My guide, accustomed, as are all Chinese coolies--both in Formosa and on the mainland--to carrying burdens on his back, volunteered thus to carry me, declaring he could easily do so. I acquiesced; and thus “pick-a-back” fashion we started. The guide was a tall man, and, though the water came well up on his thighs, he felt his way carefully with a stout staff that he carried, and all seemed going well, in spite of the fact that it was growing dark, when, without warning, the man gave a startled, guttural cry--in the unexpected fashion of the usually phlegmatic Chinese when really frightened--shook me from his shoulders, and, stooping until his whole body was submerged in the water, shuffled rapidly to a boulder behind which he crouched. Dropped thus suddenly almost to my waist into very cold water, which was running with a swift current, I was nearly swept off my feet. I managed, however, to make my way to a boulder, near the one behind which my guide was cowering. As I drew myself up out of the water on to the boulder, I angrily demanded of him the reason of his extraordinary behaviour. “Light of Heaven,” the man replied, in a low voice, between chattering teeth, “be not angry. It is a _seban_--a head-cutter--there.” With a motion of his head he indicated a figure that I had not seen, standing at the edge of the water. “I was wary,” my guide continued, “I heard a movement in the bushes. I looked up--I saw. Now our heads must surely go. As it was with our fathers----” The man continued to murmur, growing more incoherent in his terror, and evidently more than half benumbed with the cold, as I found myself also becoming.