Hawaii - James Michener [101]
ON THE LAST DAY of August the mission family was introduced to the ship on which they would live during the six months required for the slow passage to Hawaii. Reverend Thorn led them from the brick church, where they had engaged in morning prayers, onto the dock where a large three-masted ship lay anchored while her cargo of whale oil was being unloaded.
"That's a substantial ship," Jerusha observed to some of the other women. "A person shouldn't get too seasick on that," she added hopefully.
"That's not the mission ship," Reverend Thorn corrected. "Yours lies ahead."
"Oh, no!” one of the women gasped as she saw the squat and ugly little brig Thetis. It looked scarcely large enough for a river boat.
"Are we sailing in that?" Abner asked shakenly of John Whipple.
"It says Thetis," Whipple replied dourly.
The brig was almost the smallest two-master that could successfully round Cape Horn at the farthest tip of South America. It was seventy-nine feet long, twenty-four feet wide, and drew only a dozen feet when loaded. Jerusha, upon inspecting it more closely from the quay, confided to Amanda Whipple, "It looks as if it might sink if twenty-two missionaries step aboard."
"You're free to inspect the Thetis," a rough voice called, and for the first time they met Captain Retire Janders, a rugged forty-year-old master with a circle of sandy beard that framed his clean-shaven face from one ear, down the jaw line, under the chin and up to the other ear, making him look like a ruddy-faced boy peering through a hedge.
As Reverend Thorn led his family aboard he introduced each couple formally to Captain Janders. "The captain has been instructed to look after you on this long and tedious voyage," Thorn explained. "But his first job is to run his ship."
"Thank you, Reverend," Captain Janders growled. "Sometimes folks don't understand that a brig at sea ain't like a farm in Massachusetts." He led the missionaries forward to where a hatch stood open, and deep in the bowels of the brig they could see their boxes and books and barrels. "It's impossible, absolutely and forever impossible for anybody to touch anything that's down in that hold before we get to Hawaii. So don't ask. You live with what you can store in your stateroom."
"Excuse me, Captain," young Whipple interrupted. "You pronounce the name of the islands Hawaii. We've been calling them Owhyhee. What is their accurate name?"
Captain Janders stopped, stared at Whipple and growled, "I like a man who wants to know facts. The name is Hawaii. Huh-va-eee. Accent on second syllable."
"Have you been to Hawaii?" Whipple asked, carefully accenting the name as it should be.
"You learn well, young man," Captain Janders grunted. "I've sure been to Hawaii."
"What's it like?"
The captain thought a long time and said, "It could use a few missionaries. Now this hatchway aft is where you come up and down from your quarters," and he led the twenty-two down a dark, steep and narrow flight of stairs so that each wife thought: "If the boat rolls I'll never be able to manage this."
They were little prepared for what Captain Janders now showed them. It was a gloomy, grimy, 'tween-decks area twenty feet long--less than the length of four grown men--and fifteen feet wide, out of which a substantial portion had been stolen for a rough table shaped in the form of a half-circle, through the middle of which rose the brig's mainmast. "Our public living area," Captain Janders explained. "It's a mite dark at present but when a stout storm comes along and rips away our sails, we'll take that extra suit from in front of the portholes, and things'll be a bit lighter."
The missionaries stared numbly at the minute quarters and Jerusha thought: "How can twenty-two people live and eat here for