Hawaii (57 page)

"You say you can remember the canoes in which your people came?"

"Of course! It was the same canoe on each trip."

"How can you remember that?" Abner demanded sharply.

"Our family has always known its name. It was the canoe Wait-for-the-West-Wind. It had Kelolo as navigator, Kanakoa as king, Pa at one paddle and Malo at the other. Kupuna was the astronomer and Kelolo's wife Kelani was aboard. The canoe was eighty feet long by your measures and the voyage took thirty days. We have always known these things about the canoe."

"You mean a little canoe like that one at the pier? How many people did you mention. Seven, eight? In a canoe like that?" Abner was contemptuous of the man.

"It was a double canoe, Makua Hale, and it carried not eight people but fifty-eight."

Abner was dumfounded, but once more his historical sense was excited, and he wished to know more about the myths of these strange people. "Where did the canoe come from?" he asked.

"From Bora Bora," Kelolo said.

"Oh, yes, you mentioned that name before. Where is it?"

"Near Tahiti," Kelolo said simply.

"Your people came in a canoe from Tahiti . . ." Abner dropped the question and said, "I suppose the family history ends there?"

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"Oh, no!" Kelolo said proudly. "That is not even the halfway mark."

This was too much for Abner, and he stopped abruptly calling it a family history. He realized that he had got hold of one of the classic myths of the Hawaiian islands, and he said bluntly, "I'll copy it down for you, Kelolo. I would like to hear the story." He adjusted the swinging lamp, took fresh sheets of paper, and laid aside for some nights his Bible translation. "Now tell me very slowly," he said, "and don't leave out anything."

In the darkness Kelolo began to chant:

"The time of the birth of the tabu chief, The time when the bold one first saw light, At first dimly like the rising of the moon In the season of the Little Eyes in the ancient past. The great god Kane went into the goddess Wai'ololi And the offspring of light were born, the bringers of men, Akiaki who dragged the islands from the sea And gentle La'ila'i who made the flowers and the birds, And in the evening of the long day Akiaki knew his sister, And the man was born, bringer of honor and war . . ."

And as Kelolo chanted the historic summary of his people the little room was filled with the clash of-battle, the birth of gods, the abduction of beautiful women and the explosions of ancient volcanoes. Men in yellow capes, carrying spears, marched from one lava flow to another; queens fought for their children's rights and brave men perished in storms. In time Abner fell under the spell of the fabulous events, these made-up memories of a race, and when Kelolo and Malama and the canoe Wait-for-the-West-Wind made their second journey from Bora Bora to Hawaii the little missionary caught a momentary thrill of the vast ocean and its perils as Kelolo, sitting in the darkness, chanted what purported to be the song of directions for that imaginary voyage:

"Wait for the west wind, wait for the west wind, Then sail to Nuku Hiva of the dark bays To find the constant star. Hold to it, hold to it Though the eyes grow dim with heat."

But whenever Abner found his mind prepared to accept some small aspect of the narrative as true, ridiculous legendary events intruded, like Kelolo's account of how his ancestor in Bora Bora left for the trip north at the height of a hurricane, with waves forty feet high.

"Imagine a Hawaiian canoe even venturing out of port in a strong wind!" Abner laughed to Jerusha as he recounted some of the more fantastic passages in the history. "Just look! Right here we have more

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than forty generations of supposedly historic characters. Now if you allot twenty years to each generation, and that's conservative, Kelolo wants us to believe that his ancestors came here more than eight hundred years ago and then went back to get a second canoeload. Impossible!"

When Kelolo finished his genealogy�128 generations in all� Abner prudently made a copy of what he termed "this primitive and imaginary poem" and sent it to Yale College, where it formed the basis for most accounts of Hawaiian mythology; scholars appreciated in particular the detailed descriptions of the conflict between the Bora Bora god Kane and the Havaiki god Koro. Abner himself had slight regard for his work, and when he summoned Keoki to present the original he said condescendingly, "Your father claims it's a family history."

"It is," Keoki bristled.

"Now, Keoki! More than a hundred and twenty-five generations! Nobody can remember . . ."

"Kahunas can," Keoki said stubbornly.

"You sound as if you were defending the kahunas," Abner suggested.

"In the recitation of family histories, I am," Keoki replied.

"But this is ridiculous . . . mythology . . . fantasy." Abner slapped the manuscript with disdain.

"It is our book," Keoki said, clutching it to his bosom. "The Bible is your book, and these memories are our book."

"How dare you, a man who presumes to ask when he will be made a minister?"

"Why is it, Reverend Hale, that we must always laugh at our book, but always revere yours?"

"Because my Book, as you improperly call it, is the divine word of God, while yours is a bundle of myths."

"Are 'The Begats' any more true than the memories of the kahunas?" Keoki challenged.

"True?" Abner gasped, his temper rising with his astonishment. "One is the divinely revealed Word of the Lord. The other . . ." He paused in contempt and ended, "Good heavens, do you consider them equal?"

"I think there is much in the Old Testament that is merely the work of kahunas, nothing more," Keoki said firmly. Then, to repay Abner for his arrogance, he asked in confidence, "Tell me, Reverend Hale, don't you honestly think that Ezekiel was mostly kahuna?"

"You had better go," Abner snapped icily, but he felt some shame for having goaded the boy, so he put his arm about his shoulder and pointed to a canoe on the beach. "Keoki," he reasoned quietly, "surely you must know that a canoe like that could not carry fifty-eight people for thirty days ... all the way from Tahiti."

Keoki moved so that he could see the broad, silvery passageway that lay between Lanai Island and Kahoolawe, leading south. "Reverend Hale, do you recall the name of that stretch of water?"

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"Don't they call it Keala-i-kahiki?" Abner replied.

"And have you ever heard the name of that point at Kahoolawe?"

"No."

"It's likewise Keala-i-kahiki Point. What do you suppose Keala-i-kahiki means?"

"Well," Abner reflected, "Ke means the; ah means road; i means to; and I don't know what kahiki means."

"You know that what we call Jc, the people to the south call t. Now what does kahiki mean?"

Against his will, Abner formed the older word, of which kahiki was a late corruption. "Tahiti," he whispered. "The Way to Tahiti."

"Yes," Keoki said. "If you sail from Lahaina, pass through Keala-i-kahiki Strait and take your heading from Keala-i-kahiki Point, you will reach Tahiti. My ancestors often sailed that way. In canoes." And the proud young man was gone.

But Abner refused to accept such claims, and by consulting many Hawaiians he proved to his satisfaction that the word kahiki meant not Tahiti but any distant place, so he added his own note to the Yale manuscript: "Keala-i-kahiki may be translated as 'The Path to Far Places' or 'The Beyond.'" Then, as if to prove that Abner was right, the Hawaiian captain of Kelolo's ship Thetis got drunk, stayed in his cabin during a storm, and allowed his sturdy old veteran of many seas to climb upon the rocks off Lahaina, where it rotted through the years, a visible proof that Hawaiians could not even navigate in their own waters, let alone penetrate distant oceans.

IT WAS WHILE Abner was drafting a letter to Honolulu, advising the mission board that his assistant Keoki Kanakoa was behaving strangely, so that perhaps the board ought to consider Keoki's reassignment to some post of lesser importance, that the news was shouted through the still morning air that was to disrupt Lahaina for many days. Pupali's oldest daughter came screaming to Jerusha's school: "Ilikil fiiki! It has arrived! The Carthaginian/" And before the startled Jerusha could intercede, the bright-eyed beauty had leaped over the bench and dashed madly away with her sister. Together they swam out to the sleek whaler, with the dark sides and the white stripe running lengthwise, where naked and shimmering in the sunlight they were both gathered into the arms of the bark's tall captain and led below to his quarters, from which he shouted, "Mister Wilson, I don't want to be interrupted till tomorrow morning. Not even for food."

But he was interrupted. Kelolo dispatched three policemen to the Carthaginian under orders to drag Pupali's daughters off to jail, but when they climbed aboard the whaler, Mister Wilson met them on the afterdeck, shouting, "Get away! I'm warning you!"

"We come fetch wahines," the officers explained.

"You'll get broken jaws!" Mister Wilson threatened, whereupon one of the policemen shoved out his elbows, knocked the first mate

aside and started for the after hatchway. Mister Wilson, thrown off balance for a moment, tried to lunge at the intruder, but another of the policemen grabbed him, which became the signal for a general scuffle, in which, because most of the men were ashore, the three rugged policemen appeared to be winning.

"What the hell's going on here?" came a roar from the lower deck, followed by a lithe form, tall and muscular, leaping up the ladder. Captain Hoxworth was dressed only in a pair of tight sailor's pants, and when he saw what was happening on his ship, he lowered his head, lunged at the first policeman and shouted, "Into the ocean with "eml"

The agile officer saw Hoxworth coming, sidestepped with agility, and brought his right forearm viciously across the back of the captain's neck, sending him sprawling across the deck, where the New Englander cut his lower lip on his own teeth. Wiping the blood onto the back of his hand, Hoxworth glimpsed the red stain, and from his knees cried ominously, "All right!"

Rising slowly, testing his bare feet on the decking, Hoxworth moved cautiously toward the policeman who had pole-axed him. With a deceptive lunge to the right, followed by a snakelike twist to the left, Hoxworth brought his powerful right fist into the policeman's face. Then, with the Hawaiian's head momentarily snapped back, Hoxworth doubled up his own head and shoulders and drove into the man's stomach like a battering ram. The surprised policeman staggered backward and fell onto the deck, whereupon Hoxworth began kicking viciously at his face, but remembering, from the pain in his bare feet as they crashed into the man's head, that he wore no shoes, he quickly grabbed a belaying pin and started to thrash the fallen islander, thundering solid blows onto the man's head and crotch, until the policeman fainted. Still Hoxworth continued hammering him until sounds from other parts of the deck called him to activity there.

Brandishing his brutal pin, he whipped about to help Mister Wilson, who was having a bad time with a large policeman until Captain Hoxworth brought down with all the force in his bare arms the rugged belaying pin across the man's skull. The big islander fell instantly and Hoxworth instinctively kicked him in the face, then set off for the third officer, but this man, having witnessed Hoxworth's savage attacks upon his mates, prudently abandoned the battle and leaped into the bay. With a well-directed throw, Hoxworth spun the belaying pin through the air and caught the man in the face, cutting open a huge gash across his forehead. At once the man sank below the waves, leaving a patch of purple where he had gone down, and one of Hoxworth's sailors shouted, "He's drowning."

"Let the bastard drownl" Hoxworth shouted violently. "And let these swine join him." Alone he picked up the first unconscious victim, strained as the man's feet slowly cleared the railing, and then with a mighty heave tossed the policeman toward the general direcT

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tion of the first, who had now dazedly regained the surface in time to help his battered and inert companion.

Now Hoxworth grabbed the feet of the third policeman and Mister Wilson the hands, and with a one-two-three prepared to toss him overboard, but one of the man's hands was bloody, and on the three count, Mister Wilson lost his grip, so that when Hoxworth threw the legs mightily over the railing, the first mate failed to do so with the hands, and the policeman^ face struck the wood with great force, breaking his jaw and cheekbones before he pitched into the bay. There he floated for a moment, then dropped slowly to the bottom, from which he was recovered a day later.

"I'm afraid he's drowned," Mister Wilson said apprehensively.

"Let him drown," Hoxworth growled, licking his damaged lip. Then, grabbing a hom, he shouted ashore, "Don't anybody try to board this ship . . . now or ever." Tossing the hom to his mate, he brushed off his sweating chest, stamped his bare feet to knock away the pain and growled at Mister Wilson, "I was disgusted with your performance."

"I stood them off, one after the other," the mate protested.

"You fought all right," Hoxworth admitted grudgingly, "but you had stout shoes on, and when I had the bastards down you didn't kick them in the face."

"It didn't occur to me . . ." Mister Wilson began apologetically.

Quickly, furiously, Captain Hoxworth grabbed his mate by the jacket. "When you fight a man aboard ship, and he knows he's licked, always kick him in the face. Because forever after, when he looks in a mirror, he'll have to remember. If you let him go without scarring him, sooner or later he begins to think: 'Hoxworth wasn't so dangerous. Next time I'll thrash him.' But if he constantly sees the memory of solid leather across his jawbone he can't fool himself." Seeing that his mate was shaken by this advice, he pushed him away and added coldly, "Keeping control of a ship is difficult duty, Mister Wilson, and until you nerve yourself to it, you'll never be a captain."