“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 profits 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 forearms 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 flow
s,” 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 purple 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.”
“Keoki,” Abner said patiently, “a committee of missionaries, well versed in Greek, Hebrew and Latin studied in Honoruru for more than a year deciding how to spell Hawaiian names. They didn’t act in haste or ignorance, and they decided that your father’s name should be spelled Kelolo.”
Thoughtlessly Keoki pointed out: “They also decided the town should be called Honolulu, but its real name is closer to Honoruru, as you said.”
Abner flushed and was about to utter some sharp correction when Captain Janders rescued the moment by admiringly grasping Kelolo’s tattooed arm and observing, “Tamehameha! A very great king. Alii Nui Nui!”
Kelolo, confused by the earlier argument, smiled broadly and returned the compliment. Patting the railing of the Thetis he said in Hawaiian, “This is a very fine ship. I shall buy this ship for Malama, the Alii Nui, and you, Captain Janders, shall be our captain.”
When this was translated by Keoki, Captain Janders did not laugh, but looked steadily at Kelolo and nodded sagely. “Ask him how much sandalwood he can bring me for the ship?”
“I have been saving my sandalwood,” Kelolo said cautiously. “There is much more in the mountains of Maui. I can get the sandalwood.”
“Tell him that if he can get the sandalwood, I can get the ship.”
When Kelolo heard the news he started to shake hands in the American manner, but cautiously Captain Janders held back. “Tell him that he does not get the Thetis until I have carried the sandalwood to Canton and brought back a load of Chinese goods, which shall be my property to sell.”
“That is reasonable,” Kelolo agreed, and once more he proudly held forth his hand to bind the bargain. This time Captain Janders grasped it, adding prudently, “Mister Collins, draw up an agreement in three copies. State that we will sell the Thetis for a full cargo of sandalwood now, plus an equal amount when we return from China.” When the terms were translated, Kelolo solemnly agreed, whereupon Mister Collins whispered, “That’s a hell of a lot of sandalwood.”
Replied Janders, “This is a hell of a lot of ship. It’s a fair deal.”
While the towering chief was concluding the deal, Abner had an opportunity to study him closely, and his eye was attracted to the symbol of power that Kelolo wore about his brown neck. From a very thick, dark necklace, apparently woven of some tree fiber, dangled a curiously shaped chunk of ivory, about five inches long and an inch and a half wide, but what was remarkable was the manner in which, at the bottom, a lip flared out and up, so that the entire piece resembled an antique adz for shaping trees.
“What is it?” Abner whispered to Keoki.
“The mark of an alii,” Keoki replied.
“What’s it made of?”
“A whale’s tooth.”
“It must be heavy to wear,” Abner suggested, whereupon Keoki took the missionary’s hand and thrust it under the tooth, so that Abner could test the surprising weight.
“In the old days,” Keoki laughed, “you would be killed for touching an alii.” Then he added, “The weight doesn’t bother him because the necklace of human hair supports it.”
“Is that hair?” Abner gasped, and again Keoki passed his friend’s hand over the woven necklace, which, Keoki explained, had been made of some two thousand separate braids of plaited hair, each braid having been woven from eighty individual pieces of h
air. “The total length of hair,” Abner began. “Well … it’s impossible.”
“And all from the heads of friends,” Keoki said proudly.
Before Abner could comment on this barbarism a considerable commotion occurred at the side of the Thetis and the missionaries ran to witness an extraordinary performance. From the mainmast two stout ropes had been lowered over the canoe which still held Malama, the Alii Nui. The ends of the ropes were fastened to a rugged canvas sling that was customarily slipped under the bellies of horses and cows, hoisting them in this fashion onto the deck of the ship. Today, the canvas sling was being used as a giant cradle into which the men in the canoe gently placed their revered chief, crosswise, so that her feet and arms dangled over the edges of the canvas, which insured her stability, while her enormous chin rested on the hard rope binding which kept the canvas from tearing.
“Is she all settled?” Captain Janders asked solicitously.
“She’s squared away,” a sailor shouted.
“Don’t drop her!” Janders warned. “Or we’ll be massacred.”
“Gently! Gently!” the men working the ropes chanted, and slowly the gigantic Alii Nui was swung aboard the Thetis. As her big dark eyes, ablaze with childish curiosity, reached the top of the railing, while her chin rested on the edge of the canvas and her body sprawled happily behind, she waved her right hand in a grand gesture of welcome and allowed her handsome features to break into a contented smile.
“Aloha! Aloha! Aloha!” she said repeatedly in a low, soft voice, her expressive eyes sweeping the row of black-frocked missionaries in their claw-hammer coats. But her warmest greeting was for the skinny yet attractive young women who stood sedately in the rear. It would have taken almost four Amanda Whipples to equal the bulk of this giant woman as she lay in the canvas sling. “Aloha! Aloha!” she kept crying in her musical voice as she swung over the women.
“For the love of God!” Janders shouted. “Take it easy now. Gently! Gently!” As the ropes were eased over the capstans, the canvas sling slowly dropped toward the deck. Instantly, Captain Janders, Kelolo and Keoki rushed forward to intercept the sling, lest the Alii Nui be bruised in landing, but her bulk was so ponderous that in spite of their efforts to hold the sling off the deck, it pressed its way resolutely down, forcing the men to their knees and finally to a sprawling position. Undisturbed, the noble woman rolled over on the canvas, found her footing, and rose to majestic height, her bundles of tapa making her seem even larger than she was. Quietly, she passed down the line of missionaries, greeting each with her musical “Aloha! Aloha!” But when she came to the storm-tossed women, whose voyage she could imagine and whose underweight she instantly perceived, she could not restrain herself and broke into tears. Gathering little Amanda Whipple to her great bosom she wept for some moments, then rubbed noses with her as if she were a daughter. Moving to each of the women in turn, she continued her weeping and smothered them in her boundless love.
Hawaii Page 31
