While he is thus engaged the young men, who had been lying flat on their faces, get up and join the old men in chanting a song with which the movements of the rain-maker seem to accord. But as soon as he re-enters the hut, the young men at once prostrate themselves again; for they must always be lying down when he is in the hut. The performance is repeated at intervals during the night, and the singing goes on with little intermission until, just when the day is breaking, the rain-maker executes a final quiver, which lasts longer than any of the others, and seems to exhaust his remaining strength completely. Then he declares the ceremony to be over, and at once the young men jump to their feet and rush out of the hut, screaming in imitation of the spur-winged plover. The cry is heard by the men and women who have been left at the main camp, and they take it up with weird effect.​[890] [Sidenote: Rain-making by imitation of clouds and storm.] Although we cannot, perhaps, divine the meaning of all the details of this curious ceremony, the analogy of the Queensland and the Dieri ceremonies, described above, suggests that we have here a rude attempt to represent the gathering of rain-clouds and the other accompaniments of a rising storm. The hut of branches, like the structure of logs among the Dieri, and perhaps the conical shed in Queensland, may possibly stand for the vault of heaven, from which the rain-clouds, represented by the chief actor in his quaint costume of white down, come forth to move in ever-shifting shapes across the sky, just as he struts quivering up and down the trench. The other performers, also adorned with bird’s down, who burst from the tent with the cries of plovers, probably imitate birds that are supposed to harbinger or accompany rain.​[891] This interpretation is confirmed by other ceremonies in which the performers definitely assimilate {p262} themselves to the celestial or atmospheric phenomena which they seek to produce. Thus in Mabuiag, a small island in Torres Straits, when a wizard desired to make rain, he took some bush or plant and painted himself black and white, “All along same as clouds, black behind, white he go first.” He further put on a large woman’s petticoat to signify raining clouds. On the other hand, when he wished to stop the rain, he put red paint on the crown of his head, “to represent the shining sun,” and he inserted a small ball of red paint in another part of his person. By and by he expelled this ball, “Like breaking a cloud so that sun he may shine.” He then took some bushes and leaves of the pandanus, mixed them together, and placed the compound in the sea. Afterwards he removed them from the water, dried them, and burnt them so that the smoke went up, thereby typifying, as Dr. Haddon was informed, the evaporation and dispersal of the clouds.​[892] Again, it is said that if a Malay woman puts upon her head an inverted earthenware pan, and