Hawaii - James Michener [182]
It was long after midnight and Abner sat chewing his pen. Like every religious leader in history, he knew that a good society started with a stable home, and that stable homes--either by design or accident--were usually founded on the disciplined sexual relationship of one man and one woman joined after due consideration of the world's accumulated judgment on such matters. It was not good for a man to marry his sister. It was not good for families to interbreed endlessly. It was not good for girls to be taken when they were too young. But how could this accumulated wisdom be summarized for the Hawaiians?
Finally, he came up with an answer so simple, so sweetly right, that generations of Hawaiians smiled every time they heard Abner Hale's profound directive. They smiled, because they understood exactly what he meant. It was a law that covered their experience on a tropical island, and of all the minor things Abner accomplished on Maui, this happy choice of words was most affectionately remembered among the people. For his final law read: "Thou shall not sleep mischievously."
On Monday morning Abner presented his simple forthright laws to Malama, and she studied them. Two she threw out as too meddling in the lives of her people, but the rest she liked. Then she summoned her two maids-in-waiting, and the three enormous women, dressed in fine China silks and broad-brimmed hats, formed a procession which was headed by two drummers, two men sounding conch shells, four with feathered staves, Kelolo in charge of eight policemen, Keoki, Noelani and a brassy-voiced herald. Abner and Jerusha stayed away, for this was the work of Hawaiians for Hawaiians.
The drums began to beat, and when the conches sent their shrill blast through the kou trees, Malama and her two attendants started walking past the fish pond, along the dusty road beside the alii's houses, and into the center of the town. Whenever more than a hundred people assembled, coming running from all sides, Malama would command the drums to cease and direct her herald to cry: "These are the laws of Maui. Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not sleep mischievously!"
The drums resumed, leaving people gasping in the morning sunlight. Fathers, who had been earning their poi by rowing their daughters out to the whalers, were stunned and some tried to argue with Kelolo, but he silenced them and marched on.
At the little pier Malama halted and had the bugle blown four times, assembling such sailors as were available at that hour. Two captains were present, and stood with their caps in their hands, listening to the astonishing news: "Sailors shall not roam the streets at night. Girls shall not swim out to the whaling ships."
"By God!" one of the captains muttered. "There'll be hell to pay for this."
"You'll find it was the missionary who did it," the other predicted.
"God help the missionary," said the first, running by a back way to Murphy's grog shop, but he had barely exploded the news when Malama and her two stout ladies hove majestically into view with the rumpled paper containing the new laws. This time, as the drums finished beating before Murphy's establishment, there were two special laws promulgated: "Girls shall no longer dance nude in Murphy's grog shop. From today no more alcohol may be sold to Hawaiians." The drums resumed beating. The bugles sounded, and Malama and her two enormous ladies-in-waiting retired. The laws had been handed down. It would now be Kelolo's job to enforce them.
That night there were riots. Sailors from several ships stormed through the town fighting with Kelolo's inadequate policemen. Girls were ripped away from their beds and hauled against their wills out to the ships. And toward midnight a body of some fifty sailors and Lahaina merchants gathered at the mission house and began cursing Abner Hale.
"He done the laws!" a sailor