Hawaii (35 page)

"We'll keep fires going for ten days," he promised the missionaries. "We'll dry you out proper."

Wives decked the Thetis with laundry, since none had been done

FROM THE FARM OF BITTERNESS

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for more than a hundred days, but it was energetic Abner Hale, tramping to the highest spot of the island, who made the big discovery. There was another ship hugging one of the northern harbors, and he and two sailors ran down to it. It was a whaler just in from the Pacific, and before long its skipper and Captain Janders were comparing all the charts thev had on the Magellan passage.

"It's a horrible passage," the whaler said, and he showed Captain Janders and Abner how the island of Tierra del Fuego, which they had tried to pass by the southern route, stood a narrow distance off the mainland of South America, so that the Strait of Magellan was actually the northern alternate route around Tierra del Fuego.

Nobody aboard either ship had ever penetrated the-strait, but many recollected stories. "In 1578 Francis Drake made the passage in seventeen easy days," a historical expert recalled. "But in 1764 it took the Frenchman Bougainville fifty-two days. Record is two Spaniards who fought Magellan's route for a hundred and fifty days. But they finally made it."

"Why is it so difficult?" Abner asked.

"It isn't," the whaler explained. "Not until you reach the other end."

"Then what happens?" Abner pressed.

"See these rocks? The Four Evangelists? That's where ships perish."

"Why? Fog?"

"No. Westerlies from the Pacific pile up tremendous waves all along your exit from the passage. In trying to break out, you run upon the Evangels."

"You mean it's worse than where we just were?"

"The difference is this," the whaler explained. "If you try to double Cape Horn in adverse conditions, you might have fifty days of mountainous seas. It just can't be done. At the Four Evangelists the waves are worse than anything you've seen so far, but you can breast them in an afternoon ... if you're lucky."

"Where is it precisely that so many ships go on the rocks?" Janders reviewed.

"Here on Desolation Island. It's not bad of itself, but when a ship thinks it's breasted the Evangelists, it often finds it can't maintain position. In panic it turns and runs, and Desolation grabs it. Fifty . . . hundred ships."

"Any survivors?" Mister Collins asked.

"On Desolation rocks?" the whaler countered.

"What is the trick?" Mister Collins pressed.

"Find yourself a good harbor toward the western end of Desolation. Go out every day for a month if necessary and try to breast the Evangelists. But always keep yourself in position so that when you see you've got to run back to harbor for the night, you'll be in command and not the waves."

"That's exactly as I understand it," Captain Janders agreed.

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"Is this an easterly coming up?" Mister Collins asked hopefully. "Seems to me if we caught a reliable easterly we'd be in luck. It would push us right through the strait." "There's an error!" the whaler snorted. "Because while it's true that an easterly will help you a little in the first part of the transit, by the time the wind has built up a sea at the western exit, it simply creates added confusion around the Four Evangelists. Then you really have hell." "But even so, the waves can be penetrated?" Janders inquired. "Yes. Dutchmen did it. So did die Spaniards. But remember, go out every day from Desolation and come back every night till you find the right sea. And you do the steering. Not the storm."

The whaler, sensing that Abner might be a minister, asked him if

he would consent to conduct divine services as a guest, and this

pleased the missionary very much, for he looked at Captain Janders

as if to say, "Here's one sea captain who acknowledges God," but

Janders could never willingly permit Abner complete triumph, so in

snakelike tones he destroyed Kale's paradise by commenting, when

the whaler went below to rouse the men, "He's probably run the

vilest ship on the seas. Probably has crimes on his head no man

could measure. Ask him what he did in Honolulu? Once these whalers

get back around the Cape and near Boston, they all beg for one

good prayer to wash away their accumulation of evil."

Nevertheless, a surly, husky lot of men and officers assembled for

worship, and Abner flayed whatever crimes they had committed, with

this text: "Leviticus 25, verse 41: 'And shall return unto his onwn

family.' And upon returning, will his conscience return with him?"

In impassioned words, heightened by Captain Janders' goading, he

analyzed the condition of a man who had been away from both the

home of the Lord and the home of his family for four years, the

changes which had occurred both in him and in his home of which

he could not be aware and the steps which must be taken to remedy

those changes, if ill, and to capitalize upon them, if favorable. The

whalers listened with astonishment as he laid bare their half-expressed

thoughts, and at the end of the service three men asked if he would

pray with them, and when the prayers were over, the captain said,

"That was a powerful sermon, young man. I should like to give

you a token of our ship's appreciation." And he surprised Abner by

delivering to the Thetis' longboat a stalk of handsome green bananas.

"They'll ripen and be good for many days," he said, "and the sickly

ones will enjoy them."

"What are they?" Abner asked.

"Bananas, son. Good for constipation. Better get to like them

because they're the principal food in Hawaii." The whaler showed

Abner how to peel one, took a big bite, and gave the stub to Abner.

"Once you become familiar with 'em, they're real good." But

Abner found the penetrating smell of the skin offensive, whereupon

the whaler bellowed, "You damn well better get to like 'em, son

because that's what you'll be eatin' from now on."

"Were you in Hawaii?" Abner asked.

"Was I in Honolulu?" the whaler shouted. Then, recalling the sermon just concluded, he finished lamely, "We took a dozen whales south of there."

On Tuesday, December 18, after Captain Janders had copied all the charts that his fellow skipper could provide of the Magellan passage, and had compared them with his own, finding that no two placed any single island in the passage even close to where the others did, the Thetis weighed anchor and headed back for Tierra del Fuego, but this time to the northern end of the island, where it abutted onto South America, and where the forbidding passage discovered by Magellan waited sullenly. As its bleak headlands came into view on the morning of December 21, Captain Janders said to Mlister Collins, "Take a good look at 'em. We're not comin' back this way." And with stubborn determination he plunged into the narrow strait which had defeated many vessels.

The missionaries were fascinated by the first days of the passage and they lined the rails staring first at South America and then at T'ierra del Fuego. These were the first days of summer, and once a band of natives clad only in skins were spotted. At night Abner saw the fires that had given the large island its name when Magellan first coasted, for in spite of the fact that all was bleak, it was also interesting.

The Thetis, aided by the easterly wind, sometimes made as much as thirty miles in a day, but more often about twenty were covered in slow and patient probing. After the first westward thrust was completed, the brig turned south, following the shoreline of Tierra del Fuego, and the days became somnolent, and there was scarcely any night at all. The missionaries sometimes slept on deck, wakening to enjoy any phenomenon that the night produced. When winds were adverse, as they often were, the Thetis would tie up and hunting parties would go ashore, so that for Christmas all hands had duck and thought how strange it was to be in these gray latitudes instead of in white New England. There was no seasickness now, but one passenger was growing to hate the Strait of Magellan as she had never hated any other water.

This was Jerusha Hale, for although her two major sicknesses had departed, another had taken their place, and it consisted of a violent desire to vomit each time her husband made her eat a banana. "I don't like the smell of the oil," she protested.

"I don't like it either, my dear," he expkined patiently, "but if this is the food of the islands . . ."

"Let's wait till we get to the islands," she begged.

"No, if the Lord providentially sent us these bananas in the manner he did . . ."

"The other women don't have to eat them," she pleaded.

"The other women were not sent them by the direct will of God," he reasoned.

"Reverend Hale," she argued slowly, "I'm sure that when I get off this ship, where I've been sick so much, I'll be able to eat bananas. But here the oil in the skin reminds me . . . Husband, I'm going to be sick."

"No, Mrs. Halel" he commanded. And twice a day he carefuly' peeled a banana, stuck half in his mouth, and said, against his own better judgment, "It's delicious." The other half he forcefully pushed into Jerusha's, watching her intently until she had swallowed it. The procedure was so obviously painful to the sickly girl that Amanda Whipple could not remain in her berth while it was being carried out, but what made it doubly nauseous was that Abner had strung| the ripening bananas from the roof of their stateroom, and there they swung, back and forth, through every hour of the passage, and as they ripened they smelled.

At first Jerusha thought: "I'll watch the bunch grow smaller," but it showed no effect of her efforts to diminish it. Instead it grew larger, more aromatic, and swung closer to her face at night. "My dear husband," she pleaded, "indeed I shall be sick!" But he would place his hand firmly over her abdomen until the day's ration was swallowed, and he refused to allow her to be sick, and she obeyed.

After one such performance John Whipple asked, "Why do you like bananas so much, Brother Hale?"

"I don't," Abner said. "They make me sick, too."

"Then why do you eat them?"

"Because obviously the Lord intended me to eat them. How did I get them? As a result of having preached a sermon. I would be an ingrate if I did not eat them!"

"Do you believe in omens?" the young scientist asked.

"What do you mean?" Abner inquired.

"Superstitions? Omens?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"I was thinking. Keoki Kanakoa has been telling me about all the omens under which he used to live. When one of their canoes went out to sea, they had an old woman who did nothing but study omens. And if an albatross came, or a shark, that meant something . . . god had sent them . . . you could learn what the god intended . . . if you could read the omen."

"What has that to do with me?" Abner asked.

"It seems to me, Brother Hale, that you're that way with the bananas. They were given to you, so they must have been sent by God. So if they were sent by God, they must be eaten."

"John, you're blaspheming!"

"Blaspheming or not, I'd throw those bananas overboard. They're making everybody sick."

"Overboard!"

"Yes, Reverend Hale," Jerusha interrupted. "Throw them overboard."

"This is intolerable!" Abner cried, storming onto the deck, from which he speedily returned to the stateroom. "If anyone touches

FROM THE FARM OF BITTERNESS 177

those bananasl They were sent by God to instruct us in our new life. You and I, Mrs. Hale, are going to eat every one of those bananas. It is God's will." So as the Thetis crept agonizingly ahead, the bananas danced malodorously in the stateroom.

The brig had now left Tierra del Fuego and was amidst the hundreds of nameless islands that comprised the western half of the passage. The winds veered and the dreary days ran into dreary weeks and Captain Janders wrote repeatedly in his log: "Tuesday, January 15. Twenty-sixth day in the passage. Land close on both hands. Beat all day into adverse wind. Made 4 miles but toward sunset lost on every tack. Could find no hold for anchor on sloping shores. Ran back and moored where we anchored last night. But hope this westerly gale continues, for it will smooth out waters at 4 Evangels. Shore party shot fine geese and caught 2 pailsfl. sweet mussels."

Day followed day, yielding a progress of four miles or six or none. Men would tow the Thetis from anchorage out into the wind and gamble that they would sleep in the same spot that night. Two facts preyed increasingly on their minds. The land about them was so bleak that it could not possibly support life for long, especially if summer left, and it was leaving. And all thought: "If it is so difficult here, what will it be when we reach Desolation Island? And when we have reached there, what must the Four Evangelists be like?" It seemed that inch by painful inch they were approaching a great climax, and this was true.

On the thirty-second day of this desokte passage an easterly wind sprang up and whisked the little brig along the north shore of Desolation Island, a location made more terrible by the fact that 'sailors spotted the stern boards of some ship that had foundered on the rocks. The sea grew rougher, and eighteen of the missionaries found it advisable to stay below, where the smell of bananas added to their qualms. That night Jerusha declared that she could not, on pain of death, eat another banana, but Abner, having heard such protests before, gallantly ate his half, then forced the remainder into Jerusha's mouth. "You may not get sick," he commanded, holding her stomach in his control. But the ship lurched as the first fingers of the Pacific swell probed into the passage, and neither Jerusha nor Abner could dominate her retching, and she began to vomit. "Mrs. Hale!" he shouted, clapping his other hand over her mouth, but the sickness continued until the berth was fouled. "You did that on purpose!" he muttered.

"Husband, I am so sick," she whimpered. The tone of her words impressed him, and tenderly he cleaned away the mess, making her as comfortable as possible.