Then came the dances, the gongs and instruments being hung in readiness against the wall. The musicians, their arms over the top of the wooden frames, held the gongs, and drummed at them with their fingers with a will. Two women, with their arms completely hidden under masses of brass rings and white shell armlets, crept forward and touched the tips of my fingers. Then drooping their heads and extending their arms they began to move about slowly. They put their feet close together and shuffled and slid from one side of the room to the other, keeping time to the gongs whilst the little bells tied to their ankles tinkled. We were told that this was called the Hornbill’s dance. The women were very small, slim, and well-made, with pretty expressive eyes, and rather thinner lips than those of the other women of Sarawak, but theirs were so stained with betel-nut juice that in the dim light their mouths looked like large red wounds across their faces. After the women had danced, two men wound in and out of the people squatting on the floor, and stood before us. Under the folds of their sarongs they wore a circle of plaited rattans, making them stand out like crinolines. Their long hair was twisted up Cingalese fashion, and stood out from the handkerchiefs wound round their heads. They commenced the performance by flapping their arms and gliding about without lifting their feet from the floor. They then advanced and nearly touched one another, when they swiftly retreated, wheeled round one another, their arms describing circles in the air. The sarongs over their crinolines billowed and swayed with their every movement, and the dance gave one the impression of sweeping lines and of space. It was supposed to represent the flight of great hawks through the air, and I thought it beautiful. The dancers were handsome men, with sleek and gentle faces, and very arched eyebrows. All their movements were much more languid than those of the Sea Dyaks. When the dances were over we sat talking to the people, and I asked a chief what he thought of our language. He said that English people talking was like the song of birds, but the Chinese language was like the hooting of antus. He then told us of a superstition about bamboos. When people die, he said, their flesh goes into the bamboo and their souls enter the bodies of unborn children, when they are born again into the world.