From The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2024), Kindle pp. 3-4:
On the night the ships appeared, some fishermen were out on the ocean, working by torchlight. One of them, a man named Mapua, was bewildered by what he saw: An enormous silhouette approached, rising high above the surf, fire burning at its top. It had holes on its side, Mapua noticed, and a long spear in front like the sharp nose of a swordfish. Then a second creature appeared, much like the first. Mapua had no idea what they were, but he was sure they were something malevolent.
Mapua and his fellow fishermen paddled hurriedly to shore. According to oral accounts assembled by the Hawaiian historian Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau, they were “trembling and frightened by this wonderful apparition.” When they reached the village, Mapua immediately informed the high chief, Kaeo, about this strange and disturbing sight.
By the next morning the two leviathans had drawn closer to shore. What were they? Where had they come from? What did they want? An onlooker, thoroughly astonished by them, is said to have wondered, “What are those branching things?” (Probably the ships’ masts, sprits, and spars.) Another replied, “They are trees moving about on the sea.”
No, the local priest countered, they were the floating heiaus, or temples, of the gods. “This is not an ordinary thing,” the kāhuna insisted. He said the branches must be steps reaching toward heaven.
As the vessels moved still closer, wrote Kamakau, the villagers were captivated by this “marvelous monster,” and “great wonder came to the people.” A large crowd began to assemble on shore, “shouting with fear and confused thought.” Judging by the way the ships had appeared, silent and ghostly, the edges of their sails furling and fluttering, backing and filling, they seemed to some like giant stingrays that had emerged from the sea.
A few canoes were dispatched to investigate, and the brave paddlers crept just close enough to catch glimpses of humanlike creatures walking upon the decks of the ships. Never having seen tricorne hats before, they thought these strangers’ heads must be deformed. They mistook the odd, close-fitting uniforms for an epidermis. “Their skin is loose and folding,” one said. Unacquainted with pockets, the paddlers imagined they were little doors that opened into the men’s bodies. “Into these openings they thrust their hands, and take many valuable things—their bodies are full of treasure!”
As the ships edged closer to shore, the watching crowds on the beach grew larger and larger, the anticipation building to a frenzy. The people were full of fear and dread, but also a kind of rapture. They sensed something ominous was happening, that their island world was about to change forever.
“The harbor resounded with noise,” wrote Kamakau. “And louder grew the shouting.”
No comments:
Post a Comment