Hawaii - James Michener [105]
"Not an order. A request."
"Then you were partner to this request?"
"I was."
"And you are consciously setting yourself athwart my efforts to save the souls of these forsaken men steeped in evil and abornination?"
"These are just good ordinary sailors, Reverend Hale, and I don't want 'em upset."
"Upset!" Reverend Hale beat the table more loudly, so that all the seasick missionaries could hear the argument, whether they wished to or not. "You call the conversion of an immortal soul to God's grace upsetting! Captain Janders, there are some aboard this brig who would profit from some upsetting, and I am not referring exclusively to those in the fo'c's'l." Thereafter, however, he stayed out of the men's cramped quarters forward, but he did lie in wait for them as they went about their duties, until Captain Janders had once more to call in the first mate. "Damn it, Mister Collins, now he's meddling with the men when they're trying to change sails. Warn him about it."
This led to further protests from the missionary, which Captain Janders patiently entertained. Finally Hale cried, "I don't believe you care, Captain Janders, whether you run a Christian ship or not. The men tell me that you issue rations of rum after a storm. That you never try to get them to take the pledge. Obviously, you try to impede me in every way possible."
"Reverend Hale," the captain pleaded, "I'm trying to get this ship to Hawaii. You seem to be trying to get it to Beulah Land."
"I am," Hale replied.
"The two ports are incompatible."
"Not in God's eyes, Captain Janders. You've forbidden me the fo'c's'l. Now you forbid me to talk to the men on duty. Are you also going to forbid me the right to conduct Christian services on Sunday?"
"No, Reverend Hale, I aim to run a God-fearing ship, and when no ministers are aboard, I conduct services myself. Short ones. I'd be pleased to have you carry on for me. I'm in favor of church, at sea or ashore."
Later, when talking with the first mate, the captain asked, "Why do you suppose it is, Mister Collins, that with all these intelligent young men aboard, and with eleven damned attractive young women, it has to be Hale who is always well enough to eat with us? Why don't he get sick and his wife come to dinner?"
"Divine providence is sometimes malign, Captain Janders," the mate replied. But how malign, he was not to know until Reverend Hale preached his first Sunday sermon on the afterdeck. The Thetis rolled so sorely that no other missionary could appear above decks, but there stood Abner Hale, with a heavy Bible in his left hand, preaching into the winds.
"I have chosen for my text James, chapter 4, verse 8: 'Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.'" And he launched into one of the most violent attacks on the moral dangers faced by sailors that the crew had ever heard, for he charged that all who sailed before the mast were peculiarly tempted, that those who led them were apt to be insensitive brutes, that their employers who remained safe at home in Salem and Boston were determind to corrupt their vessels, and that every port they touched harbored instruments of evil that stay-at-home citizens could only dream of. Abner painted the men before him as the blackest, most evil and forlorn group of reprobates in Christendom, and the men loved it. Throughout his fiery sermon they nodded approvingly, and even Captain Janders and the first mate agreed that except in the part where Abner belabored them individually, he was close to the truth. But the result of his sermon was rather the opposite of what Abner had intended, for throughout the rest of the day the young sailors whom he wanted to reach most--for he felt that Janders and Collins were past saving--strutted with extra swagger as if in sudden realization of the fact that they "were among the evilest human beings known." They