CHAPTERXXV.
I had not been in command of the Caribas more than a month before I discovered that Donna Elenora, the wife of the Kantoon of the near-by ship Cormorant, and Fidette had their heads together and were engaged in the promulgation of a great social reform. They were also in communication with other ships in our immediate neighborhood.
They had undertaken the laudable task of “ameliorating the condition of woman”—among the Sargassons.
I was prepared to admit that the status of woman among the Sargassons was not what it ought to be. She had considerable liberty, although she was not pampered with Parisian dresses and hats. She had no really laborious duties to perform, and, had she been inclined, might have devoted considerable time to the development of her mind and the beautifying of her person. I never had observed that she took advantage of her opportunities. Instead, therefore, of frowning upon the movement, I determined to encourage it by every means in my power.
No better field on the face of the sea or land could be found in which to give the woman question a supreme test.
I was a believer in woman’s rights. I remembered the injustices under which my poor mother had sufferedin South Brooklyn, and I was determined that if Fidette were bereft of any privileges she ought to have, I would see that they were conceded to her. All I wanted to know was whether the women of Sargasso could agree upon any policy that was reasonably sure to better their condition.
At the outset what threatened to be an insuperable barrier arose. The Sargassons have not a written language. Had they possessed a common tongue, it is doubtful if many of the women addressed could have deciphered the petitions. The brief verses or inscriptions written upon the tarpon scales, and that passed current for their literature, were chiefly extracts from the Spanish or Portuguese poets, badly memorized.
When the Sargasson women had once tasted the sweets of liberty, there was little doubt that they would improve intellectually, morally and physically. I remembered to have heard and read during my last shore life, heated arguments upon this very thing. I recalled the fact that a stubborn effort had been made to eliminate the word “male” from the constitution of my native State. I knew from my mother that, when she first entered the married state, she had no position recognized before the law. She had no legal right to her earnings; no legal right to direct and care for her children, and in politics she was absolutely denied any consideration whatever. I had often admitted in my own heart that a woman’s life under such circumstances was necessarily unhappy, and I felt glad, owing to the active agitation of a few noble-hearted women, that most of the barriers restricting woman’s progress and intelligence had been swept away. I was just as pleased that this was true as any woman could have been.
I recognized the fact also that woman had become a great industrial factor in the progress of the western world. She owned vast amounts of property, on which she was taxed, and, therefore, had a right to say whatspecial uses she would prefer made of the money so exacted. Woman suffrage had been tried in one of our largest States, Wyoming, with good effect, and had there been found to improve home life instead of destroying it. I was a convert.
Sending for Fidette, I had a calm and very agreeable conversation with her upon the subject. She owned up, frankly, that she and Donna Elenora had undertaken to preach a propaganda against the subjective condition of woman in Sargasso. They believed that her superior intelligence and good looks entitled her to more consideration than she received. Fidette denounced the theory that among a people where women were few they received greater respect than in countries where they were many. She asserted what I recognized as a startling truth, that the great bulk of the personal property at present existing in Sargasso was in the hands of her sex.
As diamonds, pearls and other precious stones had no commercial value among the Sargasson people, it had been the custom, whenever a derelict was added to the group, to divide the jewels and silverware among the wives of the Kantoons. These in turn had passed the trinkets down to their daughters, and in that way many of the Sargasson women possessed jewel boxes that would have caused the noblest women of Europe to turn green with envy. Such a thing as a theft of jewels was unknown, because they never could be worn in public by the unlawful possessor, and, of course, escape to any part of the world where a market could be found was guarded against.
I entered heartily into the movement for bettering the condition of the Sargasson women.
Fidette was delighted. She foresaw the immortality that awaited her. Her name would be handed down through generations as the champion of her sex! In her ecstasy, she went to her cabin, took down her mandolin, and, in the quaint jargon of the Sargassons, sang, in words as light as air:
Wurra, wurra, wink-o-chee,“Vous etes mucho fond o’ me?”No can marry esta girlQuando jeune, y dans le whirl;Mais, oui? Mais, non!Pero—Hope on!
Wurra, wurra, wink-o-chee,“Vous etes mucho fond o’ me?”No can marry esta girlQuando jeune, y dans le whirl;Mais, oui? Mais, non!Pero—Hope on!
Wurra, wurra, wink-o-chee,
“Vous etes mucho fond o’ me?”
No can marry esta girl
Quando jeune, y dans le whirl;
Mais, oui? Mais, non!
Pero—Hope on!
This jargon may be very freely translated thus:
Alack! alas! my own sea loon,“For love of me you’re in the moon?”But you can’t marry this one girlWhile she’s young and in the whirl,You can? You can’t!But hope—hope on!
Alack! alas! my own sea loon,“For love of me you’re in the moon?”But you can’t marry this one girlWhile she’s young and in the whirl,You can? You can’t!But hope—hope on!
Alack! alas! my own sea loon,
“For love of me you’re in the moon?”
But you can’t marry this one girl
While she’s young and in the whirl,
You can? You can’t!
But hope—hope on!
While Fidette sang I made merry with my memory.
When I lived in Brooklyn I had a cousin who belonged to a wealthy family and was a member of a very famous woman’s club called the Amazons, and from her I learned that after the ladies who belonged to that organization had possessed themselves of all the “rights” that could not make their escape, they began to wrangle with each other as to which of them should enjoy the acquired privileges. The idea of having them in common did not satisfy. One incident that I remember to have heard mentioned impressed me greatly. It arose out of the annual election for the presidency. The tall and stately dame who held that honored post very nearly failed of a renomination. There was considerable feeling in the club in opposition to her, but when she realized that a younger candidate was to be named in her stead she burst into a flood of tears and made a pathetic appeal to the assembly for a continuance in authority. The result was that the meeting closed with a semi-hysterical burst of tears on all sides.
The moral of this bit of retrospection is that I felt perfectly sure Fidette and Donna Elenora would be less confidential toward each other at the end of a month than they were at the moment of arranging their friendly compact. Therefore, not approving of the sociability that had sprung up between them, I believed that the quickest way to destroy it was to encourage it.