stood behind every guest waving continuously a long-handled, painted
palm-leaf fan. The simultaneous rhythmic motion of the fans recalled
the temple scene at the end of the first Act of _Aida_. We found
the "Devil Dancers" grouped in the garden, some thirty in number. The
men were all short and very dark-skinned; they wore a species of kilt
made of narrow strips of some white metal, which clashed furiously
when they moved. Their legs and chests were naked except for festoons
of white shells worn necklace-wise. On their heads they had curious
helmets of white metal, branching into antlers, and these headdresses
were covered with loose, jangling, metallic strips. The men had their
faces, limbs, and bodies painted in white arabesques, which, against
the dark skins, effectually destroyed any likeness to human beings. It
would be difficult to conceive of anything more uncanny and less human
than the appearance of these Devil Dancers as they stood against a
background of palms in the black night, their painted faces lit up by
the flickering glare of smoky torches. As soon as the raucous horns
blared out and the tom-toms began throbbing in their maddening,
syncopated rhythm, the pandemonium that ensued, when thirty men,
whirling themselves in circles with a prodigious clatter of metals,
began shrieking like devils possessed, as they leaped into the air,
was quite sufficient to account for the terror of the Cingalee
servants, who ran and hid themselves, convinced that they were face to
face with real demons escaped from the Pit.

Like all Oriental performances it was far too long. The dancers
shrieked and whirled themselves into a state of hysteria, and would
have continued dancing all night, had they not been summarily
dismissed. As far as I could make out, this was less of an attempt to
propitiate local devils than an endeavour to frighten them away by
sheer terror. It was unquestionably a horribly uncanny performance,