Hawaii - James Michener [142]
When the words were translated to Malama her enormous moon face betrayed no emotion. Forcefully she said, "We have our own gods. It is the words, the writing that we need."
"Writing without God is useless," Abner stubbornly reiterated, his little blond head coming scarcely to Malama's throat.
"We have been told," Malama answered with equal firmness, "that writing helps the entire world, but the white man's God helps the white man."
"You have been told wrong," Abner insisted, thrusting his stubborn little face upward.
To everyone's surprise Malama did not reply to this but moved to face the women, asking, "Which one is the wife of this little man?"
"I am," Jerusha said proudly.
Malama was pleased, for she had observed how capably Jerusha managed the work of making the big dress, and she announced: "For the first moon, this one shall teach me how to read and write, and for the next, this one," indicating Abner, "shall teach me the new religion. If I find that these two new learnings are of equal importance, after two moons I shall advise you'."
Nodding to the assembly, she went gravely to the canvas commanding her servants to unbutton her dress and remove it. Then she ordered Jerusha to show her how to fold it, and in massive naked-ness lay down crosswise upon the canvas, her feet dangling aft, her arms forward, with her chin resting upon the rope edging. The capstans groaned. The sailors hefted the ropes and swung them over the eaves, and Captain Janders shouted, "For Christ's sake, things are going well. Don't drop her now!"
Inch by inch the precious burden was lowered into the canoe until finally the Alii Nui was rolled off the canvas and helped into an upright position. Clutching the new dress to her cheek she cried in full voice, "You may now come ashore!" And as the ship's boats were lowered to convey the missionaries to their new homes, they fell in line behind Malama's canoe, with its two standard-bearers fore and aft, its eager servants brushing away the flies, and with tall, naked Malama holding the dress close to her.
Prior to Malama's arbitrary choice of the Hales as her mentors, there had been some uncertainty as to which missionaries should be assigned to Maui and which to the other islands, but now it was apparent that the first choice, at least, had been made, and as the boats neared shore, Abner studied the intriguing settlement to which he was now committed. He saw one of the fairest villages in the Pacific, ancient Lahaina, capital of Hawaii, its shore marked by a fine coral strand upon which long waves broke in unceasing thunder, their tall crests breaking forward in dazzling whiteness. Where the surf finally ended, naked children played, their teeth gleaming in the sunlight.
Now for the first time Abner saw a coconut palm, the wonder of the tropics, bending into the wind on a slim resilient trunk and maintaining, no one knew how, its precarious foothold on the shore. Behind the palms were orderly fields reaching away to the hills, so that all of Lahaina looked like one vast, rich, flowering garden.
"Those darker trees are breadfruit," Keoki explained. "They feed us, but it's the stubby ones with the big heads that I used to miss in Boston . . . the kou trees with their wonderful shade for a hot land."
Jerusha joined them and said, "Seeing the gardens and the flowers, I think I am at last in Hawaii."
And Keoki replied proudly, "The garden you are looking at is my home. There where the little stream runs into the sea."
Abner and Jerusha tried to peer beneath the branches of the kou trees that lined the land he spoke of, but they could