fumigated in the smoke of the censer and returned to its scabbard.
He next took three silver 20-cent pieces of “Straits” coinage, to serve as batu
buyong, or “jar-stones,” and after “charming” them dropped each of the three in
turn into one of the water-jars, and “inspected” them intently as they lay at the
bottom of the water, shading, at the same time, his eyes with his hand from the
light of the tapers. He now charmed several handfuls of rice (“parched,”
“washed,” and “saffron” rice), and after a further inspection declared, in shrill,
unearthly accents, that each of the coins was lying exactly under its own
respective taper, and that therefore his “child” (the sick man) was very
dangerously ill, though he might yet possibly recover with the aid of the spirit.
Next, scattering the rice round the row of jars (the track of the rice thus forming
an ellipse), he broke off several small blossom-stalks from a sheaf of areca-palm
blossom, and making them up with sprays of champaka into three separate
bouquets, placed one of these improvised nosegays in each of the three jars of
water. On the floor at the back of the row of jars he next deposited a piece of
white cloth, five cubits in length, which he had just previously fumigated. Again
drawing the dagger already referred to, the Pawang now successively plunged it
up to the hilt into each of the three bouquets (in which hostile spirits might, I
was told, possibly be lurking). Then seizing an unopened blossom-spathe of the
areca-palm, he anointed the latter all over with “oil of Celebes,” extracted the
sheaf of palm-blossom from its casing, fumigated it, and laid it gently across the
patient’s breast. Rapidly working himself up into a state of intense excitement,
and with gestures of the utmost vehemence, he now proceeded to “stroke” the
patient with the sheaf of blossom rapidly downwards, in the direction of the feet,
on reaching which he beat out the blossom against the floor. Then turning the
patient over on to his face, and repeating the stroking process, he again beat out
the blossom, and then sank back exhausted upon the floor, where he lay face
downwards, with his head once more enveloped in the folds of the sarong.
A long interval now ensued, but at length, after many convulsive twitchings, the
shrouded figure arose, amid the intense excitement of the entire company, and
went upon its hands and feet. The Tiger Spirit had taken possession of the
Pawang’s body, and presently a low, but startlingly life-like growl—the
unmistakable growl of the dreaded “Lord of the Forest”—seemed to issue from
somewhere under our feet, as the weird shrouded figure began scratching
furiously at the mat upon which it had been quietly lying, and then, with