But as the funeral procession returned to the boats, Kelolo gently held his son's hand and whispered, "I would be happy, Keoki, if you would stay."
This was an invitation which the young man had anticipated, even though he had hoped to escape it. Now that it had come, he accepted and said, "I will help you." In this quiet manner, his appalling decision was made.
For some time he had sensed that a trap was closing about him, for he had been unable to hide from his father and the kahunas his bitter disappointment over Reverend Kale's refusal to accept him as a minister, a resentment which deepened when both Dr. Whipple and Abraham Hewlett quit the calling, proving that from the start they had had less dedication to God than he. The kahunas had whispered, "The missionaries will never allow a Hawaiian to join them." On the other hand, from the moment of his conversion in the snow outside Yale College, he had been totally committed to God and still stood willing to suffer the humiliation of seeing men with less vocation than he admitted to the ministry. He loved God, knew Him personally, spoke with Him at sunset. He was willing to devote his entire life to God's desires and he was ashamed of himself for having wondered, "Why should I remain faithful if the missionaries reject me because I am Hawaiian?"
In a curious way he had been content with his ambivalent position of loving God while hating His missionaries, for so long as he remained in that delicate balance he could escape making definite choices; but with the death of his great mother he had been subtly drawn by both Kelolo and the kahunas to a fundamental reconsideration of his beliefs. The cannonading of Lahaina and its debauch by Christian Americans had already pushed him to a stark question: "Is this new religion good for my people?" Now, on the evening of his mother's burial, as the pagan sun sank behind the fawn-colored hills of Lanai, lighting the sea roads with shimmering gold as it had in the days before Captain Cook, Keoki made his choice between the religions. "I will help you," he told his father.
When darkness fell, Kelolo, Keoki and two strong young kahunas proceeded to the fresh grave of their Alii Nui and carefully lifted aside the flower leis that covered it. Then they produced digging sticks which had been hidden earlier that day, and they uncovered the cedar box, pried away the top and reverently lifted out the black Bible that lay on top. Then they saw once more, wreathed in maile, their great alii. Gently they rolled the vast inert body onto a canvas sling and returned to repair the grave.
"You will cut the banana trunk," Kelolo directed, and Keoki went to the center of the island and cut down a leafy trunk which from time out of mind had represented man to the gods, and when he had a length as tall as Malama, he returned to the coffin, and it was placed inside, lest the Lord God Jehovah be angry, and the Bible was put in place, and the grave was resealed, with the flowered leis scattered upon it. Then the four strong men lifted the canvas and carried Malama to her true burial.
In darkest night they rowed to the shore where none could see them, then started a mournful march toward the hills of Maui. Toward morning they reached a secluded valley, where as soon as light came they dug a shallow grave and filled its bottom with porous rocks, upon which they placed banana leaves and ti. When all was ready, they tenderly put Malama into the grave, covering her with a sacred tapa and then with moist leaves and grass. Next they piled the grave high with such sticks as they could find, and lighted it. For three days they kept the fire slowly burning as the kahunas chanted:
"From the heat of living to the cool waters of Kane, From the desires of earth to the cool waters of Kane, From the burdens of desire to the cool retreats of Kane, Gods of the many islands, gods of the distant seas, Gods of the Little Eyes, gods of the stars and sun, Take her."
On the fourth day Kelolo opened the grave whose burning heat had baked away Malama's flesh, and with a sharp knife he severed her head from her gigantic skeleton. Carefully scraping the skull to remove all desiccated fragments, he wrapped it in maile leaves, then in tapa and finally in a closely woven pandanus mat. For so long as he lived, this would be his perpetual treasure, and as he grew older, in the evenings he would unwrap his beloved's head and talk with her. He would recall that before the Christians came she had loved tobacco. He would light his pipe and when the smoke was good, he would blow it into her mouth, knowing that she would appreciate his thoughtfulness.
Next he cut away one of the huge thigh bones, and this he gave to Keoki both to scrape and to keep, and the young man proceeded with his ancient task as if voices from the past were calling him.
Now Kelolo cut off the other leg, and scraped the thigh bone for Noelani, the Alii Nui, so that she would always have with her some reminder of the source from whence came her greatness, and when these jobs were done, Kelolo gathered the remaining bones and embers and handed them to one of the kahunas who had brought with him a curious bag of sennit, so constructed that it looked like a woman, and into this receptacle Malama's final remains were put. The sennit bag was handed to Kelolo, and with it under his left arm and the wrapped head under his right, he started forth alone on his final pilgrimage.
He walked through the heat of day far up the valley from which the whistling winds sometimes came to strike Lahaina, over the saddle, along the crest of hills and on to a cave which he had discovered while gathering maile. Here he stopped and, crawling carefully inside, collected lava rocks with which he built a small platform. Here, safe from the corrupting earth, he deposited the last royal remains of his wife. Then, as in the old times, he prayed. When this was done he sat for more than an hour staring at the desolate and hidden pile of rocks.
"Oh, Kane!” he suddenly screamed, repeating the anguished shout until the cave echoed and until he became hysterical with grief. He threw himself against the platform, took a fragment of rock into his lips, ground it between his teeth until his whole body was racked with ugliness and despair. Beating the stones with his fists he screamed, "Malama, I cannot leave you. I cannot."
When he regained composure, he started a small fire beside the platform, then raved afresh as pungent smoke filled the cave. Grabbing a piece of bark he formed a tube which he held in the flames until it was ablaze, whereupon he jammed it against his cheek until he could feel the flesh burning in a small circle. Again and again he did this, seeking to scar his face so that all who saw him would know that he mourned the death of his alii.
Then, when the pain of burnt flesh was great, he grasped a pointed stick and jammed it between his two big front teeth. With a heavy rock he began to pound the opposite end, but his teeth were strong and would not break. In the quietness of the cave, with the smoke about him, he cursed his teeth and struck the stick with enormous force until he felt a horrible wrenching in his upper jaw. The bone had broken and the tooth dangled free. Clutching it with his fingers he jerked it loose and placed it upon the lava rocks, whereupon with demonic power he knocked its companion out with the stone itself, gashing his lips as he did so.
"Oh, Malama! Malama! Cherished of my heart, Malama!” In his misery he wept for some moments. Then with superhuman resolution he took the stick again and placed its dulled point next his nose and in the corner of his right eye. With a sudden inward thrust followed by a lateral pull, he scooped away his eye and threw it onto the grave. Then he fainted.
It was ten days before the powerful chief Kelolo Kanakoa reappeared in Lahaina. He came walking erect, proudly, but removed, as if he were still in contact with his gods. About his shoulders he wore a lei of maile leaves, its fragrance reminding him of his departed wife. His right eye socket, a horrible wound, was covered with morning-glory leaves, bound in place by alona and ti. His cheeks were scarred with ugly blisters and his lips, when closed, were thick with wounds; when opened they disclosed a lacerated jaw. He moved like a man set free from grief, a man who walked with love, and as he passed, his Hawaiian friends, knowing what he had done, stepped aside with respect; but his American friends stopped with horror, wondering how he could have borne so much.
It was important that he warn Reverend Hale, b
ut when Jerusha saw him she screamed, but he was not offended, saying through lisping lips, "The whistling wind is coming. It always does at the death of an alii."
"What is the wind?" Jerusha asked, trying to compose herself, for she realized that he was speaking with great conviction.
"The whistling wind is coming," he repeated and stalked off, a man apart.
When Jerusha told her husband of the message, and of Kelolo's appearance, Abner held his head in his hands, lamenting, "These poor, bewildered people. Thank God we gave her a Christian burial." And Jerusha agreed, saying, "We should be grateful that Malama forbade heathen practices."
They grieved for obstinate Kelolo, and finally Jerusha asked, "What was the wind he spoke about?"
"One of his superstitions," Abner explained. "He's probably in a trance because of the horrible things he did to himself and is convinced that since an alii died, there will have to be some supernatural occurrence."
"Is the wind rising?" Jerusha asked.
"No more than usual," her husband replied, but as he spoke he heard a weird whistling coming down from the distant valleys that led to the crests of the hills where Malama, unknown to them, now lay.
"Abner," Jerusha insisted, "I do hear a whistling."
Her husband cocked his ear, then ran out into the dusty roadway. Dr. Whipple and Captain Janders were already listening to the ominous sound, while Hawaiians were running out of their houses and huddling under trees. "What is it?" Abner cried.
"Not like anything I ever heard," Janders replied, and the moaning whistle increased in pitch while high in the coconut palms dead branches began to tear loose. A Hawaiian sailor, who had swum in panic from one of the whalers, abandoning the ship to its fate, dashed by, wet and frightened and shouting in Hawaiian, "The whistling wind is upon us!”
"Should we go inside?" Abner asked hesitantly, but the same sailor yelled back over his shoulder, "No stay in house! Bimeby come plenty pilikia." And the three Americans remarked that the Hawaiians, who seemed to know what the wind could do, had abandoned their huts Abner was already on his way to collect his children when Murphy the saloonkeeper, rushed up and shouted, "This wind is a killer! Get out of your houses!" And while the three men scattered, the first important gust of wind struck Lahaina.
It bent the palm trees level, ripped off the roofs of several houses, then roared out to sea, where it threw great clouds of spume across the roads and tore away the masts of two whalers. During its destructive passage the whistling increased to an intense shriek and then subsided. Under the protection of a clump of kou trees Janders asked, "Where's the rain?"
None came, but the wind howled down from the mountains in new gusts, knocking down trees and throwing pigs into ditches. From the little stream before the mission house it picked up water, flinging it upon the trees, then passed out to sea, where it dashed three moored whalers together, staving in the sides of one and leaving it in perilous condition.
Still no rain came, but the winds increased, rising to even more furious levels than before, and now it became evident why the Hawaiians had left their homes, for one after another the little huts went flying through the air, crashing into the first solid object that intervened. "Will these trees hold?" Abner asked anxiously, but before anyone could assure him he saw a dark object hurtling through the air and cried, "The church!"
"It's the roof," Whipple shouted, astonished at what he saw. "It's the entire roof!" Majestically, the roof sailed over the town of Lahaina and plunged into the sea. "The walls are going down!" Whip-pie cried as the wind utterly destroyed the building.
But before Abner could lament his new loss, a woman shrieked, "The whaling boats are sinking!" And she was correct, for in the roads the demonic wind, still with no rain, had whipped up a sea that the rugged whalers could not survive. The unfortunate ones were those who were torn loose from their anchorages and dashed across the roads to the island of Lanai, on whose steep and rocky shores no rescue was possible. In that manner four ships and seventy men perished, and as they died, the Hawaiians of Lahaina mourned, "They are the sacrifices for the death of our Alii Nui."
Therefore, the sailors whose ships capsized off Lahaina would also have perished at the feet of the fatalistic Hawaiians had not Abner Hale limped among them, shouting, "Save those poor men! Save them!" But the Hawaiians repeated, "They are sacrifices!" until in frenzy Abner rushed up to one-eyed Kelolo, screaming above the storm, "Tell them, Kelolo! Tell them Malama does not require sacrifices! Tell them she died a Christian!"
There was a moment's hesitation during which the old man, weak from his vigil in the cave, looked out at the sickening sea. Then, throwing aside his tapa breechclout, he plunged into the waves and began fighting them for the bodies of sailors. Ashore Abner organized rescue parties which waded, tied together by ropes, onto the reef from which most of the water had been blown by the fantastic winds. At the end of each line swimmers like Kelolo battled the turbulent waters to haul foundering sailors across the jagged reef's edge, delivering them into the hands of rescuers. Without the work of Kelolo and Abner, the loss of American sailors would have been not seventy but nearly three hundred.
Toward the end of the struggle, Abner was limping about the reef, shouting encouragement, when he received from the hands of a swimmer the already dead body of a cabin boy, and he was overcome by the ceaseless tragedy of the sea and he started to pray: " "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.'" But his prayer was halted when he looked into the violent storm and saw that the swimmer who had handed him the boy was Kelolo, who was shouting to the other Hawaiians, "Pray to Kanaloa for strength." And Abner could see that the swimmers were praying.
When the whistling subsided, Abner sat limply beneath the kou trees, watching Dr. Whipple treat the rescued sailors, and when the doctor came to him for a rest, Abner asked, "These things couldn't have had any connection with Malama's death, could they?" When Whipple made no reply, he continued, "John, you're a scientist." From the day Whipple left the mission, Abner had never again referred to him as Brother. "How do you explain such a wind? No rain? Coming not from the sea but from the mountains?"
Even while helping to rescue the whalers, Whipple had been perplexed by this problem and now suggested, "The mountains on the other side of our island must form a curious kind of funnel. I would judge there must be wide-open valleys up which the trade winds rush. When they roll over the tops of the mountains, the entire volume is compressed into this one narrow valley leading down into Lahaina."
"That wouldn't have anything to do with the death of an alii, would it?" Abner asked suspiciously.
"No. We can explain the wind as it roars down this side of the mountain. We know that's a force of nature. But of course," he added slyly, "it's entirely possible that the wind on the other side of the mountain blows only when an alii dies." Shrugging his shoulders he added, "And if that's the case, why you have just about what Kelolo claims."
Abner started to comment on this but instead changed the subject. "Tell me, John, how did you feel, at the very height of the storm, when you were on the reef rescuing the sailors . . . seeing the whalers that had so recently been tormenting us ... well, seeing them destroyed by the Lord?" Dr. Whipple turned to study his companion, staring at him in disbelief, but Abner continued: "Didn't you feel that it was something like . . . well, I thought it was like the Egyptians at the Red Sea."
Whipple got up, disgusted, and called his wife, who was tending wounded sailors. "I don't think the alii sent the wind, and I don't think God sank the ships," he growled and left.
But he had not waited for Abner to develop the full meaning of his speculations, as they had matured on the coral reef, so Abner chased him and said, "What I wanted to ask, John, was this: 'At that moment of what I have called God's revenge for the cannonading, did you feel any actual sense of revenge against the sailors?' " "No," Whipple said flatly. "All I thought was, 'I
hope we can save the poor devils.'”
"I thought the same thing," Abner said frankly, "and I was astonished at myself."
"You're growing up," Whipple said sharply and left.
ONE UNEXPECTED BENEFIT came from the whistling wind that leveled much of Lahaina in 1829. When the damage was cleared away, Kelolo for the third time helped Abner rebuild his church, but this time the kahunas refused even to argue where the door should be. They put it where it should have been in the first place, where the local gods ordained, and the famous stone church they built that year stood for more than a century.
Now Lahaina, most beautiful of all Hawaiian towns, prospered as the national capital. The business center of the kingdom was Honolulu, to be sure, for foreigners preferred living near their consulates, but the alii had never liked Honolulu, finding it hot, cheerless and commonplace, so that even though it was true that the boy king and his regents had to spend more and more time there, he returned whenever possible to his true capital, Lahaina, and his women often remained in the cool grass houses under the kou trees even when he was called to the larger city.
Whaling vessels, their crews now better behaved, came to Lahaina in increasing numbers--78 would come in 1831, 82 in 1833--and because each stayed for about four weeks in the spring and four in the autumn, there were sometimes many tall-masted ships in the roads; and since the famous whistling wind of Lahaina blew only about twice a century, they rested in security within the charmed pocket of islands. The important thing to Janders & Whipple was that every whaler who came into the roads paid them a fee for something or other. Did the ship need firewood? J & W had it. Salt pork? Dr. Whipple found out how to salt down island hogs. Salt itself? J & W had a monopoly on the fine salt evaporated from the sea in flat lava-rock beds. Did a ship's captain insist upon fresh pork at sea? J & W could provide healthy live pigs and bundles of ti leaves for fodder on long trips. Sweet potatoes, oranges that had been introduced by Captain Cook, and fish dried by Dr. Whipple . . . J & W had them all. And if a ship required balls of olona twine, strongest in the world, or even cables woven of it, J & W controlled that monopoly, too.
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