"They'll ripen and be good for many days," he said, "and the sickly ones will enjoy them."
"What are they?" Abner asked.
"Bananas, son. Good for constipation. Better get to like them because they're the principal food in Hawaii." The whaler showed Abner how to peel one, took a big bite, and gave the stub to Abner.
"Once you become familiar with 'em, they're real good." But Abner found the penetrating smell of the skin offensive, whereupon the whaler bellowed, "You damn well better get to like 'em, son because that's what you'll be eatin' from now on."
"Were you in Hawaii?" Abner asked.
"Was I in Honolulu?" the whaler shouted. Then, recalling the sermon just concluded, he finished lamely, "We took a dozen whales south of there."
On Tuesday, December 18, after Captain Janders had copied all the charts that his fellow skipper could provide of the Magellan passage, and had compared them with his own, finding that no two placed any single island in the passage even close to where the others did, the Thetis weighed anchor and headed back for Tierra del Fuego, but this time to the northern end of the island, where it abutted onto South America, and where the forbidding passage discovered by Magellan waited sullenly. As its bleak headlands came into view on the morning of December 21, Captain Janders said to Mlister Collins, "Take a good look at 'em. We're not comin' back this way." And with stubborn determination he plunged into the narrow strait which had defeated many vessels.
The missionaries were fascinated by the first days of the passage and they lined the rails staring first at South America and then at Tierra del Fuego. These were the first days of summer, and once a band of natives clad only in skins were spotted. At night Abner saw the fires that had given the large island its name when Magellan first coasted, for in spite of the fact that all was bleak, it was also interesting.
The Thetis, aided by the easterly wind, sometimes made as much as thirty miles in a day, but more often about twenty were covered in slow and patient probing. After the first westward thrust was completed, the brig turned south, following the shoreline of Tierra del Fuego, and the days became somnolent, and there was scarcely any night at all. The missionaries sometimes slept on deck, wakening to enjoy any phenomenon that the night produced. When winds were adverse, as they often were, the Thetis would tie up and hunting parties would go ashore, so that for Christmas all hands had duck and thought how strange it was to be in these gray latitudes instead of in white New England. There was no seasickness now, but one passenger was growing to hate the Strait of Magellan as she had never hated any other water.
This was Jerusha Hale, for although her two major sicknesses had departed, another had taken their place, and it consisted of a violent desire to vomit each time her husband made her eat a banana. "I don't like the smell of the oil," she protested.
"I don't like it either, my dear," he explained patiently, "but if this is the food of the islands . . ."
"Let's wait till we get to the islands," she begged.
"No, if the Lord providentially sent us these bananas in the manner he did . . ."
"The other women don't have to eat them," she pleaded.
"The other women were not sent them by the direct will of God," he reasoned.
"Reverend Hale," she argued slowly, "I'm sure that when I get off this ship, where I've been sick so much, I'll be able to eat bananas. But here the oil in the skin reminds me . . . Husband, I'm going to be sick."
"No, Mrs. Hale!” he commanded. And twice a day he carefuly peeled a banana, stuck half in his mouth, and said, against his own better judgment, "It's delicious." The other half he forcefully pushed into Jerusha's, watching her intently until she had swallowed it. The procedure was so obviously painful to the sickly girl that Amanda Whipple could not remain in her berth while it was being carried out, but what made it doubly nauseous was that Abner had strung the ripening bananas from the roof of their stateroom, and there they swung, back and forth, through every hour of the passage, and as they ripened they smelled.
At first Jerusha thought: "I'll watch the bunch grow smaller," but it showed no effect of her efforts to diminish it. Instead it grew larger, more aromatic, and swung closer to her face at night. "My dear husband," she pleaded, "indeed I shall be sick!" But he would place his hand firmly over her abdomen until the day's ration was swal-lowed, and he refused to allow her to be sick, and she obeyed.
After one such performance John Whipple asked, "Why do you like bananas so much, Brother Hale?"
"I don't," Abner said. "They make me sick, too."
"Then why do you eat them?"
"Because obviously the Lord intended me to eat them. How did I get them? As a result of having preached a sermon. I would be an ingrate if I did not eat them!"
"Do you believe in omens?" the young scientist asked.
"What do you mean?" Abner inquired.
"Superstitions? Omens?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"I was thinking. Keoki Kanakoa has been telling me about all the omens under which he used to live. When one of their canoes went out to sea, they had an old woman who did nothing but study omens. And if an albatross came, or a shark, that meant something . . . god had sent them . . . you could learn what the god intended . . . if you could read the omen."
"What has that to do with me?" Abner asked.
"It seems to me, Brother Hale, that you're that way with the bananas. They were given to you, so they must have been sent by God. So if they were sent by God, they must be eaten."
"John, you're blaspheming!"
"Blaspheming or not, I'd throw those bananas overboard. They're making everybody sick."
"Overboard!"
"Yes, Reverend Hale," Jerusha interrupted. "Throw them overboard."
"This is intolerable!" Abner cried, storming onto the deck, from which he speedily returned to the stateroom. "If anyone touches those bananasl They were sent by God to instruct us in our new life. You and I, Mrs. Hale, are going to eat every one of those bananas. It is God's will." So as the Thetis crept agonizingly ahead, the bananas danced malodorously in the stateroom.
The brig had now left Tierra del Fuego and was amidst the hundreds of nameless islands that comprised the western half of the passage. The winds veered and the dreary days ran into dreary weeks and Captain Janders wrote repeatedly in his log: "Tuesday, January 15. Twenty-sixth day in the passage. Land close on both hands. Beat all day into adverse wind. Made 4 miles but toward sunset lost on every tack. Could find no hold for anchor on sloping shores. Ran back and moored where we anchored last night. But hope this westerly gale continues, for it will smooth out waters at 4 Evangels. Shore party shot fine geese and caught 2 pailsfl. sweet mussels."
Day followed day, yielding a progress of four miles or six or none. Men would tow the Thetis from anchorage out into the wind and gamble that they would sleep in the same spot that night. Two facts preyed increasingly on their minds. The land about them was so bleak that it could not possibly support life for long, especially if summer left, and it was leaving. And all thought: "If it is so difficult here, what will it be when we reach Desolation Island? And when we have reached there, what must the Four Evangelists be like?" It seemed that inch by painful inch they were approaching a great climax, and this was true.
On the thirty-second day of this desokte passage an easterly wind sprang up and whisked the little brig along the north shore of Desolation Island, a location made more terrible by the fact that sailors spotted the stern boards of some ship that had foundered on the rocks. The sea grew rougher, and eighteen of the missionaries found it advisable to stay below, where the smell of bananas added to their qualms. That night Jerusha declared that she could not, on pain of death, eat another banana, but Abner, having heard such protests before, gallantly ate his half, then forced the remainder into Jerusha's mouth. "You may not get sick," he commanded, holding her stomach in his control. But the ship lurched as the first fingers of the Pacific swell probed into the passage, and neither Je
rusha nor Abner could dominate her retching, and she began to vomit. "Mrs. Hale!" he shouted, clapping his other hand over her mouth, but the sickness continued until the berth was fouled. "You did that on purpose!" he muttered.
"Husband, I am so sick," she whimpered. The tone of her words impressed him, and tenderly he cleaned away the mess, making her as comfortable as possible.
"I'm not doing this to torment you, my dear companion," he argued. "God sent us these bananas. Look!" And he took down one of the yellow fruits, which he had grown to detest, and ate the entire thing.
"I'm going to be sick again!" she cried, and again he washed away the filth.
The next morning showed that the Thetis had run to the end of Desolation Island and had completed more than ninety-nine hundredths of the Magellan passage. All that remained was to effect the short dash past the Four Evangelists, four cruel and unpopulated rocks that guarded the western entrance to the strait. So at dawn on Tuesday, January 22, 1822, the little brig left the protection of Desolation Island to test the meeting ground of storms, the wave-racked confluence of the easterly moving Pacific and the westerly moving Atlantic, and as the whaling captain had predicted, the good winds that had accompanied the Thetis on her last days now ac-counted for a turbulence that no man aboard the ship had hitherto experienced.
Gigantic waves from the Pacific lashed in with terrifying force, apparently able to sweep all before them, but the choppier seas from the Atlantic rushed like a terrier into the thundering surf and tore it into a thousand separate oceans, each with its own current and direction. As his small craft approached this multiple maelstrom Captain Janders ordered, "All hands on deck lash yourselves to the ship," and lines were secured about waists and chests, and hand holds were quickly improvised, and the Thetis, all openings closed, plunged into the tremendous confusion.
For the first fifteen minutes the tiny brig was thrashed about as if the terriers of the sea had left off tormenting each other and had turned on her. She was lifted up and thrown down, ripped along on her port beams, then wallowed over and thrown backwards. She slipped and slid, and no man not tied to her decks could have survived aloft.
"Do you keep your eye upon the Evangelists, Mister Collins?" Captain Janders shouted above the fury.
"I do, sir."
"Can we take more seas, Mister Collins?"
"We cannot, sir."
"We'll turn and run."
"Mind the rocks, sir."
And the Thetis, whipping around, slashed into the violent seas coming from the Atlantic, and sped like a wounded sea animal back to Desolation Island. Below, the missionaries prayed. Not even the sick were able to remain in their berths, so violent the shaking and pitching had been.
Suddenly it was calm, and Captain Janders hid his little craft in a snug harbor whose shoreline was shaped like a fishhook. And each morning for the next week, Abner Hale, John Whipple, two other missionaries and four stout sailors rowed ashore with long rope attached to the prow of the Thetis. Running around to the tip of the fishhook, they would strain and dig into the sand, pulling until the brig began to move. Slowly, slowly, they would tow it out to the entrance of the main passage, and then run back to the rowboat and overtake it.
And each day for a week the Thetis nosed its way carefully into the meeting ground of the oceans, tested them, tried, valiantly probed, and courted destruction. The turbulence was so majestic that there seemed no possibility of subduing it, and the sailors lashed to the masts wondered if the captain would turn and head back through the strait for Good Hope. But each evening Captain Janders swore, "Tomorrow we'll break the spell. Tomorrow we'll be free." In his log he wrote: "Tuesday, January 29. Tried again. Gigantic swells from Pacific clashing with choppy sea from Atlantic caused scenes of most frightful violence. Surges so high no ship could master them. Ran for same harbor."
On the thirtieth day of January the winds veered to the west, which in the long run was a good thing in that they would now stop supporting the Atlantic choppiness and turn to stabilizing the unhampered Pacific; but their immediate effect was to prohibit any further assault on the exit. Therefore, the Thetis remained tied to shore in her snug fishhook harbor while Captain Janders, Mister Collins, Abner and John Whipple climbed a small hill to survey the wild confluence of the oceans. They could not see the Four Evangelists, but they knew where they were, and as they studied the pattern of the giant waves, Abner said, "Have you thought, sir, that perhaps you are being held back by God's will?"
Captain Janders did not growl at the young man. "I am willing to consider anything, if only we can breast that damned mile of ocean."
"It occurred to me last night," Abner said, "that your insane refusal to dispose of your worldly novels has cursed this ship."
Mister Collins looked at the young minister with blank astonishment and was about to make an obscene expostulation when Janders silenced him. "What did you have in mind, Reverend Hale?" "If we missionaries can pray, and if we can get this ship through the barrier, will you then dispose of your worldly literature, and as the captain of a ship that needs God, accept books from me?" "I will," Janders said solemnly. And the four men, standing on a hill at the end of the world, entered into a compact, and when the missionaries were gone, Janders justified himself to his first mate: "I am determined to pass this point. I've never seen such seas as we encountered at Cape Horn. Now this. Call me superstitious if you will, but it's bad luck for a ship to carry a minister. We've got eleven of 'em. If they're the cause of the bad luck, maybe they can also be the cause of good luck. I'll try anything."
That night Abner assembled the missionaries and told them of the compact. "God has been holding this ship back to teach us a lesson," he assured them, "but our prayers will lift the curse." To John Whipple and others, this seemed like medievalism, and they would not pray, but the majority did, and at the end of the prayer Whipple asked if he might pray, too, and Abner assented "Lord, strengthen the hands and the eyes of our mariners," Whipple prayed. "Abate the wind, lower the waves and let us pass."
"Amen," Captain Janders said.
After prayers, Abner visited Jerusha, still bedridden, and shared a banana with her. When she protested that it was this which was keeping her abed, he pleaded: "We are placing our destiny in the hands of God tonight. Please bear with me, beloved companion, and if we pass the barrier tomorrow, you will not have to eat any more bananas."
"Is that a sacred promise?" she asked.
"It is," he assured her. So she mastered her gorge, felt her husband's firm hand on her stomach, and ate.
At four o'clock in the morning the entire ship met for prayers, and after the missionaries had spoken long, Captain Janders prayed, "Lord, get us through."
It was not yet five when Abner and John rowed ashore with their six regular towing companions, and the small craft edged its way into the main channel, but when the rope men were hauled back on-board, Abner announced: "This day I want to pray on deck."
"Lash yourself to the mast," Janders grunted. To Collins he said, "The waves are as big as ever, but the sea is steadier and we have a wind we can cut into."
"As good a day as we'll get," the mate calculated.
"We’re away!" Janders cried, and the Thetis probed far out to sea, well south of the Four Evangelists and into the wildest part of the ocean.
These were the hours of decision. Two days ago the problem had been to ride with the helpful wind from the stern, trying to accumulate sufficient speed to penetrate the massive waves. Now the wind was full in the face, and the Thetis had to tack first north, then south, then north, trying always to gain a few hundred yards of purchase in the sea, so that on one great burst to the north the tiny brig would at last clear the Evangelists. The grave danger involved was that on the vital run to the north, the Thetis would not hold its advantage, but would be swept sideways by the waves, and onto the rocks, crashing in final and hopeless destruction.
The hours of early morning passed, and the Thetis made one fruitless
tack after another. Often on her beam ends, she fought vainly for leverage against the sea, but Abner could feel her slipping away, back toward Desolation Island, away from the line of safety that would permit a long tack past the Four Evangelists.
The hours of midday came and went, and the little brig fought on. Now she gained a mile and entered a more turbulent part of the ocean, where the full and mighty Pacific lashed out at her, and the timbers creaked and the masts swayed and Abner watched the whiskered face of Captain Janders, peering ahead, calculating the wind.
At three in the afternoon the pounding became almost unbearable on deck, and all not lashed down would have been washed away by the gigantic seas, so that Abner prayed, "Dear God, care for those below. Let the air they breathe be sweet." And he could smell the foul air of the staterooms and pitied the missionaries.
At four o'clock, but with no fear of encroaching dusk, for the summer sun would not set till nearly ten, the position of the Thetis was perilous. For Captain Janders was required either to stand farther out to sea and thus surrender all hope of running safely back to Desolation Island, or to abandon this day's attempt. He was loath to do the latter, because he had got closer to position than ever before, so for some minutes in the height of the gale he pondered.
"There's only half a mile more of turbulence," he shouted to Mister Collins.
"Hardly that, sir."
"Do you keep your eye on the Evangelists?" Janders cried.
"I do, sir."
"How many points more to windward must we head to pass the rocks, Mister Collins?"
"Three, sir."
"Can we hold such a course?"
The question was an unfair one, and both Janders and Collins knew it, for the captain was trying to tempt his mate into making the ultimate life-or-death decision. Mister Collins looked doggedly ahead and said nothing.
"Can you ease her three points into the wind, Mister Collins?"
"That I can, sir!" And the creaking Thetis bit more directly into the storm.
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