Hawaii

  On December 5 the wounded brig Thetis, coated with ice, was back at the Atlantic entrance to the waters that guarded the Cape, and there was no sign of either an easterly wind or an abated swell, so Captain Janders kept his ship tacking idly back and forth, waiting, and about ten o’clock at night it looked as if the big chance had come, for the wind seemed to veer. Crowding sail, the captain lashed his ship into the swells and for the remaining two hours of that gray day the Thetis chewed awkwardly into the heavy seas and apparently made some progress.

  On December 6 the brig actually accomplished forty-eight miles into a snowstorm, bucking a sea as choppy and as sickening as any the missionaries had so far experienced. There was not the abstract terror of the ship on beam ends, but there was the constant rise and fall, wallow and recovery that made even inanimate objects like trunks and boxes creak in misery. The cold, intensified by the sleet and snow, grew worse, and wives huddled beneath wet blankets, shivering and convinced that death would be preferable to two more weeks of Cape Horn. But Brother Whipple reported heartily to all that at last the brig was making headway.

  On Friday, December 7, the wind perversely returned to its former heading; the seas became more confused; and once again the Thetis stood on her beam ends. This time she came perilously close to foundering. Heavy trunks that had been cleated down tore loose and piled brutally into berths. Timbers creaked ominously as if they could bear no more, and the little brig fell sickeningly into a trough out of which it seemed it might not recover. “Oh, God! Let me die!” Jerusha prayed, for a trunk had her pinned against the bulkhead. Other women were crying, “Brother Hale! Can you move this box?” for they knew that he was the only missionary then capable of constructive work.

  It was some minutes therefore before he got to Jerusha, and he found her wandering in speech. “Let me die, God. It wasn’t Abner’s fault. He was good to me, but let me die!” she whimpered. He pulled the trunk away and felt her limbs to see if they were broken, but as he did so, he heard her prayer for death. “What did you say?” he asked, appalled. “God, let me die!” she prayed blindly. With a violent slap he thrashed her on the cheeks and cried, “Mrs. Hale! You may not blaspheme!” He continued slapping her until she recovered her wits, and then he sat beside her and said, “I am afraid, too, my beloved companion. I am afraid we are going to drown. Oh!” And he braced himself for a wild ride down the hollow of a wave, and the shattering pause, and the groaning climb. “Do even you think we are lost?” Jerusha asked softly. “I am afraid,” he said humbly, “but we must not blaspheme, even if we are deserted.” She asked, “What did I say, dear husband?” He replied, “It’s best forgotten. Mrs. Hale, will you pray?” And in the cold, dark ’tween-decks he coached her in what he thought would be their last prayer.

  At that moment above decks, Captain Janders was shouting in fury, “Goddamnit, Mister Collins, we can’t make it!”

  “Shall we run for Good Hope, sir?”

  “We shall not.”

  “We’ll founder, sir,” Collins warned.

  “Turn around, and we’ll lick our wounds in the Falklands,” Janders replied.

  “And then?”

  “We’ll go through the Strait of Magellan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  SO THE HAMFERDITE BRIG Thetis, seventy-nine feet long, two hundred and thirty tons out of Boston, was finally turned away from Cape Horn, and on a northeast heading, which took advantage of the strong winds, it shot up to the Falkland Islands, which hung in the South Atlantic off the coast of Patagonia.

  The Falklands were a group of rocky, wind-swept, treeless islands used by whalers—and those who could not double the Cape—for recuperation, and when the forbidding group hove into view on December 10 they seemed to the bruised missionaries like fragments of Beulah Land, and as soon as the Thetis had anchored in a rocky cove, all hastened to be among the first ashore. All through the brief, gray starless night John Whipple inspected the cold ground, and at dawn he hailed the brig with good news: “There are geese and ducks here and some small cormorants. Bring all the guns!” He organized a hunting party that was to provide the Thetis with fresh food for many weeks. Mister Collins led another group that found sweet water to replenish the barrels and stacks of driftwood that had reached the islands from the coast of Argentina.

  “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 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 they 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.

  “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 the 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 Hale’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 own 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 Mister 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 Tierra del Fuego. These were the first days of summer, and once a band of natives clad only in skins was 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 explained 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. Hale!” he commanded. And twice a day he carefully 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 … a 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 those bananas! 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 a
nd 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.