Hawaii - James Michener [210]
"What is the wind?" Jerusha asked, trying to compose herself, for she realized that he was speaking with great conviction.
"The whistling wind is coming," he repeated and stalked off, a man apart.
When Jerusha told her husband of the message, and of Kelolo's appearance, Abner held his head in his hands, lamenting, "These poor, bewildered people. Thank God we gave her a Christian burial." And Jerusha agreed, saying, "We should be grateful that Malama forbade heathen practices."
They grieved for obstinate Kelolo, and finally Jerusha asked, "What was the wind he spoke about?"
"One of his superstitions," Abner explained. "He's probably in a trance because of the horrible things he did to himself and is convinced that since an alii died, there will have to be some supernatural occurrence."
"Is the wind rising?" Jerusha asked.
"No more than usual," her husband replied, but as he spoke he heard a weird whistling coming down from the distant valleys that led to the crests of the hills where Malama, unknown to them, now lay.
"Abner," Jerusha insisted, "I do hear a whistling."
Her husband cocked his ear, then ran out into the dusty roadway. Dr. Whipple and Captain Janders were already listening to the ominous sound, while Hawaiians were running out of their houses and huddling under trees. "What is it?" Abner cried.
"Not like anything I ever heard," Janders replied, and the moaning whistle increased in pitch while high in the coconut palms dead branches began to tear loose. A Hawaiian sailor, who had swum in panic from one of the whalers, abandoning the ship to its fate, dashed by, wet and frightened and shouting in Hawaiian, "The whistling wind is upon us!”
"Should we go inside?" Abner asked hesitantly, but the same sailor yelled back over his shoulder, "No stay in house! Bimeby come plenty pilikia." And the three Americans remarked that the Hawaiians, who seemed to know what the wind could do, had abandoned their huts Abner was already on his way to collect his children when Murphy the saloonkeeper, rushed up and shouted, "This wind is a killer! Get out of your houses!" And while the three men scattered, the first important gust of wind struck Lahaina.
It bent the palm trees level, ripped off the roofs of several houses, then roared out to sea, where it threw great clouds of spume across the roads and tore away the masts of two whalers. During its destructive passage the whistling increased to an intense shriek and then subsided. Under the protection of a clump of kou trees Janders asked, "Where's the rain?"
None came, but the wind howled down from the mountains in new gusts, knocking down trees and throwing pigs into ditches. From the little stream before the mission house it picked up water, flinging it upon the trees, then passed out to sea, where it dashed three moored whalers together, staving in the sides of one and leaving it in perilous condition.
Still no rain came, but the winds increased, rising to even more furious levels than before, and now it became evident why the Hawaiians had left their homes, for one after another the little huts went flying through the air, crashing into the first solid object that intervened. "Will these trees hold?" Abner asked anxiously, but before anyone could assure him he saw a dark object hurtling through the air and cried, "The church!"
"It's the roof," Whipple shouted, astonished at what he saw. "It's the entire roof!" Majestically, the roof sailed over the town of Lahaina and plunged into the sea. "The walls are going down!" Whip-pie cried as the wind utterly destroyed the building.
But before Abner could lament his new loss, a woman shrieked, "The whaling boats are sinking!" And she was correct, for in the roads the demonic wind, still with no rain, had whipped up a sea that the rugged whalers could not survive. The unfortunate ones were those who were torn loose from their anchorages and dashed across the roads to the island of Lanai, on whose steep and rocky shores no rescue was possible.