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By Root 4535 0

men who worked themselves to death--to bother any longer with the niceties of expression that had characterized the Thetis. "I had the same stateroom coming over. Only four other men in it with me, and I felt lonely. Sister Jerusha, how's the medicine box?" And he yanked the black box down and checked its contents against the new medicines he had lately received from Boston. "I'm giving you lots of ipecac," he advised. "We find it very good for children's fevers. And tonight you and Brother Abner and I are going to have a big dinner with Retire Janders in his new store. And because I was seasick on the damnable Thetis again, I'm going to have some whiskey. You'll be seasick too, when you go back to Honolulu."

"Are we required to go?" Abner asked, for like Jerusha he preferred to remain in Lahaina, finding Honolulu, at the yearly meeting of the missionaries, a dirty, dusty, ugly little collection of hovels.

"Yes," Dr. Whipple said sadly, "I'm afraid it's going to be a difficult meeting, this one."

"What's the matter?" Abner asked. "They going to discuss pay for the missionaries again? I explained my position last time, Brother John. I shall always be unalterably opposed to salaries for missionaries. We are here as God's servants and we require no pay. My mind will not change on this."

"That isn't the subject," Whipple broke in. "I don't agree with you on the salary question. I think we ought to be paid wages, but that's beside the point. We've all got to vote on the case of Brother Hewlett."

"Brother Abraham Hewlett!" Abner repeated. "I haven't heard from him since his baby was born. And he's on the same island with me. What is the question about Brother Abraham?"

"Haven't you heard?" Whipple asked in astonishment. "He's in trouble again."

"What's he done?" Abner asked.

"He's married a Hawaiian girl," Whipple said. There was a long, shocked silence in the grass house, during which the three missionaries stared at each other in amazement.

Finally, Abner took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "You mean to say he's actually living with a native woman? A heathen?"

"Yes."

"And the meeting is to decide what to do about him?"

"Yes."

"There's nothing to decide," Abner said flatly. He went for his Bible and thumbed it for a moment, finding the text that applied to the case. "I think Ezekiel 23, verses 29 and 30, covers such behavior: 'And they shall deal with thee hatefully, and shall take away all thy labor, and shall leave thee naked and bare: and the nakedness of thy whoredoms shall be discovered, both thy lewdness and thy whoredoms. I will do these things unto thee, because thou hast gone a whoring after the heathen, and because thou art polluted with their idols."" He closed the Bible.

"Are they determined in Honolulu to throw him out of the church?" Jerusha asked.

"Yes," Dr. Whipple said.

"What else could they do?" Abner demanded. "A Christian minister marrying a heathen. 'Gone a whoring after the heathen!' I do not want to go to Honolulu, but it seems my duty."

Dr. Whipple said, "Would you excuse us, Sister Jerusha, if we walk down to the pier?" And he led Abner along the lovely paths of Lahaina, under the gnarled hau trees and the palms. "You are fortunate to live here," Whipple reflected. "It's the best climate in Hawaii. Plenty of water. And that glorious view."

"What view?" Abner asked.

"Don't you come down here every night to see the best view in the islands?" Whipple asked astonished.

"I wasn't aware . . ."

"Look," Whipple cried, as a kind of poetry took command of him, tired as he was from seeing so many bleak Hawaiian prospects. "To the west the handsome rounded hills of Lanai across a few miles of blue water. Have you ever seen gentler hills than those? Their verdure looks like velvet, thrown there by God. And to the north the clean-cut rugged mountains of Molokai. And over to the south the low hills of Kahoolawe. Wherever you look, mountains and valleys and blue sea. You lucky people of Lahaina! You exist in a nest of beauty. Tell me, do you ever see the whales that breed in the channel