Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  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.

  It was John Whipple, however, who devised one of the simplest money-making schemes for the firm. When a whaler put in with an unwieldy amount of whale oil, not enough barrels to warrant sailing all the way home, but so many that there seemed no purpose in returning to the Off-Japan Banks, Whipple arranged for the captain to leave his entire cargo at Lahaina, under the care of J & W, who, when they had assembled half a dozen such cargoes, would argue some New England captain into running the entire lot back to New Bedford. In this way J & W made a profit on storing the barrels of oil, on shipping them, and on chartering the ship that did the work. It therefore seemed to Whipple that the next logical step ought to be for his firm to buy the odd lots of oil outright and to hold them on speculation.

  Accordingly, he proposed that J & W acquire its own ships and take over the whale-oil business, but cautious Captain Janders, tugging at his red beard, was adamant. “Only one way to make money in this world,” he judged. “My motto: ‘Own nothing, control everything.’ Own a batch of oil outright? Never! Because then you worry about the market. Let someone else own it. We’ll handle it, and we’ll make the better profit. But to own a ship. That is real madness. I’ve watched the tribulations of shipowners. They have to trust a rascally captain, a worse mate and a depraved crew. They’ve got to feed the lot, insure the vessel, live in anguish when there’s a storm, and then share whatever profits there are with the crew.”

  “You bought the Thetis,” Whipple argued.

  “Sure!” Janders agreed. “I bought her, but did you see how fast I sold her? On an earlier trip I had watched Kelolo’s mouth watering for such a ship, and I knew I could turn a quick profit. Me operate a ship on my own responsibility? Never!” And he pointed to the rotting hulk that still hung on the reef. “Whenever you want to buy a ship, John, always remember the Thetis.”

  Still Whipple was not satisfied, for he argued, “Somebody makes money on ships. I thought it might as well be us.”

  Janders agreed, in part, for he said, “I grant that properly handled a ship can make a little money, but if you and I learn how to manage the business and the lands right here, John, we’ll make a fortune that will stagger the shipowners. Own nothing, control everything.”

  In the fields Captain Janders had determined to control, he was a master trader, sending meat to Oregon, picking up furs for Canton; sending hides to Valparaiso and tallow to California. He made a quick profit on each exchange and was always on hand when men were in trouble, for then money was free. Gradually, the whalers found that they could trust him with any transaction, and he became their agent. If a ship’s captain wanted to risk the dying sandalwood trade, having heard that Captain Janders had made his fortune on it, J & W gladly accumulated the precious cargo and provided letters of introduction to the Canton merchants who would buy it. If another felt convinced that he could turn a handsome profit running fresh beef to Oregon, then ice to California, J & W would supply the live cattle, sending the crazy young cowboys of Lahaina up into the hills to lasso the wild animals that had been introduced into the islands by Captain Vancouver in 1794.

  To win the good wishes of the mariners, J & W also provided many free services. If a sailor wanted to marry a native girl, there was no point in applying to Reverend Hale to conduct the ceremony, for he frowned on such alliances and invariably spent at least an hour praying with the sailor and pointing out that God had long ago warned against the sin of whoring after the heathen. Dr. Whipple, however, had been given the right by Kelolo to solemnize such marriages, and many families who were destined to live in Hawaiian history, producing the powerful half-caste politicians who organized the islands, sprang from marriages which started in the J & W store, where Reverend Whipple used Amanda, Captain Janders and his wife Luella as witnesses. Abner, of course, held that all participants in such marriages were living in whoredom, and he told them so.

  J & W also served as mail drop for the fleet, and sometimes musty letters would lie in their bins for years before sailors came rolling up the wooden stairs and along the porch, shouting, “Any mail for me?” The wiry wanderer would sit in one of the J & W chairs and read of family affairs that had transpired forty months ago. Then he would ask John Whipple for a piece of paper, and the doctor would explain, “That building at the corner. It’s a writing room for sailors, and if you ask for Mr. Cridland, he’ll take care of everything.”

  Frequently, ship captains would transmit from the distant whaling grounds requests to J & W for a half-dozen replacements for their crews, to be picked up when the ship reached Lahaina. Captain Janders knew that whalers preferred stout Hawaiian boys, and he provided them at five dollars a head, but when none were available, he would visit Kelolo and tell the one-eyed, toothless police marshal, “Round up eight or ten deserters for next month,” and Kelolo would move his men through the countryside, dragging in as worthless a lot of murderers, cowards, ship-jumpers, adulterers and hopeless drunks as any nation of the day could have provided. No American deserter could be so degenerate or worthless but that some kind Hawaiian family would give him refuge; they even fought the police to keep the murderers from arrest, but when the rogues were finally lodged in jail, Mr. Cridland, from the Seamen’s Chapel, would move among them, explaining, “If you’re taken back to America in chai
ns, you’ll be tried and sent to jail. But if you volunteer, you’ll not only get wages but also escape trial.” And with Abner’s help, usually in the form of long prayers with the dissolute rogues, Cridland would whip the men into reasonable shape, and as soon as the short-handed whaler hove into sight, Kelolo would release the imprisoned vagabonds, and Captain Janders would march them to the pier, where he would announce to the incoming captain: “A fine lot of men here for you to choose from!” And on every such recruitment J & W would make its small commission.

  Other letters of more personal content sometimes arrived, and one day in 1831 Captain Janders sent Whipple through Lahaina, seeking the Hawaiian Pupali, for a letter awaited him from Valparaiso and it appeared to contain a substantial sum of money. When fat Pupali came to the store, Janders explained, “I no savvy, Pupali! One lettah for you, but.”

  “Me no savvy read,” Pupali grinned.

  “Okay. You lissen for me. I speak for you dis papah,” Janders said.

  “Alu, alu,” Pupali nodded, his eyes bright with anticipation.

  When Janders opened the Valparaiso letter, a handful of British pound notes fluttered to the floor, and Pupali jumped upon them, pinning them down one after another, like a man swatting cockroaches. “Pehea dis money? It b’long for me?” he grinned.

  “We’ll see,” Janders said, pressing out the thin paper on which the letter was written. “ ‘To my good friend Pupali, of Lahaina,’ ” Janders began. “Well, at least the letter’s for you. Now we’ll see about the money,” Janders announced, and fat Pupali laughed at the large circle that had now gathered at the startling news that one of their men had received a document from Valparaiso.

  “Who’s it from?” an onlooker asked, and Captain Janders carefully smoothed down and inspected the last few lines of the message. “It’s from Captain Hoxworth!” he said with some surprise. At the name of the feared whaler, some of the Hawaiians drew back, for the memory of Hoxworth’s cannonading was still vivid in their memories.

  “Wha kine talk he make?” Pupali asked.

  “I am sending you herewith, my long and trusted friend, the sum of forty-five pounds sterling, which is a goodly sum of money and which an English ship captain whom I bespoke off the Japan Coast gave me as a present when I gave him your daughter Iliki. He was a fine-looking man and promised to treat her well and said he would take her home with him to Bristol when his cruise was over. Since Bristol is on the other side of the world, you will probably not see Iliki again, but when I last saw her she was happy and in good health. I could not bring her back to Lahaina as I had made a full cargo off Japan and was sailing directly home, where a girl like Iliki would not be well received. Since I had to do something, it seemed to me better that I pass her along to a decent English captain than leave her in Valparaiso, where she would certainly get into trouble. I am sending you his entire gift, less five pounds which I gave Iliki for herself, because I think it good for a woman to have some money of her own in a strange country. I hope to see you again soon. Give my love to your wife and your other daughters. They are all good girls. Your trusted friend, Rafer Hoxworth.”

  It was the island consensus that Captain Hoxworth had behaved rather well in this matter, for all who knew Valparaiso and New England agreed that a girl like Iliki would not have prospered in either locale, and while it seemed likely that the English captain would pass her along to some other ship when the time came for him to return to Bristol, there was always the chance that he might grow fond of the lively girl and take her with him. Lahaina believed implicitly that the gift had indeed been fifty English pounds and that Captain Hoxworth had accounted honestly for all of it. His foresight in sequestering five pounds for the girl herself was widely praised, and carefree Pupali was suddenly looked upon as a wealthy man.

  But the transaction was forcefully condemned by Reverend Hale, who, as soon as he heard of it, hurried to J & W to satisfy himself that the letter was authentic. He then sought out Pupali and charged in Hawaiian: “You cannot keep that money, Pupali. For a father to profit from the sale of his own daughter would be infamous.”

  “Is it a great kapu?” the fat Hawaiian asked, with his wife and three daughters at his elbows.

  “A kapu so horrible that there is no word for it,” Abner explained.

  “But you just used a word for it,” Pupali hopefully pointed out.

  “I used several words,” Abner snapped. “What I mean is that civilized languages are not required to have a single word because such an act …” He stopped in confusion and started over by stating flatly, “It is a horrible act, Pupali. You cannot keep that money.”

  “What shall I do with it?” Pupali asked.

  “I think,” Abner said after due reflection, “that you should turn it over to the church … absolve yourself of the sin of which you are now a part.”

  Pupali got the money, laid it out carefully and studied it. Then he shook his head negatively. “No,” he reasoned, “if this money is as kapu as you say, isn’t it better that it harm only me and not something as fine as your church?”

  Abner coughed and explained, “It has always been the job of the church to correct the wrongs in any society, Pupali. If you give the money to a worthy cause, its kapu will be washed away.”

  “On the other hand,” Pupali argued, “your fine church has already been destroyed twice because the spirits of the land were angry at the way you built it …”

  “It was a fire and a wind,” Abner corrected.

  “And now if you make even your own god angry at the church, it would surely burn down again,” Pupali reasoned triumphantly. “So I cannot let you run this risk, Makua Hale. I will keep the money.” In fact, things had worked out so well for the shiftless man through the sale of Iliki, that he now started introducing his three other daughters to as many whaling captains as possible, but they had grown fat and careless and found no takers.

  IN SPITE of many such defeats, these were good years for Abner and Jerusha. They now had four children, two boys and two girls, each apparently gifted with superior intelligence. Abner was disappointed that the young ones could not play with the Janders and Whipple children, but since both Mrs. Janders and Amanda stubbornly allowed their offspring not only to associate with Hawaiians but actually to speak that lascivious language, the Hale youngsters were kept rigidly alone within their walled garden. They appeared at church each Sunday, handsomely scrubbed, and often at twilight Abner would lead them to the waterfront, where they would study the marvelous islands that rimmed Lahaina Roads, and the clever children would play the game of “Spot the Whales!” in which at proper seasons of the year they would try to detect mother whales and their babies. The family came to enjoy these end-of-day respites as the finest part of the week, and much of the poetry of speech that marked the children derived from these hours when they watched the sunsets and the islands. In December the sun set almost over the middle of Lanai, as if it were a fireball going back to sleep in the dead volcano of that gracious island, but in June the great fiery sun sank off the coast of Molokai, rushing with crimson and orange streamers into the blue ocean. Then, with daylight fading, the children would listen for the talking owls and the gentle motion of the rising wind in the coconut palms.

  What they loved best, however, was when their father pointed toward the rotting hulk of the Thetis and said, “I remember when your dear mother and I sailed from Boston in that brig.” And he convinced the children that they belonged to three precious fraternities: “You are the children of God. All men are your brothers. And you are descended from the bravest group that ever came to Hawaii, the missionaries that sailed aboard the Thetis.” One night Micah whispered to his mother, “Father tells us that all men are brothers, but the ones who sailed on the Thetis are a little better than the others, aren’t they?” And to the boy’s surprise his mother said, “Your father is correct. The world holds no finer people than those who sailed aboard the Thetis.” But Micah noticed that year by year, in his fathe
r’s stories of that fateful voyage, the waves got higher and the space in the little stateroom more cramped.

  Jerusha found abiding joy in these days, for her nine years in Lahaina had taught her how to master life within a grass house. Her two great enemies were bedbugs and cockroaches, but scrupulous cleanliness controlled the first and meticulous care in wrapping every edible crumb in time dismayed the roaches so that they marched away to some more careless house. Even so, the grassy walls, lined though they were with smooth and fragrant pandanus matting, were convenient hiding places for all kinds of insects, and often at night one would roll over on his pallet and hear the squashing sound of some hard-shelled vermin being crushed. Nor could the dust from the pebbled floor ever be adequately controlled. But life was possible, and at times even palatable.

  There was some talk between Amanda Whipple and Luella Janders that their patient sister Jerusha was killing herself in the damp grass shack, and together they sent a petition to the mission board in Honolulu begging for some lumber. “Our husbands have volunteered to build a decent house for this Christian and long-suffering woman, if you will but supply the timbers,” they wrote. But since one of the signatories was Amanda Whipple, who was known to have encouraged her husband when he abandoned the mission, and since Whipple had twice been additionally censured for marrying American sailors to Hawaiian girls, the petition came to naught, and Jerusha continued to live and work inside the dark, damp grass shack.

  Abner, had he known of Amanda’s move, would have been outraged, for he stubbornly maintained his original conviction: “We have been sent here as the servants of God. Through gifts to the mission, He will provide for us as He deems best.” It was, however, trying to Jerusha to see her four children clothed only in such remnants as the mission board could send her from the charity barrels, and she tried her health still further by constantly ripping apart gift clothing, smoothing out the larger pieces of cloth thus provided, and sewing them into new garments for her children. On one point, however, she was adamant: “We have got to have books for Micah. If you don’t write to the Board demanding them, I shall have to.” She was not above stopping whaling captains on the streets and begging them for any books which they might have done with and which her brilliant son could read. “I am trying to teach him all he requires for entrance into Yale,” she explained. “But he reads so fast and understands so well …” In one way or another she got the books.