In all frankness, he began, Fidette had made a mistake in preferring me to the Portuguese. The Kantoon (Fidette’s father) was the son of an Oporto sailing master. Fidette’s mother, as we know, was a New Orleans creole.
The propriety of the lover’s taking off was not questioned for a moment. His life was forfeit by the Sargasson code. And yet, by these Sargasson people, the trombone was held to be a sacred instrument, and this young man had devoted his life to its study. It was just their standard of music.
The Kantoon informed me that a rebellion was fomenting, the first that had occurred since the great Chin-Goone outbreak in 1816, which grew out of a concerted plot on the part of 200 Kantoons to organize an expedition to go to St. Helena, rescue Napoleon and make him the Emperor of Sargasso.
Napoleon was the only great figure in history thoroughly known and respected by the Sargassons. They regarded him in much the same light as the ancient Greeks and Romans did Hercules. To them he was rather more God than man. His imperious and impulsive character filled them with the wildest admiration.
When these 200 Kantoons organized there was only one fearless young commander, Chin-Goone, who stubbornly opposed the project. He did not want Sargasso opened to the world. He defied the entire 200! Armed with the only ship’s auger in the community, at dead of night he scuttled 100 ships occupied by the leaders of the Napoleonic movement. These vessels, their Kantoons and their crews all went to the bottom.
The movement failed, and for one year this young dare-devil Kantoon was, apparently, the most popular man in all the Community. But he thoroughly understood his fate under the Sargasson law. He knew that he must die on the anniversary of his act. He enjoyed himself as much as he could, and when the day arrived, accompanied by his hardy crew, he visited the stately vessel of the High Priest and submitted quietly and without resistance to being triced up and cast into the sea.
Recurring to the situation that confronted us now, the Kantoon was very grave, and said that the entire company of the vessel on which had dwelt Fidette’s late lover, the Portuguese, had risen in rebellion because of the young man’s execution.
They had secured the co-operation of twelve other crews, and a night attack for the abduction of Fidette and her summary punishment was highly probable.
The method of punishing a young woman who had been treacherous to her lover was quite peculiar. The false sweetheart was compelled to live, but lines of age and crows’ feet were tattooed into her face. Her hair was bleached white, like an old woman’s, and every vestige of her youth was destroyed.
Such an outrage, of course, the Kantoon was determined to prevent, and I was quite as resolutely opposed to it.