leaning perilously forward till they were
practically lying upon their terrified partners, and now bending sideways
as a man bends who has water in one ear after bathing. All of them clutched
each other in a close and intimate manner, but some, as if by separation to
intensify the joy of their union, or perhaps to secure greater freedom for
some particularly spacious manoeuvre, would part suddenly in the middle of
the room and, clinging distantly with their hands, execute a number of
complicated side-steps in opposite directions, or aim a series of vicious
kicks at each other, after which they would reunite in a passionate embrace
and gallop in a frenzy round the room, or fall into a trance or simply fall
down. If they fell down they lay still for a moment in the fearful
expectation of death, as men lie who fall under a horse; and then they
would creep on hands and knees to the wall through the whirling and
indifferent crowd.

Watching them, you could not tell what any one couple would do next. The
most placid and dignified among them might at any moment fling a leg out
behind them and almost kneel in mutual adoration, and then, as if nothing
unusual had happened, shuffle onward through the press; or, as though some
electric mechanism had been set in motion, they would suddenly lift a foot
sideways and stand on one leg. Poised pathetically, as if waiting for the
happy signal when they might put the other leg down, these men looked very
sad, and I wished that the Medusa's head might be smuggled somehow into the
room for their attitudes to be imperishably recorded in cold stone; it
would have been a valuable addition to modern sculpture.

Upon this whirlpool I embarked with the greatest misgiving and a strange
young woman clinging to my person. The noise was deafening. The four black
men were now all shouting at once and playing all their instruments at
once, working up to the inconceivable uproar of the finale; and all the
dancers began to dance with a last desperate fury. Bodies buffeted one from
behind, and while one was yet looking round in apology or anger more bodies
buffeted one from the flank. It was like swimming in a choppy sea, where
there is no time to get the last wave out of your mouth before the next one
hits you.

Close beside us a couple fell down with a great crash. I looked at them
with concern, but no one else took any notice. On with the dance! Faster
and faster the black men played. I was dimly awar