Hawaii - James Michener [178]
"You have many bolts of good cloth here, Captain," Abner pointed out. "I have long dreamed of having my congregation properly clothed when the church opens. But the people have no money. Will you extend them credit?"
Captain Janders tugged at the rim of beard that still fringed his face and said, "Reverend Hale, long ago you taught me to revere the Bible. I have got to stand on Proverbs 22, verse 26: 'Be not thou one of them . . . that are sureties for debts.' Thus saith the Lord, and it's good enough for me. Cash! Cash! The rule of this establishment."
"I know that cash is a good rule," Abner began.
"The Lord's rule," Janders repeated.
Abner said: "But it doesn't have to be money cash, does it, Captain?"
Janders said: "Well ... if something could be converted . . ."
Abner said: "A lot of whalers come into these roads, Captain. What do they need that my natives could supply?"
Janders countered: "Why are they your natives?"
Abner replied: "They belong to the church. What could they bring you?"
Janders mused: "Well, the whalers are always demanding tapa cloth for calking. And I could use a lot of olona twine."
Abner proposed: "If I could supply you with regular amounts of tapa and olona? Would you trade the cloth?"
So Janders sealed the deal which became one of the principal foundations of his fortune, for the explosion of whalers into Lahaina Roads was about to occur--42 in 1825; 31 in 1826--and when they arrived, Captain Retire Janders calmly waited to service them with products supplied by Reverend Hale's natives: tapa, olona, pigs, wild beef. At one point Kelolo protested: "Makua Hale, you used to fight with me when I took my men into the mountains for sandalwood. For me they worked only three weeks at a time. For you they work all the weeks." But Abner explained to the simple-minded man: "They do not work for me, Kelolo. They work for God." Nevertheless Kelolo insisted: "They still work all the time."
In one sense Abner did profit: he got each of his parishioners properly dressed for the opening of church, and on the Sunday when the sprawling edifice was consecrated, curious processions from miles around marched through the dust in their unaccustomed finery from Captain Janders' store. The alii, of course, made a respectable showing, the men in frock coats and black hats, the women in handsomely gored dresses made from rich, thick stuffs from Canton. But the common people, even though they had watched the alii shift from tapa breechclouts to London jackets, had not quite caught the niceties of western dress. Women seemed to have found the easier solution: prim high collars on tight-fitting yokes which encased the bosom and from which hung copious folds of cloth; long sleeves hiding the offensive nakedness of the wrists; this costume was the essence of practicality and ugliness, and that beautiful women should have submitted to it was incomprehensible. It was completed by a broad-brimmed hat of woven sugar-cane leaves, decorated with imitation flowers, for real ones were not allowed in church lest they exhibit vanity and distract the congregation.
Men faced more confusing problems, for each felt honor-bound to wear some one article from the Janders store, so that the first who entered the church after the alii wore a pair of shoes, a Bombay hat and nothing more. The second wore a man's shirt with his legs pushed through the sleeves and the collar tied around his waist with a strand of olona twine. When Abner saw these ridiculous worshipers he was inspired to send them back home, but they were so eager to enter the new church that he allowed them to do so.
The next pair were brothers to whom Janders had sold a complete Canton suit; one wore the coat and nothing else; his brother wore the pants and white gloves. Now a man came wearing a woman's dress, complete with a wreath of maile leaves about his head, and this time Abner was stern. "No flowers or pagan-smelling