The Devil in Paradise--Captain Putnam in Hawaii

by James L. Haley

  Boki was riding immediately before her. “Chief Boki, may I ask why there are so many bones down here? Was this a place of sacrifice?”

  “No, not really,” he answered. “When the old king conquered this island many years ago, the Oahu king opposed him. There was a great battle on top of the pali. When Ta-meha-meha was victorious, the opposing soldiers were cast over.”

  Well, that is lovely, she thought. Just when I thought this place was less brutal than I had believed . . .

  After several miles the track turned west at what she surmised was the north end of the island, then up and away from the coast, past a small lava-rock temple, of which there were several score dotting the island.

  Boki dismounted and again helped Clarity out of her sedan chair, and she beheld something else that she would have listed as the least expected: an English cottage of red brick that could only have been imported, and glass windows with white-painted wooden sashes. It might have been lifted from central London but for its diminutive size and the fact that, once within, she found the floor not of wood but of packed earth. Still, it was furnished with the finest appointments.

  “This is where you will stay,” said Liliha. “You will find everything you need. The queen has commanded that we provide you a servant, one who has a new child and can nurse yours as well, if you wish. She is one of our kanakas, and we will send for her. Her name is Hewela. She does not speak English, but you know enough of our language to make your needs known.”

  * * *

  * * *

  AFTER TWO AND a half days’ hard sail into oblique winds, Rappahannock entered Lahaina Roads and its relative calm in the lee of Maui’s mountains. Yeakel swung the large cutter out on its davits, laden with Lieutenant Horner and fifteen heavily armed marines, waiting upon the captain and Karaimoku before lowering.

  “Mr. Ross!” Bliven blurted suddenly.

  “Sir?”

  “Run to Mr. Erb. Here, take one of my shoes. Tell him I require a pair of marine boots of the approximate size, right away. I’m damned if I walk into possible trouble wearing these damned slippers.”

  Bliven waited impatiently until Ross returned and helped him into the boots with their high, scalloped tops.

  When Karaimoku emerged from his berth, he was transformed, wearing a native malo, his shoulders draped with a striking cape of feathers of brilliant scarlet and yellow blazes sewn into a fine mesh, and he carried one of those ancient-looking crested helmets.

  “Heavens,” said Bliven.

  “I am known here,” he answered. “You will be safe as long as I am with you. You will not know what I am asking and saying, but I will ask for the missionaries to be brought down straightaway, and we will bring them back with us. I will learn all I can from the people.”

  They seated themselves in the cutter, and Lieutenant Horner and a dozen marines stepped in after them. Yeakel supervised their lowering. As the cutter touched the water ten sailors pulled at their sweeps. “I am sorry for the people of Hana,” said Karaimoku. “They have known much suffering over the years. In the old days, every contender for king wanted to own it. The great Ta-meha-meha fought for it; so did his father and his uncle in their time.” Karaimoku pointed to the hill that loomed south of them. “Kahumanu herself was born there, on a hill outside the town.”

  As they approached the beach, Karaimoku donned his crested mahiole, and the sight of a high chief in ceremonial war garb went far to quell the unrest of the throng that gathered. “Mr. Horner,” said Bliven, “you come ashore with us and bring four marines; leave the others in the boat unless they are needed.”

  As soon as he said it, he realized this was the very thing that Captain Cook had done on the day he was killed, and for the same reason of not wanting to create too great a threat to the natives.

  When Karaimoku began speaking, runners ascended the hill to where the missionaries were gathered at the edge of their compound, and in few moments they began walking down hurriedly, each carrying a portmanteau: Asa and Lucy Thurston, and Samuel and Mercy Whitney. Bliven looked them over quickly. “Is this all of you? Are you unharmed?”

  “We are quite uninjured,” said Thurston. “In fact our church and house have been guarded by our native Christians since the massacre at Hana.”

  “I am glad to hear it. Mr. Horner, have your men take their baggage and help them into the boat. Mr. Pitt, have you learned what you require?”

  “More than enough.”

  “Well, then, promise them that I will do everything I possibly can to see that justice is done for them.”

  “I have done so already, and now we must hurry.”

  Two of the marines pushed them off the sand and then pulled themselves into the cutter, and the sailors went to their oars, port side pulling back, starboard pushing forward to turn them toward the ship.

  “To whom do we owe the honor of our rescue?” asked Thurston.

  Until that moment Bliven had scarcely noticed that after his nearly two years in and out and into Honoruru, the church in Lahaina did not know him. “Bliven Putnam,” he said, “captain commanding United States sloop of war Rappahannock.”

  “Aha!” erupted Lucy Thurston. “You must be Clarity’s mysterious husband! Now we understand.”

  “Shall you set off now in pursuit of Captain Saeger?” asked Thurston.

  Bliven stared at him, astonished. “How did you know it was he?”

  “So we deduced. He docked his schooner here in Lahaina for two days’ drinking and making rude gestures up toward the church. He was disjointed that the local chief has joined our church and no longer permits the women of his district to consort with sailors. Made him quite enraged. He said he was going to the windward side to trade for sandalwood, and then he was going to Kona and to find a more agreeable port. We heard about the killing only a day later, so we believed it could not have been any other.”

  “My God. What do you think, Mr. Pitt? Do you think he might still be in Kona?”

  “Maybe. We will not know unless we hurry.”

  Regaining Honoruru required only overnight with the trade winds behind them, where the entire missionary company was reunited, and Bliven and Karaimoku were given instant audience with the queen. He noticed at once that she still eschewed Western dress, and wore the thick lei niho palaoa of her royal rank about her neck.

  “Karaimoku,” she intoned, “what is the way of it?”

  “My queen, what he suspected before has been proven true. When our people at Hana bundled the sandalwood, they placed it only on the outside. The inner logs were worthless.”

  Kahumanu’s face twitched with rage.

  “Ma’am,” said Bliven, “this fact strengthens my suspicion that he set the great fire in Canton, and when he put to sea once more, he was next seen in Maui. The rest you know.”

  Kahumanu assimilated this as still and grim as a statue. Indeed, she sat motionless for so long that she might have been taken for struck dumb, but every soul at court knew she was calculating. The kanakas, the common people who loaded the wood, would not have dared such a thing on their own. She turned to Karaimoku. “From whose ahupuaas was this sandalwood taken? Which of our chiefs have done this thing?”

  Karaimoku’s sadness was immeasurable. “Kaiwikapu,” he said at last. “And Na-ao-kaalelewa.” The queen was from Hana; he knew that she knew these chiefs.

  Suddenly she rose and, reaching to the side, took from her closest retainer a fearsome twelve-foot lance. It was then that Bliven noticed she had not been sitting on her Louis XIV gilt chair but upon a strong, shaped bench of yellow and brown koa wood. Using the spear as a staff, she advanced to the edge of the dais and stood immovable for two full minutes, glaring at those inside the royal pili.

  She looked sharply down to her right, at the man with the writing desk. “Mr. Jenkins, have you set this all down in true account?” Bliven was surprised to
see that she had acquired an amanuensis.

  “I have, ma’am.”

  “Hear me, then, my chiefs and ministers. Through all our history, chiefs have governed the people on their lands, with no interference from the king, subject only to their portion of taxes, and providing soldiers in a war. See, all of you, where this has brought us. A hundred dead, our reputation ruined, we are made the victims of an evil man, those who have brought the word of God have been placed in danger. I say as I hold the spear of the Conqueror, those days are at an end. Hear my judgment! The lands of these two chiefs are forfeited.”

  A gasp rose from the court, followed by a receding murmur.

  “If any deny my right to do this, speak now.” The silence fell like a pall. “I give these lands to the Chief Naihetutui, and they shall be used to support the families afflicted by this terrible act. Now, Captain Putnam, do you know where this wicked man has gone?”

  “We believe to the Kona coast, ma’am.”

  “Is it your intention to pursue him?”

  “As soon as Your Majesty dismisses us.”

  “Go, then! Go, and let justice be done!”

  Bliven and Karaimoku walked quickly back down to the pier, picking up at the waterfront the pilot that was now required.

  “I thought for a moment she was going to sentence those two chiefs to death,” Bliven remarked.

  “It would have been better for them if she had,” answered the high chief. “For a chief to lose his rank, to lose his land, to net fish and pull up kalo like the country people, is worse than death. I expect they will be dead within a year by their own hands, rather than suffer this. You have heard the queen’s justice. You are an American, what did you think about it?”

  “Well, I noted that she aimed her justice not for the government but to provide for the victims of the crime. I think in all honesty that it was well done, and fair.”

  Karaimoku clambered down into the gig behind him. “So did I.”

  As soon as they were back aboard, Miller asked if he might speak to the two of them, and they repaired to the sea cabin. “There are elements of this whole story that are not making sense to me,” he began.

  “Go on, Mr. Miller.”

  “First, Saeger left Canton the night before we did. With his ship, he should have beaten us here by three weeks. How is it this massacre took place only the day before we arrived? No one seems to have seen him before then.”

  “Good point.”

  “Second, the people he fired on were in canoes. They would have begun fleeing or diving into the water at first firing. How did he manage to kill a hundred people with only four guns, even loaded with grape?”

  Karaimoku sat up, suddenly agitated. “Four guns? The people at Lahaina told me he had ten guns!”

  Bliven and Miller stared at each other. “Lieutenant Miller, I suspect that you were correct in your suspicion weeks ago that he put in to the Philippines and acquired greater armament.”

  “Has he gone mad?”

  “As a dog goes mad, I fear,” Bliven answered.

  “Captain Putnam,” said Karaimoku, “I think you are in a pickle.” Even in the tension, Bliven had to smile at a new Briticism from this native chief. “You have told the queen that you cannot deliver him up to a foreign country, and she has taken your wife hostage to the north shore of Oahu to make you do it. You have said that you cannot fire on a ship under your own flag. What are your intentions?”

  Bliven stood suddenly, pacing a circle around the mahogany table, punctuating the air with his fist. “Mr. Miller”—he stopped just as suddenly—“make all preparations for getting under way, but do not hoist the anchor except on my order.”

  “Aye, Captain.” He saluted and left.

  “Mr. Pitt, come topside with me. You must help me think.”

  He was quickly up the ladder and aft to the quarterdeck, pacing back and forth. “What you say is true, but—my God, wait a minute. Wait a minute! I may not fire upon him. You, however, Mr. Pitt, are bound by no such restriction.”

  “What? I fire upon him? How? What with? What are you working at, Captain?”

  “Yes, let us work at it.” He pointed at him several times. “Mr. Pitt, you are a military commander, you have led armies, and I believe that the principles of military engagement are probably similar both on land and on the sea.” He began walking forward and Karaimoku followed him.

  “Yes.”

  “Let us say, you are at the head of your army and you look over your enemy’s forces. Where would you attack him?”

  “Where he is weakest.”

  “Exactly. Now, what do you think is Captain Saeger’s worst point?”

  “That he killed a hundred of our people.”

  “Yes, but there he acted out of vengeance. What is his greatest weakness, what can he always be counted to act upon?”

  “His greed?”

  “And what is he greedy for?”

  “Money.”

  “Yes, but how is he accustomed to getting money here, in your country?”

  “With our sandalwood.” They approached the bow and Karaimoku interrupted himself. “You have placed larger guns in the front of your ship.”

  “Yes. This way when I come toward somebody, they know I mean to do business. Now, you told me something before that has been buzzing around in my mind like a bee. You said that on your brother’s land, where they have taken my wife, there are valleys that are sacred to the priests of the old religion. Would they not still contain sandalwood?”

  “Most surely.”

  “Of all your leading chiefs, who has the worst opinion of the white people.”

  “My brother.”

  “And who owes Saeger more money than anyone?”

  “My brother.”

  “And who has the sandalwood that could cause him to come ashore?”

  Karaimoku nodded emphatically. “My brother.”

  “So, if Saeger comes ashore to collect the sandalwood for the debt that your brother owes him, and he is captured by Boki’s warriors—or your warriors—it would not have been by my hand, would it?”

  Karaimoku stood stock-still. “Captain Putnam, I see that what you could not come to directly, you came back to by skittering around sideways. Here and now I give you a Hawaiian name: Paiea.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “The crab.”

  “Ha! I shall wear it proudly. But come, how do we get Saeger ashore at Pupukea?”

  “I do not know.”

  Bliven headed aft again, seeing the loose gear being stowed, and the master at arms beginning to take a roll of the crew. “Suppose, just suppose, that Saeger were handed a letter from your brother. In it he apologizes for his lateness in paying the debt and says that the queen and other chiefs, including yourself, have impressed upon him the importance of maintaining good credit with the foreign powers. With the end of the old religion, the forests that were once forbidden are no longer, and he is harvesting the sandalwood, if Saeger would care to come to Pupukea and get it. If you were Saeger, would you go?”

  “I would consider whether it was a trap—and then I would go.”

  “Can your brother read and write?”

  “Only to sign his name, I think. Maybe better by now.”

  “Well, then . . . well, then . . . How about this? You will write the letter on your brother’s behalf. I will take it to Kona and hope that I get there in time. You will go to Pupukea as fast as you can, tell your brother everything, and be prepared to capture Saeger when he comes ashore. Do you think your brother will agree?”

  “To capture and maybe kill this man? Yes, he will agree.”

  “Let us go below.” In the sea cabin Bliven provided fresh paper and his desk set to Karaimoku, who began writing in a labored and elementary hand. “Now, if you say—”

 
Karaimoku’s free hand flashed up. “Do not tell me. I know what is wanted.”

  “Yes, of course. If I may suggest, do not claim that Boki will pay his whole debt, or Saeger might suspect a trick. If you say you have enough sandalwood to pay seventy or eighty percent of your debt, and say you hope that will satisfy him for the present, it will sound more plausible, don’t you think?”

  Karaimoku looked up, his eyes wide. “Captain Putnam, you make an admirable sneak. And we must get him ashore,” he added suddenly. “I will tell him that the wood comes from the sacred forest, so it is being kept in the temple and he must come get it.”

  “Oh, yes, that will do, that will do.”

  When it was finished he signed it “Karaimoku, High Chief and First Minister,” and said, “Well. The bait is on the hook, and I must leave now with all speed. I will gather my warriors and go to my brother, who will gather his warriors, and we will prepare the priests in the temple there. The queen need not know any of this. We are doing her bidding, but she becomes alarmed when any soldiers gather that are not hers.”

  “I understand. You tell your queen only what she needs to know, and I will tell my government only what they need to know.”

  “We are plotters, you and I.”

  In the back of his mind he remembered saying this to someone else.

  “I must go,” said Karaimoku. “If you reach Kona and you are too late, send word quickly so we can disperse before arousing suspicion.”

  “I will. Mr. Ross!”

  He came out of his berth. “Sir?”

  “See Mr. Pitt up on deck and have him taken ashore in my gig.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It would be a hard sail down to Kona, obliquely against the trade winds, perhaps two days. If Saeger got there and no word of his doings had reached there, he should be in no hurry to abandon its plentiful rum and willing women.