Hawaii (81 page)

To punish the mutineers for actions which, in Hoxworth's opinion as he reported in his log, could well have led to the loss of the Carthaginian, no food or water was passed down through the grating that day, nor was the slop bucket hauled up, and as twilight fell and the card games ceased, John Whipple settled down for his first long night of hell in the crowded hold, but as he prepared to lie upon the bare boards, Nyuk Tsin moved among the Hakka men and found a few extra cloths. Vermin had already begun breeding in the rags, but Whipple used them and thanked their owners. But the smell of the hold nauseated him.

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.

"Nol" 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 hi 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,

FROM THE STARVING VILLAGE 407

did not like it, but Whipple observed that it was mainly the Hakka who were willing to try something new.

On the third day the grating was kicked aside, some of the boards of the hatch covering were removed, and a ladder was thrust down into the hold. Armed sailors stood guard as Dr. Whipple slowly climbed up and adjusted his eyes to bright daylight. Before he departed, the Chinese signified that they were sorry to see him go, and he replied that he would send them more water and better food. Then the boards were hammered home again.

Whipple's meeting with Captain Hoxworth was a painful one. For the first two hours the captain avoided him, but at lunch they had to meet, and Whipple said flatly, "Rafer, we have got to give those people more water."

"We will," Hoxworth grunted.

"And they must have better food."

"At the price we agreed to haul them, Doctor, that's impossible."

"It isn't impossible to keep filth out of the rice."

"Our cook ain't trained in this Chinee stuff, Doctor."

"He's got to feed them better."

"Not at these prices," Hoxworth replied stubbornly.

Dr. Whipple, now sixty-six, was afraid of very little, and without throwing down a blunt challenge, observed: "Two days ago you accused me of being a missionary. It's been many years since I thought of myself as such, but as I grow older I'm increasingly proud to accept the charge. I am a missionary. I've always been one. And, Rafer, do you know the truly damnable thing about a missionary?"

Hoxworth suspected that he was being challenged by a man at least as smart as he was, and replied cautiously, "I think I know the worst about missionaries."

"No, Captain, you don't, because if you did you would never treat me as you have the past two days. You have never learned the one respect in which missionaries must be feared."

"What?" Hoxworth asked.

"They write."

"They what?"

"They write. They have an absolute mania for taking pen in hand and writing a book, or a memorial, or a series of letters to the newspapers." Icily he stared at the big sea captain and said, "Rafer, I have never written, yet, of what I think of the way you treated Abner Hale, your partner's father, because that was a personal thing and could possibly be excused. But unless you feed these Chinese better, when we get to Honolulu I am going to write. I am going to write a series of letters, Rafer, that will forever cast a stigma upon the blue flag that you love so well. Whenever an H & H ship puts into port, someone will have heard about those letters. Because missionaries have one terrible power, Rafer. They write. They are the conscience of the Pacific.'

There was an ominous silence, broken finally by Hoxworth's slam-

ming his fist onto the table till the dishes rattled. "Why, goddamn it, this is nothing but blackmail."

"Of course!" Whipple agreed. "Blackmail is the only refuge of the literate man against barbarism. And you're a barbarian, Rafer."

"What is it you want?" the captain growled.

"Twice as much rice a day. And decent meat. Water three times a day. The slop bucket to come up three times a day. And I will be free to go down into the hold once a day to check the sick."

"I will not run the risk of having this ship mutinied," Hoxworth stormed. "I will not uncover that hold till we reach Honolulu."

"I'll go down through the grating," Whipple countered.

"You'll get back as best you can," Hoxworth warned.

"The Chinese will lift me back."

"You seem very fond of . . ." Hoxworth did not finish this insult but asked confidentially, "Tell me, Doctor, what's happening with that Chinee girl? Do them men take turns?"

"She's the wife of one man," Whipple replied coldly. "They live in one corner of the hold."

"Tell me, does this man, well, does he . . ."

"Yes. Behind a sheet which he hangs from the bulkhead."

"Well, I'll be damned!" the captain mused. "You wouldn't find three hundred American sailors letting a man get away with anything like that. No, sir!"

"Maybe the Chinese are more civilized," Whipple said and left.

It was with pride that he accompanied the first additional ration of water into the hold. He was there when the improved food came down, and by this time the awful stench had abated somewhat, for he had taken upon himself the job of setting the deck sail properly so as to wash fresh air down into the noisome hold. The poison was now abated from the broken ankle, and the second man's face was healing. Some of the Punti, directed by Whipple, were fraternizing with the Hakka, and Mun Ki, on one special day toward the end of the voyage, actually wanted Nyuk Tsin for herself alone, and not because he had been daydreaming of his naked Kung wife. He was finding Nyuk Tsin a most pleasurable and hard-working woman.

On one particularly hot day the Chinese were startled to hear a terrifying sound forward, as of chains running out, and they thought some disaster had overtaken them, for they knew nothing of ships, but it immedately became apparent that the motion of the Carthaginian had ceased; at last the ship was home. After much coming and going on deck, the boards covering the hold were knocked away and the ladder was dropped down. One by one the Chinese climbed back into daylight, rubbed their eyes in pain, and gradually saw the white shoreline of Honolulu, the palm trees, the distant majesty of Diamond Head, and far behind the flat land the mountains rising green and blue and purple, shrouded in misty storms. As was customary on almost each day of the year, a rainbow hung in the

FROM THE STARVING VILLAGE 409

valleys, and the Chinese thought this a particularly good omen to mark their arrival at the Fragrant Tree Country. How beautiful, how exceedingly marvelous the land seemed that day.

There were others, too, who felt that the arrival of the Carthaginian was a good omen, for the Honolulu Mail carried a report which stated: "We are told on good authority that Whipple & Janders, utilizing the H & H schooner Carthaginian, will shortly be depositing in Honolulu a new cargo of more than three hundred Celestials destined for the sugar fields. These able-bodied hands, for we have been assured that Dr. John Whipple went personally to China to secure only strong young males�many of them Hakka this time�will be available on five-year contracts at the rate of $3 cash a month, food and found, plus three Chinese holidays a year. At the end of ten or fifteen years of work in our fields, it is confidently expected that the Chinese will return to their homeland, especially since they have not brought their own women with them, and it can hardly be supposed that they will find any here.

"Sugar men who have already utilized Chinese on our plantations say this of them. For all kinds of work they are infinitely superior to the shiftless Hawaiians. They eat less, obey better, are not subject to "illness, are more clever in mastering new jobs, make fine carpenters when trained, and have a noticeable affinity for agricultural life. The employer must be stern, not beat them too often, and above all must not show signs of vacillation, for like all Orientals, the Chinese respect and love those who exercise a firm authority and despise those who do not.

"We are fortunate in acquiring such admirable workmen for our plantations and we are sure that after these industrious Chinese have worked out their terms and have saved their wages, they will return to China, leaving in these islands an enviable reputation for industriousness while taking back to China wealth they could not otherwise have dreamed of. The sugar industry welcomes these Celestials, and we feel confident that the true prosperity of our islands will date from this day."

On such truly amicable terms the Chinese went ashore at the Fragrant Tree Country, but in their disembarkation there was this profound difference among them: the Punti thought: "This will be a good home for five years, and then I will see the Low Village again," and no Punti had this determination to a greater degree than Kee Mun Ki; but the Hakka thought: "This is a good land to make a home in, and we shall never leave," and no Hakka thought this more strongly than Char Nyuk Tsin.

If the Chinese sometimes irritated Hawaii by refusing to call the new land anything but the Fragrant Tree Country, the islands retaliated in a rather striking jnanner. Inside the hot customs shed an immigration official was shouting, "All right! Attention! All Pakes over here!" No one moved, so he shouted again, this time pro-

nouncing the word slowly: "Pa-kays, over here." Again there was no response, so he yelled, "You Chinks! Line upl"

It was said that when the first Chinese landed in Hawaii the islanders asked them, "What shall we call you?" And the most sedate of the travelers replied, "It would be proper if you called me Tak Yeh/ " which meant Older Uncle. And from that time on, the Chinese were called Pakes.

As it came Kee Mun Ki's turn to face the interpreters he trembled, for he knew that soon he must make a fundamental decision concerning the Hakka girl Char Nyuk Tsin, but any perplexity over her was driven from his mind when an official, a large Hawaiian with a few phrases of Chinese, scowled at the man in front of Kee Mun Ki and growled, "What's your name?"

The Punti stood silent in fear, so the huge Hawaiian shouted, "What's your name?" Still the man remained awe-struck, so that a Chinese scholar employed for the purpose hurried up and said in good Punti, "Tell the man your name."

"Leong Ah Kam," the Chinese replied.

"Which of the names is the important one," the Hawaiian asked.

"Leong," the interpreter explained.

"How'd you spell it?" the Hawaiian asked.

"Well," the scholarly interpreter hedged, "in English this name Leong is rather difficult. It could be made into Lung or Long or Ling or Liong or Lyong."

The big official studied the problem for a moment. "Lung sounds silly," he growled, not because he was angry at the Chinese standing before him but because he was bedeviled by this constant problem of finding names for immigrant Chinese. Suddenly his face brightened into a generous smile and he pointed a big, pudgy finger at the laborer Leong Ah Kam, and fastening upon the last two names, he announced: "From now on your real name is Akama. And don't you forget it."