Hawaii - James Michener [281]
It was not until four o'clock the following afternoon that the grate was opened and some water sent down, and Whipple was astonished at the sensible discipline imposed at this moment by the gasping Chinese. Kee Mun Ki stood forth as the leader of the Punti, and a tall, rugged man as spokesman for the Hakka, and the water was justly divided and apportioned, after which Dr. Whipple shouted, "Will you send down four more buckets of water, please?"
There was a hushed convocation aloft to consider this request and after a moment the heavy sound of boots. Through the grating Captain Hoxworth shouted, "What is it you want?"
We require four more buckets of water," Whipple replied evenly.
"What you require and what you get are two different matters," Hoxworth stormed. "I'm dealing with a mutiny."
"Will you have your men haul up the slops?" Whipple pleaded.
"No!” Hoxworth replied, and marched off.
During the second awful night there was both hunger and acute suffering from lack of water, but Dr. Whipple explained to the Chinese that Captain Hoxworth was mentally unbalanced and that everyone, including Whipple, must be careful not to exasperate him. The stench was worse that night, if possible, for not much breeze came through the grating, but next morning four extra buckets of water were sent down and some food. When Whipple was given his share, his stomach revolted and he thought: "Good God! Do we serve them this? To eat?" The long day passed, and Dr. Whipple, unable to occupy himself merely by tending the broken ankle and the crushed jaw, found himself thinking: "No one who journeys to a distant land ever has it easy. Things were better on the Thetis, but were they really much better? At least in the Pacific there isn't constant seasickness. Now if this were the Atlantic . . ."
But the Chinese, in these same empty hours, were thinking: "I'll bet a rich American like this one never knew such things before." And although Whipple and his Chinese friends could talk about many things, on this fundamental fact of emigration they could never communicate. Even when each had the full vocabulary of the other, this basic fact of brotherhood--that all have known misery--could not be shared, for just as Abner Hale had refused to believe that the Polynesians had suffered heroic privation in getting to Hawaii, so the Chinese of the Carthaginian would never accept the fact that the wealthy white man had known tribulation too.
The day droned on. The smells lessened when Dr. Whipple showed the men how he wanted the slop bucket washed down. It helped, too, when he sloshed a full bucket of water in the urinal corner. The man with the broken face moaned less often, and the ominous red streaks up the groin of the other sick man diminished. There were card games and some shouting among the Punti over an incident which Whipple did not understand, and suddenly Mun Ki rose and announced something, whereupon he and his wife started hanging rude blankets across a corner of the hold.
"Goodness!" Dr. Whipple said to himself when he discovered what the contrivance was for. And the meaningless day passed into meaningless night. But before the light vanished, the grating was kicked aside and Captain Hoxworth shouted abruptly, "You ready to come up, Whipple?"
"I brought these people aboard this ship," the doctor said quietly. "I'll stay with them till the sores are healed."
"As you wish. Here's some bread." And a loaf of bread banged down into the hold. The Chinese, to whom Whipple offered some, did not like it, but Whipple observed that it was mainly the Hakka who were willing to try