In the mid-1930s Tom Harrison, under the auspices of the Oxford Exploration Club, organized an expedition into the jungles of Borneo. The young men who went with him included Edward Shackleton, son of the famous explorer Ernest Shackleton, and Patrick M. Synge, cousin of the Irish playwright. Together they spent six months among the Kayans, Kenyahs and the nomadic Punans, drank their rice spirit to the accompaniment of haunting chants, danced and sang, blew poisoned darts from the blow-pipe, were tattoed, and dwelt in longhouses whose features included chandeliers of human heads.