The seventh morning broke resplendently beautiful. The Kantoon, awakened, came bounding out his cabin with the skill of an acrobat, sprang into the air, and alighted neatly in the cask of water that stood awaiting him. It was one of my self-imposed duties of “The Week of Silence” to keep this cask filled with water. In the Sargasso Sea evaporation is so rapid that I have no doubt that the contents of the barrel would have been quite exhausted.
The magic of the Kantoon’s voice awakened the entire ship’s company. He gave a long, sonorous howl, which was the signal for everybody to start up and yawn.
A hearty meal was then served upon the upper deck, all being seated. Waiters were unknown, that idea never having developed in the Sargasson mind. The food had been cooked more than a week before and carefully stowed away in a water-tight chest, cast overboard to keep fresh, but held to the ship by a strong thong. One of the first acts of the steward was to drag this box out the water. Most of the men partook very sparingly. As for Fidette, she ate ravenously.
As I said before, I always liked the frankness of this young woman, for she never pretended to be anything but the ingenuous girl she was.
Then followed the closing event of “The Week of Silence,” “The Dance of the Derelicts.” This differed entirely in character from the “Sun Dance.” The entire ship’s company did not participate. All the sailors remained standing respectfully with bared heads while Fidette executed a difficult and rather tedious hornpipe. She was arrayed in a curious costume, the skirt of which was woven from variegated sea-grass, hardly reaching to the knees. The bodice was made wholly of tarpon scales, held together by some insoluble gum. How beautiful were her arms and shoulders! After the hornpipe followed a “walk around.” Then, offering her hands to her father and the chief mate, the three skipped around the deck in a most hilarious “razzle-dazzle” manner.
Not a smile crossed any cheek during this ceremony, which the Sargassons regarded as wholly religious. “The Dance of the Derelicts” is a public manifestation of gratitude to the Greatest of all the Kantoons for his mercy in permitting the Sargassons to have survived another year. It is not to be wondered at that this strange people are grateful for the protecting power of the Most High. They really appreciate the benefits that He confers in allowing them to live after their own manner and under their own laws.
To their way of thinking, there is a great deal of prosperity among the Sargassons, for which they are properly proud. They have no coin or medium of exchange, except sharks’ teeth and tarpon scales, but these seem to serve the purpose very well.
The ceremonial ended as it had begun—with another feast.
Just as the long sleep throughout “The Week of Silence” had been to the Sargassons a continuous vision of the wildest excitement and a foretaste of the eternal bliss of the sweet-water heaven they all hoped to attain, so, antithetically, was “The Dance of the Derelicts,” in which they found no pleasure whatever, a solemn reminder of the cares of this world.
Fidette showed no anxiety to see or to converse with me. The old love had supplanted the new.