The Curse of Lono - By Hunter S. Thompson Page 0,39

hot dogs had been gnawed off by eels, but the hooks were otherwise clean. Not even a sea snake had taken our wrong-minded bait, and the water all around us was littered with floating debris: beer bottles, orange peels, plastic baggies and mangled tuna fish cans. About ten yards off the stern was an empty Wild Turkey bottle with a piece of paper inside.

Ackerman had tossed it over some time during the night, after finishing off the whiskey and stuffing the bottle with a sheet of Kona Inn stationery on which I had scrawled: "Beware. There ARE no fish." I thought it would be halfway to Guam by now, a warning to other fools who might try to fish in the Land of Po.

Captain Steve was staring glumly over the side of the boat at the anchor line. "All we have to do now," he said, "is haul up the anchor and get the hell out of this place." He shook his head and made a nervous whistling noise. "Let me tell you one thing for sure," he added, "we are lucky to be alive right now. That's the worst night I ever spent in my life." He pointed in the general direction of land, where the surf was still pounding and foaming against the rocks. "One shift in the wind," he said, "could have swung us around so fast that I couldn't even have got the engine started. We'd be driftwood by now."

He was still staring down at the anchor line. The other end of it, I knew, was tied securely around a rock far below, and we both understood what would have to be done. There was no way to haul it up, or to maneuver it loose with the boat. We would have to either chop the line and leave the anchor behind, or somebody would have to go down with a tank and untie the knot.

We stood there for a while on the fantail, staring down at the cold black water. Ackerman was out of the question, so it was either me or Captain Steve. He had gone down the night before, and I knew it was my turn now. That was fair. That was the rule of the sea, a true cornerstone of the macho way of life.

I zipped up my jacket and opened a beer. "How much do anchors cost?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Well. . . with ninety feet of line, at, say, about two dollars a foot. . ." He seemed to be adding it up very carefully in his mind.

"Yeah," he said finally. "Call it four hundred, maybe four fifty."

"That's cheap," I said, reaching for my belt knife. "I'll give you a check." I leaned out to grab the anchor line with my other hand, preparing to cut us loose. Nothing short of extreme physical violence could have got me in the water that morning.

Captain Steve stayed my hand before I could slash the line. "Wait a minute," he said. "I can't go back to the harbor with no anchor. They'd laugh me out of town."

"Fuck those people," I said. "They weren't on the boat last night."

He was strapping on the tanks.

I watched him go over the side and disappear.

It was 4 February, a fine, warm early morning. The natives of Kealakekua Bay were up early for the word had got about that the great ships were leaving. The shores on both sides, divided by that great black slab of cliff, were thick with dark bodies, some waving white cloths.

For Cook's men there was a strong measure of regret at parting after the contentment occasioned by this visit. For the Hawaiians, it had been a strange two and a half weeks, busy, emotional, traumatic even, like no other period in their lives or their history: an unpredicted divine descent upon the steady round of the seasons; an event of great satisfaction paid for at a great price.

By the early morning of 6 February they were at the northern extremity of a deep bay just south of the northern tip of Hawaii, Upolu Point. They had all but completed their clockwise circumnavigation of the island, in accordance with the legendary annual practice of Lono. Then it came on to blow very hard for 36 hours.

On 8 February, three years to the day -- almost to the hour -- since Cook had volunteered at the Admiralty to command this voyage, the Resolution's foremast split. . . They could not proceed in this condition,