Hawaii

by James Michener

  "Yes. Profane books. I was wondering, Captain Janders, if you would entertain it kindly if I were to give you, from the mission stores, several books of a more appropriate and edifying nature?"

  "Richardson and Smollett are edifying enough for me," Janders laughed.

  "But when you have in your care some four dozen souls . . ."

  "In those circumstances I rely on Bowditch and the Bible . . . in that order."

  "Do I understand that you would not take it kindly . . ."

  "I would not," Janders said stiffly.

  "The mission family has decided," Abner said abruptly, having talked with no one of this project, "that starting with today we shall hold both morning and afternoon services on deck, weather permitting."

  "Fine," Janders said. Then, always eager to keep the young minister off balance, he asked, "By the way, how's Mrs. Hale?"

  "Poorly," Abner said.

  "I should think you would spend some time with her," Janders suggested.

  "I do," Abner snapped. "I pray with her morning and night."

  "I meant, play games with her, or read her an interesting novel. Would you entertain it kindly if I were to offer you, from my own library, several novels of an entertaining nature?"

  "We do not read novels," Abner retaliated. "Especially not on Sundays."

  "In that case, when you do get around to seeing your wife, you can tell her that on Tuesday we'll land at Brava, and she can walk ashore. It'll do us all wonders."

  Jerusha was elated by this news, and on Monday, when the calmer waters in the lee of Cape Verde were reached, she ventured on deck for an hour and the sun diminished her pallor. On Tuesday, when the islands were clearly in sight, she clung to the railing, praying for the moment when she could step ashore, but she was to be sorely disappointed, for a stiff breeze came up offshore, followed by heavy low clouds, and even before the Thetis began to roll in deep troughs, it became apparent that to beat into Brava would be too difficult a task, whereas to run before the mounting storm would carry the little brig so far on its westward heading that any attempt to recover Brava would be wasteful. Nevertheless, Jerusha stood in the rain, praying that some miracle would enable the ship to make land, and it was not until Captain Janders himself passed and said, "We're going to run before the wind, ma'am. There'll be no Brava," that she admitted sorry defeat. Then she discovered that she was very seasick, and began retching at the rail so that Janders shouted, "You, there! Take this poor woman below!"

  It was a gloomy family that met that night in the swaying cabin for a supper of gruel and hard cheese. Half the missionaries were unable to leave their staterooms. The others wore bleak faces in recognition of the fact that a chance to step ashore had been missed, and that no other would present itself for many days. How lonely and mean the cabin seemed as the whale-oil lamp swung in the creaking night, as the latrine smelled up the fetid atmosphere, and as friends retched in new despair. Keoki, corning in with the food, said, "I would like to offer the evening prayer," and in rich Hawaiian he praised the open ocean as compared to land, for on the former one was required to know God, whereas on land there were many diversions. Therefore, reasoned Keoki, it was better this night to be on the Thetis than to be in Brava.

  Of all the listeners, only Abner knew enough Hawaiian to piece together the message, and he thought it so felicitous that he interpreted it for the mission family, and then he surprised everyone by standing and uttering his first prayer in Hawaiian. It was halting, but it was the native tongue of the islands, and it helped acquaint God with the strange tongue in which this family was to work.

  ON THE FORTY-FIFTH DAY of the voyage, Monday, October 15, the groaning Thetis crossed the equator in brilliant sunshine and on a glassy sea. The first victim was Reverend Hale. Since the day was hot, Captain Janders casually suggested at noon that his passengers ought to wear old clothes, and not too many of them. When he was satisfied that no one was wearing his best, he winked at Keoki, who passed a signal aloft.

  "Oh, Reverend Hale!" a voice cried down the hatchway. "Cridland wants to see you!"

  Abner hurried from table, grasped the handrail leading aloft, and swung up the narrow ladder. He had gone only a few yards forward when he was completely drenched in a bucket of sea water thrown down from the shrouds. He gasped, looked about in dismay, and felt his muscles contracting in useless fury. But before he could speak, Mister Collins winked at him and said, "We've crossed the equator! Call Whipple!" And Abner was so startled by the experience that he found himself calling, "Brother Whipple! Can you come?"

  There was a movement at the hatchway as Whipple ran into a full bucket of water. "Equator!" Abner giggled.

  John wiped himself off, then looked up into the shrouds where two sailors were dizzy with delight and reaching for fresh buckets. On the spur of the moment Whipple shouted, "Whales!" and stood back as several passengers from below came storming up the ladder and into their initiation. Soon the deck was choked with laughing missionaries, and Captain Janders announced that the crew would now initiate the sailors who had not yet crossed the line. But when one of the young men who had doused Whipple came up for his diet of gruel, whale oil, soap and grease, John shouted, "Oh, no! I'm to feed this one!" And to everyone's surprise he leaped into the middle of the fray, got himself roundly smeared with grease, and fed the laughing sailor, whereupon there was great hilarity and the captain ordered all hands an issue of rum, at which point the missionaries solemnly withdrew. An hour later Abner had visible proof of the horrors of ardent spirits, for Keoki Kanakoa begged him to come forward into the fo'c's'l, where the old whaler who had accepted the Bible had somehow collected six or eight extra rations of grog and was now cursing vehemently and bashing his head into a bulkhead. With some difficulty Abner got him into his foul bunk and sat consoling him. When the man was sober enough to speak coherently, Abner asked, "Where is your Bible?"

  "In the box," the old whaler replied contritely.

  "This one?"

  "Yes." Primly, Abner opened the box, ignored the filth and disarray, and lifted out the Holy Book.

  "Some men do not deserve Bibles," he said sternly, and left.

  "Reverend! Reverend!" shouted the sailor. "Don't do that! Please!" But Abner was already far aft.

  The strange day ended with a sight of incomparable beauty, for from the west, heading to the coast of Africa, came a tall ship with many sails, out of the sunset, and the Thetis spoke to her and lowered a longboat to greet the stranger, taking mail which could be returned to Boston; and as the longboat prepared to stand off, Captain Janders, in the stern, shouted, "Whipple! They might appreciate prayers!" And John swung down into the boat, and all aboard the Thetis watched as their men rowed into the sunset to visit the strange, tall ship, so beautiful in the dusk.

  Jerusha was brought on deck, and although she tried to control herself, fell into tears at the sight of this curious meeting of two ships in the first shadows of night. "My beloved companion," she signed, "it's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Look how the sunset rests on the waters. The sea is a mirror."

  Amanda, not wishing to be alone at such a still moment, came to stand with the Hales and whispered, "It was almost unbearable, to see Brother Whipple rowing away like that. It's the first time we've been separated. He has been my dear companion and close friend. How lucky we are to be spending our first days of marriage like this."

  But when the longboat returned to the Thetis, and when the tall ship had resumed its passage, with night upon it and the noiseless sea, Amanda saw that her husband sat in the prow biting his lip, while Captain Janders sat in the stem, riveted in hatred. Even the sailors, New England men all, were harshly silent, their mouths pursed into tight lines. Only Captain Janders spoke. "By God!" he cried. "At such moments I wish we were armed. I wish to Almighty God we had sent that damned foul thing to the bottom." In fury he threw a handful of letters at the missionaries' feet. "I would not entrust your letters to such a ship. A slaver."

&nb
sp; Later, John Whipple reported to the missionaries: "It was horrible. They had not secured the chains below, and you could hear them swinging in the swell. It was a dark ship. Abner, would you pray?" And in the hot cabin, on their first night across the equator, the missionaries prayed and Abner said simply, "Where there is darkness, Lord, allow the light to shine. Where there is evil, substitute goodness. But let us not concern ourselves only with distant evil. Remind us always that our first responsibility is the evil that occurs within our immediate environs. Lord, help us not to be hypocrites. Help us to do Thy work day by day."

  He was so moved by this chance brush with the slaver that he could not sleep and spent the night on deck, peering off into the direction of Africa, hoping that God would vouschafe him a flash of light indicating that the blackbirder had exploded. Toward morning he was visited by Keoki Kanakoa, who said, "Reverend Hale, you worry so much about Africa. Did you not know that there are also slaves in Hawaii?"

  "There are?" Abner asked in astonishment.

  "Of course. On my father's island there are many slaves. We call them foul corpses, and they may touch nothing that we touch. They are kapu. Not long ago they were kept for the human sacrifices."

  "Tell me all about them," the stunned young missionary said, and as Keoki explained the various rituals and kapus involving the foul corpses, Abner felt an impatient fury mounting in his throat, so that before Keoki finished he cried, "Keoki, when I get to Hawaii there will be no more slavery."

  "It will be difficult," the giant Hawaiian warned.

  "Keoki, you will eat with the foul corpses." He told none of the other missionaries of this resolve, not even Jerusha, but as dawn came he knew in his heart that that strange tall ship, that cruel Brazilian slaver, had been sent across his path at the equator for a purpose. "There will be no more slavery in Hawaii," he swore as the sun rose.

  It was on the long, dreary run to Cape Horn, more than six thousand miles in almost a straight line, that the famous "missionary's disease" struck in earnest, so that long after seasickness was forgotten, missionary families would recall with embarrassment and discomfort the illness which really prostrated them.

  They called it, in a blush of euphemism, biliousness, and day after day Jerusha would inquire cautiously, "Reverend Hale, do you still suffer from biliousness?"

  He would reply, "Yes, my dear companion, I do."

  Since all the other couples were conducting similar inquiries, with identical responses, the missionaries began to look with truly jaundiced eyes at their doctor, as if Brother Whipple ought by some miracle to be able to dispel the tormenting biliousness. He studied his authorities, especially the Family Medical Book, and prescribed various time-honored cures. "Two tablespoons of ipecac and rhubarb," he advised.

  "Brother Whipple, I've been taking ipecac for weeks," a worried missionary reported. "No good."

  "Have you tried two grains of calomel, Brother Hewlett?"

  "It helps at the moment ... but .. ."

  "Then it'll have to be castor oil ... and walking."

  "I can't take castor oil, Brother Whipple."

  "Then walk."

  So the dreadfully constipated missionaries took ipecac and rhubarb and calomel and castor oil. But mostly they walked. After breakfast all who were able would stride purposefully up and down, up and down the, cramped afterdeck, turning on the animal pens at one end, and the foremast at the other. Sometimes they walked for hours, trying to shame their recalcitrant intestines into action, but nothing really cured the biliousness.

  The after quarters contained one latrine, unbearably foul, and if each missionary occupied it for only fifteen minutes at a time, which was not excessive in their condition, five and a half hours were automatically consumed, and the day was half spent with no time allocated for emergency cases on the part of those who in extreme desperation had taken a master dose or ipecac, rhubarb, calomel and castor oil, all together.

  It therefore became necessary for Brother Whipple, with Captain Janders' amused consent and with able help from Keoki Kanakoa, to rig an unclosed improvised privy aft of the stern. At stated intervals all females would go below decks, and one minister after another would test his good fortune on the open seat, his hands wrapped desperately about the timbers Keoki had hammered into place, his pallid white bottom winking at the whales.

  Day after day they walked. The boisterous sailors, whose bodies were kept functioning by the extraordinary amount of work they had to do, irreverently made bets as to which of the brothers would next try his luck on the precarious perch, and they referred to the constant walking as "the missionary waltz."

  One day, in despair, poor, tied-up Abner demanded of Brother Whipple, "Why is it that God afflicts us so and does nothing to those impious sailors."

  "It's simple, Brother Hale," the doctor laughed. "We all got seasick and cleaned our lower quarters completely. Then we ate little and allowed it to compact itself. Lacking fruit and vegetables the compacting became harder. But most of all, we did no work. Sailors work, so God looks after their bellies."

  Abner wasn't sure but what Brother Whipple had indulged in blasphemy, but he was too uncomfortable to argue, so he merely said, "I feel dreadful."

  "Let me see your eyes," Whipple ordered, and when he saw tie bleary yellow stains he said, "You are dreadful."

  "What can I do?" Abner pleaded.

  "Walk," Whipple commanded, and the missionary waltz resumed.

  Brother Whipple took most of his walks at night, when the stars were out and when his interest in science could be freely indulged. His long discussions with the mates over astronomy came so to occupy his mind that he frequently absented himself from evening prayers, a dereliction which caused Abner to detail two brothers to investigate.

  "We are a family, as you know, Brother Whipple," they said. "Our prayers are family prayers."

  "I am sorry I was forgetful," Whipple apologized. "I'll attend prayers." But as soon as the first worshiper cried, "Amen!” the young doctor was up the hatch and talking astronomy.

  "How does a mariner feel when he crosses the line and sees that the North Star has vanished?" he asked.

  "Well," Mister Collins reflected, "no matter how well you know the southern stars, it's a wrench to see old reliable go down over the horizon."

  From his work with the mates, Whipple learned to work Bowditch for both latitude and longitude, and occasionally his calculations coincided with those of Captain Janders, which led the latter to predict, "You'd make a better navigator than you ever will a missionary."

  "We'll trap your soul yet," Whipple retorted. "If I could get Brother Hale up here . . ."

  "Leave him where he is!" Janders urged.

  Nevertheless, Captain Janders had to admit surprise at the success Abner was enjoying in converting the crew. He had five Bibles out and two more pending. Six men had been cajoled into signing temperance pledges, at which Janders growled, "Easiest thing in the world is to get sailors on board to become temperance. Trick is to do it in port."

  The sailors appreciated Abner's curious gift of raising exactly those questions they had often pondered, so that even men who were not religious would stand about as he argued: "Suppose this voyage occupies four years. On the first week you are away, your mother dies. You don't hear about it. Now what is your relation to your mother during the next two hundred weeks? She is dead, yet you think of her as living. She is dead, yet she has the capacity to help you. Is it not possible that she is indeed living? In Jesus Christ?"

  "I didn't think about it that way, Reverend," an unbeliever said. "But in another way I did. Suppose I'm married, and when I leave Boston my wife is ... well ... if you'll excuse me . . . expecting. Now I never see that baby for four years, but when I come home he looks like me, has my habits, and in some unknown way has come to love me."

  "Only sometimes he don't look like you," the old whaler observed from his own experience. "What then?"

  "Have you converted Captain Janders?" Cridland ask
ed.

  "No," Abner replied sorrowfully. " ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.'"

  "Wait a minute, Reverend!" an old hand corrected. "Cap'n believes. When you ain't aboard he conducts services."

  "True believing requires that you submit your will entirely to God's," Abner explained. "Captain Janders will not confess that he lives in a state of abject sin."

  "I don't classify him as no sinner," the old whaler reflected. "Not a proper, hard-working sinner, that is. Now you take a man like Cap'n Hoxworth of the whaler Carthaginian ... I seen Cap'n Hoxworth get four naked Honolulu girls into his cabin at one time . . . Well, as a sinner, our cap'n just don't compare."

  Nevertheless, Abner waged relentless campaigns against Captain Janders, particularly in the matter of novels, which the captain read ostentatiously immediately after each Sabbath sermon. "You will learn to call such books aborninations," Abner mournfully predicted.

  Janders fought back with irony: "You converting any more old whalers, Brother Hale?"

  The question infuriated Abner, symbolizing as it did the world's pernicious habit of rejoicing over the downfall of sanctimonious men. Actually, he could have turned the tables on the captain, so far as the old whaler was concerned, for the man was agonizingly eager to win back his Bible before reaching Cape Horn. "Many's a sailor's been lost at the Horn, Reverend," he constantly pleaded. "Don't make me round the Horn without a Bible!”

  But Abner had absorbed one fundamental lesson on this trip: the established church must not be maneuvered into a position of danger by the backsliding of fools who were never truly saved in the first place. It is such who have the greatest power to damage the church and they must be denied the opportunity of doing so. Frequently, on the long leg south Abner would sit on a trunk in his stateroom and analyze this case with his seven companions: "I was too prompt to accept this man . . . too eager for merely another number rather than for a secured soul. We must never repeat this foolish mistake in Hawaii."

  And then, on the evening of November 24, just as Keoki placed on the half-moon table the Saturday night suet pudding, an unexpected gale from the southwest struck the Thetis port-side and threw her well onto her beam ends. Since the storm had come without warning, the after hatch had not been closed and torrents of cold gray water cascaded into the cabin. The lamp swung parallel to the decking. Food and chairs and missionaries were swept into a jumble and buried in new floods ripping down the hatchway. There were screams, and from the stateroom where Jerusha lay ghastly ill, Abner heard a plaintive cry, "Are we sinking?"