Hawaii - James Michener [126]
"Try the ropes again!" Janders called at the expiry of two of his vital eight minutes, and this time the sailors shouted madly, and the ropes moved, and the after mainsail crept slowly up the swaying mast, and wind was mysteriously trapped in its triangular expanse, and the sliding shoreward stopped.
"I feel her steady on course," Janders shouted.
"She is steady on," Collins repeated.
"Will she clear the Evangels?" Janders checked.
"She will clear them," Collins replied dully, hiding the exultation his heart felt.
And as the last fearful moments passed, the little brig Thetis maintained her northward tack into the storm, until at last she neared the perilous rocks, and all on deck saw that she would pass them by a margin of dreadful precision.
"The Lord God of Hosts is with us!" Abner shouted in unministerial joy.
But Captain Janders did not hear, for he kept his eyes fixed ahead, refusing to look at the Evangelists. He was seeking the ocean area where it would be safe for him to swing the Thetis onto her new and final tack. Minutes passed, then a quarter of an hour, then a half hour, and still he kept his eyes monotonously fixed on the great, heaving ocean, until finally, in swift alteration, he heeled the brig over, and cut her back on a southward tack that would carry her through the last mountainous waves and down the final vile troughs. Then he shouted, "Bring the men down." And Cridland and the old whaler came down from their dizzy perch and found footing on the deck. "May God be praised," Abner mumbled.
Yet at this exact moment, when he was entitled to share in the ship's jubilation, Abner was grave, as if in a trance, thinking: "Two days ago when a comforting wind was at our back, we were unable to accomplish anything. But today, with the gale right in our faces, we were able to fight it." He studied the little brig to discover the secret whereby a New England ship could cut directly into the heart of a storm, combating the elements each inch of the way, and although he did not understand the technique Captain Janders had utilized, he understood the man, and all men, and himself. "How strange," he reflected in the howling wind, "that when the storm is in your face, you can fight it."
Later, when Captain Janders unleashed Abner, the mariner said, in a kind of daze, "I would not want to be the captain of whom it was said in Boston, 'He tried to round the Horn, but ran instead for Good Hope.' "
"No one will say that of you, Captain," Abner said proudly. The hatches were broken open and Mister Collins shouted the good news to the missionaries: "We are safe!”
All below who could stand piled on deck, and in the cold wind Captain Janders said, "Reverend Hale, through God's grace we broke through. Will you pray?" But for the only time on the voyage, Abner was numbed into silence. His eyes were filled with tears and he could think only of Cridland and the whaler, whipping through distant space, working to save the ship, and of Captain Janders fighting the storm, so John Whipple read from the sweet thundering passages in the Psalms that sailors love:
"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
"Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
"Though the water thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. . . .
"The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. ... "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
"These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. "For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.
"They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their