by Bodie Thoene
Kaiulani felt a rush of air as the approaching train pushed air ahead of it toward the platform. Then she felt a pressure in her ears, almost like diving down on the reefs of home.
Andrew was still waving. Then he was also pointing. His motions seemed to have an edge of urgency.
Someone in the crowd pushed Kaiulani hard from behind. She staggered sideways, clutching at Hannah, then toppled off the pavement, standing directly in the path of the on-rushing train.
There was no time to cry out, yet for a moment Kaiulani saw horror imprinted on the faces of the onlookers. She thought of her mother’s favorite psalm: “He shall give His angels charge concerning thee… .”
The train whistle screamed a warning, a shriek dwarfed by the anguished cry pouring from hundreds of human throats.
Then Annie’s strong hands reached under Kaiulani’s arms and dragged her up just as the engine thundered into the station.
Something sent Kaiulani’s left shoe flying. Was it possible the heel had been struck by the train? Was that how close it had been?
Andrew came flying along the platform, shouting, “Out of the way! Get out of my way!” Pausing only an instant to confirm that Kaiulani was unharmed, he resumed sprinting up the stairs. Now he bellowed, “Stop him! Stop that man!”
While the throng in the station ebbed and flowed and the train departed, a breathless Kaiulani and panting Annie huddled with Hannah against the white-tiled wall of the tunnel.
Andrew returned. “He got away,” he reported. “Don’t know if he went outside or crossed to the westbound line. Sorry.”
“But surely,” Hannah remarked, “it was an accident.”
“That’s not what I saw,” Andrew said. “Not at all.”
* * * *
The inspector from Scotland Yard took copious notes as Andrew paced back and forth in Kaiulani’s hotel suite and the trio of women looked on. Andrew said again, “I tell you, I clearly saw the chap staring at the princess with a cold, determined look in his eye.”
The inspector’s lower lip protruded, conveying his doubt. “Amongst all the crowd, you spotted this one fellow with a peculiar expression?”
Andrew defended, “He was the only person not smiling. There was dark intent in his expression as he made his way towards the princess.”
The inspector addressed Kaiulani, “What say you, uh, Princess?”
“I only felt myself being pushed. I saw nothing but the train and then I felt the arms of my sister reaching out to pull me up at the last instant.”
The inspector pressed her. “Then an accident, would you say? Is there anyone who would like you dead? Pardon my bluntness.”
Annie, who had not let go of Kaiulani’s hand, stammered, “Who could believe such a thing? Who would ever want to hurt my sister?”
The inspector snapped his notebook closed. With lips pressed together, he shrugged and shook his head at Andrew. “Sorry, Mister Andrews. There you have it. You seem to be the only one who believes the princess is in danger.”
Resigned, Andrew nodded and retrieved his hat. He addressed Kaiulani. “I can’t convince you of what I am certain. I’ll write your guardian, Mister Davies, and your father in Honolulu. You should have a Pinkerton agent with you whenever you go out.”
Kaiulani, exhausted by the ordeal, smiled feebly at Andrew. “I do thank you for your concern. I can’t see how a Pinkerton would fit into my simple lifestyle. I should be safe enough at school. I don’t want you to worry, Andrew. Please, until we meet again, don’t give me another thought.”
He was silent for a long moment. Staring at his shoes, he replied, “I fear I won’t see you again…for a long time, Kaiulani. And I can’t help but worry. You are truly, like Mister Mark Twain, an innocent abroad if you think the long arm of the enemies of the Hawaiian monarchy cannot reach you on these shores.” He turned to leave with the policeman.
Kaiulani called after him. “Andrew? Please. Pray for me.”
He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “I discovered tonight that my…care for you…suddenly makes me want to pray. I must first learn how.”
Chapter Thirteen
1973
Archie’s boat, Royal Flush, carried them slightly northwest out of Lahaina Harbor, pushed by a steady wind from the south. Sandi watched in amazement as he piloted the forty-two-foot vessel without any help. Occasionally he would slip ties around two spokes of the ship’s wheel and leave the cockpit to tighten or loosen some rope. She’d never sailed before, so Sandi had no idea what he was doing, but considering he was able to do it by himself, she was impressed.
She had always imagined sailing was a hobby for at least two people working together: one to hold the wheel and bark orders, another to carry them out. And if someone went sailing by himself, she thought, certainly two hands would be a minimum. But Archie was confident and each move he made on the boat deliberate and precise. He must have noticed her admiring gaze, for he said, “She’s a sweet little boat. Makes sailing easy. Almost as good as another hand.”
Sandi suddenly laughed out loud as the meaning of the sailboat’s name came to her. A royal flush was the highest winning hand in poker.
The other four people onboard, a married couple and their two teenage daughters, didn’t seem to fully appreciate Archie’s accomplishment. They leaned against the low side of the cabin roof, snapping pictures of the receding coastline and drinking little plastic cups full of more pog, poured from milk-container-like waxed paper cartons. Sandi smiled at the thought. Not such a secret recipe after all…poor Joe.
The view of the island really was astounding. High green ridges descended from unseen mist-covered peaks, divided by fingers of rich red soil reaching back from the sea. But Sandi found herself watching and enjoying the way Archie’s mechanical arm worked. When she first arrived at the boat, she noticed that the grip on the end of the artificial limb had been changed. In place of the pincer were two rubber-lined, stainless steel half-circles that overlapped when closed. When he noticed her stare, he explained that he had a few different kinds of attachments for the arm—all with a different purpose. The one he wore on the boat was heavy duty, shaped specifically to grip rope.
It worked through a simple mechanical action, connected to a harness he wore around his shoulders. As he raised his arm from the shoulder, a cable pulled the grip open. When he lowered his arm, the grip closed by the strength of rubber bands strapped around its base. The reach of his left arm was much shorter than the right, and seemed to take considerable effort to manipulate, but he was still able to pull a line, hand over hand, almost as quickly as she’d ever seen it done.
They sailed far enough into the channel to see the eastern tip of the Island of Molokai. Archie warned everyone to hold on tight, loosened the sails, and with the last bit of forward momentum, spun the boat’s wheel in a hard turn, back in the direction they’d come. Catching the question on Sandi’s face, he said, “Don’t go anywhere” and disappeared into the cabin.
“Funny,” she mumbled as the sails flapped noisily in the breeze and the boat bobbed in the choppy water.
When he returned, Archie was carrying a large canvas bag. “Watch this.” He smiled. “Now you’re really gonna see something.”
He hefted the bag to the bow, unzipped it, and attached a rope to something inside. Returning to the cockpit, he turned a crank, and Sandi watched as a canvas tube slowly uncoiled from the bag like a charmed cobra from its woven basket. Higher and higher it crept, ascending toward the top of the mast. Archie returned to the mast and worked at untwisting the tube, then attached another rope at its base. Finally, satisfied that all was correct, he pulled on a smaller, thinner cord that gathered the canvas skyward like a rolled-up sock, revealing a new sail inside.
As the wind caught its folds, it billowed outward, a dazzling spread of bright blue cloth that looked like a triangle of sky tethered to the boat. It whipped and cracked, as if trying to break free and fly home.
When Archie hopped back do
wn into the cockpit, he excused himself around behind Sandi and turned a crank that tightened the bottom edge of the sail, pulling it toward the boat and forcing it to hold the wind that came at it. The boat slowly began heeling toward the north again, even before Archie loosed the wheel and gave it permission to do so. He trimmed the main sails again and everything snapped taut.
Sandi was on the low side as the boat headed northeast with the wind pushing directly into all three sails, the newest spread out in front of them like a hot air balloon. Though speed was hard to gauge over the monotonous waves, Sandi could tell they were traveling much faster than they had been.
“You might want to move up here,” Archie said, patting the cockpit seat next to his wheel.
Looking back from the perch, she could see why: the railing where she had sat was now running close to the water as the wind pushed the boat hard over in its path.
“Fantastic!” she said, staring at the sail again. “What do you call that?”
Archie looked at her and smiled appreciatively. “Beautiful.”
She felt color climb to her cheek. How long had it been since a man had held her with his glance? “I—I mean, what you just did…the…”
“I know what you meant.” He turned away and explained in a businesslike way, “The sail’s a spinnaker. Lots of boats have those. But that canvas cover is a new invention by a buddy of mine, Etienne. Guy’s gonna be rich. See, a spinnaker’s hard to set without getting it twisted in the middle. Like me. Some thought comes into my head and catches the wind…out it comes, all tangled up. Sorry.”
She replied, “You only said one word.”
“True. But maybe I shouldn’t let the wind fill that sail.”
“All this sailor talk, Archie. Right over my head.”
He shrugged. “It’s been awhile since I tried to talk to a female. I guess I’ve forgotten how.”
“Beautiful was a good start.”
“You are, you know.”
“Well done, you. Brilliant follow-up line.”
“Not bad for a one-handed sailor, eh?”
She paused, hearing some deep wound in his tone. “Who was she?”
“A girl I knew since we were kids. She’s married now. Mainland. Has a baby. Life goes on, I guess.”
A pang of guilt stabbed Sandi. What was she doing? Flirting with a man when John was still out there somewhere? “For some of us, life is on hold. It has to be. I can’t—”
Archie seemed to recognize the unhappiness in her eyes. “Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” He glanced at her wedding ring, then quickly pointed to the spinnaker. His tone became that of the official tour guide. “That sock keeps the sail contained, out of the wind, until you’re sure you’ve got it rigged right. When you’re ready to take it down, you do the same thing in reverse, and it goes right back in the bag like a neat coil of rope.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, not really listening to his words.
Archie leaned against the pitch of the deck, steering confidently with his muscled right arm.
“Fantastic,” Sandi said again but quickly looked away.
“Well,” Archie said, “there’s really not a whole lot else happening here until we get to the bay. You find a comfortable place to sit, and we’ll be there before you know it.”
She climbed up to the high side of the boat, past the tourist family holding tightly to the boat’s safety railing. One hand for myself and one for the boat, she thought, just like Archie said. She moved as far forward as she could go and sat, letting her bare feet dangle off the side.
The teenage girls hadn’t realized they were allowed to do that and quickly followed her example. The spray from the bow washed over their feet from time to time, cold and tickly. Sandi lay back with her arms spread along the line of the cabin roof, her face upturned full into the overhead sun.
She marveled at how the light washed right through her closed eyelids, filling her vision with a warm pink color. As the irregular, circular rhythms of the boat’s movement coaxed the stress from her shoulders, she drifted in a state between waking and sleeping and wondered: What is it I always see? Something when I close my eyes. And now it’s just gone, washed out by this beautiful—
Her eyes snapped open, and her stomach churned. She felt sick but knew it wasn’t from the waves. The image she always saw when she closed her eyes was John’s face. She wanted to always see that. She didn’t want to forget him, not ever, not even for a second. He was still out there, and she felt unfaithful for having even the slightest good time without him.
She glanced back toward the wheel…and Archie. He smiled at her, and she tried to manage a smile back. Oh, Lord, what am I doing here? she prayed. They weren’t even halfway through with the trip, and she already wished it were over.
“Whale!” shouted the other man on board. “Uh, one, no, two o’clock.”
Archie had already instructed his passengers in the proper way to target whales, by using a clock face as a reference. “ ‘Over there,’ ” he’d said jokingly, “is not a good description, especially when not everyone can see where you’re pointing.” He tapped his eye patch and everyone had laughed. Then he had shared a little rhyme with them. “Twelve is the bow, six is the stern. If you don’t know the rest, it’s about time you learn.”
With a series of three quick movements, Archie loosed the sails, and the boat coasted to a quick stop in the choppy water. The giant beast was no more than twenty-five yards off the bow, between the boat and the land. Sandi stared in wonder as its back arched out of the water and it breathed quickly with a loud gust of air that vaporized water droplets into a fine mist. A moment later its white-streaked tail emerged, rising almost to vertical as the leviathan angled toward the depths again.
“Whoa!” said everyone but Archie, almost in unison, as though watching a fireworks display.
Sandi wondered why Archie hadn’t joined in the chorus. She looked back toward the wheel and saw him shading his eyes with his right hand and scanning the water farther back along the boat, toward their “four o’clock.” He was all business now.
“See another one, Captain?” the tourist father asked.
“Mm, maybe,” Archie said. “There was a slick…do you know what that is? A slick is a little flat spot of water that gets left behind when a whale dives, like the one when this first guy went down—” He interrupted himself, pointing. “Five o’clock.”
The whole row of tourists, including Sandi, had to stand to see where he pointed. Off the starboard side, back in the direction they’d come from, was the distinctive ridge of the back of a smaller whale. Everyone strained to hear over the lapping water and rippling sails. A second later, its breath came, smaller and higher pitched than the first one. It sounded to Sandi like the hiss of a steam iron as it heated.
“That’s the calf,” Archie said. “The mother has just had him this season. They’ll stay, and she’ll nurse him in the Islands until April or May, then they’ll make the long trip back to Alaska.”
“Wow! Alaska?” asked one of the girls. “They have to swim all that way?”
With absolute seriousness, Archie replied, “There are very few flights.”
Sandi guffawed so abruptly she was able to pretend it was a cough.
After the family had snapped a few pictures of the mother and calf whales’ leisurely dives and ascents, Archie got the boat underway again. Sandi settled back into her seat, determined to at least remember what she saw today, if for no other reason than to share it with John when he came home.
* * * *
Victorian England
Kaiulani took Winston’s suggestion seriously that a future monarch must understand and speak fluently the languages of the great powers. She threw herself into her studies with renewed determination.
Madame Dominque Brun sat just like her four students on one of the five over-stuffed chairs around the room. Each girl had a small writing tablet on her lap, while Madame held a green, clothbound book.
&nbs
p; “Nouns with two different plurals and meanings,” she pronounced carefully. “Write for me each, en francais, s’il vous plaît, after I give you first, the singular. L’aïeul, the grandfather.”
There was a clattering of chalk sticks on the boards as each pupil raced to complete the assignment.
Hannah finished first, turning her tablet toward Madame Brun. Kaiulani glanced up, frustrated that her friend took to the French language so much faster than she.
“Bon,” praised Madame Brun. “But do not forget—” She reached out and tapped additional punctuation in each of the words.
It was a reminder for Kaiulani to check her marking as well. She finished next and turned her work to Madame Brun.
