Hawaii - James Michener [198]
Rising slowly, testing his bare feet on the decking, Hoxworth moved cautiously toward the policeman who had pole-axed him. With a deceptive lunge to the right, followed by a snakelike twist to the left, Hoxworth brought his powerful right fist into the policeman's face. Then, with the Hawaiian's head momentarily snapped back, Hoxworth doubled up his own head and shoulders and drove into the man's stomach like a battering ram. The surprised policeman staggered backward and fell onto the deck, whereupon Hoxworth began kicking viciously at his face, but remembering, from the pain in his bare feet as they crashed into the man's head, that he wore no shoes, he quickly grabbed a belaying pin and started to thrash the fallen islander, thundering solid blows onto the man's head and crotch, until the policeman fainted. Still Hoxworth continued hammering him until sounds from other parts of the deck called him to activity there.
Brandishing his brutal pin, he whipped about to help Mister Wilson, who was having a bad time with a large policeman until Captain Hoxworth brought down with all the force in his bare arms the rugged belaying pin across the man's skull. The big islander fell instantly and Hoxworth instinctively kicked him in the face, then set off for the third officer, but this man, having witnessed Hoxworth's savage attacks upon his mates, prudently abandoned the battle and leaped into the bay. With a well-directed throw, Hoxworth spun the belaying pin through the air and caught the man in the face, cutting open a huge gash across his forehead. At once the man sank below the waves, leaving a patch of purple where he had gone down, and one of Hoxworth's sailors shouted, "He's drowning."
"Let the bastard drown!” Hoxworth shouted violently. "And let these swine join him." Alone he picked up the first unconscious victim, strained as the man's feet slowly cleared the railing, and then with a mighty heave tossed the policeman toward the general direction of the first, who had now dazedly regained the surface in time to help his battered and inert companion.
Now Hoxworth grabbed the feet of the third policeman and Mister Wilson the hands, and with a one-two-three prepared to toss him overboard, but one of the man's hands was bloody, and on the three count, Mister Wilson lost his grip, so that when Hoxworth threw the legs mightily over the railing, the first mate failed to do so with the hands, and the policeman’s face struck the wood with great force, breaking his jaw and cheekbones before he pitched into the bay. There he floated for a moment, then dropped slowly to the bottom, from which he was recovered a day later.
"I'm afraid he's drowned," Mister Wilson said apprehensively.
"Let him drown," Hoxworth growled, licking his damaged lip. Then, grabbing a horn, he shouted ashore, "Don't anybody try to board this ship . . . now or ever." Tossing the horn to his mate, he brushed off his sweating chest, stamped his bare feet to knock away the pain and growled at Mister Wilson, "I was disgusted with your performance."
"I stood them off, one after the other," the mate protested.
"You fought all right," Hoxworth admitted grudgingly, "but you had stout shoes on, and when I had the bastards down you didn't kick them in the face."
"It didn't occur to me . . ." Mister Wilson began apologetically.
Quickly, furiously, Captain Hoxworth grabbed his mate by the jacket. "When you fight a man aboard ship, and he knows he's licked, always kick him in the face. Because forever after, when he looks in a mirror, he'll have to remember. If you let him go without scarring him, sooner or later he begins to think: 'Hoxworth wasn't so dangerous. Next time I'll thrash him.' But if he constantly sees the memory of solid leather across his jawbone he can't fool himself." Seeing that his mate was shaken by this advice, he pushed him away and added coldly, "Keeping