Hawaii - James Michener [279]
"Don't ever try to mutiny my ship!" Hoxworth stormed, cursing the coolies and stalking back to his bridge.
He was met there by an ashen-faced Dr. Whipple, who demanded bitterly, "Was such brutality necessary, Captain Hoxworth?"
The tall seafarer, fleshy and prosperous, stared ahead over the prow of his ship and said, "John, you'd better keep out of this."
"I can't be a partner to such brutality," the gray-haired doctor said firmly.
"You afraid of blood?" Hoxworth asked. "Or afraid of losing your investment?"
Dr. Whipple refused to acknowledge this insulting query, and continued as if he had not heard it: "As a Christian I cannot tolerate your behavior toward men I conscripted in good faith."
The older man continued conning his ship and said calmly, "Dr. Whipple, how many vessels do you think were mutinied last year by Chinee pirates who smuggled themselves aboard?"
"I don't know," Whipple replied.
"Eleven," Captain Hoxworth said evenly. "That is, eleven that we know about. We haven't the remotest knowledge of what's lurking in that hold. Pirates . . . cutthroats . . . mutineers. You guess. All I'm saying is, that a Hoxworth & Hale ship is never going to be mutinied by any Chinee. That's why I personally supervised this little adventure."
"But to kick an unconscious man!”
"Dr. Whipple, I respect your principles. I like the way you carry out your business. But in my business, the minute a captain is either afraid or unwilling to kick his enemy to a pulp, he's on the verge of losing his ship. I have nineteen ships now, and I don't propose to lose a damned one of them to a bunch of murderous Chinamen."
Dr. Whipple studied these remarks in silence, then moved to the doorway leading from the bridge. In resolute, unhurried words he said, "Captain, although I respect your fears, I must dissociate myself from your actions. They were brutal and indefensible."
The doctor considered this statement a morally crushing one and left the bridge, but big Captain Hoxworth bounded after him, caught him by the arm, swung him around, and growled, "Once a missionary, always a missionary. Doctor, you-don't know a goddamned thing about running a ship, and you ought to keep your nose out of it. This is not work for a missionary. It's work for a man." Shoving Whipple away in contempt, he stalked back to the bridge, from which he ran his ship and from which, figuratively, he ran his entire line of prosperous vessels.
John Whipple did not allow his anger at such treatment to obscure his judgment. In years of trading around the Pacific he had often met obstinate men and the cruel situations which they produce, and he had learned that in such confrontations his only chance of winning lay in doing exactly what in conscience ought to be done. It was by reliance upon this conviction that he had quietly made his way in such disparate jungles as Valparaiso, Batavia, Singapore and Honolulu. Now he went calmly to his cabin, next door to the one where the captain had kept the two young Chinese girls during the Hong Kong layover, and took up his doctor's kit. Checking it as he had learned to do more than forty years before, he carried it sedately to the locked grating and said to the sailor on guard, "Open it and let me in."
"The captain would . . ."
"Open it," Whipple commanded. "There's a man dying down there." And he took a belaying pin and started knocking away the wedges that held the grating in place. When it had swung free, he saw that no ladder could be fitted into it, so he held his bag between his knees, grabbed the edge of the opening, and swung himself down into the stinking hold. "What a horrible smell!" he mumbled through clenched teeth as he joined the three hundred and one Chinese.
Compared to the brightness of the day on deck, all was gloom and shadowy darkness in the hold, and as his eyes slowly became accustomed to the tenebrous hell,