once from the opposite mountain-top, and immediately the whole
party moved on down the slope.

Here was the same lovely tangle of vines and ferns and beautiful
flowers. Monkeys sported in the trees and chattered and scolded
the intruders. Down one range and up another they scrambled and
at last they came upon the village of the head-hunters.

It lay in a valley in an open space where the forest trees had
been cleared away. It consisted of some half-dozen houses or huts
made of bamboo or wickerwork, and the place seemed literally
swarming with women and children and noisy yelping dogs. But even
these could not account for the terrible din that seemed to fill
the valley. Such unearthly yells and screeches the white men had
never heard before.

"What is it?" asked Captain Bax. "Has the whole village gone
mad?"

Mackay turned to one of his guides, and the man explained that
the noise came from a village a little farther down the valley. A
young hunter had returned with a Chinaman's head, and his friends
were rejoicing over it. The merrymaking sounded to the visitors
more like the howling of a pack of fiends, for it bore no
resemblance to any human sounds they had ever heard.

Fortunately they were invited to stop at the nearer village and
were not compelled to take part in the horrible celebration. They
were taken at once to the chief's house. It was the best in the
village, and boasted of a floor, made of rattan ropes half an