I gently took the small sphere from the Kantoon’s fingers and replaced it in the basket, telling him in a general way that harm might come to him if he dropped one. To Fidette, however, on the earliest opportunity, I made a free and frank confession. I told her that to drop one of those detonating shells meant instant death to every one within a radius of twenty-five feet. She appeared to attach no importance to my caution, but my words found an indelible place in her bright memory.
It was an episode that only a woman’s genius could turn to future account.
They were to become “blood oranges.”
The history of this revolt against the Kantoon of the Happy Shark, is exceedingly curious.
Ostensibly, the rebellion was for the purpose of avenging the death of the young Portuguese lover of Fidette. But it was led by a young man who had not personally known the Portuguese, and whose real motive I shall now explain.
I have already told what a sturdy race of men the Sargassons were. This was due to the cruel, but invariable, rule of destroying all weak children and of putting to death all young men who, having attained their growth, did not reach the height of six feet or more. When a young man attained the age of 21 he was summoned before the Kantoons of twenty-one ships, who assembled on an island of floating sod, and he was then carefully measured as to his height. The only question ever raised was whether the candidate so examined had attained his full growth. Instances had happened in which the young man had been kept under observation for several years, and then finally condemned. The penalty was death.
There were no jails in Sargasso where people who broke the laws could be locked up. You will remember that I suffered a few days’ confinement in a temporary cage on the main deck of the Happy Shark. It is not improbable that such a cell existed on all the ships. But the difficulty of caring for prisoners and the impossibility of banishment made it necessary to inflict the death penalty for nearly all infractions of the Sargasson social customs.
One of the most popular men in all the Seaweed Sea was the son of a distinguished Kantoon, whose barnacle-covered ship was not far distant from the Happy Shark. He had just attained his majority, and at a council of Kantoons, at which he had presented himself, it had been decided that he was a full half inch under size. However much he stretched his neck in the effort to elongate his frame to the required six feet, the decision was against him. Most decided in his opinion was the Kantoon of my ship. He scouted the idea that the young man had not attained his full stature. He ridiculed the assertion of the candidate that he still suffered from growing pains, and finally turned the tide against a popular movement on the part of several other members of the council to give the candidate another year’s grace.
It is doubtful if this extension of time would have proved of real benefit to the candidate, because he had already done everything in his power to lengthen himself, having hung by his arms for half a day at a time in order to expand the knee and hip joints. The Kantoon of the Happy Shark pronounced the final decree that the young man must die.
Entirely contrary to custom, the condemned protested.