y decorated
with white horse-hair tied in little brushes, doubtless furnished by
our white pony.

The dancing at once fixed our attention. Two or three men, though
usually only two, took position on the little terreplein below the
shack, and began a slow movement, taking very short, formal, staccato
steps in a circle against the sun. Keeping back to back and side to
side, they maintained the whole body in a tense, rigid posture with
the chest out, head up and thrown back, abdomen drawn in, right hand
straight out, the left also, holding a shield, eyes glazed and fixed,
knees bent forward. Between the steps, the dancers would stand in
this strained, tense position, then move forward a few inches, and so
on around the circle. After a little of this business, for that is
just what it was, the next part came on, a simulation of fighting:
and, as everything before was as stiff, strained, and rigid as it
was possible to be, so now everything was light, graceful, agile,
and quick; leaps forward and back, leaps sideways, the two combatants
maneuvering, as it were, one around the other, for position. It was
hard to realize that human motions could be so graceful, light and
easy. Then head-knives were drawn, and cuts right, and cuts left,
cuts at every part of the body from the head to the ankles, were
added to the motion; the man on the defensive for the moment making
suitable parries with his shield.

The dance completed, the dancers would advance and face Mr. Worcester,
put their heels together in true military fashion, hold their arms out
right and left, and make a slight inclination of the head, a sort of
salute, in fact, to the one they regarded as the principal personage
of the party.

We saw much dancing later on in our trip, but none that equalled this
in intensity and character, apart from its being of a totally different
kind, Heiser managed, with some difficulty, to take a photograph of
the tense phase of one of the dances; it gives a better idea of the
phase than my imperfect description.

The dancing was followed by archery, the target being a small banana
stem at some thirty paces. This calls for no especial comment,
except that many hits were made, and many of the misses would have
hit a man. More interesting was an ambush they laid for us, to show
how they attacked. While collecting for it, to our astonishment the
entire party suddenly ran in all directions at top speed and hid
behind whatever offered. On t