Cloud Atlas

join us. I am sorry to write, no man from either shift braved the first mate’s displeasure by attending, but we shall persist in our efforts undiscouraged. Rafael was up the masthead & interrupted our prayers with a treble cry of “Land! a-hoyyyyyy!”

We ended our worship early & braved dousings of sea spray to watch land emerge from the rocking horizon. “Raiatea,” Mr. Roderick told us, “of the Societies.” (Once again the Prophetess’s keel crosses the Endeavour’s. Cpt. Cook himself named the group.) I asked if we would be putting ashore. Mr. Roderick affirmed, “The captain wants to pay one of the Missions a call.” The Societies loomed larger & after three weeks of oceanic grays & blazing blues, our eyes rejoiced at the moss-drenched mountain faces, aglint with cataracts, daubed with cacophonous jungle. The Prophetess cleared fifteen fathoms, yet so clear was the water, iridescent corals were visible. I speculated with Henry on how we might prevail upon Cpt. Molyneux for permission to go ashore, when the very same appeared from the deckhouse, his beard trimmed & forelock oiled. Far from ignoring us, as is his custom, he walked over to us with a smile as friendly as a cutpurse’s. “Mr. Ewing, Dr. Goose, would you care to accompany the first mate & I ashore on yonder isle this morning? A settlement of Methodists lies in a bay on the northern coast, ‘Nazareth’ they’ve named it. Gentlemen of inquiring minds may find the place diverting.” Henry accepted with enthusiasm & I did not withhold my consent, though I mistrusted the old raccoon’s motivations. “Settled,” the captain pronounced.

An hour later the Prophetess kedged into Bethlehem Bay, a black-sand cove sheltered from trade winds by Cape Nazareth’s crook. Ashore was a stratum of cruder thatched dwellings erected on “stilts” near the waterline, occupied (I correctly assumed) by the baptized Indians. Above these were a dozen timber buildings crafted by civilized hands, & higher still, below the hill’s crown, stood a proud church denoted by a white cruciform. The larger of the skiffs was lowered for our benefit. Its four rowers were Guernsey. Bentnail & a pair of garter snakes. Mr. Boerhaave donned a hat & waistcoat more suitable for a Manhattan salon than a haul across the surf. We beached with no mishap worse than a good soak, but our sole emissary from the colonists was a Polynesian dog panting under golden jasmine & vermilion trumpet flowers. The shoreline huts & “Main Street” winding up to the church were devoid of human life. “Twenty men, twenty muskets,” commented Mr. Boerhaave, “and the place’d be ours by dinnertime. Makes you think, eh, sir?” Cpt. Molyneux instructed the rowers to wait in the shade while we “Call on the King in his Counting House.” My suspicion that the captain’s new graces were skin-deep was confirmed when he found the trading store boarded up & he vented a fanged oath. “Mayhap,” speculated the Dutchman, “the niggers unconverted themselves & ate their pastors for pudding?”

A bell rang from the church tower & the captain slapped his forehead. “D—— my eyes, what am I thinking? It’s the Sabbath, by G—— & these holy s——s’ll be a-braying in their rickety church!” We wound our way up the steep hill at a crawl, our party slowed by Cpt. Molyneux’s gout. (I feel a loamy breathlessness when I exert myself. Recalling my vigor on the Chathams, I am worried at how severely the Parasite taxes my constitution.) We reached Nazareth’s house of worship just as the congregation was emerging.

The captain removed his hat, boomed a hearty “Greetings! Jonathon Molyneux, captain of the Prophetess.” He indicated our vessel in the bay with a sweep of his hand. The Nazarenes were less effusive, the men awarding us wary nods, their wives & daughters hiding behind fans. Cries of “Fetch Preacher Horrox!” echoed into the church recesses as its native occupants now poured out to see the visitors. Upwards of sixty adult men & women I counted, of whom around a third were White, garbed in their Sunday “Best” (as could be managed two weeks’ voyage from the nearest haberdashery). The Blacks watched us with bare curiosity. The Native women were decently clothed, but more than a few were blighted with goiter. Boys protecting their fair-skinned mistresses from the sun’s fierceness with parasols of palm leaves grinned a little. A privileged “platoon” of Polynesians wore a natty brown shoulder band embroidered with a white crucifix as a uniform of sorts.

Now bounded out a cannonball of a man whose clerical garb declaimed his calling. “I,” announced the patriarch, “am Giles Horrox, preacher of Bethlehem Bay & representative of the London Missionary Society on Raiatea. State your business, sirs, be quick about it.”

Cpt. Molyneux now extended his introductions to include Mr. Boerhaave “of the Dutch Reformist Church,” Dr. Henry Goose, “Physician of the London Gentry & late of the Feejee Mission” & Mr. Adam Ewing, “American Notary of Letters & Law.” (Now I stood wise to the rogue’s game!) “The names of Preacher Horrox & Bethlehem Bay are spoken of with respect amongst us peripatetic devout of the South Pacific. We had hoped to celebrate the Sabbath before your altar”—the captain looked ruefully at the church—“but, alas, contrary winds delayed our arrival. At the very least, I pray your collection plate is not yet closed?”

Preacher Horrox scrutinized our captain. “You command a godly ship, sir?”

Cpt. Molyneux glanced away in an imitation of humility. “Neither as godly nor as unsinkable as your church, sir, but yes, Mr. Boerhaave & I do what we can for those souls in our care. ’Tis an unceasing struggle, I am sorry to say. Sailors revert to their wanton ways as soon as our backs are turned.”

“Oh, but, Captain,” spoke a lady in a lace collar, “we have our recidivists in Nazareth too! You will pardon my husband’s caution. Experience teaches us most vessels under so-called Christian flags bring us little but disease & drunkards. We must assume guilt until innocence is established.”

The captain bowed again. “Madam, I can grant no pardon where no offense was given nor any taken.”

“Your prejudices against those ‘Visigoths of the Sea’ are amply warranted, Mrs. Horrox”—Mr. Boerhaave entered the exchange—“but I won’t tolerate a drop of grog aboard our Prophetess, however the men holler! & oh, they holler, but I holler back, ‘The only spirit you need is the Holy Spirit!’ & I holler it louder & longer!”

The charade was having its desired effect. Preacher Horrox presented his two daughters & three sons, all of whom were born here in Nazareth. (The girls might have stepped from a Ladies’ School, but the boys were tanned as kanákas beneath their starched collars.) Loath as I was to be lassoed into the captain’s masquerade, I was curious to learn more of this island theocracy & let the current of events carry me along. Soon our party proceeded to the Horroxes’ parsonage, which dwelling would not shame any petty Southern Hemisphere consul. It included a large drawing room with glass windows & tulipwood furniture, a necessary room, two shacks for servants & a dining room, where presently we were served with fresh vegetables & tender pork. The table stood with each leg immersed in a dish of water. Mrs. Horrox explained, “Ants, one bane of Bethlehem. Their drowned bodies must be emptied periodically, lest they build a causeway of themselves.”

I complimented the domicile. “Preacher Horrox,” the lady of the house told us with pride, “was trained as a carpenter in the shire of Gloucester. Most of Nazareth was built by his hands. The pagan mind is impressed with material display, you see. He thinks:—How spick & span are Christians’ houses! How dirty our hovels! How generous the White God is! How mean is ours!’ In this way, one more convert is brought to the Lord.”

“If I could but live my life over,” opined Mr. Boerhaave, without the slightest blush, “I should chuse the missionary’s selfless path. Preacher, we see here a well-established mission with roots struck deep, but how does one begin the work of conversion upon a benighted beach where no Christian foot ever trod?”

Preacher Horrox gazed beyond his interrogator to a future lecture hall. “Tenacity, sir, compassion & law. Fifteen years ago our reception in this bay was not so cordial as your own, sir. That anvil-shaped island you see to the west, thither? Borabora, the Blacks call it, but Sparta is an apter name, so warlike were its warriors! On the beach of Bethlehem Cove we fought & some of us fell. Had our pistols not won that first week’s battles, well, the Raiatea Mission should have remained a dream. But it was the will of the Lord that we light his beacon here & keep it burning. After a half year we could bring over our womenfolk from Tahiti. I regret the Native deaths, but once the Indians saw how God protects his flock, why, even the Spartans were begging us to send preachers.”

Mrs. Horrox took up the story. “When the pox began its deadly work, the Polynesians needed succor, both spiritual & material. Our compassion then brought the heathen to the holy font. Now ’tis the turn of Holy Law to keep our flock from Temptation—& marauding seamen. Whalers, particularly, despise us for teaching the women chastity & modesty. Our men must keep our firearms well-oiled.”

“Yet if shipwrecked,” noted the captain, “I’ll warrant those same spouters beg Fate to wash ’em up on beaches where those same ‘cursed missionaries’ have brought the Gospels, do they not?”

Assent was indignant & universal.

Mrs. Horrox answered my query about the enforcement of law & order in this lonesome outpost of Progress. “Our Church Council—my husband & three wise elders—passes those laws we deem necessary, with guidance of prayer. Our Guards of Christ, certain Natives who prove themselves faithful servants of the Church, enforce these laws in return for credit at my husband’s store. Vigilance, unflagging vigilance, is vital, or by next week . . .” Mrs. Horrox shuddered as apostasy’s phantoms danced a hula on her grave.

The meal over, we adjourned to the parlor, where a Native boy served us cool tea in pleasing gourd cups. Cpt. Molyneux asked, “Sir, how does one fund a Mission as industrious as yours?”

Preacher Horrox felt the breeze change & scrutinized the captain afresh. “Arrowroot starch & cocoa-nut oil defray costs, Captain. The Blacks work on our plantation to pay for the school, Bible study & church. In a week, God will it, we shall have an abundant harvest of copra.”

I asked if the Indians worked of their own free will.

“Of course!” exclaimed Mrs. Horrox. “If they succumb to sloth, they know the Guards of Christ will punish them for it.”

I wished to ask about these punitive incentives, but Cpt. Molyneux snatched back the conversation. “Your Missionary Society ship carries these perishable commodities back around the Horn to London?”

“Your conjecture is correct, Captain.”

“Have you considered, Preacher Horrox, how more secure your Mission’s secular footing—& by extension its spiritual one—would be, if you had a reliable market closer to the Societies?”

The preacher told the serving boy to quit the room. “I have considered this question at length, but where? Mexico’s markets are small & prone to banditry, Cape Town is a marriage of corrupt excisemen & greedy Afrikaners. The South China Seas swarm with ruthless, saucy pirates. The Batavian Dutch bleed one dry. No offense, Mr. Boerhaave.”

The captain indicated myself. “Mr. Ewing is a denizen of”—he paused to unveil his proposal—“San Francisco, California. You will know of its growth from a paltry town of seven hundred souls to a metropolis of . . . a quarter million? No census can keep count! Celestials, Chileans, Mexicans, Europeans, foreigners of all colors are flooding in by the day. An egg, Mr. Ewing, kindly inform us how much is presently paid for an egg in San Francisco.”

“A dollar, so my wife wrote to me.”

“One Yankee dollar for a common egg.” (Cpt. Molyneux’s smile is that of a mummified crocodile I once saw hanging in a Louisiana dry-goods store.) “Surely, this gives a man of your acumen some pause for thought?”

Mrs. Horrox was nobody’s fool. “All the gold will be mined out soon.”

“Aye, madam, but the hungry, clamoring, enriched city of San Francisco—only three weeks away by a trim schooner like my Prophetess—will remain & its destiny is clear as crystal. San Francisco shall become the London, the Rotterdam & the New York of the Pacific Ocean.”

Our capitán de la casa picked his teeth with a bluefin bone. “Do you believe, Mr. Ewing, commodities grown in our plantations may fetch a fair price in your city” (how strange ’tis hearing our modest township so appelled!) “both of the moment & after the gold rush?”

My truthfulness was a card Cpt. Molyneux had played to his devious advantage, but I would not lie to spite him any more than I would to aid him. “I do.”

Giles Horrox removed his clergyman’s collar. “Would you care to accompany me to my office, Jonathon? I am rather proud of its roof. I designed it myself to withstand the dreadful typhoo.”

“Is that so, Giles?” replied Cpt. Molyneux. “Lead the way.”

Notwithstanding the name of Dr. Henry Goose was unknown in Nazareth until this morning, once the wives of Bethlehem learned a famed English surgeon was ashore, they recalled all manner of ailments & beat a crowded path to the Parsonage. (So odd to be in the presence of the fairer sex again after so many days penned up with the uglier one!) My friend’s generosity could not turn away a single caller, so Mrs. Horrox’s salon was commandeered as his consultation room & draped with linen to provide appropriate screens. Mr. Boerhaave returned to the Prophetess to see about making more space in the hold.

I begged the Horroxes’ leave to explore Bethlehem Bay, but its beach was unbearably hot & its sand flies pestilential, so I retraced our steps up the “Main Street” towards the church, whence issued the sound of psalmody. I intended to join in the afternoon worship. Not a soul, not a dog, not even a Native, stirred the Sabbath stillness. I peered into the dim church & so thick was the smoke within, I feared, erroneously, the building was aflame! The singing was now over & substituted by choruses of coughing. Fifty dark backs faced me & I realized the air was thick with the smoke not of fire nor incense but raw-cut tobacco! for every man jack of them was puffing on a pipe.

A rotund White stood in the pulpit sermonizing in that hybrid accent “Antipodean Cockney.” This shew of informal religiosity did not offend until the content of the “sermon” became apparent. I quoth: “So it came to pass, see, Saint Peter, aye, ’im ’oo Mistah Jesus called Sweeter Peter Piper, he cameth from Rome an’ he taughteth them hooky-nosed Jews in Palestine what was what with the Old Baccy, an’ this is what I’m teachin’ you now, see.” Here he broke off to give guidance to an individual. “Nah, Tarbaby, you’re doing it all wrong, see, you load your baccy in the fat end, aye, that one, see, oh, J——s sneezed! how many times I told you, this is the stem, this is the d——d bowl! Do it like Mudfish next to you, nah, let me shew you!”

A sallow, stooping White leant against a cabinet (containing, I later verified, hundreds of Holy Bibles printed in Polynesian—I must request one as a souvenir ere our departure) watching the smoky proceedings. I made myself known to him in whispers so as not to distract the smokers from their sermon. The young man introduced himself as Wagstaff & explained the pulpit’s occupant was “the Headmaster of the Nazareth Smoking School.”

I confessed, such an academy was unknown to me.

“An idea of Father Upward’s, at the Tahitian Mission. You must understand, sir, your typical Polynesian spurns industry because he’s got no reason to value money. ‘If I hungry,’ says he, ‘I go pick me some, or catch me some. If I cold, I tell woman, “Weave!’ “Idle hands, Mr. Ewing, & we both know what work the Devil finds for them. But by instilling in the slothful so-an’-sos a gentle craving for this harmless leaf, we give him an incentive to earn money, so he can buy his baccy—not liquor, mind, just baccy—from the Mission trading post. Ingenious, wouldn’t you say?”

How could I disagree?

The light ebbs away. I hear children’s voices, exotic avian octaves, the surf pounding the cove. Henry is grumbling at his cuff links. Mrs. Horrox, whose hospitality Henry & I are enjoying tonight, has sent her maid to inform us dinner is served.

Monday, 9th December—

A continuance of yesterday’s narrative. After the smoking school was dismissed (several of the students were swaying & nauseous, but their teacher, an itinerant tobacco trader, assured us, “They’ll be hooked like pufferfish in no time!”), the back of the heat was broken, though Cape Nazareth still broiled in glowing sunshine. Mr. Wagstaff strolled with me along the wooded arm of land shouldering northwards from Bethlehem Bay. The youngest son of a Gravesend curate, my guide had been drawn to the missionary’s vocation since infancy. The Society, by arrangement with Preacher Horrox, sent him hither to wed a widow of Nazareth, Eliza, née Mapple, & be a father to her son, Daniel. He arrived on these shores last May.

What fortune, I declared, to dwell in such an Eden, but my pleasantry punctured the young man’s spirits. “So I believed in my first days, sir, but now I don’t rightly know. I mean, Eden’s a spick ’n’ span place, but every living thing runs wild here, it bites & scratches so. A pagan brought to God is a soul saved, I know it, but the sun never stops burning & the waves & stones are always so bright, my eyes ache till dusk comes. Times are, I’d give anything for a North Sea fog. The place puts a straining on our souls, to be truthful, Mr. Ewing. My wife’s been here since she was a small girl, but that doesn’t make it easier for her. You’d think the savages’d be grateful, I mean, we school them, heal them, bring employment & eternal life! Oh, they say ‘Please, sir,’ an’ ‘Thank you, sir’ prettily enough, but you feel nothing”—Wagstaff pounded his heart—“here. Aye, look like Eden it might, but Raiatea is a fallen place, same as everywhere, aye, no snakes, but the Devil plies his trade here as much as anywhere else. The ants! Ants get everywhere. In your food, your clothes, your nose, even. Until we convert these accursed ants, these islands’ll never be truly ours.”

We arrived at his modest dwelling, crafted by his wife’s first husband. Mr. Wagstaff did not invite me in but went inside to fetch a flask of water for our walk. I took a turn around the modest front garden, where a Black gardener was hoeing. I asked what he was growing.

“David is dumb,” a woman called to me from the doorway dressed in a loosened, grubby pinafore. I am afraid I can only describe her appearance and manner as slovenly. “Dumb as a stone. You’re the English doctor staying at the Horroxes’.”

I explained I was an American notary & asked if I might be addressing Mrs. Wagstaff.

“My wedding banns and marriage lines say so, yes.”

I said Dr. Goose was holding an ad hoc surgery at the Horroxes’, if she wished to consult with him. I assured her of Henry’s excellence as a physician.

“Excellent enough to spirit me away, restore the years I’ve wasted here & set me up in London with a stipend of three hundred pounds per annum?”

Such a request was beyond my friend’s powers, I admitted.

“Then your excellent physician can do nothing for me, sir.”

I heard giggles in the bushes beyond me, turned around & saw a host of little Black boys (I was curious to note so many light-skinned issue of “cross-racial” unions). I ignored the children & turned back to see a White boy of twelve or thirteen, as grubby as his mother, slip by Mrs. Wagstaff, who did not attempt to waylay him. Her son frolicked as naked as his Native playmates! “Ho, there, young fellow,” I reprimanded, “won’t you get a sunstroke running about in that state?” The boy’s blue eyes held a feral glint & his answer, barked in a Polynesian tongue, baffled me as much as it amused the pickaninnies, who flew off like a flock of greenfinches.

Mr. Wagstaff followed in the boy’s wake, much agitated. “Daniel! Come back! Daniel! I know you hear me! I’ll lash you! Do you hear? I’ll lash you!” He turned back to his wife. “Mrs. Wagstaff! Do you want your son to grow up a savage? At the very least make the boy wear clothes! Whatever will Mr. Ewing be thinking?”

Mrs. Wagstaff’s contempt for her young husband, if bottled, could have been vended as rat poison. “Mr. Ewing will think whatever Mr. Ewing will think. Then, tomorrow, he will leave on his handsome schooner, taking his thinkings with him. Unlike you & I, Mr. Wagstaff, who’ll die here. Soon, I pray God.” She turned to me. “My husband could not compleat his schooling, sir, so it is my sorry lot to explain the obvious, ten times a day.”

Averse to seeing Mr. Wagstaff’s humiliation at the hands of his wife, I gave a noncommittal bow & withdrew outside the fence. I heard male indignation trampled by female scorn & concentrated my attention on a nearby bird, whose refrain, to my ears, sounded thus:—Toby isn’t telling, nooo . . . Toby isn’t telling . . .

My guide joined me, most visibly glum. “Beg pardon, Mr. Ewing, Mrs. Wagstaff’s nerves are fearful frayed today. She don’t sleep much on account of the heat & flies.” I assured him the “eternal afternoon” of the South Seas taxes the sturdiest physiologies. We walked under slimy fronds, along the tapering headland, noxious with fertility, & furry caterpillars, plump as my thumb, dropped from talons of exquisite heliconia.

The young man narrated how the Mission had assured Mr. Wagstaff’s family of his intended’s impeccable breeding. Preacher Horrox had married them a day after his arrival in Nazareth, while the enchantment of the Tropics still dazzled his eyes. (Why Eliza Mapple had consented to such an arranged union remains uncertain: Henry speculates the latitude & clime “unhinges” the weaker sex & renders them pliable.) Mr. Wagstaff’s bride’s “infirmities,” true age & Daniel’s obstreperous nature came to light scarcely after their signatures on the wedding documents had dried. The stepfather had tried beating his new charge, but this led to such “wicked recriminations” from both mother & stepson that he knew not where to turn. Far from helping Mr. Wagstaff, Preacher Horrox chastised him for a weakling & the truth is, nine days out of ten he is wretched as Job. (Whatever Mr. Wagstaff’s misfortunes, could any compare to a parasitic Worm gnawing his cerebral canals?)

Thinking to distract the brooding youth with matters more logistical, I asked why such an abundance of Bibles lay untouched (& read only by book lice, to tell the truth) in the church. “Preacher Horrox should by rights tell it, but briefly, the Matavia Bay Mission first translated the Lord’s Word into Polynesian & Native missionaries using those Bibles achieved so many conversions that Elder Whitlock—one of Nazareth’s founders what’s dead now—convinced the Mission to repeat the experiment here. He’d once been ’prenticed to a Highgate engraver, see. So with guns & tools the first missionaries brought a printing press, paper, bottles of ink, trays of type & reams of paper. Within ten days of founding Bethlehem Bay, three thousand primers was printed for Mission schools, before they’d dug the gardens, even. Nazareth Gospels came next & spread the Word from the Societies to the Cooks to Tonga. But now the press is rusted up, we’ve got thousands of Bibles begging for an owner & why?”

I could not guess.

“Not enough Indians. Ships bring disease dust here, the Blacks breathe it in & they swell up sick & fall like spinny tops. We teach the survivors about monogamy & marriage, but their unions aren’t fruitful.” I found myself wondering how many months had passed since last Mr. Wagstaff smiled. “To kill what you’d cherish & cure,” he opined, “that seems to be the way of things.”

The path ended down by the sea at a crumbling “ingot” of black coral, twenty yards in length & in height two men. “A marae, this is called,” Mr. Wagstaff informed me. “All over the South Seas you see ’em, I’m told.” We scrambled up & I had a fine view of the Prophetess, an easy “dip” away for a lusty swimmer. (Finbar emptied a vat over the side & I spied Autua’s black silhouette atop the mizzen, furling the fore-skysail lifts.)

I inquired after the origins & purpose of the marae & Mr. Wagstaff obliged, with brevity. “Just one generation ago, the Indians did their screaming & bloodletting & sacrificing to their false idols right on these stones where we’re standing.” My thoughts went back to the Banquet Beach on Chatham Isle. “The Christ Guards gives any Black who sets foot here now a hefty flogging. Or would do. The Native children don’t even know the names of the old idols no more. It’s all rats’ nests & rubble now. That’s what all beliefs turn to one day. Rats’ nests & rubble.”

Plumeria petals and scent enwrapped me.

My neighbor at the dinner table was Mrs. Derbyshire, a widow well into her sixth decade, as bitter & hard as green acorns. “I confess to a disrelish for Americans,” she told me. “They killed my treasured uncle Samuel, a colonel in His Majesty’s Artillery, in the War of 1812.” I gave my (unwanted) condolences, but added that notwithstanding my own treasured uncle was killed by Englishmen in the same conflict, some of my closest friends were Britons. The doctor laughed too loudly & ejaculated, “Hurrah, Ewing!”

Mrs. Horrox seized the rudder of conversation ere we ran onto reefs. “Your employers evince great faith in your talents, Mr. Ewing, to entrust you with business necessitating such a long & arduous voyage.” I replied that, yes, I was a senior enough notary to be entrusted with my present assignment, but a junior enough scrivener to be obligated to accept the same. Knowing clucks rewarded my humility.

After Preacher Horrox had said grace over the bowls of turtle soup & invoked God’s blessing on his new business venture with Cpt. Molyneux, he sermonized upon a much-beloved topic as we ate. “I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our Civilizing World, manifests himself not in the Miracles of the Biblical Age, but in Progress. It is Progress that leads Humanity up the ladder towards the Godhead. No Jacob’s Ladder this, no, but rather ‘Civilization’s Ladder,’ if you will. Highest of all the races on this ladder stands the Anglo-Saxon. The Latins are a rung or two below. Lower still are Asiatics—a hardworking race, none can deny, yet lacking our Aryan bravery. Sinologists insist they once aspired to greatness, but where is your yellow-hued Shakespeare, eh, or your almond-eyed da Vinci? Point made, point taken. Lower down, we have the Negro. Good-tempered ones may be trained to work profitably, though a rumbunctious one is the Devil incarnate! The American Indian, too, is capable of useful chores on the Californian barrios, is that not so, Mr. Ewing?”

I said ’tis so.

“Now, our Polynesian. The visitor to Tahiti, O-hawaii, or Bethlehem for that matter, will concur that the Pacific Islander may, with careful instruction, acquire the ‘A-B-C’ of literacy, numeracy & piety, thereby surpassing the Negroes to rival Asiatics in industriousness.”

Henry interrupted to note that the Maori have risen to the “D-E-F” of mercantilism, diplomacy & colonialism.

“Proves my point. Last, lowest & least come those ‘Irreclaimable Races,’ the Australian Aboriginals, Patagonians, various African peoples &c., just one rung up from the great apes & so obdurate to Progress that, like mastodons & mammoths, I am afraid a speedy ‘knocking off the ladder’—after their cousins, the Guanches, Canary Islanders & Tasmanians—is the kindest prospect.”

“You mean”—Cpt. Molyneux finished his soup—“extinction?”

“I do, Captain, I do. Nature’s Law & Progress move as one. Our own century shall witness humanity’s tribes fulfill those prophecies writ in their racial traits. The superior shall relegate the overpopulous savages to their natural numbers. Unpleasant scenes may ensue, but men of intellectual courage must not flinch. A glorious order shall follow, when all races shall know & aye, embrace, their place in God’s ladder of civilization. Bethlehem Bay offers a glimpse of the coming dawn.”

“Amen to that, Preacher,” replied Cpt. Molyneux. One Mr. Gosling (fiancé of Preacher Horrox’s eldest daughter) wrung his hands in oleaginous admiration. “If I dare be so bold, sir, it strikes me as almost . . . yes, a deprivation to let your theorem go unpublished, sir. ‘The Horrox Ladder of Civilization’ would set the Royal Society alight!”

Preacher Horrox said, “No, Mr. Gosling, my work is here. The Pacific must find itself another Descartes, another Cuvier.”

“Wise of you, Preacher”—Henry clapped a flying insect & examined its remains—“to keep your theory to yourself.”

Our host could not conceal his irritation. “How so?”

“Why, under scrutiny it is obvious a ‘theorem’ is redundant when a simple law suffices.”

“What law would that be, sir?”

“The first of ‘Goose’s Two Laws of Survival.’ It runs thus, ‘The weak are meat the strong do eat.’ ”

“But your ‘simple law’ is blind to the fundamental mystery, ‘Why do White races hold dominion over the world?’ ”

Henry chuckled & loaded an imaginary musket, aimed down its barrel, narrowed his eye, then startled the company with a “Bang! Bang! Bang! See? Got him before he blew his blowpipe!”

Mrs. Derbyshire uttered a dismayed “Oh!”

Henry shrugged. “Where is the fundamental mystery?”

Preacher Horrox had lost his good humour. “Your implication is that White races rule the globe not by divine grace but by the musket? But such an assertion is merely the same mystery dressed up in borrowed clothes! How is it that the musket came to the White man & not, say, the Esquimeau or the Pygmy, if not by august will of the Almighty?”

Henry obliged. “Our weaponry was not dropped onto our laps one morning. It is not manna from Sinai’s skies. Since Agincourt, the White man has refined & evolved the gunpowder sciences until our modern armies may field muskets by the tens of thousands! ‘Aha!’ you will ask, yes, ‘But why us Aryans? Why not the Unipeds of Ur or the Mandrakes of Mauritius?’ Because, Preacher, of all the world’s races, our love—or rather our rapacity—for treasure, gold, spices & dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity, yes, powers our Progress; for ends infernal or divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my Maker cast me on the winning side.”

Henry’s forthrightness was misconstrued as incivility & Preacher Horrox, the Napoleon of his equatorial Elba, was pinkening with indignation. I complimented our hostess’s soup (though in truth my craving for vermicide makes it difficult to ingest any but the plainest fare) & asked if the turtles were caught on nearby beaches or imported from afar.

Later, lying abed in the muggy darkness, eavesdropped by geckos, Henry confided that the day’s surgery had been “a parade of hysterical sun-baked women who need no medicine but hosiers, milliners, bonnet makers, perfumeries & sundry trappings of their sex!” His “consultations,” he elaborated, were one part medicine, nine parts tittle-tattle. “They swear their husbands are tupping the Native women & live in mortal fear they’ll catch ‘something.’ Handkerchiefs aired in rotation.”

His confidences made me uneasy & I ventured that Henry might practice a little reserve when disagreeing with our host. “Dearest Adam, I was practicing reserve, & more than a little! I longed to shout this at the old fool:—‘Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the darker races to their graves in order to take their land & its riches? Wolves don’t sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! “Intellectual courage”? True “intellectual courage” is to dispense with these fig leaves & admit all peoples are predatory, but White predators, with our deadly duet of disease dust & firearms, are examplars of predacity par excellence, & what of it?’ ”

It upsets me that a dedicated healer & gentle Christian can succumb to such cynicism. I asked to hear Goose’s Second Law of Survival. Henry grinned in the dark & cleared his throat. “The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That’s it.” He began snoring soon after, but my Worm kept me awake until the stars began weakening. Geckos fed & padded softly over my sheet.

Dawn was sweating & scarlet as passionfruit. Male & female Natives alike drudged up “Main Street” to the church plantations atop the hill, where they worked until the afternoon heat was intolerable. Before the skiff came to take Henry & me back to the Prophetess, I went to watch the workers plucking weeds from the copra. Peradventure it fell to young Mr. Wagstaff to be their overseer this morning & he had a Native boy bring us cocoa-nut milk. I withheld from asking after his family & he did not mention them. He carries a whip, “but I rarely employ it myself, that’s what the Guard of Christ the King are for. I just watch the watchers,” he said.

Three of these dignitaries watched their fellows, leading hymns (“land shanties”) & reprimanding slackers. Mr. Wagstaff was less inclined to conversation than yesterday & let my pleasantries lapse into silence broken only by sounds of the jungle & laborers. “You’re thinking, aren’t you, that we’ve made slaves out of free peoples?”

I avoided the question by saying Mr. Horrox had explained their labors paid for the benefits of Progress brought by the Mission. Mr. Wagstaff did not hear me. “There exists a tribe of ants called the slave maker. These insects raid the colonies of common ants, steal eggs back to their own nests & after they hatch, why, the stolen slaves become workers of the greater empire & never even dream they were once stolen. Now if you ask me, Lord Jehovah crafted these ants as a model, Mr. Ewing.” Mr. Wagstaff’s gaze was gravid with the ancient future. “For them with the eyes to see it.”

People of shifting character unnerve me & Mr. Wagstaff was one such. I made my excuses & proceeded to my next port of call, viz., the schoolroom. Here, infant Nazarenes of both hues study Scripture, arithmetic, and their ABC’s. Mrs. Derbyshire teaches the boys & Mrs. Horrox the girls. In the afternoon the White children have an additional three hours’ tutelage in a curriculum appropriate to their station (though Daniel Wagstaff for one appears immune to his educators’ wiles), while their darker playmates join their parents in the fields before the daily vespers.

A short revue was staged in my honor. Ten girls, five White, five Black, recited a Holy Commandment apiece. Then I was treated to “O! Home Where Thou Art Loved the Best” accompanied by Mrs. Horrox on an upright piano whose past was more glorious than its present. The girls were then invited to ask the visitor questions, but only White misses raised their hands. “Sir, do you know George Washington?” (Alas, no.) “How many horses pull your carriage?” (My father-in-law keeps four, but I prefer to ride a single mount.) The littlest asked of me, “Do ants get headaches?” (Had her classmates’ titters not reduced my interrogator to tears, I should be standing there pondering this question still.) I told the students to live by the Bible & obey their elders, then took my leave. Mrs. Horrox told me departees were once presented with a garland of plumeria, but the Mission elders deemed garlands immoral. “If we allow garlands today, it will be dancing tomorrow. If there is dancing tomorrow . . .” She shuddered.

’Tis a pity.

By noon the men had loaded the cargo & the Prophetess was kedging out of the bay against unfavorable winds. Henry & I have retired to the mess room to avoid the spray & oaths. My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled “True History of Autua, Last Moriori” & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what:—“Streams of blood”? “Themes of mud”? “Robin Hood”?

I recall the crimes Mr. Melville imputes to Pacific missionaries in his recent account of the Typee. As with cooks, doctors, notaries, clergymen, captains & kings, might evangelists also not be some good, some bad? Maybe the Indians of the Societies & the Chathams would be happiest “undiscovered,” but to say so is to cry for the moon. Should we not applaud Mr. Horrox’s & his brethren’s efforts to assist the Indian’s climb up “Civilization’s Ladder”? Is not ascent their sole salvation?

I know not the answer, nor whence flew the surety of my younger years.

During my night at the Horroxes’ Parsonage, a burglar broke into my coffin & when the reprobate could not locate my jackwood trunk’s key (I wear it around my neck), he attempted to force the lock. Had he succeeded, Mr. Busby’s deeds & documents would now be fodder for sea horses. How I wish our captain was cut from trustworthy Cpt. Beale’s cloth! I dare not give Cpt. Molyneux custody of my valuables & Henry warned me against “stirring the hornets’ nest” by raising the attempted crime with Mr. Boerhaave, lest an investigation spur every thief aboard to try his luck whenever my back is turned. I suppose he is right.

Monday, 16th December—

Today at noon the sun was vertical & that customary humbuggery known as “Crossing the Line” was let loose, by which “Virgins” (those crewmen crossing the equator for the first time) endure various hazings & duckings, as thought fit by those Tars conducting ceremonies. The sensible Cpt. Beale did not waste time on this during my Australia-bound voyage, but the seamen of the Prophetess were not to be denied their fun. (I considered all notions of “fun” to be an anathema to Mr. Boerhaave, until I saw what cruelties these “amusements” entailed.) Finbar warned us the two “Virgins” were Rafael & Bentnail. The latter has been at sea for two years but sailed only the Sydney-Cape Town run.

During the dogwatch the men slung an awning over the foredeck & assembled around the capstan, where “King Neptune” (Pocock, dressed in absurd robe with a squilgee wig) was holding court. The Virgins were tied to the catheads like a pair of Saint Sebastians. “Sawbone & Mr. Quillcock!” cried Pocock upon seeing Henry & me. “Art thou come to rescue our virgin sisters from my scabdragon?” Pocock danced with a marlinespike in a vulgar fashion & the seamen clapped with lickerish laughter. Henry, laughing, retorted that he preferred his virgins without beards. Pocock’s riposte on maidens’ beards is too obscene to record.

His Barnacled Majesty turned back to his victims. “Bentnail of Cape Town, Riff-the-Raff of Convict-town, be you ready to enter the Order of the Sons of Neptune?” Rafael, his boyish spirits restored in part by the anticks, responded with a brisk, “Aye, Your Lordship!” Bentnail gave a surly nod. Neptune roared, “Naaaaaay! Not till we shave those d——d scales off you sogerers! Bring me the shaving cream!” Torgny hurried up with a pail of tar, which he applied to the prisoners’ faces with a brush. Next, Guernsey appeared, dressed as Queen Amphitrite & removed the tar with a razor. The Cape man howled curses, which caused much merriment & not a few “slips” of the razor. Rafael had the sound sense to bear his ordeal in silence. “Better, better,” growled Neptune, before yelling, “Blindfold ’em both & shew Young Riff into my courtroom!”

This “courtroom” was a barrel of salt water into which Rafael was plunged headfirst while the men chanted to twenty, after which Neptune commanded his “courtiers” to “fish out my newest citizen!” His blindfold was removed & the boy leant against the bulwarks to recover from his hazing.

Bentnail acquiesced less willingly, yelling, “Unhand me you sons of w——s!” King Neptune rolled his eyes in horror. “That stinking mouth needs forty o’ the best in the brine, boys, or me eyes ain’t mates!” On the count of forty, the Afrikaner was raised, baying, “I’ll kill every last one of you sons of sows, I swear I will I—” To general hilarity, he was submerged for another forty. When Neptune declared his sentence served, he could do nothing but choke & retch feebly. Mr. Boerhaave now ended the skylarking & the newest Sons of Neptune cleaned their faces with oakum & a bar of toilet soap.

Finbar was still chuckling at dinner. Cruelty has never made me smile.

Wednesday, 18th December—

Scaly seas, barely a breath of wind, therm. remains about 90º. The crew have washed their hammocks & triced them up to dry. My headaches commence earlier daily & Henry has once more increased my dosage of vermicide. I pray his supply will not be depleted ere we drop anchor in O-hawaii, for the pain unameliorated would shatter my skull. Elsewhere my doctor is kept busy by much erysipelas & bilious cholera on the Prophetess.

This afternoon’s fitful siesta was cut short by clamor, so I went on deck & there found a young shark being baited & hoisted aboard. It writhed in its own brilliant ruby juices for a considerable time before Guernsey declared it well & truly dead. Its mouth & eyes called to mind Tilda’s mother. Finbar butchered its carcass on deck & could not altogether ruin its succulence in his galley (a woody scrod fish). The more superstitious sailors spurned this treat, reasoning sharks are known to eat men, thus to eat shark flesh is cannibalism by proxy. Mr. Sykes spent a profitable afternoon making sandpaper from the hide of the great fish.

Friday, 20th December—

Can it be that the cockroaches grow fat on me as I sleep? This morning one woke me by crawling over my face & attempting to feed from my nostril. Truly, it was six inches long! I was possessed of a violent urge to kill the giant bug, but in my cramped, gloomy cabin it had the advantage. I complained to Finbar, who urged me to pay a dollar for a specially trained “roach rat.” Later, doubtless, he will want to sell me a “rat cat” to subdue the roach rat, then I will need a cat hound & who knows where it will all end?

Sunday, 22nd December—

Hot, so hot, I melt & itch & blister. This morn I awoke to the laments of fallen angels. I listened in my coffin, as moments unfolded into minutes, wondering what new devilry my Worm was working, until I made out a booming cry from above:—“There she blows!” I uncovered my porthole, but the hour was too dim to see clearly, so despite my weakness I forced myself up the companionway. “There, sir, there!” Rafael steadied me by my waist with one hand as he pointed with the other. I gripped the handrail tight, for my legs are unsteady now. The boy kept pointing. “There! Ain’t they a marvel, sir?” By the crepuscular light I beheld a spume, only thirty feet from the starboard prow. “Pod o’ six!” shouted Autua, from aloft. I heard the Cetaceans’ breathing, then felt the droplets of spume shower upon us! I agreed with the boy, they make a sublime sight indeed. One heaved itself up, down & beneath the waves. The flukes of the fish stood in silhouette against the rose-licked east. “More’s the pity we ain’t a spouter, I says,” commented Newfie. “Must be a hundred barrels o’ spermaceti in the big un alone!” Pocock snapped. “Not I! I shipped on a spouter once, the cap’n was the blackest brute you’ve ever seen, them three years make Prophetess seem a Sunday pleasure punt!”

I am back in my coffin, resting. We are passing through a great nursery of humpbacks. The cry “There she blows!” is heard so often that none now bother to watch. My lips are baked & peeled.

The color of monotony is blue.

Christmas Eve—

A gale & heavy seas & ship rolling much. My finger is so swollen, Henry had to cut off my wedding band lest it prevent circulation & cause the onset of dropsy. Losing this symbol of my union with Tilda depressed my spirits beyond all measure. Henry berates me for being a “silly puffin” & insists my wife would set my health above a fortnight without a metal loop. The band is in my doctor’s safekeeping, for he knows a Spanish goldsmith in Honolulu who will repair it for a reasonable price.

Christmas Day—

Long swells left by yesterday’s gale. At dawn the waves looked like mountain ranges tipped with gold as sunbeams slanted low under burgundy clouds. I rallied all my strength to reach the mess room where Mr. Sykes & Mr. Green had accepted Henry’s & my invitation to our private Christmas Meal. Finbar served a less noxious dinner than is his wont, of “lobscouse” (salt beef, cabbage, yam & onion), so I was able to stomach most of it, until later. The plum duff had never seen a plum. Cpt. Molyneux sent word to Mr. Green that the men’s grog ration was doubled, so by the afternoon watch the seamen were flown. A regular saturnalia. A quantity of small beer was poured down a luckless Diana monkey, who capped its crapulous mummery by jumping overboard. I retired to Henry’s cabin & together we read the second chapter of Matthew.

The dinner wrought havoc on my digestion & necessitated frequent visits to the head. On my last visit, Rafael was waiting outside. I apologized for delaying him, but the boy said, no, he had contrived this meeting. He confessed he was troubled & posed me this question: “God lets you in, doesn’t he, if you’re sorry . . . no matter what you do, he don’t send you to . . . y’know”—here the ’prentice mumbled—“hell?”

I own, my mind was more on digestion than on theology & I blurted out that Rafael could hardly have notched up a mortal portfolio of sin in his few years. The storm lantern swung & I saw misery distort my young brave’s face. Regretting my levity, I affirmed the Almighty’s mercy is indeed infinite, that “joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety & nine just persons, which need no repentance.” Did Rafael wish to confide in me, I asked, be it as a friend, or a fellow orphan, or a relative stranger? I told him I had noticed how downcast he seemed of late & lamented how altered was that blithe boy who had stepped aboard in Sydney, so eager to see the wide world. Ere he framed his reply, however, an attack of laxity obliged me to return to the head. When I emerged, Rafael was gone. I shall not press the matter. The boy knows where he can find me.

Later—

Seven bells of the first watch were just smote. My Worm pains my head as if the clapper strikes my skull. (Do ants get headaches? I gladly should be turned into an ant to be freed from these agonies.) How Henry & others sleep through this din of debauchery & blasphemous caroling I know not, but keenly I envy them.

I snuffed some vermicide, but it no longer brings elation. It merely helps me feel halfway ordinary. Then I took a turn about the decks, but the Star of David was obscured by thick clouds. A few sober shouts aloft (Autua’s amongst them) & Mr. Green at the wheel assured me that not all the crew were “sixteen sheets to the wind.” Empty bottles rolled from port to starboard & back with the swell. I stumbled upon an insensible Rafael curled around the windlass, his corrupted hand gripping his empty pewter. His bare young chest was bespattered by ocherous smearages. That the boy had found his solace in drink instead of his friend-in-Christ made my own spirits glummer.

“Guilty thoughts disturbing your rest, Mr. Ewing?” spoke a succubus at my shoulder & I dropped my pipe. It was Boerhaave. I assured the Hollander that while my conscience was quite untroubled I doubted he could claim as much. Boerhaave spat overboard, smiling. Had fangs & horns sprouted I should have felt no surprise. He slung Rafael over his shoulder, slapped the sleeping ’prentice’s buttocks & carried his somnolent burden to the after-hatch, to keep him out of harm’s way, I trust.

Boxing Day—

Yesterday’s entry sentences me to a prison of remorse for the rest of my days. How perversely it reads, how flippant I was! Oh, I am sick to write these words. Rafael has hanged himself. Hanged, by means of a noose slung over the mainmast lower yardarm. He ascended his gallows between the end of his watch & first bell. Fate decreed I should be amongst his discoverers. I was leaning over the bulwark, for the Worm causes bouts of nausea as it is expelled. In the blue half-light I heard a cry & saw Mr. Roderick gazing heavenward. Confusion twisted his face; succeeded by disbelief; folding in grief. His lips formed a word, yet no word issued. He pointed to that he could not name.

There swung a body, a gray form brushing the canvas. Noise erupted from all quarters, but who was shouting what to whom I cannot recall. Rafael, hanged, steady as a plumb lead as the Prophetess pitched & rolled. That amiable boy, lifeless as a sheep on a butcher’s hook! Autua had scrambled aloft, but all he could do was lower the boy down gently. I heard Guernsey mutter, “Should never o’ sailed on Friday, Friday’s the Jonah.”

My mind burns with the question, Why? None will discuss it, but Henry, who is as horrified as myself, told me that, secretly, Bentnail had intimated to him that the unnatural crimes of Sodom were visited upon the boy by Boerhaave & his “garter snakes.” Not just on Christmas night, but every night for many weeks.

My duty is to follow this dark river to its source & impose justice on the miscreants but, Lord, I can scarce sit up to feed myself! Henry says I cannot flagellate myself whene’er innocence falls prey to savagery, but how can I let this be? Rafael was Jackson’s age. I feel such impotence, I cannot bear it.

Friday, 27th December—

Whilst Henry was called away to attend an injury, I hauled myself to Cpt. Molyneux’s cabin to speak my mind. He was displeazed at being visited, but I would not quit his quarters until my charge was stated, to wit, Boerhaave’s pack had tormented Rafael with nightly bestiality until the boy, seeing no possibility of reprieve or relief, took his life. Finally, the captain asked, “You do, of course, have evidence for this crime? A suicide letter? Signed testimonials?” Every man aboard knew I spoke the truth! The captain could not be insensible of Boerhaave’s brutality! I demanded an inquiry into the first mate’s part in Rafael’s self-slaughter.

“Demand all you wish, Mr. Quillcock!” Cpt. Molyneux shouted. “I decide who sails Prophetess, who maintains discipline, who trains the ’prentices, not a d——d pen pusher, not his d——d ravings & by God’s Blood not any d——d ‘inquiry’! Get out, sir, & blast you!”

I did so & immediately collided with Boerhaave. I asked him if he was going to lock me up in his cabin with his garter snakes, then hope I‘d hang myself before dawn? He showed his fangs and in a voice laden with venom and hatred, issued this warning: “The stink of decay is on you, Quillcock, no man of mine would touch you lest he contract it. You’ll die soon of your ‘low fever.’ ”

Notaries of the United States, I had the wit to warn him, do not vanish as conveniently as colonial cabin boys. I believe he entertained the notion of strangling me. But I am too sickly to be afraid of a Dutch sodomite.

Later—

Doubt besieges my conscience & complicity is its charge. Did I give Rafael the permission he sought to commit self-slaughter? Had I divined his misery when last he spoke to me, interpreted his intention & replied, “No, Rafael, the Lord cannot forgive a planned suicide, for repentance cannot be true if it occurs before the crime,” the boy may yet be drawing breath. Henry insists I could not have known, but for once his words ring hollow to my ears. Oh, did I send that poor Innocent to Hell?

Saturday, 28th December—

A magic-lantern show in my mind has the boy taking the rope, ascending the mast, knotting his noose, steadying himself, addressing his Maker, launching himself into vacancy. As he rushed through the black, did he feel serenity or dread? The snap of his neck.

Had I but known! I could have helped the child jump ship, deflect his destiny as the Channings did mine, or help him understand that no state of tyranny reigns forever.

The Prophetess has every inch of canvas aloft & is “sailing like a witch” (not for any benefit of mine, but because the cargo is rotting) & makes over 3º of latitude daily. I am terribly sick now & confined to my coffin. I suppose Boerhaave believes I am hiding from him. He is deceived, for the righteous vengeance I wish to visit upon his head is one of the few flames unextinguished by this dreadful torpor. Henry beseeches me write my journal to occupy my brain, but my pen grows unwieldy & heavy. We make Honolulu in three days. My loyal doctor promises to accompany me ashore, spare no expense to obtain powerful paregorics & remain at my bedside until my recovery is compleat, even if the Prophetess must leave for California without us. God bless this best of men. I can write no more today.

Sunday, 29th December—

I fare most ill.

Monday, 30th December—

The Worm is recrudescent. Its poison sacs have burst. I am racked with pain & bedsores & a dreadful thirst. Oahu is still two or three days to the north. Death is hours away. I cannot drink & do not recall when I ate last. I made Henry promise to deliver this journal to Bedford’s in Honolulu. From there it will reach my bereaved family. He swears I shall deliver it on my own two feet, but my hopes are blasted. Henry has done his valiant best, but my parasite is too virulent & I must entrust my soul to its Maker.

Jackson, when you are a grown man do not permit your profession to sunder you from loved ones. During my months away from home, I thought of you & your mother with constant fondness & should it come to pass [. . .]*

Sunday, 12th January—

The temptation to begin at the perfidious end is strong, but this diarist shall remain true to chronology. On New Year’s Day, my head pains were rolling so thunderously I was taking Goose’s medicine every hour. I could not stand against the ship’s roll, so I stayed abed in my coffin, vomiting into a sack though my guts were vacant & shivering with an icy, scalding fever. My Ailment could no longer be concealed from the crew & my coffin was placed under quarantine. Goose had told Cpt. Molyneux that my Parasite was contagious, thereby appearing the very paragon of selfless courage. (The complicity of Cpt. Molyneux & Boerhaave in the subsequent malfeasance cannot be proven or disproven. Boerhaave wished evil on me, but I am forced to admit it unlikely he was party to the crime described below.)

I recall surfacing from feverish shallows. Goose was an inch away. His voice sank to a loving whisper. “Dearest Ewing, your Worm is in its death throes & expelling every last drop of its poison! You must drink this purgative to expel its calcified remains. It will send you to sleep, but when you awake, the Worm that has so tormented you shall be out! The end of your suffering is at hand. Open your mouth, one last time, handsomely does it, dearest of fellows . . . here, ’tis bitter & foul a flavor, it’s the myrrh, but down with it, for Tilda & Jackson . . .”

A glass touched my lips & Goose’s hand cradled my head. I tried to thank him. The potion tasted of bilgewater & almond. Goose raised my head & stroked my Adam’s apple until I swallowed the liquid. Time passed, I know not how long. The creaking of my bones & the ship’s timbers were one.

Somebody knocked. Light softened my coffin’s darkness & I heard Goose’s voice from the corridor. “Yes, much, much better, Mr. Green! Yes, the worst is over. I was very worried, I confess, but Mr. Ewing’s color is returning & his pulse strong. Only one hour? Excellent news. No, no, he’s asleep now. Tell the captain we’ll be going ashore tonight—if he could send word to arrange lodgings, I know Mr. Ewing’s father-in-law will remember the kindness.”

Goose’s face floated into my vision again. “Adam?”

Another fist knocked at the door. Goose uttered an oath & swam away. I could no longer move my head but heard Autua demanding, “I see Missa Ewing!” Goose bade him begone, but the tenacious Indian was not to be faced down so easily. “No! Missa Green say he better! Missa Ewing save my life! He my duty!” Goose then told Autua this:—that I saw in Autua a carrier of disease & a rogue planning to exploit my present infirmity to rob me even of the buttons from my waistcoat. I had begged Goose, so he claimed, to “keep that d——d nigger away from me!” adding that I regretted ever saving his worthless neck. With that, Goose slammed & bolted my coffin door.

Why had Goose lied so? Why was he so determined no one else should see me? The answer raised the latch on a door of deception & an horrific truth kicked that same door in. To wit, the doctor was a poisoner & I his prey. Since the commencement of my “Treatment,” the doctor had been killing me by degrees with his “cure.”

My Worm? A fiction, implanted by the doctor’s power of suggestion! Goose, a doctor? No, an itinerant, murdering confidence trickster!

I fought to rise, but the evil liquid my succubus had lately fed me had enfeebled my limbs so wholly I could not so much as twitch my extremities. I tried to shout for aid, but my lungs did not inflate. I heard Autua’s footsteps retreat up the companionway & prayed for God to guide him back, but his intentions were otherwise. Goose clambered up the hawser to my bunk. He saw my eyes. Seeing my fear, the demon removed his mask.

“What’s that you’re saying, Ewing? How shall I comprehend if you drool & dribble so?” I emitted a frail whine. “Let me guess what you’re trying to tell me—‘Oh, Henry, we were friends, Henry, how could you do this to me?’ [He mimicked my hoarse, dying whisper.] Am I on the nose?” Goose cut the key from my neck & spoke as he worked at uncovering my trunk. “Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren’t sacred beings crafted in the Almighty’s image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit.” He mimicked my usual voice, very well. “ ‘But why me, Henry, are we not friends?’ Well, Adam, even friends are made of meat. ’Tis absurdly simple. I need money & in your trunk, I am told, is an entire estate, so I have killed you for it. Where is the mystery? ‘But, Henry, this is wicked!’ But, Adam, the world is wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. ‘The weak are meat, the strong do eat.’ ”

Goose checked my eyes for sentience & kissed my lips. “Your turn to be eaten, dear Adam. You were no more gullible than any other of my patrons.” My trunk lid swung open. Goose counted through my pocketbook, sneered, found the emerald from von Weiss & examined it through an eyepiece. He was unimpressed. The fiend untied the bundles of documents relating to the Busby estate & tore open the sealed envelopes in search of banknotes. I heard him count my modest supply. He tapped my trunk for secret compartments, but he found none, for there are none. Lastly, he snipped the buttons from my waistcoat.

Goose addressed me through my delirium, as one might address an unsatisfactory tool. “Frankly, I am disappointed. I have known Irish navvies with more pounds to their name. Your cache scarcely covers my arsenick & opiate. If Mrs. Horrox had not donated her hoard of black pearls to my worthy cause, poor Goose’s goose would be basted & cooked! Well, it is time for us to part. You will be dead within the hour & for me, ’tis hey, ho! for the open road.”

My next cogent remembrance is of drowning in salt water so bright it hurt. Had Boerhaave found my body & thrown me overboard to ensure my silence & avoid tiresome procedures with the American consul? My mind was still active & as such might yet exercise some say in my destiny. Consent to drown, or attempt to swim? Drowning was by far the least troublesome option, so I cast about for a dying thought & settled on Tilda, waving off the Belle-Hoxie from Silvaplana Wharf so many months before with Jackson shouting, “Papa! Bring me back a kangaroo’s paw!”

The thought of never more seeing them was so distressing, I elected to swim & found myself not in the sea but curled on deck, vomiting profusely & trembling violently with fever, aches, cramps, pinches. Autua was holding me (he had forced a bucketful of brine down me to “flush out” the poison). I retched & retched. Boerhaave shoved his way through the crowd of onlooking stevedores & seamen, snarling, “I told you once, nigger, that Yankee’s no concern of yours! & if a direct order won’t convince you—” Though the sun half-blinded me, I saw the first mate land one brutal kick in Autua’s ribs & launch another. Autua gripped the atrabilious Hollander’s shin in one firm hand whilst he gently lowered my head to the deck and rose up to his full height, taking his assailant’s leg with him, robbing Boerhaave of his balance. The Dutchman fell on his head with a leonine roar. Autua now seized the other foot & slung our first mate over the bulwarks like a sack of cabbages.

Whether the crewmen were too fearful, astonished, or delighted to offer any resistance, I shall never know, but Autua carried me down a gangplank on the dockside unmolested. My reason informed me that Boerhaave could not be in heaven nor Autua in hell so we must be in Honolulu. From the harbor we passed down a thoroughfare bustling with innumerable tongues, hues, creeds & odors. My eyes met a Chinaman’s as he rested beneath a carved dragon. A pair of women whose paint & tournure advertised their ancient calling peered at me & crossed themselves. I tried to tell them I was not yet dead, but they were gone. Autua’s heart beat against my side, encouraging my own. Thrice he asked of strangers, “Where doctor, friend?” Thrice he was ignored (one answered, “No medicine for stinking Blacks!”) before an old fish seller grunted directions to a sick house. I was parted from my senses for a time, before hearing the word Infirmary. Merely entering its fetid air, laden with ordure & decomposition, caused me to retch anew, notwithstanding my stomach was empty as a discarded glove. The buzzing of bluebottles hovered & a madman howled about Jesus adrift on the Sargasso Sea. Autua muttered to himself in his own tongue. “Patience more, Mr. Ewing—this place smell death—I take you to Sisters.”

How Autua’s Sisters might have strayed so far from Chatham Isle was a puzzle I could not begin to solve, but I entrusted myself to his care. He quitted that charnel house & soon the taverns, dwellings, and warehouses thinned before giving way to sugar plantations. I knew I should ask, or warn, Autua about Goose, but speech was yet beyond my powers. Nauseous slumber tightened then loosened its grip on me. A distinct hill rose up & its name stirred in memory’s sediment:—Diamond Head. The road hither was rocks, dust & holes, walled on both sides with unyielding vegetation. Autua’s stride broke only once, to cup cool stream water to my lips, until we arrived at a Catholick mission, beyond the final fields. A nun tried to “shoo” us away with a broom, but Autua enjoined her, in Spanish as broken as his English, to grant his White charge sanctuary. Finally, one sister who evidently knew Autua arrived & persuaded the others that the savage was on a mission not of malice but of mercy.

By the third day I could sit up, feed myself, thank my guardian angels & Autua, the last free Moriori in this world, for my deliverance. Autua insists that had I not prevented him from being tossed overboard as a stowaway he could not have saved me & so, in a sense, it is not Autua who has preserved my life but myself. Be that as it may, no nursemaid ever ministered as tenderly as rope-roughened Autua has to my sundry needs these last ten days. Sister Véronique (of the broom) jests that my friend should be ordained & appointed hospital director.

Mentioning neither Henry Goose (or the poisoner who assumed that name) nor the saltwater bath which Autua gave Boerhaave, Cpt. Molyneux forwarded my effects via Bedford’s agent, doubtless with one eye on the mischief my father-in-law may inflict on his future as a trader operating from San Francisco. Molyneux’s other eye is on disassociating his reputation from that now-notorious murderer known as the Arsenick Goose. The devil has not yet been apprehended by the Port Constabulary nor, I suspect, shall that day ever come. In Honolulu’s lawless hive, where vessels of all flags & nations arrive & depart daily, a man may change his name & history between entrée & dessert.

I am exhausted & must rest. Today is my thirty-fourth birthday.

I remain thankful to God for all his mercies.

Monday, 13th January—

Sitting under the candlenut tree in the courtyard is pleasant in the afternoon. Laced shadows, frangipani & coral hibiscus ward away the memory of recent evil. The sisters go about their duties, Sister Martinique tends her vegetables, the cats enact their feline comedies & tragedies. I am making acquaintances amongst the local avifauna. The palila has a head & tail of burnished gold, the ākohekohe is a handsome crested honeycreeper.

Over the wall is a poorhouse for foundlings, also administered by the sisters. I hear the children chanting their classes (just as my schoolmates and I used to before Mr. & Mrs. Channing’s philanthropy elevated my prospects). After their studies are done, the children conduct their play in a beguiling babel. Sometimes, the more daring of their number brave the nuns’ displeasure by scaling the wall & conduct a grand tour above the hospice garden by means of the candlenut’s obliging branches. If the “coast is clear,” the pioneers beckon their more timid playmates onto this human aviary & white faces, brown faces, kanáka faces, Chinese faces, mulatto faces appear in the arboreal overworld. Some are Rafael’s age & when I remember him a bile of remorse rises in my throat, but the orphans grin down at me, imitate monkeys, poke out their tongues, or try to drop kukui nuts into the mouths of snoring convalescents & do not let me stay mournful for very long. They beg me for a cent or two. I toss up a coin for dextrous fingers to pluck, unerringly, from the air.

My recent adventures have made me quite the philosopher, especially at night, when I hear naught but the stream grinding boulders into pebbles through an unhurried eternity. My thoughts flow thus. Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes.

What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.

What precipitates acts? Belief.

Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind’s mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history’s Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the “natural” (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?

Why? Because of this:—one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

Is this the doom written within our nature?

If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen or a vainglorious general’s sword.

A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living. Upon my return to San Francisco, I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere.

I hear my father-in-law’s response: “Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don’t tell me about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell ’em their imperial slaves’ rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium’s! Oh, you’ll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You’ll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!”

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?