Hawaii - James Michener [175]
It was Abner, however, who delivered the aching blow. "Do you know what happens if you alii of Lahaina permit your girls to be debauched in this way?" he asked ominously.
"What happens, Makua Hale?" Malama asked, for she trusted him.
"When the ships sail back home, the men laugh at Hawaii."
There was a long silence as this ugly accusation was digested, for the alii of Hawaii were proud people, desperately hungry for the world's approval. Finally, Malama asked cautiously, "Would the alii of Boston allow their girls to swim out to a Hawaiian ship?"
"Of course not," Kelolo snapped. "The water is too cold."
There was no laughter, for this was an honest observation, and Abner quickly added, "Kelolo is correct. The water in Boston is not so sweet and warm as here, but even if it were, no girls would be allowed to swim out to Hawaiian ships. The alii of Boston would be ashamed if that happened."
Malama asked quietly, "Do you think the sailors laugh at us, Makua Hale?"
"I know they do, Malama. Do you remember the whaler Carthaginian when it was here? I was aboard the Carthaginian on the whaling grounds, and the sailors were laughing about Honolulu."
"Ah, but Honolulu is known to be an evil place," Malama admitted. "That is why I will not live there. That's why the king keeps his capital here at Lahaina."
"And they laughed at Lahaina," Abner insisted.
"That is bad," Malama frowned. After a while she asked, "What should we do?"
Abner replied, "You should build a fort, by the roads, and each night at sunset a drum should beat, and any sailor who is ashore should then be arrested and kept in the fort till morning. And any girl who swims out to ships should be put in jail, too."
"Such laws are too harsh," Malama said, and she dismissed the meeting, but when the other alii had gone she took Jerusha aside and asked querulously, "Do you think the sailors laugh at us, because of the girls?"
"I laugh at you!" Jerusha said firmly. "To think of people debauching their own daughters!"
"But they are not alii," Malama insisted.
"You are the conscience of the people," Jerusha replied.
That night the Hales argued long as to whether the daughters of Pupali should be admitted back into the mission school, and Abner was for dismissing them permanently, but Jerusha held that they should be given another chance, and when the John Goodpasture left the roads, the four delinquent girls, dressed neatly in new dresses, came penitently back. The more Jerusha preached to them about the miserableness of their sin, the more heartily they agreed. But when, some weeks later, a child heralded the arrival of the whaler Vashti with the exciting cry, "Vashti iron hook fall now, plenty kelamoku," the four girls bolted again, and that night Abner insisted that the older three at least be expelled. They were, and since these were the years when whalers came to Lahaina with increasing frequency--seventeen were to arrive in 1824--the three older daughters of Pupali did a good business. They no longer had to go out to ships, for they became the dancers at Murphy's grog shop and kept little rooms aft of the small dance floor, where they were permitted to keep half of the coins they earned.
Iliki, the fairest of the daughters, was allowed to stay in the mission school, and under Jerusha's most careful guidance grew to understand the Bible and to forswear whaling ships. She was slim for a Hawaiian girl, with very long hair and flashing eyes. When she smiled, her handsome white teeth illuminated her face, and Jerusha could appreciate why it was that men wanted her. "When she is twenty," Jerusha said, "we will marry her to some Christian Hawaiian, and you mark my words, Abner, she'll be the best wife in the islands."
When Jerusha spoke thus, Abner was not listening, for he had erected for himself, out of rough ends of timber gathered here and there--for nothing in Lahaina was more precious than wood--a small table upon which papers were spread in seven or eight neat piles, each with a sea shell placed on it to preserve order.