Hawaii - James Michener [202]
The next ball crashed into the fort and threw bits of rock high into the air. The third ball struck the gate area and demolished it, so that hundreds of sailors were free to storm inside, where they elbowed Kelolo aside and threatened Malama.
"See that missionary house?" Hoxworth shouted, elated at his success with the cannon. "Up there to the left. Smash it."
Again the first ball was high, and Hoxworth danced barefooted with excitement as he directed the sights lowered. The fifth shot of the day tore completely through the mission house, as did the sixth and seventh. "By God," the captain screamed, "that'll end the laws!"
And then, as if he had been struck by some terrible unseen hand, he clasped his breast, cursed at the gunners and knocked them about like stones in a child's game. "Goddamn you!" he screamed. "What are you doing?" And leaping into the bay, he swam furiously ashore. Dripping wet he rushed past the breached fort, where sailors were abusing the chief of police and the fat woman, and onto the mission grounds, where the splintered wood from the shattered grass house appalled him. Bursting into the room he had visited only shortly before, he cried in anguish, "Jerusha! Are you hurt?"
He did not find her and started looking under the fallen beams-- frail bits of wood hauled patiently from the mountains--and then from the inner room he heard sounds, and he smashed open the niggardly woven door and saw Jerusha and her husband praying in the dust of their destroyed home. "Oh, thank God!" he yelled with joy, grabbing Jerusha to his bare and salty body. She did not resist, but passively looked at him with horror which was heightened when she saw that her husband was approaching him with a broken knife.
"No!" she found strength to scream. "God will do it, Abner!" And with relief such as she had never known before in her life, not even when Abner alone and sweating had delivered her first baby, she saw her husband drop his arm. Quickly, Captain Hoxworth wheeled about, saw the knife, and smashed his fist into Abner's pale face. The little man doubled up and flew backwards against the grass wall and through its weakened portion. From inside the room he could hear his wife struggling with the sea captain. Before he could regain his feet he heard her screams and then the captain's cry of rage as she bit into the great salty hand. By the time he could get back into the room, brandishing a club, he saw Hoxworth standing at the front door, what was left of it, sucking his fiercely bitten hand. And then, as if nothing had happened, the huge sea captain said sorrowfully, "It is a dreadful place that your husband has brought you to, Jerusha. When did you last have a new dress?" He started to go, then added almost in tears, "Why is it that we always meet when you are pregnant ... by this goddamned fool?"
The rioting continued for three more days, and girls who had been well along in Jerusha's school, standing midway between the savage and the civilized, reverted to the insane joy of sleeping, six and eight and ten at a time, in the hot foc's'ls of the whaling ships. Murphy's grog shop rollicked with songs. Old men who tried to keep sailors out of their homes were beaten up, and their daughters taken. And at the palace, tired, bewildered Malama ordered all women to the hills and found it increasingly difficult to breathe.
It was on the third day of the riots that she summoned Abner and asked with difficulty, "How did these things happen, my dear teacher?"
"We are all animals, Malama," he explained. "Only the laws of God keep us within the confines of decency."
"Why have your men not learned those laws?" Malama