yams, cut them in pieces, and laid the
pieces beside the body in order to serve as food for the ghost, who was
supposed to eat it at night.[303] This notion seems inconsistent with
the belief that the soul of the departed had already been carried off to
Boigu, the island of the dead; but consistency in such matters is as
l