Hawaii

by James Michener

  At dusk, when the head sections, now empty of their treasure, had been dumped back into the sea where twelve hours before they had held a tiny brain which had steered the goliath through the waves, Captain Hoxworth shouted, "Through the generosity of the Lord, our prayers have been delayed. Let the fry-pots tend themselves. We'll pray." And he assembled all hands onto the oily deck, but Abner Hale would not participate in the services, so John Whipple conducted both the prayers and the singing and delivered an inspired sermon on a passage from the 104th Psalm: "O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! . . . The earth is full of Thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom Thou hast made to play therein. . . . The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever." In his peroration he preached quietly: "From the turbulent deep God has raised up leviathan. From the wastes of the ocean He has brought us His riches. But from the wastes of the human ocean constantly He provides us with riches greater still, for the leviathan of man's spirit is immeasurable and its wealth is counted not in casks or spermaceti. It is counted in love, and decency, and faith. May we who have trapped the great whale trap in our own lives the greater leviathan of understanding."

  Captain Hoxworth was visibly moved by Whipple's sermon and shouted, "Cook! Break out some good food, and well celebrate!"

  "We ought to be getting back to the Thetis," Abner warned.

  "Forget the Thetis!" Hoxworth boomed. "We'll sleep here tonight." and he led the missionaries down into his quarters, and they were stunned. The cabin was spacious, with clean green cloth npon the table. The captain's retiring room was finished in fine mahogany and decorated with numerous examples of carved whale bone, while his sleeping quarters featured a commodious bed, furnished with clean linen and hung on gimbals, so that even though the Carthaginian rolled in a storm, its captain slept in a steady bed. Along the wall was slung a bookcase, filled with works on geography, history, the oceans and poetry. Compared to the mean and meager Thetis, this ship was luxurious.

  And the food was good. Captain Hoxworth said, in a low strong voice that carried his magnetism through the cabin, "We fight hard for our whales. We never finish second best, and we eat well. This is a lucky ship, and, Reverend Whipple, at the conclusion of this voyage I'll own two thirds of her, and at the end of the next, she'll be mine."

  "These are fine quarters," Whipple replied.

  "I had the mahogany put in at Manila. You see, I'm bringing my wife aboard on the next trip." He laughed apologetically and explained, "When a captain does that, the crew calls the ship a 'Hen Frigate.' Some whalers won't ship aboard a 'Hen Frigate.' Others prefer it. Say the food and the medicine are apt to be better."

  "Do captains' wives ever get seasick?" Whipple asked.

  "A little, at first," Hoxworth boomed. "But on a bigger ship, like this, they get over it quickly."

  "I'd like to see Amanda and Jerusha as captains' wives," Whipple laughed.

  "Did you say Jerusha?" the captain asked.

  "Yes. Jerusha Hale, Abner's wife."

  "Excellent!" the big man cried. "It's Jerusha I'm marrying, too."

  And he reached out to grab Aimer's small hand. "Where's yours from, Reverend Hale?"

  "Walpole, New Hampshire," Abner replied, unhappy at mentioning his wife's name in a whaling cabin.

  "Did you say Walpole?" Hoxworth asked.

  "Yes."

  Big Rafer Hoxworth kicked back his chair and grabbed Abner by the coat. "Is Jerusha Bromley aboard that brig out there?" be asked menacingly.

  "Yes," Abner replied steadily.

  "God Almighty!" Hoxworth cried, shoving Abner back into his chair. "Andersonl Lower me a boat!” With fury clouding his face he grabbed his cap, jammed it on the back of his head, and stormed aloft. When Abner and John tried to follow he thrust them back into the cabin. "You wait here!” he thundered. "Mister Wilson!” he bellowed at his mate. "If these men try to leave this cabin, shoot "em." And in a moment he was on the sea, driving his men toward the brig Thetis.

  When he swung himself aboard, refusing to wait for a ladder, Captain Janders asked, "Where are the missionaries?" but Hoxworth, dark as the night, roared, "To hell with the missionaries. Where's Jerusha Bromley?" And he stormed down into the smelly cabin, shouting, "Jerusha! Jerusha!" When he found her sitting at the table he swept all the other missionaries together with his giant arms and roared, "Get out of here!" And when they were gone he took Jerusha's hands and asked, "Is what they tell me true?"

  Jerusha, with an extra radiance now that she was both recovered: from seasickness and in the first happy flush of pregnancy, drew back from the dynamic man who had wooed her four years ago. Hoxworth, seeing this, slammed his powerful fist onto the table and shouted, "Almighty God, what have you done?"

  "I have gotten married," Jerusha said firmly and without panic.

  "To that worm? To that miserable little . . ."

  “To a wonderfully understanding man," she said, drawing herself against a small section of the wall that separated two stateroom doors.

  "That goddamned puny . . ."

  "Rafer, don't blaspheme."

  "I'll blaspheme this whole goddamned stinking little ship to hell before I'll let you ..."

  "Rafer, you stayed away. You never said you would marry me ..."

  "Never said?" he roared, leaping over a fallen chair to grab her to him. "I wrote to you from Canton. I wrote to you from Oregon. I wrote from Honolulu. I told you that as soon as I landed in New Bedford we'd be married, and that you'd sail with me on my ship. It'll be my ship soon, Jerusha, and you're sailing with me."

  "Rafer, I'm married. To a minister. Your letters never came."

  "You can't be married!" he stormed. "It's me you love, and you know it." He crushed her to him, and kissed her many times. "I can't let you go!"

  "Rafer," she said quietly, pushing him away. "You must respect my condition."

  The big captain fell back and looked at the girl he had been dreaming of for nearly four years. It is true that he had not, on that first wild acquaintance, asked her to marry him, but when the whales were good and his future known, he had written to her, three separate times, cautious lest any one letter not be delivered. Now she said that she was married . . . perhaps even pregnant. To a contemptible little worm with scraggly hair.

  "I'll kill you first!” he screamed. "By God, Jerusha, you shall never remain married . . ." And he lunged at her with a chair.

  "Abner!" she cried desperately, not knowing that he was absent, for she was certain that if he were aboard the Thetis, somehow he would rescue her. "Abner!" The chair crashed by her head and the wild sea captain was upon her, but before she fainted she saw Keoki and the old whaler leaping down into the cabin with hooks and clubs.

  Later, the missionaries comforted her, saying, "We heard it all, Sister Hale, and we hoped not to intervene, for he was a madman and we trusted he would recover his senses."

  "I had to club him, Mrs. Hale," Keoki apologized.

  "Where is he now?"

  "Captain Janders is taking him back to his ship," one of the wives explained.

  "But where's Reverend Hale?" Jerusha cried in deep love and fear.

  "He's on the other ship," Keoki explained.

  "Captain Hoxworth will kill him!" Jerusha wailed, trying to get onto the deck.

  "That's why Captain Janders went along," Keoki assured her. "With pistols."

  But not even Captain Janders was able to protect Abner that night, for although Rafer Hoxworth quieted down on the cooling trip to the Carthaginian, and although he was a model of politeness to John Whipple, when he saw Abner, and how small he was and how wormy in manner, he lost control and leaped screaming at the little missionary, lifting him from the deck and rushing him to the railing of the ship, where the blubber had been taken aboard, and possibly because he slipped unexpectedly on grease, or possibly by intention, he raised Abner high into the night and flung him furiously
into the dark waves.

  "You'll not keep her!" he screamed insanely. "I'll come back to Honolulu and rip her from your arms. By God, I'll kill you, you miserable little worm."

  While he was shouting, Captain Janders was desperately maneuvering his rowboat, warning his men, "After they cut a whale there's bound to be sharks." And the rowers saw dark forms gliding in the water, and one brushed Abner, so that he screamed with fear, "Sharks!"

  From the dark deck of the Carthaginian, Captain Hoxworth roared, "Get him, sharks! Get him! He's over on this side. Here he is, sharks!" And he was raging thus when John Whipple reached into the vast Pacific and pulled his brother aboard.

  "Did the sharks get you, Abner?" he whispered.

  "They took my foot . . ."

  "No! It's all right, Abner. A little blood, that's all."

  "You mean my foot isn't . . ."

  "It's all right, Abner," Whipple insisted.

  "But I felt a shark . . ."

  "Yes, one hit at you," Whipple said reassuringly, "but it only scraped the skin. See, these are your toes." And the last thing Abner could remember before he fainted was John Whipple pinching his toes and from a dark distance Rafer Hoxworth screaming futilely, "Get him, sharks! He's over there. Get the stinking little bastard and chew him up. Because if you don't kill him I’ll have to."

  That was the reason why Abner Hale, twenty-two years old and dressed in solemn black, with a beaver hat nearly as tall as he was, limped as he prepared to land at the port city of Lahaina on the island of Maui in Hawaii. The shark had not taken his foot, nor even his toes, but it had exposed the tendon and damaged it, and not even careful John Whipple could completely repair it.

  THE ACTUAL LANDING of the missionaries was a confused affair, for when the Thetis drew into the famous wintering port of; Lahaina, there was great commotion on shore, and the missionaries saw with horror that many handsome young women were throwing off their clothes and beginning to swim eagerly toward the little brig, which apparently they knew favorably from the past, but the attention of the ministers was quickly diverted from the swimmers to a fine canoe which, even though it started late, soon overtook the naked swimmers and drew up alongside the Thetis. It contained a man, a completely nude woman and four attractive girls, equally nude.

  "We come back!" the man cried happily, boosting his women onto the little ship.

  "No! No!" Keoki Kanakoa cried in a flood of embarrassment. "These are missionaries!"

  "My girls good girls!" the father shouted reassuringly, shoving his handsome women aboard as he had done so often in the past. "Those girls swimming no good. Plenty sick."

  "Heavenly Father" Abner whispered to Brother Whipple. "Are they his own daughters?"

  At this point two of the girls saw the old whaler who had saved the Thetis off the Four Evangelists, and apparently they remembered him kindly, for they ran across the deck, called him by name, and threw their arms about him, but he, seeing Jerusha Hale's dismay, tried to brush them away as a man keeps flies from his face when he is eating.

  "Go back! Go back!” Keoki pleaded in Hawaiian, and gradually the four laughing daughters and their beautiful naked mother began to realize that on this ship, unlike all others, they were not wanted, and in some confusion they climbed back into the canoe, which their family had acquired by providing such services to passing ships. Sadly, the man of the house, his day's profit gone, paddled his employees back to Lahaina, and whenever he came to groups of girls swimming to the Thetis he called in bewilderment, "Turn back! No girls are wanted!" And the convoy of island beauties sadly returned to the shore and dressed.

  Aboard the Thetis, Abner Hale, who had never before seen a naked woman, said dazedly to his brothers, "There's going to be a lot of work to do in Lahaina."

  Now from the shore came out two other Hawaiians of sharply different character. Abner first saw them when a large canoe, with vassals standing at stern and prow bearing yellow-feathered staffs, became the center of an extraordinary commotion. Islanders moved about in agitation as among them appeared two of the most gigantic human beings Abner had so far seen.

  "That's my father!" Keoki Kanakoa shouted to the missionaries, and by choice he came to stand with the Hales, repeating to Abner, "The tall man is my father, guardian of the king's estates."

  "I thought he was King of Maui," Abner remarked with disappointment.

  "I never said so," Keoki replied. "The people in Boston did. They thought it impressed the Americans."

  "Who is the woman?" Jerusha inquired.

  "My mother. She's the highest chief in the islands. When my father wants to ask her a question of state, he has to crawl into the room on his hands and knees. So do I." Along the railing the missionaries studied the enormous woman who half climbed, half relaxed as her subjects heaved her fantastic bulk into the canoe. Keoki's mother was six feet four inches tall, stately, long-haired, noble in every aspect, and weighed three hundred and twenty pounds. Her massive foreams were larger than the bodies of many men, while her gigantic middle, swathed in many layers of richly patterned tapa, seemed more like the trunk of some forest titan than of a human being. By her bulk alone it could be seen that she was a chief, but her most conspicuous features were her two splendid breasts, which hung in massive brown grandeur above the soft red and yellow tapa. The missionary men stared in wonder; the women gazed in awe.

  "We call her the Alii Nui," Keoki whispered reverently, pronouncing the title Alee-ee. "It is from her that our mana flows."

  Abner looked at his young Christian friend in amazement, as if some foul error had corrupted him. "It is from God and not from an alii nui that your spiritual consecration flows," he corrected.

  The young Hawaiian blushed, and with attractive candor explained, "When you have lived a long time with one idea, you sometimes express better ideas in the same careless way."

  Again Abner frowned, as if his labors with Keoki were being proved futile. "God isn't what you call a better idea, Keoki," he said firmly. "God is a superlative fact. He stands alone and brooks no comparisons. You don't worship God merely because He represents a better idea." Abner spoke contemptuously, but Keoki, with tears of considerable joy in his eyes, did not recognize that fact and accepted the words in love.

  "I am sorry, Brother Hale," he said contritely. "I used the word thoughtlessly."

  "I think it would be better, Keoki," Abner reflected, "if from now on you referred to me in the old way. Reverend Hale. Your people might not understand the title Brother."

  Jerusha interrupted and asked, "Didn't we agree that we were to call one another Brother and Sister?"

  "That was among ourselves, Mrs. Hale," Abner explained patiently.

  "Isn't Keoki one of ourselves?" Jerusha pressed.

  "I think the term ourselves refers principally to ordained ministers and their wives," Abner judged.

  "When you have been ordained, Keoki, it'll be Brother Abner," Jerusha assured the young Hawaiian. "But even though you are not yet ordained, Keoki, I am your Sister Jerusha." And she stood beside him and said, "Your father and mother are handsome people."

  With great dignity, and with yellow feathers on the staffs fluttering in the wind, the long canoe approached the Thetis, and for the first time the Hales saw the full majesty of Keoki's father. Not so large in bulk as the Alii Nui, he was nevertheless taller--six feet seven--and of striking presence. His hair was a mixture of black and gray. His brown face was cut by deep lines of thought and his expressive eyes shone out from beneath heavy brows. He was dressed in a cape of yellow feathers and a skirt of red tapa, but his most conspicuous ornament was a feathered helmet, close-fitting to the head but with a narrow crest of feathers that started at the nape of the neck, sweeping over the back of the head and reaching well in front of the forehead. By some mysterious trick of either history or the human mind, Kelolo, Guardian of the King's Estates, wore exactly the same kind of helmet as had Achilles, Ajax and Agamemnon, but because his people had never discovered metals, his was
of feathers whereas theirs had been of iron.

  Seeing his tall son on the deck of the Thetis, giant Kelolo deftly grabbed a rope as it was lowered to him, and with swift movements sprang from the canoe onto a footing along the starboard side of the Thetis and then adroitly onto the deck. Abner gasped.

  "He must weigh nearly three hundred pounds!" he whispered to Jerusha, but she had now joined Keoki in tears, for the affectionate manner in which giant Kelolo and his long-absent son embraced, rubbed noses and wept reminded her of her own parents, and she held her lace handkerchief to her eyes.

  Finally Keoki broke away and said, "Captain Janders! My father wishes to pay his respects," and the tough New England sea captain came aft to acknowledge the greeting. Kelolo, proud of having learned from earlier ships how properly to greet a westerner, thrust out his powerful right hand, and as Captain Janders took it, he saw tattooed from wrist to shoulder the awkward letters: "Tamehameha King."

  "Can your father write in English?" Janders asked.

  Keoki shook his head and spoke rapidly in Hawaiian. When Kelolo replied, the son said, "One of the Russians did this for my father. In 1819, when our great king Kamehameha died."

  "Why did he spell it Tamehameha?" Janders asked.

  "Our language is just now being written for the first time," Keoki explained. "The way you Americans have decided to spell it is neither right nor wrong. My father's name you spell Kelolo. It would be just as right to spell it Teroro."

  "You mean the truth lies somewhere in between?" Janders asked.

  Eagerly Keoki grasped the captain's hand and pumped it, as if the latter had said something which had suddenly illuminated a difficult problem. "Yes, Captain," the young man said happily. "In these matters the truth does lie somewhere in between."

  The idea was repugnant to Abner, particularly since he had been increasingly worried about Keoki's apparent reversion to paganism as Hawaii neared. "There is always only one truth," the young missionary corrected.

  Keoki willingly assented, explaining, "In matters of God, of course there is only one truth, Reverend Hale. But in spelling my father's name, there is no final truth. It lies between Kelolo and Teroro and is neither."