Hawaii (103 page)

Her husband Whip and her sister Nancy enjoyed a wild time in San Francisco. Whip got a formal divorce but did not bother to marry Nancy, because, as he pointed out, "I'll never make a good husband." Nancy, finding in sex a complete gratification, was content to tag along on whatever terms he proposed, nor was she distressed when she uncovered suspicious circumstances that seemed to prove that her companion was also the consort of several well-known waterfront girls. What she liked best, however, apart from the passionate moments when he came home after a long absence, were the intense days when he took her with him to talk with men who had built tunnels. They were an odd, dedicated group of experts, willing to tackle nature on any terms, and they convinced Whip that if he could scrape together enough money, they could penetrate the Koolau Mountains and bring water to his dusty lands. Surreptitiously, he sent one of the engineer geologists to Hawaii, and in the guise of bird-collecting this keen fellow tramped the Koolaus and satisfied himself that tunneling them would present no unusual problems. "As a matter of fact," he reported, "it looks to me as if the mountains were built in layers tilted on end. If that's true, when you drill your tunnel you'll not only collect all the water you trap in outside ditches to lead into your tunnel, but the porous rock above the tunnel will probably deliver an equal amount of its own. This could be a profitable undertaking, so far as water's concerned."

"How long would the tunnel have to be?"

"Eight, ten miles," the engineer replied.

"Can you build a tunnel that long?" Whip asked.

"Any tunnel is simply a function of money," the engineer replied. "If you've got the money, I can get the dynamite."

"In this case, how much?"

"Four million."

"Don't forget my name," Whip said.

HAWAII

This report seemed to be the final answer to Whip's land problem. He didn't have the four million dollars then, but there was always a chance he might one day have it. He therefore decided to return to Hawaii, but Nancy Janders said, "I wouldn't, Whip."

"Why not?"

"Well, Iliki's there. That'll be embarrassing for you. And I certainly can't go back with you."

"I don't think you should," Whip said coldly, and a few days later he added, "You ought to be looking for a man for yourself,

Nance."

"You through with me?" Nancy asked.

"No place for you in Hawaii," he said truthfully. "How you fixed

for money?"

"The family sends me my share," she assured him.

"Nance," he said in his most friendly manner, "I sure hope you have a wonderful life from here on out. Now you better get some clothes on."

She had been gone only a few hours when there was a knock at his hotel-room door, and a little man in an overcoat that reached down to his ankles entered. "My name's Overpeck, Milton Overpeck, and I hear you're interested in drilling a tunnel."

"That's right," Whip said. "Sit down, Mr. Overpeck. You like whiskey?"

"I like anything," Overpeck said.

"You a tunnel man?"

"Well, yes and no," the little man replied, gulping a huge draft of whiskey. Coughing slightly he asked, "I understand you're drilling your tunnel in order to get water."

"You've followed me around pretty well, Mr. Overpeck. Another

whiskey?"

"Look, son, if you calculate on getting me drunk and outsmarting me, quit now, because you simply can't do it."

"I'm offering it in hospitality," Whip assured him.

"I never accept hospitality unless the host joins me. Now you gulp one down and catch up, and we can have a fine talk."

The two men, Whip Hoxworth twenty-four years old and Milton Overpeck in his early fifties, guzzled straight whiskey for several hours, during which the little engineer fascinated the Hawaiian landowner with a completely new theory about water. The doughty drinker, whose eyes were bright and clear after three quarters of a bottle, apparently knew more about Hawaii than Whip did, at least about the island of Oahu.

"My theory is this," he explained, using pillows, books and newspapers to build his island. "This volcano here and this one here built Oahu. That's perfectly obvious. Now, as they built, one surely must have overflowed the rightful terrain of the other. I judge all volcanic rock to be porous, so in Oahu it seems to me you have got to

FROM THE STARVING VILLAGE 517

have a complex substructure, the bulk of it porous. All the fine water that falls on your island doesn't run immediately out to sea."

"Well, the engineer I sent out there did say that he thought the mountains were probably porous," Whip remembered.

"I'm not interested in the mountains you see above land," Overpeck snapped. "I'm interested in the subterranean ones. Because if, as I suspect, there was a rising and a falling of the entire mountain mass . . ." He stopped, studied his friend and said, "Sorry, you're drunk. I'll be back in the morning." But as he was about to leave he said, "Don't sleep on a pillow tonight. Leave everything just as it is."

Whip, through bleary eyes, tried to focus on the turmoil in his room and asked, "What's all this got to do with tunnels?"

"I wouldn't know," Overpeck replied. "I'm a well man meself."

He appeared at seven next morning, chipper as a woodchuck, his long overcoat � flapping about his ankles in the cold San Francisco weather. He surprised Whip by completely dismissing the intricate construction of pillows, books and newspapers. "Best thing is to show you," he said cheerily. "Wells'11 be the making of Hawaii." And he led Whip down to the foot of Market Street, where grimy ferries left for the other side of the bay, and when after a long walk through Oakland they stood before a well he had recently dug he pointed with unconcealed admiration at a pipe protruding from the ground, from which gushed a steady volume of water that rose fourteen feet into the air.

"Does it run like this all the time?" Whip asked.

"Day and night," Overpeck replied.

"What does it?"

"Artesian, that's what it is. Artesian."

"How many gallons a day?"

"A million four."

"How long will it last?"

"Forever."

This was what Wild Whip had been dreaming of, a steady source of fresh water, but he had imagined that the only way to get it was to drive a tunnel through the mountains. If Overpeck were correct, where the water really lay was at his feet, but in business Whip was both daring and cautious. He was willing to take almost any gamble to obtain water, but he wanted assurance that he had at least a fair chance of winning. Carefully he asked, "Why did you have to bring me all the way over here to show me this well? Why didn't you show me one in San Francisco?"

"Artesian water don't happen everywhere," Overpeck replied.

"Suppose there isn't any on my land in Hawaii?"

"My job is to guess where it is," Overpeck answered. "And I guess it's under your land."

"Why?"

"That's what I was explaining with the pillows and the newspapers," he said.

"I think we better go back to the hotel," Whip said. "But wait a minute. How did you get the well down there?"

"A special rig I invented."

"How far down did you go?"

"Hundred and eighty feet."

"You want to sell the rig?"

"Nope."

"I didn't think so." The two men returned to the ferry, and as Whip studied the cold and windy hills of San Francisco, imagining them to be Hawaii, he became increasingly excited, but when little Mr. Overpeck assured him that a layer of cap rock must have imprisoned enormous stores of sweet water under the sloping flatlands of Oahu, Whip could feel actual perspiration break out on his

forehead.

"What kind of deal can we make, Overpeck?" he asked bluntly.

"You're sweating, son. If I find water, I'm handing you millions of dollars, ain't I?"

"You are."

"I'm a gambler, Mr. Hoxworth. What I want is the knd next to yours."

"How much?"

"You pay for getting the rig over there. You give me three dollars a day. And you buy, before we start, one thousand acres of land. If we get water, I buy it from you for what you paid. If we don't, you keep it."

"Are the chances good?"

"There's one way we can test my theory without spending a cent."

"How?"

"Think a minute. If there really is a pool of inexhaustible water hiding under your land, the overflow has got to be escaping somewhere. Logically, it's running away under the sea level, but some of it must be seeping out over the upmost edge of the cap rock. Go out to your land. Tell people you're going to raise cattle. Walk along the upper areas until you find a spring. Calculate how high above sea level you are, and then walk back and forth along that elevation. If you find half a dozen more springs, it's not even a gamble, Mr. Hoxworth. Because then you know the water's hiding down below you."

"You come out and check," Whip suggested.

"People might guess. Then land values go up."

Whip reflected on this shrewd observation and made a quick decision. "Buy yourself a good bull. Bring him to the islands with you and we'll announce that you're going to help me raise cattle. Then everybody'll feel sorry for me, because lots of people have gone bust trying that on the barren lands. Takes twenty of our acres to support one cow, and nobody makes money."

Three weeks later little Mr. Overpeck arrived in Honolulu with a bull and announced to the Honolulu Mail that he was going to advise Mr. Whipple Hoxworth in the raising of cattle on the latter's big ranch west of the city. He led his bull out to the vast, arid, use—

FROM THE STARVING VILLAGE

519

less acres, and as soon as he got there he told Whip, "Buy that land over there for me." And Whip did, for practically nothing, and the next day he concluded that he had been victimized by the shrewd little man, for they tramped both Whip's acres and Overpeck's, and there were no springs.

"Why the hell did you bother me with your nonsense?" the young man railed.

"I didn't expect any springs today," Overpeck said calmly. "But I know where they'll crop out after the next big storm up in the mountains," and sure enough, three days after the rain clouds left, along the line that Overpeck had predicted, he and Whip discovered sure evidences of seepage. They stood on the hillside looking down over the bleak and barren acres, Whip's four thousand and Overpeck's one, and the little man said, "We're standing on a gold mine, Mr. Hoxworth. I'm mortally certain there's water below. Buy up all the land you can afford."

Eight weeks later the little man reappeared in Hawaii without any cattle, but with nine large boxes of gear. This time he informed the Mail: "It looks as if Mr. Hoxworth's investment in cattle is going to be lost unless somehow we can find water on those acres."

He set up a pyramidal wooden derrick about twelve feet high, at the bottom of which were dung two large iron wheels connected by an axle upon which rope could be Wound when the wheels were turned by hand. This rope went from the axle and up to the top of the derrick, where it crossed on a pulley and dropped down to be kshed to the end of a heavy iron drill. Laboriously Overpeck cranked the heavy wheels until the iron drill was hauled to the top of the derrick. Then he tripped a catch and jumped back as the drill plunged downward, biting its way through sand and rock. Laboriously he turned the wheels and lifted the drill back into position; then a swift whirrrrr, and the next bite was taken.

"How long will this take?" Hoxworth asked, amazed at the effort required.

"A long time."

"Have you the strength?"

"I'm boring for a million dollars," the wiry little man replied. "I got the strength."

Days passed and weeks, and the determined engineer kept hoisting his drills, breaking their points on almost impenetrable hard pan, sharpening them by hand, and hoisting them once more. "You ought to have an engine," Whip growled as the work made slow progress.

"When I get some money, I'll get an engine," Overpeck snapped.

Now Whip saw the little fighter in a new light. "All your life you've been broke, haven't you?"

"Yep. All my life I was waiting for a man like you."

"Are we going to hit water?"

"Yep."

At two hundred feet the drills were hammering their way through

HAWAII

520

cap rock, once soft ocean mud but now, millions of years later, rock as hard as diamonds. Whip grew despondent and was afraid to pass through the streets of Honolulu, where people already hated him for the way he had treated his former wife, Iliki Janders, and where they now laughed at him for his folly in trying to raise cattle on his barren acres. At first, when those who had sold additional land saw Overpeck's drilling rig, there had been consternation: "Has Whip bamboozled us? Did he know there was water below that rubble? Such fears relaxed when it was apparent that no water existed. "He's down to two hundred and fifty feet and is running out of rope," spies reported.

And then on the fourteenth of September, 1881, Milton Overpeck's plunging drill crashed through the last two inches of cap rock, and up past the iron, past the rope, gushed cold sweet water at the rate of one million three hundred thousand gallons a day. When it gurgled to the top of the well it kept rising until it reached the apex of the twelve-foot derrick and stood a steady fourteen feet in the air, hour after hour, month after month.

When Whip saw the glorious sight he became agitated and cried, "We must save that water!" But little Mr. Overpeck assured him, "Son, it'll run forever." They scooped out a large depression in which the water was impounded and then pumped to wherever it was needed. They drilled additional wells, all by hand, and Whip said, "Overpeck, it's ridiculous for you to do so much work. Let's buy an engine that'll do it for you," but the determined little man replied, "I finish these wells, I'm never going to work again. I'm going to get a hotel room, lease my land to you, and live easy."

He did all these things, but he had failed to anticipate the natural future of a man like Overpeck in Hawaii. One of the unmarried Janders girls smelled him out, checked the land records to be sure he owned the land he said he did, and married him. Thus his thousand acres was brought safely back into the grand alliance of Hoxworth-Whipple-Hale-Janders-Hewlett.