The king took to him all the men in both
islands, giving up to the queen the women, to become her subjects. Since
then the Male and Female Islands had been managed as separate
communities. There was no king or queen now, the people of both islands
being ruled by the wise-ones, who lived on the mountain tops in the
Female Island. But the inhabitants of the two islands still continued to
live apart, the males on one island and the females on the other. On the
Male Island the males dwelt alone, without their wives, or any other
women. Every year, in the month of March, the men came to the Female
Island, and tarried there three months, to wit, March, April, and May,
dwelling with their wives for that space. At the end of those three
months they returned to their own island, and pursued their avocation
there, selling ambergris to the traders from Sumatra. As for the
children whom their wives bore them, if they were girls they stayed with
their mothers; but if they were boys their mothers brought them up until
they were fourteen years old, and then sent them to their fathers. Those
women who were married did nothing but nurse and rear their children.
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