Cloud Atlas

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 kanakas 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 capitan 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