Hawaii - James Michener [237]
Under such treatment, Abner fainted, but to lose the hateful enemy thus infuriated Captain Hoxworth additionally, and he grabbed him from the grave and began throwing him down again with tremendous force, shouting, "I should have kept you among the sharks, you dirty, dirty, dirty bastard."
How far the dreadful punishment would have continued is uncertain, for natives, hearing the fight, hurried in to rescue their beloved little minister, but when they reached him, they thought him dead. With love they carried him to the mission house, where unthinkingly they allowed the four Hale children to see their father's mutilated figure, and the three younger ones began to weep, but sallow-faced Micah kneeled over his father's battered face and began washing away the blood.
In the days that followed, it became quite apparent to Dr. Whipple that Abner had suffered severe damage in the head, Captain Hoxworth's huge boots having either displaced a piece of bone or dislodged a set of nerve ends; and for several days Abner looked blankly at his commiserating friends, who said, "We have told Hoxworth he can never again come into this port."
"Who is Hoxworth?" Abner asked dully.
But under Whipple's care, the missionary recovered, although ever afterwards the people of Lahaina would frequently see him stop on his walks, joggle himself up and down as if resetting his brain, and then continue, an uncertain man who now required a cane. There was one particularly uncomfortable moment during his recovery when he discovered that his four children were not with him, but were lost somewhere among the heathen of Maui. He began to rant, and his voice raised to a wailing lament, but Amanda produced the children, for she had been tending them in her own home, and he was pacified.
Both the Whipples and the Janderses were surprised, upon his recovery, to find that not only did he insist upon keeping the children with him; the children much preferred their life within the mission confines to the freer existence outside; and as soon as he was able, Abner re-established the curious, walled-in household on the mission grounds.
Then, in 1840, an unexpected visitor arrived in Lahaina, and the pattern of life was permanently broken, for the arrival was a tall, emaciated, very striking-looking Congregational minister dressed in jet-black and wearing a stovepipe hat that made him seem twice his natural height. At the pier he announced, "I am Reverend Eliphalet Thorn, of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, of Boston. Can you lead me to Reverend Hale?"
And when the gaunt old man, spare and effective as a buggy whip, strode into the mission house, he was instantly aware of all that must have transpired, and he was appalled that Abner had tried to keep his children with him. "You should either find yourself a new wife, or return to friends in America," Thorn suggested.
"My work is here," Abner replied stubbornly.
"God does not call upon his servants to abuse themselves," Thorn countered. "Brother Abner, I am making arrangements to take your children back to America with me."
Instead of arguing against this sensible decision, Abner asked carefully, "Will Micah be able to enter Yale?"
"I doubt that the boy's preparation is adequate," Thorn countered, 'living so far from books."
At this, Abner summoned his scrawny, sallow-faced son and bade him stand at attention, hands at sides, before the visitor from Boston. In a steady voice Abner directed, "Micah, I want you to recite the opening chapter of Genesis in Hebrew, then in Greek, then in Latin, and finally in English. And then I want you to explain to Reverend Thorn seven or eight of the passages