"From the elaborate and vehement execution of the players, and the want of regular time in the music, I judged, and rightly, that we had entered as the overture began. During its performance the dancers sat leaning forward, hiding their faces as I have described; but when it concluded and, without any break, the music changed into the regular rhythm for dancing, the four girls dropped their fans, raised their hands in the act of Sembah or homage, and then began the dance by swaying their bodies and slowly waving their arms and hands in the most graceful movements making much and effective use all the while of the scarf hanging from their belts. Gradually raising themselves from a sitting to a kneeling posture, acting in perfect accord in every motion, then rising to their feet, they floated through a series of figures hardly to be exceeded in grace and difficulty, considering that the movements are essentially slow, the arms, hands, and body being the real performers, whilst the feet are scarcely noticed and for half the time not visible. "They danced five or six dances, each lasting quite half an hour, with materially different figures and time in the music. All these dances, I was told, were symbolical: one of agriculture, with the tilling of the soil, the sowing of the seed, the reaping and winnowing of the grain, might easily have been guessed from the dancer's movements. But those of the audience whom I was near enough to question were, Malay-like, unable to give me much information. Attendants stood or sat near the dancers, and from time to time, as the girls tossed one thing on the floor, handed them another. Sometimes it was a fan or a mirror they held, sometimes a flower or small vessel, but oftener their hands were empty, as it is in the management of the fingers that the chief art of Malay dancers consists. "The last dance, symbolical of war, was perhaps the best, the music being much faster, almost inspiriting, and the movements of the dancers more free and even abandoned. For the latter half of the dance they each held a wand, to represent a sword, bound with three rings of burnished gold which glittered in the light like precious stones. This nautch, which began soberly like the others, grew to a wild revel until the dancers were, or pretended to be, possessed by the Spirit of Dancing, hantu menâri as they called it, and leaving the Hall for a moment to smear their fingers and faces with a fragrant oil, they returned, and the two eldest, striking at each other with their wands, seemed inclined to turn the symbolical into a real battle. They were, however, after some trouble, caught by four or five women and carried forcibly out of the Hall, but not until their captors had been made to feel the weight of the magic wands. The two younger girls, who looked as if they too would like to be "possessed," but did not know how to accomplish it, were easily caught and removed.