Hawaii - James Michener [306]
One of his own sons was first to speak, saying, "If God had wanted the water to fall on these dry lands, He would have ordered it, and any action contrary to God's wish seems to me a reflection on His infinite wisdom."
Dr. Whipple looked at his son and replied, "I can only cite you the parable of the talents. God never wants potential gifts to lie idle."
One of the Janders boys, a profound conservative, argued: "J & W is overextended. There's no money for chancy adventures."
"A good firm is always overextended," Whipple replied, but seeing that the younger men would surely vote against his using J & W funds, he quickly added, "I don't want you to put up any of your own money, but I'm surely going to gamble all of mine. All I want from you is lease rights to your worthless land on the dry side."
When he had control of six thousand acres of barren soil, he hired two hundred men and many teams of mules and with his own money launched the venture that was to transform his part of Oahu from a desert into a lush, succulent sugar plantation. With shovels and mule-drawn sledges, he dug out an irrigation ditch eleven miles long, maintaining a constant fall which swept the water down from high mountainsides and onto the arid cactus lands. When his ditch faced some deep valley that could not be avoided, he channeled his water into a narrow mouth and poured it into a large pipe which dropped down to the valley floor and climbed back up to the required elevation on the other side, where it emptied out into the continuation of the ditch. Water, seeking its former level, rushed down the pipe and surged back up the other side without requiring pumps.
When the ditch was finished and its effect upon the Whipple fortunes evident, he convened the J & W men and showed them the map of Oahu, with arable areas marked in green. "We're bringing water about as far as we can in ditches. Yet look at this map. We're using less than twenty per cent of our potential land. Ninety per cent of our rainfall still runs back into the ocean. Gentlemen, long after I'm dead somebody will think of a way to pierce these mountains and bring that water over to this side, where it's needed. I beg of you," the white-haired scientist pleaded, "when the project becomes feasible, and sooner or later it must, don't hesitate. Pool your funds. Go into debt if necessary. Because the man who controls that water will control Hawaii."
One of the more conservative Janderses, who chafed at working under Whipple, whispered, "They always get dotty in their old age." And the firm became so preoccupied with making money from John Whipple's ditches that they quite forgot his vision of a tunnel through the heart of the mountains.
WHILE NYUK TSIN and her husband were suffering reversals in the manufacture of poi, they observed that difficulties were also visiting their favorite guest. Captain Rafer Hoxworth, when he dined at the Whipples, showed in his face the strain that had overtaken him with the illness of his gracious wife, Noelani, the tall and stately Hawaiian lady whose charm was so much appreciated by the Chinese. In 1869 it became apparent to Nyuk Tsin, as she served the big dinners, that Mrs. Hoxworth needed medical care, and as the year progressed, the tall Hawaiian woman grew steadily less able to sit through a long dinner without showing signs of exhaustion, and Nyuk Tsin grieved for her.
The haoles, as Caucasians were called in the islands, were not able to understand what had brought their beloved friend so close to death, but the kanakas, as the Hawaiians were known, understood. Of their declining sister they said, "Ho'olana i ka wai ke ola.--Her life floats upon the water." But if Noelani herself was aware of this sentence, she betrayed her reactions to no one. She gave the