Hawaii - James Michener [228]
ACTUALLY, the question was of no importance, for Lahaina was about to be visited by a pestilence known as the scourge of the Pacific. On earlier trips to Hawaii this dreadful plague had wiped out more than half the population, and now it stood poised in the fo'c's'l of a whaler resting in Lahaina Roads, prepared to strike once more with demonic force, killing, laying waste, destroying an already doomed population. It was the worst disease of the Pacific: measles.
This time it started innocently by jumping from the diseased whaler and into the mission home, where immunities built up during a hundred generations in England and Massachusetts confined the disease to a trivial childhood sickness. Jerusha, inspecting her son Micah's chest one morning, found the customary red rash. "Have you a sore throat?" she asked, and when Micah said yes, she informed Abner, "I'm afraid our son has the measles."
Abner groaned and said, "I suppose Lucy and David and Esther are bound to catch it in turn," and he took down his medical books to see what he should do for the worrisome fever. Medication was simple and the routine not burdensome, so he said, "We'll plan for three weeks of keeping the children indoors." But it occurred to him that it might be prudent to see if John Whipple had any medicine for reducing the fever more quickly, and so he stopped casually by J & W's to report, "Worse luck! Micah seems to have the measles and I suppose . . ."
Whipple dropped his pen and cried, "Did you say measles?"
"Well, spots on his chest."
"Oh, my God!" Whipple mumbled, grabbing his bag and rushing to the mission house. With trembling fingers he inspected the sick boy and Jerusha saw that the doctor was perspiring.
"Are measles so dangerous?" she asked with apprehension.
"Not for him," Whipple replied. He then led the parents into the front room and asked in a whisper, "Have you been in contact with any Hawaiians since Micah became ill?"
"No," Abner reflected. "I walked down to your store."
"Thank God," Whipple gasped, washing his hands carefully.
"Abner, we have only a slight chance of keeping this dreadful disease away from the Hawaiians, but I want your entire family to stay in this house for three-weeks. See nobody."
Jerusha challenged him directly: "Brother John, is it indeed the measles?"
"It is," he replied, "and I would to God it were anything else. We had better prepare ourselves, for there may be sad days ahead." Then, awed by the gravity of the threat, he asked impulsively, "Abner, would you please say a prayer for all of us ... for Lahaina? Keep the pestilence from this town." And they knelt while Abner prayed.
But men from the infected whaler had moved freely through the community, and on the next morning Dr. Whipple happened to look out of his door to see a native man, naked, digging himself a shallow grave beside the ocean, where cool water could seep in and fill the sandy rectangle. Rushing to the reef, Whipple called, "Kekuana, what are you doing?" And the Hawaiian, shivering fearfully, replied, "I am burning to death and the water will cool me." At this Dr. Whipple said sternly, "Go back to your home, Kekuana, and wrap yourself in tapa. Sweat this illness out or you will surely die." But the man argued, "You do not know how terrible the burning fire is," and he sank himself in the salt water and within the day he died.
Now all along the beach Hawaiians, spotted with measles, dug themselves holes in the cool wet sand, and in spite of anything Dr. Whipple could tell them, crawled into the comforting waters and died. The cool irrigation ditches and taro patches were filled with corpses. Through the miserable huts of the town the pestilence swept like fire, burning its victims with racking fevers that could not be