128. At 8 o’clock a band of musicians which I will call the orchestra entered, sat down beside one of the small fires in the west, and began to make various vocal and instrumental noises of a musical character, which continued with scarcely any interruption until the close of the dance in the morning. At the moment the music began the great central fire was lighted, and the conflagration spread so rapidly through the entire pile that in a few moments it was enveloped in great flames. A storm of sparks flew upward to the height of a hundred feet or more, and the descending ashes fell in the corral like a light shower of snow. The heat was soon so intense that in the remotest parts of the inclosure it was necessary for one to screen his face when he looked towards the fire. And now all was ready to test the endurance of the dancers who must expose, or seem to expose (paragraph 149), their naked breasts to the torrid glow. [Illustration: Bureau of Ethnology Fifth Annual Report Pl. XII DANCE OF NAHIKÀÏ.] 129. _First dance_ (Plate XII). When the fire gave out its most intense heat, a warning whistle was heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen forms, lithe and lean, dressed only in the narrow white breechcloth and moccasins, and daubed with white earth until they seemed a group of living marbles, came bounding through the entrance, yelping like wolves and slowly moving around the fire. As they advanced in single file they threw their bodies into divers attitudes--some graceful, some strained and difficult, some menacing. Now they faced the east, now the south, the west, the north, bearing aloft their slender wands tipped with eagle down, holding and waving them with surprising effects. Their course around the fire was to the left, i.e., from the east to the west, by way of the south, and back again to the east by way of the north, a course taken by all the dancers of the night, the order never being reversed. When they had encircled the fire twice they began to thrust their wands toward it, and it soon became evident that their object was to burn off the tips of eagle down; but owing to the intensity of the heat it was difficult to accomplish this, or at least they acted well the part of striving against such difficulty. One would dash wildly towards the fire and retreat; another would lie as close to the ground as a frightened lizard and endeavor to wriggle himself up to the fire; others sought to catch on their wands the sparks flying in the air. One approached the flaming mass, suddenly threw himself on his back with his head to the fire, and swiftly thrust his wand into the flames. Many were the unsuccessful attempts; but, at length, one by one, they all succeeded in burning the downy balls from the ends of their wands. As each accomplished this feat it became his next duty to restore the ball of down. The mechanism of this trick has been described (paragraph 120),