Hawaii - James Michener [136]
Later, the missionaries comforted her, saying, "We heard it all, Sister Hale, and we hoped not to intervene, for he was a madman and we trusted he would recover his senses."
"I had to club him, Mrs. Hale," Keoki apologized.
"Where is he now?"
"Captain Janders is taking him back to his ship," one of the wives explained.
"But where's Reverend Hale?" Jerusha cried in deep love and fear.
"He's on the other ship," Keoki explained.
"Captain Hoxworth will kill him!" Jerusha wailed, trying to get onto the deck.
"That's why Captain Janders went along," Keoki assured her. "With pistols."
But not even Captain Janders was able to protect Abner that night, for although Rafer Hoxworth quieted down on the cooling trip to the Carthaginian, and although he was a model of politeness to John Whipple, when he saw Abner, and how small he was and how wormy in manner, he lost control and leaped screaming at the little missionary, lifting him from the deck and rushing him to the railing of the ship, where the blubber had been taken aboard, and possibly because he slipped unexpectedly on grease, or possibly by intention, he raised Abner high into the night and flung him furiously into the dark waves.
"You'll not keep her!" he screamed insanely. "I'll come back to Honolulu and rip her from your arms. By God, I'll kill you, you miserable little worm."
While he was shouting, Captain Janders was desperately maneuvering his rowboat, warning his men, "After they cut a whale there's bound to be sharks." And the rowers saw dark forms gliding in the water, and one brushed Abner, so that he screamed with fear, "Sharks!"
From the dark deck of the Carthaginian, Captain Hoxworth roared, "Get him, sharks! Get him! He's over on this side. Here he is, sharks!" And he was raging thus when John Whipple reached into the vast Pacific and pulled his brother aboard.
"Did the sharks get you, Abner?" he whispered.
"They took my foot . . ."
"No! It's all right, Abner. A little blood, that's all."
"You mean my foot isn't . . ."
"It's all right, Abner," Whipple insisted.
"But I felt a shark . . ."
"Yes, one hit at you," Whipple said reassuringly, "but it only scraped the skin. See, these are your toes." And the last thing Abner could remember before he fainted was John Whipple pinching his toes and from a dark distance Rafer Hoxworth screaming futilely, "Get him, sharks! He's over there. Get the stinking little bastard and chew him up. Because if you don't kill him I’ll have to."
That was the reason why Abner Hale, twenty-two years old and dressed in solemn black, with a beaver hat nearly as tall as he was, limped as he prepared to land at the port city of Lahaina on the island of Maui in Hawaii. The shark had not taken his foot, nor even his toes, but it had exposed the tendon and damaged it, and not even careful John Whipple could completely repair it.
THE ACTUAL LANDING of the missionaries was a confused affair, for when the Thetis drew into the famous wintering port of; Lahaina, there was great commotion on shore, and the missionaries saw with horror that many handsome young women were throwing off their clothes and beginning to swim eagerly toward the little brig, which apparently they knew favorably from the past, but the attention of the ministers was quickly diverted from the swimmers to a fine canoe which, even though it started late, soon overtook the naked swimmers and drew up alongside the Thetis. It contained a man, a completely nude woman and four attractive girls, equally nude.
"We come back!" the man cried happily, boosting his women onto the little ship.
"No! No!" Keoki Kanakoa cried in a flood of embarrassment. "These are missionaries!"
"My girls good girls!" the father shouted reassuringly, shoving his handsome women aboard as he had done so often in the past. "Those girls swimming no good. Plenty sick."
"Heavenly Father" Abner whispered to Brother Whipple. "Are they his own daughters?"
At this point two of the girls saw the old whaler who had saved the Thetis off the Four Evangelists, and apparently they remembered