The Devil in Paradise--Captain Putnam in Hawaii

by James L. Haley

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Mr. Miller, get the master-at-arms to arm fifty men. I shall take them ashore with Mr. Horner’s marines. You will be in command here. In a few moments, send Jackson ashore with twenty more. Mr. Yeakel, get both cutters ready to put into the water!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, Mr. Horner, let us look to the shore. You see the beach where our friends just landed. Hm! look at them scampering up the trail, showing us where it is! They won’t get far, I’ll wager. Now, to the left of it you see a hill perhaps a hundred feet high, and on top of it and back from the edge you see walls maybe ten feet tall of lava rock. Looks like a fortification. Do you see it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That is our objective: that is where the chiefs were going to attempt to lure Saeger and whoever was with him. Once we locate the entrance, we will rush it. Now, whoever is inside, no matter how hostile, will be armed vastly inferior to us. Do not start shooting just because you see black people. Hold your fire until we discover whose they are.”

  “I understand sir.”

  “All right, get your marines into your boat.”

  * * *

  * * *

  DAVID HORNER WAS first through the gate of the temple, leading his company of marines with bayonets fixed, the men behind him shouting to spike their ferocity; but once they were within the courtyard, they fell silent. Bliven and his company of seamen charged in behind them but were struck equally dumb even as they obeyed a command to broaden into a firing line. They beheld opposing them about twenty priests of the temple, or of this and other temples, for as Bliven realized in a flash the import of what Karaimoku had told him: that Boki, although he did not fight the new religion, nevertheless sheltered dissident kahunas in his own district. Boki may very well have been intending to ride a religious restoration to depose their giggling drunk of a king and his stepmother, whom Boki disdained, and himself take power. Kahumanu herself must have known how tenuous her own grip on power was; thus she had to be seen to turn against the missionaries in the wake of the Hana massacre. And what faced him now was not a clot of recalcitrant priests but the dragon seeds of Boki’s new revolution.

  Almost as one the kahunas produced and brandished an armory of native weapons that Bliven had seen pictured in the books about Captain Cook: the heavy war clubs studded with sharks’ teeth; the wicked pahoa daggers, each with not one but two blades of razor-sharp volcanic glass, with the handle in the middle so that they could stab while thrusting both left and right. In their own era, in the savage days of early man, such weapons would have instilled terror, but against modern muskets they inspired pity.

  “Sacrilege!” bellowed one of the priests, astonishing Bliven that he would have known that English word. That kahuna came to the fore of the group, genticulating hysterically. “You enter our heiau! You defile our temple! For this you will die!”

  “Lieutenant,” called Bliven, “do not fire unless you must!”

  “No, sir, I understand! Marines, en garde, but hold your fire!” The company took a step forward, lowering their muskets.

  Bliven advanced three steps toward the priests and began to understand from their bleary eyes and swaying that their determination if not their courage might have a chemical source. “Lay down your weapons,” he said. “We have no quarrel with you. I give you my word, you will not be harmed.” It was apparent that neither Boki’s nor Karaimoku’s warriors were anywhere around.

  The pregnant silence continued for over a minute, until one of the younger and meatier of the priests suddenly descended into a kind of lewd half-squat. His eyes bulging, he uttered the most guttural bawl with his tongue stuck out halfway down his chin, at which the others followed suit.

  “Stop this!” shouted Bliven.

  Their shouting and brandishing of weapons went on until without any visible signal they surged forward, their war clubs high and daggers clenched.

  “Marine company,” cried Horner, “prepare to fire! Fire!”

  The lava rock of the enclosing walls echoed the explosions of the muskets, and the charging priests were stopped for an instant. More than half fell, but then the others came on.

  “Reload!”

  “Ship’s company,” roared Bliven, “prepare to fire! Fire!”

  There was another resounding volley, and pistols withdrawn from belts dropped those who were still standing. All waited with bayonets en garde to fight whoever should emerge from the cloud of smoke, but none came.

  “Reload!”

  Nimbly, the firing line of sailors disengaged their ramrods and stood their rifled muskets on their butts—powder, wadding, ram; ball, wadding, ram—

  The smoke slowly lifted and revealed the completeness of what they had done.

  “Why did they come on so?” Horner shook his head. “I did not wish to fire upon them—not at all.” His distress appeared almost desperate.

  “This was your first real action?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Set your mind at ease, Lieutenant. You acted honorably.”

  Horner still looked, stricken, at the bodies before them.

  “They were the last of their kind, David. They were the end of an era in human history. Perhaps they felt that such a momentous turning point should not be marked by a tame surrender. Maybe they wanted no part of a future without terror and human sacrifice. That was the world in which they became very powerful.”

  “Still, I feel quite terrible, sir.”

  “Good, for if you exulted, I would have to report you as unfit for advancement. But come. Come with me.” They walked over to the nearest of the fallen kahunas. Bliven stooped and removed an obsidian-bladed pahoa from his hand. “Do you see this big dagger that I carry in my belt?”

  “Yes, sir. I have wondered about it, but never asked.”

  “I took it from an Arab pirate in the Barbary War. It has brought me luck. And here is yours.” He handed the pahoa over to Horner.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  They surveyed the priests sprawled bloody on the ground, when a couple of them twitched and moaned. “Send someone back to the ship to fetch Dr. Berend. He will see if he can do something for any of them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Horner turned and relayed the order to his corporal, who exited the temple at a trot and started down the path to the beach.

  “And then I suppose you should form up a burial detail after Berend gets here and looks them over. Until then, we don’t know that there aren’t any more of them. Get some skirmishers into the surrounding forest. We don’t want to be surprised.”

  The smoke had drifted away, and they looked across the courtyard toward the grass pili that must have been its sanctuary. “Jesus,” said Horner, “look what they have done.” Lennox Jackson joined them.

  Lined up outside the grass-walled sanctuary, opposite a grinning wooden idol, eight tree-trunk stakes, each with a man’s corpse tied to it, had been driven into holes cut in the rock. A tall figure was identifiable as Jakob Saeger, from his height, from the wisps of white hair and crooked teeth. His weight was supported not by his legs but by the native cords that bound him to the pole, for his legs had been broken, one knocked out to a sickening angle at the knee, the other smashed at the shinbone. The garrote that strangled out his life still bit into this throat, turning his pasty white face as purple as a plum, but he had not watched his own sacrifice, for two blood-crusted holes in his face showed where his eyes had been spooned out.

  “My God, sir,” breathed Jackson, “is this what the rest of the world is like?”

  “A good deal of it, I fear.”

  “What they call a religion is a horror, sir,” said Horner.

  “Well, we were hanging witches in Salem barely a hundred years ago, so let us try to not feel too superior. Get your skirmishers to report, Mr. Horner. Well, with Saeger and his men dead, tha
t would explain why the warriors have dispersed; that was Karaimoku’s intention. I suspect that their hostage is at Boki’s house and that trail would be an easy ambush.”

  Jackson suddenly crouched and extracted his pistol. “Sir, I saw movement within that grass house.”

  “Form up your company behind us.”

  With his heart in his throat Bliven entered the pili, with his men close behind, but it was as he first descried. They found only one person within, unarmed: the Chiefess Liliha, seated on a storage chest. She sat erect, bare chested, unbowed, and unmoved by the slaughter that had taken place a few feet away.

  “Where is my wife?” he demanded.

  Liliha made no answer but gazed at him, her expression seeming more than anything bemused.

  He advanced on her, preceded by the point of his saber, which he placed just beneath her left nipple, where it made an indentation. “Chiefess, there might be a day when I could be induced to spare your life. But the day that my wife is held prisoner is not that day.”

  Liliha withdrew from the point of his sword, not in pain or panic, and breaking neither her gaze at him nor her quizzical smirk. “She is in my house. She and your son are unharmed. You may fetch them whenever your wish.”

  “Captain Putnam!” David Horner’s voice came from the courtyard.

  “In here!”

  Horner ducked through the door to enter. “Sir, skirmishers report that the trails leading away from here are empty. The forest is too thick for anyone to come through there, except they be monkeys coming through the treetops.”

  “Very well. I shall take six of your marines with me to fetch the hostage. You will stay here. The chiefess is not to leave for any reason. And, Mr. Horner, do you know the myth of Circe?”

  “Who, sir? I do not believe so, not at all.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. In ancient Greece, the story of Circe was about an inveterate seductress who, after she had her way with men, turned them into pigs. Beware this chiefess. Do not allow her to leave, and do not allow her any liberties whatever. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bliven selected his six marines and they ascended the trail to the house at a fast walk, running on its level and downhill portions. The sight of a Georgian cottage jarred him, as peaceful as it was incongruous, but he led the detail through the front door without knocking. Clarity was standing in the hall before the front door, and to the side Bliven could see the chair from where she had seen them coming.

  With a huge sigh of relief he rushed forward and held her. “My love, are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is the baby?”

  “In the bedroom, sleeping.”

  “You were well cared for, then?”

  She gestured around the house. “As you see.”

  He held her again, longer, and looked around the parlor. “Of all the ways in which I might have imagined they live, Georgian Regency would not have come first to mind.”

  “Perhaps it did not fit in with the image they wished to project of being the defenders of the old ways.”

  Bliven nodded in agreement. “That would be hard to square with a love of luxury, would it not? Can you gather your things?”

  “Already done, ever since I heard the gunfire. Cannons at first, then muskets. Are you all right, dearest?”

  “Perfectly. If you can show these gentlemen what they are to bring, we must go.”

  When they regained the rock wall of the temple, Bliven stopped Clarity gently with a hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps you should wait out here. It is quite ghastly inside.”

  “No, do not shield me, I came here to see everything.” They entered and saw Berend within, kneeling from one Hawaiian to the next, and Mutterbach with him. “How do you find it, Doctor? Can any of them be saved?”

  Berend stood and shook his head. “No. Some of them may have been breathing at the time you sent for me, but they are dead as doornails now.”

  “Captain Putnam?” David Horner hailed him from the door of the pili.

  Bliven excused himself from Clarity, Berend, and Mutterbach. “Lieutenant Horner, have you had any trouble?”

  “No, sir. But the burial detail begs leave to say the ground here is almost solid rock. It is not possible to bury the dead here.”

  “I see.” Bliven looked over the pili. “The grass of these walls, and the timber frame, should be adequate for a funeral pyre. Commence to take it apart, then make a layer of grass and wood, then a layer of bodies, more grass and wood, more bodies, and so on. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is Liliha still within?” he asked as Clarity came over and joined him.

  Horner stood aside so they could enter. “Yes, sir.”

  Bliven found her unmoved from when he had departed. “Chiefess, where is your husband?”

  Liliha continued looking at him with the same limpid passivity.

  “Madam, I ask again: Where is your husband? I require an answer.”

  “Captain,” she said at last, “have you ever been to London?”

  “What!”

  “My husband and I are going to London. Our new king and queen are going there to pay their respects to the new British king and queen. As we are in the front rank of Their Majesties’ retainers, it was natural that we should be invited to accompany them.”

  Clarity leaned toward him and whispered, “I will explain presently, but this question is best not pursued.”

  Bliven stood back from between Liliha and the door of the pili and sheathed his saber. “Very well, Chiefess, you are free to go. Tell your husband that I am glad we were not enemies in this. We wanted the same thing: justice for the innocent people who were killed at Hana, and that has been achieved.”

  “Good-bye, Captain.” Liliha moved toward the door of the pili, brushing the back of her hand against the front of Horner’s trousers. “Good-bye, Lieutenant. I hope we meet again one day.”

  As she exited, Bliven shot a look at Horner, who shook his head. “Circe, sir.”

  Bliven allowed himself a smile. “Were you tempted?”

  “I should say, sir. Yes, I was.”

  “M-hm. And do you remember what Dr. Berend told the crew, about a moment of Venus followed by a lifetime of Mercury?”

  “Vividly, sir.”

  “Good. One thing further, Mr. Horner.” He gestured to the wooden idol that stood grinning at the corpses of Saeger and his men. “Have some of your men uproot this thing and bring it along.”

  “Very good, Captain.”

  When they were outside the temple compound, he touched Clarity’s shoulder to stop her. “What did you mean back there when you said I should not question Liliha more closely?”

  “Ah. Dearest, Hawaiian modes of expression are very subtle and very oblique. Her telling you about London was a way to say that if you abused her further, it would go down very hard with their good friend the king, and would damage the whole effort to Christianize these people.”

  They started down the path to the beach, their arms around each other. “Well, I confess,” he said, “that particular interpretation did escape me. Did I miss much else while I was gone all those months?”

  “Oh, Lord, I should think this was enough! But, yes, actually, there was a rebellion on Tauai not long after you left. They always have had an independent streak, as you may have heard. The queen sent Karaimoku and several canoes of warriors. They captured old King Tamoree and his family and brought them back to Honoruru as her ‘guests.’ Can you imagine? She said they were her guests!”

  “My, how did that come out?”

  “I thought she might have them killed, but she said she just wanted them to honor the existing alliance. So, to cement the alliance, she married the old king, and then married his son for good measure.”

  “Y
ou are not in earnest!”

  “I am surely in earnest. I asked her about it, and she said European kings marry for alliance all the time, and she wanted this alliance to be good both for now and the future, so she married two generations.”

  “Oh, my God! Was that the son who is your friend Prince George?”

  “No, no, this one was younger and much better looking. When I questioned her—very deferentially, of course—she pointed to Old Tamoree, and she said, ‘Well, if I have to marry that old thing, I want some fun out of it, too.’”

  “Ha! Oh, Lord—and what did Reverend Bingham have to say about this?”

  “Not a word. As long as she comes to church and at least hears out his sermons, he knows better than to criticize her.”

  On the beach he lifted her and Ben up into the gig, not minding the little water that seeped over the soles of his boots. They were pulled out to the sloop, past the blasted remains of the schooner.

  “Bosun’s chair here!” Bliven called up.

  Yeakel had seen them coming with Clarity and the baby and was almost finished rigging one.

  “Oh, pooh. I could manage the ladder very well if I weren’t carrying our precious one.”

  On deck Bliven helped her straight across to the ladder, then aft to the sea cabin, where he showed her his berth and the close stool, then held her tightly, running his fingers through her hair. “My love, do you think you have seen enough now to write your next novel?”

  “Quite enough. My only complaint is there is not much left for me to make up from my imagination. If I merely report all this in its bare facts, it would be difficult enough for anyone to believe it.”

  He kissed her. “I leave that to you. I must go topside and confer with my officers. I shall return directly.”

  He found Miller on the quarterdeck, watching with wide eyes as the idol was hoisted over the rail, spinning slowly so that its mother-of-pearl eyes got a full view of the whole of the weather deck, its grimace of sharks’ teeth holding in thrall those of the crew who beheld it. “Captain, that is rather a larger trophy than your Arab dagger. How do you propose to display it?”