The Devil in Paradise--Captain Putnam in Hawaii

by James L. Haley

  Those two days were exhausting before the winds eased in the lee of Hawaii Island’s enormous mountains, and they eased around a point not named on the chart and into Kailua Kona’s south-facing bay. It contained four ships, one of them a large topsail schooner, their hopes rising by degrees until they saw FAIR TRADER painted on its stern.

  It was near nightfall, the bars would be filling, and the Rappahannock’s officers fanned out along the waterfront, knowing only that Saeger was inordinately tall, white-haired, and overbearing. It was Jackson who found him, in a place called Ka-eo’s. Without being noticed, he tracked down the others; the lieutenants loitered in a nearby establishment as Bliven approached the open door, the smell of beer and piss, the growing noise. Of all things, he found himself thinking about Lady Macbeth: Screw your courage to the sticking-place.

  He entered, and immediately saw a man who could only be Saeger at the far end of the bar. Bliven’s uniform created a zone of quiet around him as he passed through and boldly up to the tall old man. “Excuse me, sir, are you Captain Saeger of the Fair Trader?”

  He drew himself up to his full height. “I am. What can I do for you?” His suspicious nature seemed to hang in a protective cloud around him.

  Bliven held out his hand. “Captain Putnam, United States sloop of war Rappahannock, just in harbor from Honoruru. I have a letter for you.”

  “Oh, well, that is good of you.” When Bliven took it out of his pocket, Saeger said, “What, is it not sealed?”

  “No, sir, it is rather an open letter. Let me buy you a drink and I will explain.”

  “Very well, if you wish.” His voice was deep and sonorous, not what one would associate with a butcher.

  “Rum or whiskey?”

  “Rum, sir.”

  “Excuse me, please! A bottle of rum and two glasses.”

  They appeared almost instantaneously. “Two dollars, Captain.”

  He placed the coins on the counter. “May we sit at that table?” The feet of the chairs squealed on the wooden floor, one of the few he had seen.

  “Now, what is this about?”

  Bliven worked the cork out of the bottle and filled their glasses. “Captain, you have not been in Honoruru of late, as I understand.”

  “I have not.”

  “Are you aware that High Chief Karaimoku is now prime minister of the country?”

  “No, I am not.”

  “You are aware, though, that he is the brother of High Chief Boki, who owes a great deal of money to Western captains, including yourself. Under pressure from European and American representatives, the government has begun a policy to redeem these debts, whatever it should take, as an issue of establishing the credit of their country. It seems, there are forests on Boki’s estate that have never been harvested for sandalwood.” He handed over the letter. “He is offering to make good on part of his debt to you.”

  Saeger examined it as if it were a scientific specimen. “Here, now,” he growled, his voice very broad as though he had let himself into the circle of a joke. “What do you take me for? Boki can’t write, and this looks like he just came out of primary school.”

  “Quite right,” said Bliven evenly. “He has learned to sign his name, but he cannot compose a letter such as this.”

  Saeger puffed out his cheeks. “Pff!”

  “But his brother can.” He turned the letter over to reveal the signature. “The Americans and Europeans in Honoruru have united in telling them that no one will do business with them if they do not pay their debts, or at least as much of a debt as will be acceptable to him that holds it, such as you.”

  Bliven could tell Saeger was considering this, like the first nibble at a fishing line.

  “Now, there may come a day when they regret it, but for now the chiefs are as addicted to gilt mirrors and mahogany furniture as their king is to liquor.”

  “That is true,” grumbled Saeger. “They have no more self-control than children.”

  “Yes. Now, when Karaimoku gave me this letter, he vouchsafed that there are a couple of valleys on his brother’s land that he knew still had sandalwood. In the old days those valleys were sacred to the priests, and no one has ever cut there. Those mountains are something on the order of three thousand feet high and catch the most rain, and so have the thickest forest. If Boki has wood now with which to make progress on what he owes you, that is likely where it comes from.”

  “It would stand to reason, yes.”

  “Well, I don’t know the man myself, but I do have some acquaintance with Karaimoku, and he seems to place some faith in his word. To be sure, the queen remonstrated with him and the other debtor chiefs very severely on the damage they were doing to themselves and the country by ignoring their debts.”

  “M-hm.”

  Bliven laughed suddenly. “Of course, that number would include the king first of all, but I don’t know what she can do about him.”

  “Truly said.” Saeger drained his rum. “Well, if he makes a contract whilst he is drunk, that is no defense to let him escape its terms.”

  No, thought Bliven, no indeed. He held the bottle over Saeger’s empty glass. “One more?”

  “Thank you. You sailed all the way down here to tell me this?”

  “No, no, it is a side errand, really. My ship is visiting all the ports, showing the flag, you see, meeting the local officials. The United States is broadening its horizons, as it were. Karaimoku asked me if I would carry this with me in case I encountered you.”

  “I see.” Saeger began reading the letter in detail. “The forests used to belong to the temple. That makes sense; that is where they killed Captain Vancouver’s men back in ’ninety-three for just putting in to water.”

  “One other thing, Captain Saeger. I have heard that some of the other big creditors, like Marshall and Wildes, have gotten wind that Boki intends to pay you what he can. I should warn you, they may reach him first with a better offer. If I were you, I should make haste.”

  Saeger considered it further and began to nod his head. “Indeed, I shall do so.”

  “You do know where Boki’s lands are, at Pupukea?”

  “Oh, yes, I know it well.” Saeger stood, tall but crooked, and Bliven rose after him. Saeger extended his hand. “Good night, Captain Putnam. I am in your debt. May I keep this letter in case he tries to deny it all?”

  Bliven took his hand. You have no idea. “Of course. My errand is complete. Good night, sir. Fair sailing to you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  HE WAS AWAKE and drinking coffee as through his stern windows he saw the Fair Trader stand out to sea from Kailua Kona’s tiny little bend of a bay. He went up on deck; it was chilly because the sun was not yet above the hulking mass of Hualalai. It gave him a thrill to stand in the shadow of a volcano that had erupted, they told him, twice within his lifetime, and whose jolting earthquakes still struck and no one could say when next. West, across the bay, were the leaning remains of a huge grass pili behind a wall of lava rock, where the great King Ta-meha-meha had lived. How much he had missed, Bliven thought, by being born just an eyelash too late.

  He tried to divine how long of a head start to give Saeger and his crew of the misbegotten. If he were able to arrest any of them, he thought, he must gratify his curiosity in learning how they had come to such a pass in life as to work for such a man as could snuff out a hundred innocent people. Were they equally distempered by nature, or had they like so many others followed their road as best they could, and eventually found themselves at a divergence with no good possibilities? Two days, he thought. Karaimoku must have reached Boki by now to prepare to trap Saeger within the walls of their Pupukea temple and have their warriors ready for a fight if one were needed.

  He went back down to his cabin, suddenly surprised at himself that in all this chasing about the Sandwich Islands he had never yet unshelved
Jedidiah Morse’s Compendious Geography. What must he have to say about this place? He found it on page 619, almost an afterthought: The people are darker than they are on Tahiti, but many with pleasant features; Captain Cook was killed here; the trade winds blow from the east; and the mountains catch the moisture, causing each island to have a wet side and a dry side. “Pfft!” With this much information, he thought, any old tar in Boston should write a geography, and he replaced it on the shelf.

  He spread his chart of the Sandwich Islands on the table. Saeger had stood out to the northwest, surely the fastest and most sensible course; after he cleared the big island he would race along the outlet of the Alenuihaha Channel, then the winds would slack off in the lee of Maui, Lanai, and Molokai, and then with only a slight alteration to northwest by north they would cross the Kaiwi Channel and bear up the east coast of Oahu. It could not take more than three days to round the northern extremity of Oahu at Kahuku Point and drop anchor at Pupukea . . . and eternity.

  No, he would not wait two days: they would embark the following afternoon. He did not wish to let events there go stale before he arrived.

  Bliven plotted the same course he anticipated for Saeger. Once they were well under way, the lieutenants gathered in the sea cabin at his call, as did the lieutenant of marines—the bosun, for if they had to fight, it would be in the open, and his ship handling would be crucial.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “in the future we may look back on these days and think them improbable, but the fact is that up to now our plan is working. When I spoke to Saeger, he betrayed no hint of disbelief or suspicion that I was playing him false. He took Karaimoku’s letter with him and embarked the next day on this course we are trailing. And now, unlike the dog who chased a boar and got cut up, we must think in advance about what to do if we catch him.”

  He spread the chart of Oahu on the table.

  “First thing, Captain, if I may?” Yeakel said. “Before we ever get into it with anyone, I would recommend that we shorten sail just as we round Kahuku Point. The last thing we want to do is give ourselves away and then overshoot the mark. It would take forever to claw our way back, and we might not be able to at all because the wind will have us running full and by.”

  There was a murmur of nodding approval. “Mr. Yeakel, keep up that thinking and you will make captain one day. Well done.”

  “Captain?”

  “Mr. Miller.”

  “Let me speak cautiously here as we explore. By the time we get there, if all goes well, Saeger will have gone ashore, but we don’t know with how many men. For that matter, if indeed he mounts ten guns, we don’t know how many men are on his ship: he may have taken on Filipino sailors as well as guns.”

  “Or Boogis pirates, for all we know,” said Bliven.

  “Oh, yes!” whispered Miller. “That is true. Well, that emphasizes the point I would make: that even though this is an American vessel, our guns should be rolled out and ready for instant action before we ever see him.”

  “Yes, I quite agree,” said Bliven. “Gentlemen?”

  “Agreed.”

  Bliven ventured, “Do you suggest that we at least speak him, and give him a chance to surrender? Or allow to surrender whoever is on the vessel?”

  “I suppose we should have to,” said Miller, “even if just once.”

  Jackson shook his head. “If he has gone piratical, he knows that there is only one end for him if he does surrender. If I were him, I would see no choice but to fight it out.”

  “Against us?” Bliven’s tone of voice suggested the madness of taking on a vastly superior vessel in a gun duel. “If he is not aboard, I believe we may count on it that they will hesitate in indecision. That will be a critical moment, for either they will, in the absence of the one who bullies them, abandon him and surrender or panic and open fire, in which case we will, as we have said, return fire in an instant. And then, once we have disabled their vessel, we will go ashore in force, say, fifty of our men with the fifty marines. Does anyone have another idea?”

  Miller tapped the point on the chart showing the shallow scallop of Pupukea’s inlet. “I believe that anything more detailed must wait until we see the lie of the land.”

  As they bore up the east coast of Oahu, all of them stood transfixed by the landscape, a thick, flat coastal jungle that ended abruptly at a vaulting wall of a mountain, two thousand feet high or more, corrugated by erosion from the veils of waterfalls that dissipated into mist before disappearing into the forest. When they passed the jutting promontory marked on the chart as Makahoa Point, they knew they were three miles from the northern tip of the island.

  “Very well, Mr. Yeakel, reef your courses. Master-at-Arms, beat to quarters. Mr. Miller, see that the twenty-four-pounders are loaded with ball, the carronades with grape.” The hollow thumping tattoo of the drum at the head of the ladder penetrated below, bringing men boiling up from below. There was the heavy creaking of the twenty-fours being rolled in, each one weighing forty-three hundred pounds and sitting on half-ton carriages. Belowdecks the boys scuttled into the powder magazine where only they could go, and Dr. Berend gathered up the more gruesome articles of his trade—more dire than his vials of mercurous chloride: his kit of tourniquets, knives, and bone saw—and repaired to his cockpit, donning the leather apron that he had not, thus far on this cruise, had to streak with blood.

  “I am going below. I shall return directly,” Bliven said. When he appeared again, he had changed his officer’s shoes for marine boots, had his Yemeni jambia thrust through his belt, and carried his speaking trumpet in his hand.

  By the time they reached land’s end and saw open water open out to port, all was quiet again. “Very well, Mr. Yeakel, drop your t’gallant yards, shorten to stays’ls and main tops’l.”

  They turned west for three miles, and then from the moment they came southwest they saw their quarry at anchor, far ahead of them at Pupukea inlet.

  “What is your sounding?”

  “Eighty fathoms, Captain.”

  “Come two points to port. Bring us in a little closer.”

  With all in readiness, the silence on board was crushing, the wind in the rigging and the hiss of the water they cut through slower than before.

  “He does not appear to be expecting company.” They neared the shore obliquely until they could hear the breakers dull in the distance. “Sounding?”

  “Twenty-five fathoms, Captain.”

  “Drop your sails; ready to let go the anchors. We will need both of them or we will drift over the cable and swing around. I don’t want to do that unless it is useful.” He found himself thinking again of Macdonough on Lake Champlain. “Bring us in about fifty yards off his beam.”

  “No sign of life,” said Miller. “I rather wish we saw somebody.”

  “Sounding?”

  “Fifteen fathoms, sir.”

  “Sails down. Let go your anchors!”

  When the noise ceased, Bliven crossed to the port rail and put the speaking trumpet to his lips. “Ahoy, Fair Trader! Ahoy!”

  After a moment’s silence Rippel said quietly, “Nobody home?”

  “Ahoy, Fair Trader! This is United States sloop of war Rappahannock. Where is your captain?”

  Only a ghost ship could have appeared more lifeless.

  “Ahoy, Fair Trader! I ask you again: Where is your captain? I require an answer!”

  At last a voice came back, thin and surely without a trumpet. “Our captain is ashore!”

  “Did you mark that accent?” asked Miller. “I don’t know what it was, but it was nothing even remotely European.”

  “Fair Trader, who is your senior officer aboard?” Bliven turned to Miller. “I am getting annoyed. Preble would never have stood for this.”

  Still no more answer came.

  “Fair Trader, I ask you for the last time, who is your senior offi
cer?”

  Both ships rocked in the swell for two minutes as the officers studied the lines of the sleek schooner. And then, in an instant, gunports snapped open where none had been visible before, and they found themselves staring at seven muzzles, a confusion of carronades and six- and twelve-pounders.

  As loudly as his lungs would generate Bliven screamed, “Down!” even as he flung himself from the rail onto the deck. The schooner’s side erupted in flame, so close that they felt the heat of the muzzle blasts and the impacts of balls striking the hull and railing, and the whistling chatter of grape from the carronades. From somewhere forward he heard screams and realized they had suffered casualties.

  From prone on the deck Bliven cried, “Fire, all guns! Fire!” The Rappahannock seemed to slide sideways in the water from the recoil. As soon as he gave the order he reproached himself: he should have waited to ascertain their position in the swell, for as they rolled they might have shot into the water or over their rigging.

  Peering through the smoke as it cleared, however, they beheld the entire side of the schooner appeared to have caved in five feet above the waterline, revealing compartments, bedding, open hold, and two guns knocked off their carriages.

  “Reload! Get the wounded below!”

  “Captain, look! They have a boat down.”

  They stood again and were able to see no one reloading the schooner’s guns. “No, they already had a boat down. Now they are pulling for shore. Their guns were all previously loaded, and they don’t have enough on board to reload them.”

  “Or know how,” said Miller. “Look, they are Boogis, after all.”

  Horner called from the waist, “Shall we get a boat down and get after them, Captain?”

  “No, hold where you are!” More quietly he added, “Gentlemen, the gunfire will have alerted the warriors of Boki and Karaimoku. These fellows won’t get far. Mr. Jackson, get forward and then go below. Report to me damage and casualties.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Mr. Rippel, take a couple of men, go forward, and observe her from a different perspective, see if you detect any movement.”