- Dr. John Whipple: [Addressing Abner, while holding Keoki's lifeless body, victim of the measles epidemic that has ravaged the native Hawaiians] There's nothing you could've done for him... When Captain Cook discovered these islands 50 years ago, they were a true paradise. Infectious disease was unknown. They didn't even catch cold! And there were 400,000 of them - now there are less than 150,000. You and I may well live to see the last Hawaiian lowered into his grave - with proper Christian services, of course.
- Abner Hale: I have been thinking lately, that our church is ready for a board of deacons. I'm willing to make you their head, Keoki. You would move among the Hawaiians, find out who is smoking, who has alcohol on his breath, who is sleeping with another man's wife - that sort of thing. Then each week, you will hand me a list, to be admonished from the pulpit.
- Keoki: I sought a way to serve my people... not to spy upon them.
- [turns and walks away]
- [reading from a proclamation to her subjects]
- Queen Malama: First law: In this place, everyone will serve God. Everyone will love Jesus.
- Abner Hale: Your mother will not be pleased that you have refused the deaconship.
- Keoki: My mother is dying.
- Abner Hale: Your mother is not dying, Keoki. I just talked with her. There is nothing wrong with her.
- Keoki: She will die... and then will come the whistling wind.
- Rev. Immanuel Quigley: I wish you would reconsider Brother Hale. You'll be alone here, no church, no support... no friends.
- Abner Hale: In this place I have known God, Jerusha Bromley and Ruth Malama Kanakoa. Beyond that, a man needs no friends.
- Charles Bromley: And this is my daughter, Miss Jerusha.
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Reverend Hale.
- [She extends her hand to greet him; he sneezes violently]
- Abner Hale: Oh dear. Did I spray?
- Charles Bromley: No, no, no, not at all.
- Abner Hale: We are taking the land of the people whose souls we came to save, while they are dying... The whole race is dying before our eyes!
- Rev. Immanuel Quigley: I'm afraid that is true. But the Lord's ways are not our ways. And the only answer that I can find is that perhaps, the Lord intends for these islands gradually to pass into other hands.
- Abner Hale: May God forgive you.
- Keoki: Instead of sending God's words, you sent adventurers to steal our lands. Pestilence to ravage our countrysides. Strong drink to defile the manhood of our sons. And devils in the shape of whalers to despoil our daughters and cast them aside like little wounded animals.
- Charles Bromley: All this mooning around over a damn sailor she hasn't heard from in almost two years - it's unnatural!
- Rev. Dr. Thorn: A wife! We must have a wife. We do not send young men to live among the native savages without wives!
- Rev. Dr. Thorn: I presume that like most of our young volunteers you are still confronted with the problem of finding a wife.
- Dr. John Whipple: Oh, no, sir. My cousin has agreed to marry me.
- Gideon Hale: Almighty God, look down with pity on this miserable company of sinners, conceived in lust, delivered in evil, enslaves to every loathsome appetite the flesh is err to. We have held fast against atheism, Romanism, Unitarianism, and a score of lesser evils, and we thank Thee that thou has chosen one of us to carry thy holy word and the precious light of John Calvin to the wicked and be benighted heathen of Hawaii.
- Abner Hale: I have always admired the character of Jerusha as set forth in holy scripture. I think, particularly on second Kings, 15:33. "Five and twenty years old was Jotham when he began to reign. And he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok." It's a lovely verse.
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: Yes. It's beautiful.
- Abner Hale: You wouldn't think of going to Hawaii with a man like me - or, would you?
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: Not if he wasn't my husband.
- Abner Hale: Oh! Goodness! I certainly didn't mean to imply that!
- Abigail Bromley: I think what you are doing is shameful. If she accepts that - that scrawny weed of a man, it'll be out of despair.
- Abner Hale: Skin is but flesh. Flesh is corruption incarnate!
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: The flesh was given to us by God, too.
- Abner Hale: As a burden. As a temptation. A temptation that you are to me, at this very moment.
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: That's one of the purposes of marriage, isn't it?
- Abner Hale: I'm utterly depraved! I think of nothing but your loveliness, Jerusha.
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: Is it possible for anything to seem lovely without God having wanted it so?
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: I felt so good after my bath, I brushed my skin with oil of lilac.
- Abner Hale: I smell it. Moses forbade the use of perfume!
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: Proverbs say that ointment and perfume rejoice the heart.
- Abner Hale: Isiah cursed the woman who used perfume...
- Queen Malama: [to Jerusha] I like you here. You stay Lahaina. She teach me write.
- Abner Hale: Ali'i nui, I'm not assigned to your island. My Mission is in Honolulu.
- Queen Malama: Where you go, I not care. *Her* stay here.
- Abner Hale: But, Mrs. Hale is my wife!
- Queen Malama: She your wife?
- Abner Hale: Yes.
- Queen Malama: I let you stay too.
- Keoki: She had to marry my father because he is her brother. The Ali'i nui may only have children by her brother.
- Queen Malama: Tell me, this god, how he look?
- Abner Hale: God is a spirit... He cannot be seen with the eyes. He is seen only in the heart of those that have found a state of grace.
- Queen Malama: In one month time, I find grace!
- Abner Hale: No, it cannot be done that way. To be saved, you must first confess that you are *evil*, corrupt and sinful.
- Queen Malama: I evil, corrupt, sinful. What is sinful? What it mean?
- Abner Hale: It means *bad*.
- Queen Malama: I bad? No! They're bad, not me. I am Ali'i nui. I cannot be bad.
- Abner Hale: If you don't give him up, he will *burn* throughout all eternity - in the blazing fires of everlasting hell.
- Queen Malama: How hot - dis hell?
- Abner Hale: Hotter than the fires of a thousand volcanos. It burns incessantly. It's pain is horrible, beyond imagining.
- Abner Hale: You have the sin of pride, Ali'i nui. To find grace, you must become humble.
- Queen Malama: Humble?
- Abner Hale: Humble...
- Queen Malama: Are you - humble? I think maybe you proud too.
- Abner Hale: You bear the responsibility for the degradations of your men.
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: I do.
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: Mr. Morris, Mr. Morris!
- [pointing out the native girls swimming towards his ship]
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: I'll have that one there. No, no, Mr. Morris, that one there. Mr. Morris, that one definitely there. Oh, what the hell, Mr. Morris, send the *all* to my cabin.
- Abner Hale: As God's instrument on earth, I order you to take your sailors back to your ship!
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: My men are *not* sailors, Reverend. They're whalers. And for over three years they've been on this voyage and they haven't touched land in eight months. Now, the females of Lahaina have got the warmest blood in the Pacific and my men have neither the strength, nor the inclination to fight them off. Neither, might I add, have I.
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: Refer, I'm married.
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: Married?
- [looks at Abner, back to Jerusha]
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: Oh, my God, not to him? What did he do? Pray you into bed?
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: Rape - is a rotten sport at any time. But, in Lahaina, it's a darn right waste of energy. Now, get out of here and find yourselves some cooperative ones.
- Kelolo: What kind adultery you not like too much?
- Abner Hale: What kind? There's only one kind of adultery - and it is a mortal sin.
- Kelolo: Got 23 kind of adultery go on in this place all the time. Marry man sleep with another marry wahini. That one kind. Marry man, he sleep with wife, his brother. That two kind. Marry man sleep with wife, his son. That's three kind...
- Queen Malama: Next law: no more will girls go to the ships. Next law: when the sun goes down, beneath the water, the sailors will go back to the ships. Next law: no more will the grog shops sell the rum to my people. Next law: There will be no more sleeping together in mischief, without getting married.
- Keoki: If we say there shall be no adultery without saying which kind, everyone would think, "They don't mean our kind of adultery. They mean the other 22 kinds." On the other hand, if we list all 23 kinds, somebody will surely say, "We never heard that kind before. Let's try it!"
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: I wanted you more than anything else on this earth. And I could have taken you by candlelight in your father's own house and *you* know that. May the Lord strike me dead if I ever pass up another virgin, as long as I live. What a damn fool. What a God abandoned fool.
- Abner Hale: If only I'd had a chance to save it.
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: You had that chance.
- Abner Hale: I mean it's soul!
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: I mean the child.
- Queen Malama: [to Rev. Hale] Kelolo has some something to say to you... Make you *very* happy.
- Kelolo: I evil! I corrupt. I sinful.
- Capt. Rafer Hoxworth: Why you bible-thumping, son of a bitch! Do you want every female I lay my eyes on?
- Abner Hale: God, bring them low! Punish them! Send the earthquakes, plagues, floods, pestilences! Destroy them. Destroy them, utterly!
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: I've never seen a people more generous, more loving, more *filled* with Christian sweetness than these. I will *not* believe that God has rejected them simply because they haven't been baptized.
- Dr. John Whipple: When Captain Cook discovered these islands 50 years ago, they were a true paradise. Infectious disease was unknown. They didn't even catch cold. And there were 400,000 of them. Now there are less than 150,000. You and I may well live to see the last Hawaiian lowered into his grave - with proper Christian services, of course.
- Abner Hale: My ministry here is at an end.
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: Your ministry here is not ended. We'll stay here in Lahaina and shelter and protect these people. We will win them to a merciful God - with bonds a charity so strong, they will belong to Him forever.
- Abner Hale: How?
- Jerusha Bromley Hale: By offering what you've always valued most and found it hardest to give - to them and to me: your love.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
