Friendship is a mirage of Fogland! It vanishes when the sunlight of self-interest beats upon it.
In every way I encouraged the propaganda that these good ladies had set on foot. Day by day I saw them depart, filled with the enthusiasm of their sacred mission. Naturally, the first visits were paid nearest home, but the field of the propaganda was gradually extended until their absence embraced the period between the rising and going down of the sun.
For a few days I was told all that occurred, exactly what had been said on each vessel, how the tea tasted with which they had been regaled, and even the spiteful remarks that the women on the other ships had made about their neighbors. But, prompted by Donna Elenora, who unconsciously was more of a logician than Fidette, the leader of the Great Cause soon ceased to tell me anything. In this she was entirely within her own rights, and I found no fault.
The Kantoon of the Cormorant, however, was not so complacent, and on the first refusal of his wife to tell him where she had been he reasserted the majesty of man by locking her up in the sick bay and putting her on a diet of dry seaweed and rainwater. He peremptorily refused to allow Donna Elenora to again accompany Fidette, and the splendid future of the good work seemed to be imperiled. It was in vain that Fidette appealed to me to have her companion released. I told her, candidly, that under the new order of things my influence did not extend to a control of the women in the community; that, however much liberty I might allow the gentle sex, I could not abolish the marriage relation or create any ex-post facto regulation that would abrogate the control that the husband was admitted to have over the conduct of the wife at the time the contract was made.
This didn’t satisfy Fidette. Her estimate of man was no better than before. I was really charmed with the manner in which she stamped her little foot on the deck and said:
“Just wait till we control Sargasso and its myriad ships. We’ll crucify such a man as Elenora’s husband!”
This was perfectly delightful to me.
I learned from time to time that the social conditions on the ships that had been visited by the two priestesses of emancipation were quite the same as on board the Cormorant. The custom of giving teas to the visiting wives and daughters of the Kantoons had already practically destroyed one of the most sacred ordinances of the Sargassons forbidding the presence of fire on any ship. This offense, for which any man in the crew would have been instantly punished with death, was now committed by the ladies of Sargasso with impunity.
Another circumstances that I noticed in the line of independence was that they began bartering their jewels among each other, and the greater part of the personal property that had been the pride of the Sargasson people bid fair to drift into the hands of a few women who were shrewder and more skilled in the arts of barter than the others. I foresaw that this would lead to no end of trouble. Fidette was the superior of any woman in striking a bargain, and she did not, therefore, suffer especially at the hands of the shrewdest of her sex.
The catastrophe that I had feared came in a most startling and unexpected way.