CHAPTERXVI.
During these days of harrowing suspense I saw much of Fidette.
Together we had walked into her father’s cabin one afternoon and she was showing me its treasures. In an artistically designed hanging basket of woven sea grass I noticed a dozen or more orange-like spheroids, quite resembling the fruit in shape and color. I at first mistook them for the real thing, wondering whence they had come. But, on closer inspection, I recognized them as specimens of detonating bombs, manufactured in Wilmington, Del., and used upon the Fourth of July and other national holidays to add to the noise and the enthusiasm of the occasion.
They are fired from small mortars, and are hurled to a great height in the air. When their velocity is exhausted they explode. They are filled with charcoal and a fulminate similar to that with which percussion caps are charged. They are the most dangerous fireworks used, and the manufacturer will only sell them to the most experienced exhibitors.
A terrible experience enabled me to recognize these deadly missiles at a glance. Only a few years before I had been bound up the Delaware to Philadelphia for charter when the captain decided to anchor off Wilmington, owing to fog, and I, as first mate, was sent ashore to proceed to the Quaker City by train, in order to reportto our principals. I had succeeded in finding the mouth of Brandywine Creek, and was rapidly ascending it toward the nearest street to the railroad station, when, the mist having lifted, I saw that I was near a large brick factory at which fireworks were made. The exterior of the building announced the fact and bore the name of the company.
Just as I was passing this building, that faced the little creek, a terrific explosion occurred within its walls. The entire side of the structure was blown out, and one unfortunate man was hurled almost over my head into the water. Believing that I could render aid to the wounded—and I was confident there must be many—I told my men to land me at the little wharf near the works, and hurried into the building. All was wreck and confusion. Two dead women and five dead men lay about the room. Almost without exception they were unscarred and appeared to have died from concussion. In a box, each carefully separated by a layer of cotton, lay several hundred of these papier-mâché-encased bombs.
They were exactly similar in color to those I saw before me.
Evidently the Kantoon did not know the dangerous character of the pretty yellow spheres that occupied so prominent a place in his quarters. Just at this moment the good man entered, and I asked him how they had come into his possession.
Taking one up, playfully, he explained, as he tossed it about from one hand to the other, that they had been found in a box of wreckage that had floated into the canal several months before, and had been picked up by one of his boat crews. The box had been in the water several months, but it was hermetically sealed.
“Oh! they are all right,” he said, carelessly.
The Kantoon admitted that he had no idea to what use the orange-hued spheres were put. He had been in the habit of making ink from their contents, which Fidettehad used in decorating shells, fish scales and sharks’ teeth.
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 rememberthat 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.
His firmness in the matter, his disinclination to accept death when it was decreed him, excited wonderment. As usual in such cases, he had a week in which to take leave of his friends, at the end of which time he was expected to present himself for execution.
During that interval he fomented the rebellion.
The women who had visited Fidette on the Happy Shark had repeated and enlarged upon the cruel incident of the Portuguese’s death. The young insurgent leader caught up this act as one of injustice, and gathered around him a faithful band of fifty rebellious spirits like himself. They seized a derelict that was occupied only by a caretaker, fortified it and scorned the mandate of the Grand Council.
Hansko Yap, as he was called, announced that the purpose of himself and his followers was to avenge the death of Fernandez. But the real motive was to humiliate the Kantoon of my ship for the manner in which he had persisted in bringing about the sentence of death. Spurred on by the courage of despair, the young leader developed into a veritable Commander Cushing.
With utter fearlessness he prepared the most deadly engine that could be sent against his adversaries. This consisted of a large spar—the foremast of his own ship—which was neatly tapered to a point, and this capped with iron. The spar was eighty feet long, and as straight as an arrow.
The method of attack was to use this spar as a battering ram to break holes through the assailed ships. With entire indifference to the presence of sharks, forty of the young men who had joined in the rebellion would spring into the water, clasp the spar tightly under one arm, and with the disengaged hand propel the floating mast at a high rate of speed. Starting back a thousand feet or more from the derelict they intended to assail, they would bring their engine of destruction forward with a rapid and regular stroke of great power until within five feet of the vessel, when, at a signal from their leader, all would dive. The crash was so great that the hull of a wooden vessel was always broken in.
With iron steamers the damage was less serious, but it was only a question of time and repetition when a seam would open and the plates start apart. Being withoutany means of stopping the inflow of water, the Sargassons of the doomed ship methodically prepared themselves for death, and stood upon the deck chanting their weird, funereal song until the ship gradually settled and took its final plunge.
Such had been the experience in the attacks upon all vessels prior to the assault on the Happy Shark.
Already this bold opponent of public order had sunk a dozen ships, and had caused it to be made known among the entire community that our craft must accept the same fate.
As the defense had been placed completely in my hands, I took the precaution of having twenty boats in the water ready to be manned and sent out at a moment’s notice. In similar cases the oarsman took his place in the stern of the boat, while in the bow was a sailor armed with a very sharp knife. The defense, therefore, was likely to be very stubborn, because a score of semi-savages, armed with huge swords, would be able to make a very serious attack upon twice as many men swimming in water. Excepting a few men who were already in the boats, keeping them in order so that they could be promptly manned, the rest of the crew lay asleep upon the deck, all armed with spears or cutlasses, awaiting the boarding party.