The Curse of Lono - By Hunter S. Thompson Page 0,42

him and put a foot in the small of his back, and shoved him violently over the side.

Captain Steve grabbed wildly for a hand-hold, then disappeared into the sea. He came sputtering to the surface, still not completely awake, and clawing desperately at the slippery side of the boat.

Ackerman wanted to drag him in with a gaffing hook, but I restrained him.

After we hauled Captain Steve back aboard he sulked for a while in the cockpit, then climbed up to take the wheel. He eased the boat into the harbor, squatting darkly in his seat on the bridge and avoiding the eyes of the smiling Kanakas on the gasoline dock.

Nobody was there to meet us, but it didn't matter. We were warriors, returned from the Land of Po, and we had terrible stories to tell. But not in the harbor, or at the bar in the Kona Inn. Our tale was too grim.

Captain Steve was still hunkered down on the bridge when Ackerman and I finished off-loading our gear and prepared to leave. "Where're you guys going?" he called out. "To Huggo's?"

I shrugged, too weak and whipped to care where I was going, just as long as it was away from the sea. I felt like driving up the mountain to Waimea and applying for a job as a cowboy on the Parker Ranch. Get back to the land for a while, drink gin all night and run around naked with the menehunes.

But when I mentioned this to Ackerman he shook his head. "No," he said. "There's only one place for us now -- the City of Refuge."

THE BALCONY LIFE

It was time to leave. Ackerman's notion of fleeing to the City of Refuge had seemed like a good idea at the time, but the scene we found back at the compound on our return from South Point was too ugly to cure by anything as simple as a drive down the coast to some temple of ancient superstition where we may or may not have found refuge. Right, I thought, never mind that silly native bullshit. Where's a telephone? What we need now is a quick call to Aloha Airlines.

Ackerman agreed. We were both stunned by the chaos we saw when we turned the little VW convertible into the driveway. The same storm that had almost whipped us to death in the ocean off South Point the night before had moved north and was now pounding the KonaCoast with fifteen-foot waves and a blinding monsoon rain. On the way in from the Honokohau we'd seen cars and mopeds abandoned all along Alii Drive

, which was littered with driftwood and jagged black rocks. Huge waves were breaking over the highway at DisappearingBeach -- which had long since disappeared, once again -- and it took us almost two hours to get from the boat to the compound which was taking a serious surf.

Everyone noticed the profound change in the atmosphere in the bay, and the contrast with their first arrival. The waters were empty of canoes, the black lowering line of cliff revealed not a single spectator along its crest. Some of Cook's men were uneasy, others, as King observed, felt their vanity hurt that they were so disregarded. Just as they were concluding that the entire population had been evacuated or struck down by some plague, a single canoe put off and headed for the Discovery . Up the sloop's gangway there climbed a ferocious looking chief wearing a fine red-feathered cloak. He was the king's nephew, Kamehameha, whose appearance had so alarmed them three weeks earlier when he had introduced himself with Terreeoboo's two sons. . .

The sailmakers, carpenters and the marines, with King again in command, found no objection to their reinstalling themselves in the old field with their tents by the heiau. Bayly even got his clock and telescopes ashore with his tents. The priests seemed as friendly as before, and were ready to taboo the area again, and the carpenters were able to go about their special craft of cleaning out the mast's heel, dealing with the sprung fishes, shaping new ones from some hard toa wood they had providentially kept from Moorea.

On the following morning King Terreeoboo arrived in the bay as he had before, in great style and at a fine pace. At once the waters of the bay were un-tabooed, and suddenly it was almost as if nothing had changed since those days when there were always numberless canoes plying between shore and ships,