A tall man was shrouded from head to foot in a flowing garment of the soft palm fibre, and his face was hidden by a great wooden mask, hideously painted, and furnished with a pair of long, curved horns. This frightful apparition stalked slowly round the circle, creating no small terror in the people whom he approached. Then he slowly walked up to me, and, bending over me, thrust the hideous mask in my face and glared at me through the eye-holes. When he had stood thus for a minute or so, he stepped back a few paces and began to dance very slowly and sedately, spreading out his garment on either side and wagging the great horned mask in a most horrible manner. Then he came and knelt on the ground before me, remaining perfectly motionless while the people still sidled round, chanting, sweeping, and shaking their rattles. At last he nodded the great mask at me, three times, in a slow and mysterious fashion, and in a twinkling there was slipped over my head and shoulders a leathern bag, which shut out the light and sound and nearly suffocated me. A confused din of drums, horns, and chanting voices came distantly to my ears, and I felt coil after coil of rope being passed round my body and limbs, and made out that I was being lashed to some kind of pole. Presently the pole was lifted into a horizontal position, and as I hung from it, the coils of rope cut into my flesh in the most agonising manner. I could feel my bearers lift the pole on to their shoulders, and then they started off at a brisk walk, each step causing me excruciating pain. We left the village by a narrow forest path, as I could tell by feeling leaves and branches brushing against my body, and we travelled along this, as it seemed to me for hours. Next we crossed a wide clearing, where I could feel the hot sun pouring down upon my naked skin--for they had torn off the remnant of my clothing when they bound me to the pole--and then quite suddenly the air became dank and chilly, as if we had entered a cellar or a vault, and, in spite of the bag in which my head was muffled, I could hear that the creaking of the pole reverberated in a hollow fashion as sounds do in a tunnel. Presently they laid me on the ground, and then I was tilted over an edge and partly slid and partly hoisted down what seemed like a ladder, and again carried along the level for a time. Then came another steep descent and another stretch along the level, and of a sudden the air became hot, not with the heat of the sun but with the close warmth of a fire. I was now laid down on a smooth, hard surface, and I felt someone unfastening the lashing that held me to the pole, although my arms and legs were still tightly bound. Then the bag was plucked from my head and I drew in a deep breath of hot, stuffy, foul-smelling air.