The scene was inside one of the houses, and fourteen or
fifteen different dances were performed, one of them obscene, but
presented and accepted with the same seriousness as the other varieties.
Some small girls danced extraordinarily well, and their movements were
fairylike in unaffected grace.
Enjoying the very pleasant air after the night's rain, we travelled
rapidly down-stream on the swollen river to Tumbang Marowei, where we
spent the night. There were twenty men from the kampong eager to accompany
me on my further journey, but they were swayed to and fro according to the
dictates of the kapala, who was resolutely opposed to letting other
kampongs obtain possession of us. He wanted to reserve for himself and the
kampong the advantages accruing from our need of prahus and men. To his
chagrin, in the morning there arrived a large prahu with four Murungs from
Batu Boa, who also wanted a chance at this bonanza, whereupon the kapala
began to develop schemes to harass us and to compel me to pay more.
Without any reason whatsoever, he said that only ten of the twenty men I
had engaged would be able to go. This did not frighten me much, as the
river was swollen and the current strong, so that one man in each of our
prahus would be sufficient to allow us to drift down to the nearest Malay
kampong, where I had been promised men some time before.
