Towards evening the men of Ndong Koni’s town began to adorn and decorate themselves for the fancy un-dress ball, using paint and powder, and wearing round their ankles strings of native bells. The women take no part in these celebrations except to look on and to add to the noise. When they were all ready the men formed themselves into two long lines in the street, with the drums and other wooden instruments across one end. A certain famous dancer performed in the middle, down the lines and back, to the beating of the drums. He seemed to be all joints, and he passed from shape to shape so rapidly that at times he seemed to have no shape at all. At intervals all the men danced, keeping their places in the line, but at certain changes in the music whirling to the other end of the street, and back, adding also a wild song to the beating of the drums, and furiously shaking the bells on their ankles, by which means together with a sudden stamp upon the ground they managed to mark time, which they did to perfection, and to add rhythm, which was quite fascinating in such a volume of noise. Among the tribes which have been longer at the coast such celebrations are attended with rum-drinking; they are also continued all night, and before morning the scene is a hideous debauch. But the Fang have not yet become victims of the white man’s rum, and I know of no wrong attaching to these dances of the men except that they sometimes get excited almost to frenzy; when this occurs they are not unlikely to draw their knives on each other upon the slightest provocation, thus closing the celebration in a free-for-all fight and the spilling of blood. “Where is the man who hath not tried How mirth doth into folly glide, And folly into sin?” Ndong Koni had joined in the frolic. In one particular dance they used firebrands which they waved before them. Next to Ndong Koni stood a man of giant size who thought he had a grudge against one of the family. When the excitement was at its height he suddenly threw fire in Ndong Koni’s face. Ndong Koni was only a boy of about nineteen years and not large; but quick as a flash he struck the fellow a blow in the face. The man, instantly drawing his sword, sprang at him; but Ndong Koni had already drawn his sword and was on his guard. In a minute, as it seemed, the men of the two towns separated and stood facing each other, a sword in every man’s hand. Then, thrusting and parrying, they circled around and drifted down the street towards the place where I was sitting. Before any serious wounds were inflicted, the chief, Mb’Obam, hearing the clash of swords, came from his house, and running between them at considerable risk to himself begged them not to fight, especially, he added, when the white man was visiting their town. He soon succeeded in quieting them.