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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Footnote to History, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+(#25 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
+
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+Title: A Footnote to History
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Release Date: May, 1996  [EBook #536]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 20, 1996]
+[Most recently updated: August 27, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1912 Swanston edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+An affair which might be deemed worthy of a note of a few lines in
+any general history has been here expanded to the size of a volume
+or large pamphlet.  The smallness of the scale, and the singularity
+of the manners and events and many of the characters, considered,
+it is hoped that, in spite of its outlandish subject, the sketch
+may find readers.  It has been a task of difficulty.  Speed was
+essential, or it might come too late to be of any service to a
+distracted country.  Truth, in the midst of conflicting rumours and
+in the dearth of printed material, was often hard to ascertain, and
+since most of those engaged were of my personal acquaintance, it
+was often more than delicate to express.  I must certainly have
+erred often and much; it is not for want of trouble taken nor of an
+impartial temper.  And if my plain speaking shall cost me any of
+the friends that I still count, I shall be sorry, but I need not be
+ashamed.
+
+In one particular the spelling of Samoan words has been altered;
+and the characteristic nasal n of the language written throughout
+ng instead of g.  Thus I put Pango-Pango, instead of Pago-Pago; the
+sound being that of soft ng in English, as in singer, not as in
+finger.
+
+
+R. L. S.
+VAILIMA,
+UPOLU,
+SAMOA.
+
+
+
+EIGHT YEARS OF TROUBLE IN SAMOA
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE ELEMENTS OF DISCORD:  NATIVE
+
+
+
+The story I have to tell is still going on as I write; the
+characters are alive and active; it is a piece of contemporary
+history in the most exact sense.  And yet, for all its actuality
+and the part played in it by mails and telegraphs and iron war-
+ships, the ideas and the manners of the native actors date back
+before the Roman Empire.  They are Christians, church-goers,
+singers of hymns at family worship, hardy cricketers; their books
+are printed in London by Spottiswoode, Trubner, or the Tract
+Society; but in most other points they are the contemporaries of
+our tattooed ancestors who drove their chariots on the wrong side
+of the Roman wall.  We have passed the feudal system; they are not
+yet clear of the patriarchal.  We are in the thick of the age of
+finance; they are in a period of communism.  And this makes them
+hard to understand.
+
+To us, with our feudal ideas, Samoa has the first appearance of a
+land of despotism.  An elaborate courtliness marks the race alone
+among Polynesians; terms of ceremony fly thick as oaths on board a
+ship; commoners my-lord each other when they meet--and urchins as
+they play marbles.  And for the real noble a whole private dialect
+is set apart.  The common names for an axe, for blood, for bamboo,
+a bamboo knife, a pig, food, entrails, and an oven are taboo in his
+presence, as the common names for a bug and for many offices and
+members of the body are taboo in the drawing-rooms of English
+ladies.  Special words are set apart for his leg, his face, his
+hair, his belly, his eyelids, his son, his daughter, his wife, his
+wife's pregnancy, his wife's adultery, adultery with his wife, his
+dwelling, his spear, his comb, his sleep, his dreams, his anger,
+the mutual anger of several chiefs, his food, his pleasure in
+eating, the food and eating of his pigeons, his ulcers, his cough,
+his sickness, his recovery, his death, his being carried on a bier,
+the exhumation of his bones, and his skull after death.  To address
+these demigods is quite a branch of knowledge, and he who goes to
+visit a high chief does well to make sure of the competence of his
+interpreter.  To complete the picture, the same word signifies the
+watching of a virgin and the warding of a chief; and the same word
+means to cherish a chief and to fondle a favourite child.
+
+Men like us, full of memories of feudalism, hear of a man so
+addressed, so flattered, and we leap at once to the conclusion that
+he is hereditary and absolute.  Hereditary he is; born of a great
+family, he must always be a man of mark; but yet his office is
+elective and (in a weak sense) is held on good behaviour.  Compare
+the case of a Highland chief:  born one of the great ones of his
+clan, he was sometimes appointed its chief officer and conventional
+father; was loved, and respected, and served, and fed, and died for
+implicitly, if he gave loyalty a chance; and yet if he sufficiently
+outraged clan sentiment, was liable to deposition.  As to
+authority, the parallel is not so close.  Doubtless the Samoan
+chief, if he be popular, wields a great influence; but it is
+limited.  Important matters are debated in a fono, or native
+parliament, with its feasting and parade, its endless speeches and
+polite genealogical allusions.  Debated, I say--not decided; for
+even a small minority will often strike a clan or a province
+impotent.  In the midst of these ineffective councils the chief
+sits usually silent:  a kind of a gagged audience for village
+orators.  And the deliverance of the fono seems (for the moment) to
+be final.  The absolute chiefs of Tahiti and Hawaii were addressed
+as plain John and Thomas; the chiefs of Samoa are surfeited with
+lip-honour, but the seat and extent of their actual authority is
+hard to find.
+
+It is so in the members of the state, and worse in the belly.  The
+idea of a sovereign pervades the air; the name we have; the thing
+we are not so sure of.  And the process of election to the chief
+power is a mystery.  Certain provinces have in their gift certain
+high titles, or NAMES, as they are called.  These can only be
+attributed to the descendants of particular lines.  Once granted,
+each name conveys at once the principality (whatever that be worth)
+of the province which bestows it, and counts as one suffrage
+towards the general sovereignty of Samoa.  To be indubitable king,
+they say, or some of them say,--I find few in perfect harmony,--a
+man should resume five of these names in his own person.  But the
+case is purely hypothetical; local jealousy forbids its occurrence.
+There are rival provinces, far more concerned in the prosecution of
+their rivalry than in the choice of a right man for king.  If one
+of these shall have bestowed its name on competitor A, it will be
+the signal and the sufficient reason for the other to bestow its
+name on competitor B or C.  The majority of Savaii and that of Aana
+are thus in perennial opposition.  Nor is this all.  In 1881,
+Laupepa, the present king, held the three names of Malietoa,
+Natoaitele, and Tamasoalii; Tamasese held that of Tuiaana; and
+Mataafa that of Tuiatua.  Laupepa had thus a majority of suffrages;
+he held perhaps as high a proportion as can be hoped in these
+distracted islands; and he counted among the number the
+preponderant name of Malietoa.  Here, if ever, was an election.
+Here, if a king were at all possible, was the king.  And yet the
+natives were not satisfied.  Laupepa was crowned, March 19th; and
+next month, the provinces of Aana and Atua met in joint parliament,
+and elected their own two princes, Tamasese and Mataafa, to an
+alternate monarchy, Tamasese taking the first trick of two years.
+War was imminent, when the consuls interfered, and any war were
+preferable to the terms of the peace which they procured.  By the
+Lackawanna treaty, Laupepa was confirmed king, and Tamasese set by
+his side in the nondescript office of vice-king.  The compromise
+was not, I am told, without precedent; but it lacked all appearance
+of success.  To the constitution of Samoa, which was already all
+wheels and no horses, the consuls had added a fifth wheel.  In
+addition to the old conundrum, "Who is the king?" they had supplied
+a new one, "What is the vice-king?"
+
+Two royal lines; some cloudy idea of alternation between the two;
+an electorate in which the vote of each province is immediately
+effectual, as regards itself, so that every candidate who attains
+one name becomes a perpetual and dangerous competitor for the other
+four:  such are a few of the more trenchant absurdities.  Many
+argue that the whole idea of sovereignty is modern and imported;
+but it seems impossible that anything so foolish should have been
+suddenly devised, and the constitution bears on its front the marks
+of dotage.
+
+But the king, once elected and nominated, what does he become?  It
+may be said he remains precisely as he was.  Election to one of the
+five names is significant; it brings not only dignity but power,
+and the holder is secure, from that moment, of a certain following
+in war.  But I cannot find that the further step of election to the
+kingship implies anything worth mention.  The successful candidate
+is now the Tupu o Samoa--much good may it do him!  He can so sign
+himself on proclamations, which it does not follow that any one
+will heed.  He can summon parliaments; it does not follow they will
+assemble.  If he be too flagrantly disobeyed, he can go to war.
+But so he could before, when he was only the chief of certain
+provinces.  His own provinces will support him, the provinces of
+his rivals will take the field upon the other part; just as before.
+In so far as he is the holder of any of the five NAMES, in short,
+he is a man to be reckoned with; in so far as he is king of Samoa,
+I cannot find but what the president of a college debating society
+is a far more formidable officer.  And unfortunately, although the
+credit side of the account proves thus imaginary, the debit side is
+actual and heavy.  For he is now set up to be the mark of consuls;
+he will be badgered to raise taxes, to make roads, to punish crime,
+to quell rebellion:  and how he is to do it is not asked.
+
+If I am in the least right in my presentation of this obscure
+matter, no one need be surprised to hear that the land is full of
+war and rumours of war.  Scarce a year goes by but what some
+province is in arms, or sits sulky and menacing, holding
+parliaments, disregarding the king's proclamations and planting
+food in the bush, the first step of military preparation.  The
+religious sentiment of the people is indeed for peace at any price;
+no pastor can bear arms; and even the layman who does so is denied
+the sacraments.  In the last war the college of Malua, where the
+picked youth are prepared for the ministry, lost but a single
+student; the rest, in the bosom of a bleeding country, and deaf to
+the voices of vanity and honour, peacefully pursued their studies.
+But if the church looks askance on war, the warrior in no extremity
+of need or passion forgets his consideration for the church.  The
+houses and gardens of her ministers stand safe in the midst of
+armies; a way is reserved for themselves along the beach, where
+they may be seen in their white kilts and jackets openly passing
+the lines, while not a hundred yards behind the skirmishers will be
+exchanging the useless volleys of barbaric warfare.  Women are also
+respected; they are not fired upon; and they are suffered to pass
+between the hostile camps, exchanging gossip, spreading rumour, and
+divulging to either army the secret councils of the other.  This is
+plainly no savage war; it has all the punctilio of the barbarian,
+and all his parade; feasts precede battles, fine dresses and songs
+decorate and enliven the field; and the young soldier comes to camp
+burning (on the one hand) to distinguish himself by acts of valour,
+and (on the other) to display his acquaintance with field
+etiquette.  Thus after Mataafa became involved in hostilities
+against the Germans, and had another code to observe beside his
+own, he was always asking his white advisers if "things were done
+correctly."  Let us try to be as wise as Mataafa, and to conceive
+that etiquette and morals differ in one country and another.  We
+shall be the less surprised to find Samoan war defaced with some
+unpalatable customs.  The childish destruction of fruit-trees in an
+enemy's country cripples the resources of Samoa; and the habit of
+head-hunting not only revolts foreigners, but has begun to exercise
+the minds of the natives themselves.  Soon after the German heads
+were taken, Mr. Carne, Wesleyan missionary, had occasion to visit
+Mataafa's camp, and spoke of the practice with abhorrence.  "Misi
+Kane," said one chief, "we have just been puzzling ourselves to
+guess where that custom came from.  But, Misi, is it not so that
+when David killed Goliath, he cut off his head and carried it
+before the king?"
+
+With the civil life of the inhabitants we have far less to do; and
+yet even here a word of preparation is inevitable.  They are easy,
+merry, and pleasure-loving; the gayest, though by far from either
+the most capable or the most beautiful of Polynesians.  Fine dress
+is a passion, and makes a Samoan festival a thing of beauty.  Song
+is almost ceaseless.  The boatman sings at the oar, the family at
+evening worship, the girls at night in the guest-house, sometimes
+the workman at his toil.  No occasion is too small for the poets
+and musicians; a death, a visit, the day's news, the day's
+pleasantry, will be set to rhyme and harmony.  Even half-grown
+girls, the occasion arising, fashion words and train choruses of
+children for its celebration.  Song, as with all Pacific islanders,
+goes hand in hand with the dance, and both shade into the drama.
+Some of the performances are indecent and ugly, some only dull;
+others are pretty, funny, and attractive.  Games are popular.
+Cricket-matches, where a hundred played upon a side, endured at
+times for weeks, and ate up the country like the presence of an
+army.  Fishing, the daily bath, flirtation; courtship, which is
+gone upon by proxy; conversation, which is largely political; and
+the delights of public oratory, fill in the long hours.
+
+But the special delight of the Samoan is the malanga.  When people
+form a party and go from village to village, junketing and
+gossiping, they are said to go on a malanga.  Their songs have
+announced their approach ere they arrive; the guest-house is
+prepared for their reception; the virgins of the village attend to
+prepare the kava bowl and entertain them with the dance; time flies
+in the enjoyment of every pleasure which an islander conceives; and
+when the malanga sets forth, the same welcome and the same joys
+expect them beyond the next cape, where the nearest village nestles
+in its grove of palms.  To the visitors it is all golden; for the
+hosts, it has another side.  In one or two words of the language
+the fact peeps slyly out.  The same word (afemoeina) expresses "a
+long call" and "to come as a calamity"; the same word (lesolosolou)
+signifies "to have no intermission of pain" and "to have no
+cessation, as in the arrival of visitors"; and soua, used of
+epidemics, bears the sense of being overcome as with "fire, flood,
+or visitors."  But the gem of the dictionary is the verb alovao,
+which illustrates its pages like a humorous woodcut.  It is used in
+the sense of "to avoid visitors," but it means literally "hide in
+the wood."  So, by the sure hand of popular speech, we have the
+picture of the house deserted, the malanga disappointed, and the
+host that should have been quaking in the bush.
+
+We are thus brought to the beginning of a series of traits of
+manners, highly curious in themselves, and essential to an
+understanding of the war.  In Samoa authority sits on the one hand
+entranced; on the other, property stands bound in the midst of
+chartered marauders.  What property exists is vested in the family,
+not in the individual; and of the loose communism in which a family
+dwells, the dictionary may yet again help us to some idea.  I find
+a string of verbs with the following senses:  to deal leniently
+with, as in helping oneself from a family plantation; to give away
+without consulting other members of the family; to go to strangers
+for help instead of to relatives; to take from relatives without
+permission; to steal from relatives; to have plantations robbed by
+relatives.  The ideal of conduct in the family, and some of its
+depravations, appear here very plainly.  The man who (in a native
+word of praise) is mata-ainga, a race-regarder, has his hand always
+open to his kindred; the man who is not (in a native term of
+contempt) noa, knows always where to turn in any pinch of want or
+extremity of laziness.  Beggary within the family--and by the less
+self-respecting, without it--has thus grown into a custom and a
+scourge, and the dictionary teems with evidence of its abuse.
+Special words signify the begging of food, of uncooked food, of
+fish, of pigs, of pigs for travellers, of pigs for stock, of taro,
+of taro-tops, of taro-tops for planting, of tools, of flyhooks, of
+implements for netting pigeons, and of mats.  It is true the beggar
+was supposed in time to make a return, somewhat as by the Roman
+contract of mutuum.  But the obligation was only moral; it could
+not be, or was not, enforced; as a matter of fact, it was
+disregarded.  The language had recently to borrow from the
+Tahitians a word for debt; while by a significant excidence, it
+possessed a native expression for the failure to pay--"to omit to
+make a return for property begged."  Conceive now the position of
+the householder besieged by harpies, and all defence denied him by
+the laws of honour.  The sacramental gesture of refusal, his last
+and single resource, was supposed to signify "my house is
+destitute."  Until that point was reached, in other words, the
+conduct prescribed for a Samoan was to give and to continue giving.
+But it does not appear he was at all expected to give with a good
+grace.  The dictionary is well stocked with expressions standing
+ready, like missiles, to be discharged upon the locusts--"troop of
+shamefaced ones," "you draw in your head like a tern," "you make
+your voice small like a whistle-pipe," "you beg like one
+delirious"; and the verb pongitai, "to look cross," is equipped
+with the pregnant rider, "as at the sight of beggars."
+
+This insolence of beggars and the weakness of proprietors can only
+be illustrated by examples.  We have a girl in our service to whom
+we had given some finery, that she might wait at table, and (at her
+own request) some warm clothing against the cold mornings of the
+bush.  She went on a visit to her family, and returned in an old
+tablecloth, her whole wardrobe having been divided out among
+relatives in the course of twenty-four hours.  A pastor in the
+province of Atua, being a handy, busy man, bought a boat for a
+hundred dollars, fifty of which he paid down.  Presently after,
+relatives came to him upon a visit and took a fancy to his new
+possession.  "We have long been wanting a boat," said they.  "Give
+us this one."  So, when the visit was done, they departed in the
+boat.  The pastor, meanwhile, travelled into Savaii the best way he
+could, sold a parcel of land, and begged mats among his other
+relatives, to pay the remainder of the price of the boat which was
+no longer his.  You might think this was enough; but some months
+later, the harpies, having broken a thwart, brought back the boat
+to be repaired and repainted by the original owner.
+
+Such customs, it might be argued, being double-edged, will
+ultimately right themselves.  But it is otherwise in practice.
+Such folk as the pastor's harpy relatives will generally have a
+boat, and will never have paid for it; such men as the pastor may
+have sometimes paid for a boat, but they will never have one.  It
+is there as it is with us at home:  the measure of the abuse of
+either system is the blackness of the individual heart.  The same
+man, who would drive his poor relatives from his own door in
+England, would besiege in Samoa the doors of the rich; and the
+essence of the dishonesty in either case is to pursue one's own
+advantage and to be indifferent to the losses of one's neighbour.
+But the particular drawback of the Polynesian system is to depress
+and stagger industry.  To work more is there only to be more
+pillaged; to save is impossible.  The family has then made a good
+day of it when all are filled and nothing remains over for the crew
+of free-booters; and the injustice of the system begins to be
+recognised even in Samoa.  One native is said to have amassed a
+certain fortune; two clever lads have individually expressed to us
+their discontent with a system which taxes industry to pamper
+idleness; and I hear that in one village of Savaii a law has been
+passed forbidding gifts under the penalty of a sharp fine.
+
+Under this economic regimen, the unpopularity of taxes, which
+strike all at the same time, which expose the industrious to a
+perfect siege of mendicancy, and the lazy to be actually condemned
+to a day's labour, may be imagined without words.  It is more
+important to note the concurrent relaxation of all sense of
+property.  From applying for help to kinsmen who are scarce
+permitted to refuse, it is but a step to taking from them (in the
+dictionary phrase) "without permission"; from that to theft at
+large is but a hair's-breadth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE ELEMENTS OF DISCORD:  FOREIGN
+
+
+
+The huge majority of Samoans, like other God-fearing folk in other
+countries, are perfectly content with their own manners.  And upon
+one condition, it is plain they might enjoy themselves far beyond
+the average of man.  Seated in islands very rich in food, the
+idleness of the many idle would scarce matter; and the provinces
+might continue to bestow their names among rival pretenders, and
+fall into war and enjoy that a while, and drop into peace and enjoy
+that, in a manner highly to be envied.  But the condition--that
+they should be let alone--is now no longer possible.  More than a
+hundred years ago, and following closely on the heels of Cook, an
+irregular invasion of adventurers began to swarm about the isles of
+the Pacific.  The seven sleepers of Polynesia stand, still but half
+aroused, in the midst of the century of competition.  And the
+island races, comparable to a shopful of crockery launched upon the
+stream of time, now fall to make their desperate voyage among pots
+of brass and adamant.
+
+Apia, the port and mart, is the seat of the political sickness of
+Samoa.  At the foot of a peaked, woody mountain, the coast makes a
+deep indent, roughly semicircular.  In front the barrier reef is
+broken by the fresh water of the streams; if the swell be from the
+north, it enters almost without diminution; and the war-ships roll
+dizzily at their moorings, and along the fringing coral which
+follows the configuration of the beach, the surf breaks with a
+continuous uproar.  In wild weather, as the world knows, the roads
+are untenable.  Along the whole shore, which is everywhere green
+and level and overlooked by inland mountain-tops, the town lies
+drawn out in strings and clusters.  The western horn is Mulinuu,
+the eastern, Matautu; and from one to the other of these extremes,
+I ask the reader to walk.  He will find more of the history of
+Samoa spread before his eyes in that excursion, than has yet been
+collected in the blue-books or the white-books of the world.
+Mulinuu (where the walk is to begin) is a flat, wind-swept
+promontory, planted with palms, backed against a swamp of
+mangroves, and occupied by a rather miserable village.  The reader
+is informed that this is the proper residence of the Samoan kings;
+he will be the more surprised to observe a board set up, and to
+read that this historic village is the property of the German firm.
+But these boards, which are among the commonest features of the
+landscape, may be rather taken to imply that the claim has been
+disputed.  A little farther east he skirts the stores, offices, and
+barracks of the firm itself.  Thence he will pass through Matafele,
+the one really town-like portion of this long string of villages,
+by German bars and stores and the German consulate; and reach the
+Catholic mission and cathedral standing by the mouth of a small
+river.  The bridge which crosses here (bridge of Mulivai) is a
+frontier; behind is Matafele; beyond, Apia proper; behind, Germans
+are supreme; beyond, with but few exceptions, all is Anglo-Saxon.
+Here the reader will go forward past the stores of Mr. Moors
+(American) and Messrs. MacArthur (English); past the English
+mission, the office of the English newspaper, the English church,
+and the old American consulate, till he reaches the mouth of a
+larger river, the Vaisingano.  Beyond, in Matautu, his way takes
+him in the shade of many trees and by scattered dwellings, and
+presently brings him beside a great range of offices, the place and
+the monument of a German who fought the German firm during his
+life.  His house (now he is dead) remains pointed like a discharged
+cannon at the citadel of his old enemies.  Fitly enough, it is at
+present leased and occupied by Englishmen.  A little farther, and
+the reader gains the eastern flanking angle of the bay, where
+stands the pilot-house and signal-post, and whence he can see, on
+the line of the main coast of the island, the British and the new
+American consulates.
+
+The course of his walk will have been enlivened by a considerable
+to and fro of pleasure and business.  He will have encountered many
+varieties of whites,--sailors, merchants, clerks, priests,
+Protestant missionaries in their pith helmets, and the nondescript
+hangers-on of any island beach.  And the sailors are sometimes in
+considerable force; but not the residents.  He will think at times
+there are more signboards than men to own them.  It may chance it
+is a full day in the harbour; he will then have seen all manner of
+ships, from men-of-war and deep-sea packets to the labour vessels
+of the German firm and the cockboat island schooner; and if he be
+of an arithmetical turn, he may calculate that there are more
+whites afloat in Apia bay than whites ashore in the whole
+Archipelago.  On the other hand, he will have encountered all ranks
+of natives, chiefs and pastors in their scrupulous white clothes;
+perhaps the king himself, attended by guards in uniform; smiling
+policemen with their pewter stars; girls, women, crowds of cheerful
+children.  And he will have asked himself with some surprise where
+these reside.  Here and there, in the back yards of European
+establishments, he may have had a glimpse of a native house elbowed
+in a corner; but since he left Mulinuu, none on the beach where
+islanders prefer to live, scarce one on the line of street.  The
+handful of whites have everything; the natives walk in a foreign
+town.  A year ago, on a knoll behind a bar-room, he might have
+observed a native house guarded by sentries and flown over by the
+standard of Samoa.  He would then have been told it was the seat of
+government, driven (as I have to relate) over the Mulivai and from
+beyond the German town into the Anglo-Saxon.  To-day, he will learn
+it has been carted back again to its old quarters.  And he will
+think it significant that the king of the islands should be thus
+shuttled to and fro in his chief city at the nod of aliens.  And
+then he will observe a feature more significant still:  a house
+with some concourse of affairs, policemen and idlers hanging by, a
+man at a bank-counter overhauling manifests, perhaps a trial
+proceeding in the front verandah, or perhaps the council breaking
+up in knots after a stormy sitting.  And he will remember that he
+is in the Eleele Sa, the "Forbidden Soil," or Neutral Territory of
+the treaties; that the magistrate whom he has just seen trying
+native criminals is no officer of the native king's; and that this,
+the only port and place of business in the kingdom, collects and
+administers its own revenue for its own behoof by the hands of
+white councillors and under the supervision of white consuls.  Let
+him go further afield.  He will find the roads almost everywhere to
+cease or to be made impassable by native pig-fences, bridges to be
+quite unknown, and houses of the whites to become at once a rare
+exception.  Set aside the German plantations, and the frontier is
+sharp.  At the boundary of the Eleele Sa, Europe ends, Samoa
+begins.  Here, then, is a singular state of affairs:  all the
+money, luxury, and business of the kingdom centred in one place;
+that place excepted from the native government and administered by
+whites for whites; and the whites themselves holding it not in
+common but in hostile camps, so that it lies between them like a
+bone between two dogs, each growling, each clutching his own end.
+
+Should Apia ever choose a coat of arms, I have a motto ready:
+"Enter Rumour painted full of tongues."  The majority of the
+natives do extremely little; the majority of the whites are
+merchants with some four mails in the month, shopkeepers with some
+ten or twenty customers a day, and gossip is the common resource of
+all.  The town hums to the day's news, and the bars are crowded
+with amateur politicians.  Some are office-seekers, and earwig king
+and consul, and compass the fall of officials, with an eye to
+salary.  Some are humorists, delighted with the pleasure of faction
+for itself.   "I never saw so good a place as this Apia," said one
+of these; "you can be in a new conspiracy every day!"  Many, on the
+other hand, are sincerely concerned for the future of the country.
+The quarters are so close and the scale is so small, that perhaps
+not any one can be trusted always to preserve his temper.  Every
+one tells everything he knows; that is our country sickness.
+Nearly every one has been betrayed at times, and told a trifle
+more; the way our sickness takes the predisposed.  And the news
+flies, and the tongues wag, and fists are shaken.  Pot boil and
+caldron bubble!
+
+Within the memory of man, the white people of Apia lay in the worst
+squalor of degradation.  They are now unspeakably improved, both
+men and women.  To-day they must be called a more than fairly
+respectable population, and a much more than fairly intelligent.
+The whole would probably not fill the ranks of even an English
+half-battalion, yet there are a surprising number above the average
+in sense, knowledge, and manners.  The trouble (for Samoa) is that
+they are all here after a livelihood.  Some are sharp
+practitioners, some are famous (justly or not) for foul play in
+business.  Tales fly.  One merchant warns you against his
+neighbour; the neighbour on the first occasion is found to return
+the compliment:  each with a good circumstantial story to the
+proof.  There is so much copra in the islands, and no more; a man's
+share of it is his share of bread; and commerce, like politics, is
+here narrowed to a focus, shows its ugly side, and becomes as
+personal as fisticuffs.  Close at their elbows, in all this
+contention, stands the native looking on.  Like a child, his true
+analogue, he observes, apprehends, misapprehends, and is usually
+silent.  As in a child, a considerable intemperance of speech is
+accompanied by some power of secrecy.  News he publishes; his
+thoughts have often to be dug for.  He looks on at the rude career
+of the dollar-hunt, and wonders.  He sees these men rolling in a
+luxury beyond the ambition of native kings; he hears them accused
+by each other of the meanest trickery; he knows some of them to be
+guilty; and what is he to think?  He is strongly conscious of his
+own position as the common milk-cow; and what is he to do?  "Surely
+these white men on the beach are not great chiefs?" is a common
+question, perhaps asked with some design of flattering the person
+questioned.  And one, stung by the last incident into an unusual
+flow of English, remarked to me:  "I begin to be weary of white men
+on the beach."
+
+But the true centre of trouble, the head of the boil of which Samoa
+languishes, is the German firm.  From the conditions of business, a
+great island house must ever be an inheritance of care; and it
+chances that the greatest still afoot has its chief seat in Apia
+bay, and has sunk the main part of its capital in the island of
+Upolu.  When its founder, John Caesar Godeffroy, went bankrupt over
+Russian paper and Westphalian iron, his most considerable asset was
+found to be the South Sea business.  This passed (I understand)
+through the hands of Baring Brothers in London, and is now run by a
+company rejoicing in the Gargantuan name of the Deutsche Handels
+und Plantagen Gesellschaft fur Sud-See Inseln zu Hamburg.  This
+piece of literature is (in practice) shortened to the D. H. and P.
+G., the Old Firm, the German Firm, the Firm, and (among humorists)
+the Long Handle Firm.  Even from the deck of an approaching ship,
+the island is seen to bear its signature--zones of cultivation
+showing in a more vivid tint of green on the dark vest of forest.
+The total area in use is near ten thousand acres.  Hedges of
+fragrant lime enclose, broad avenues intersect them.  You shall
+walk for hours in parks of palm-tree alleys, regular, like soldiers
+on parade; in the recesses of the hills you may stumble on a mill-
+house, tolling and trembling there, fathoms deep in superincumbent
+forest.  On the carpet of clean sward, troops of horses and herds
+of handsome cattle may be seen to browse; and to one accustomed to
+the rough luxuriance of the tropics, the appearance is of
+fairyland.  The managers, many of them German sea-captains, are
+enthusiastic in their new employment.  Experiment is continually
+afoot:  coffee and cacao, both of excellent quality, are among the
+more recent outputs; and from one plantation quantities of
+pineapples are sent at a particular season to the Sydney markets.
+A hundred and fifty thousand pounds of English money, perhaps two
+hundred thousand, lie sunk in these magnificent estates.  In
+estimating the expense of maintenance quite a fleet of ships must
+be remembered, and a strong staff of captains, supercargoes,
+overseers, and clerks.  These last mess together at a liberal
+board; the wages are high, and the staff is inspired with a strong
+and pleasing sentiment of loyalty to their employers.
+
+Seven or eight hundred imported men and women toil for the company
+on contracts of three or of five years, and at a hypothetical wage
+of a few dollars in the month.  I am now on a burning question:
+the labour traffic; and I shall ask permission in this place only
+to touch it with the tongs.  Suffice it to say that in Queensland,
+Fiji, New Caledonia, and Hawaii it has been either suppressed or
+placed under close public supervision.  In Samoa, where it still
+flourishes, there is no regulation of which the public receives any
+evidence; and the dirty linen of the firm, if there be any dirty,
+and if it be ever washed at all, is washed in private.  This is
+unfortunate, if Germans would believe it.  But they have no idea of
+publicity, keep their business to themselves, rather affect to
+"move in a mysterious way," and are naturally incensed by
+criticisms, which they consider hypocritical, from men who would
+import "labour" for themselves, if they could afford it, and would
+probably maltreat them if they dared.  It is said the whip is very
+busy on some of the plantations; it is said that punitive extra-
+labour, by which the thrall's term of service is extended, has
+grown to be an abuse; and it is complained that, even where that
+term is out, much irregularity occurs in the repatriation of the
+discharged.  To all this I can say nothing, good or bad.  A certain
+number of the thralls, many of them wild negritos from the west,
+have taken to the bush, harbour there in a state partly bestial, or
+creep into the back quarters of the town to do a day's stealthy
+labour under the nose of their proprietors.  Twelve were arrested
+one morning in my own boys' kitchen.  Farther in the bush, huts,
+small patches of cultivation, and smoking ovens, have been found by
+hunters.  There are still three runaways in the woods of Tutuila,
+whither they escaped upon a raft.  And the Samoans regard these
+dark-skinned rangers with extreme alarm; the fourth refugee in
+Tutuila was shot down (as I was told in that island) while carrying
+off the virgin of a village; and tales of cannibalism run round the
+country, and the natives shudder about the evening fire.  For the
+Samoans are not cannibals, do not seem to remember when they were,
+and regard the practice with a disfavour equal to our own.
+
+The firm is Gulliver among the Lilliputs; and it must not be
+forgotten, that while the small, independent traders are fighting
+for their own hand, and inflamed with the usual jealousy against
+corporations, the Germans are inspired with a sense of the
+greatness of their affairs and interests.  The thought of the money
+sunk, the sight of these costly and beautiful plantations, menaced
+yearly by the returning forest, and the responsibility of
+administering with one hand so many conjunct fortunes, might well
+nerve the manager of such a company for desperate and questionable
+deeds.  Upon this scale, commercial sharpness has an air of
+patriotism; and I can imagine the man, so far from haggling over
+the scourge for a few Solomon islanders, prepared to oppress rival
+firms, overthrow inconvenient monarchs, and let loose the dogs of
+war.  Whatever he may decide, he will not want for backing.  Every
+clerk will be eager to be up and strike a blow; and most Germans in
+the group, whatever they may babble of the firm over the walnuts
+and the wine, will rally round the national concern at the approach
+of difficulty.  They are so few--I am ashamed to give their number,
+it were to challenge contradiction--they are so few, and the amount
+of national capital buried at their feet is so vast, that we must
+not wonder if they seem oppressed with greatness and the sense of
+empire.  Other whites take part in our brabbles, while temper holds
+out, with a certain schoolboy entertainment.  In the Germans alone,
+no trace of humour is to be observed, and their solemnity is
+accompanied by a touchiness often beyond belief.  Patriotism flies
+in arms about a hen; and if you comment upon the colour of a Dutch
+umbrella, you have cast a stone against the German Emperor.  I give
+one instance, typical although extreme.  One who had returned from
+Tutuila on the mail cutter complained of the vermin with which she
+is infested.  He was suddenly and sharply brought to a stand.  The
+ship of which he spoke, he was reminded, was a German ship.
+
+John Caesar Godeffroy himself had never visited the islands; his
+sons and nephews came, indeed, but scarcely to reap laurels; and
+the mainspring and headpiece of this great concern, until death
+took him, was a certain remarkable man of the name of Theodor
+Weber.  He was of an artful and commanding character; in the
+smallest thing or the greatest, without fear or scruple; equally
+able to affect, equally ready to adopt, the most engaging
+politeness or the most imperious airs of domination.  It was he who
+did most damage to rival traders; it was he who most harried the
+Samoans; and yet I never met any one, white or native, who did not
+respect his memory.  All felt it was a gallant battle, and the man
+a great fighter; and now when he is dead, and the war seems to have
+gone against him, many can scarce remember, without a kind of
+regret, how much devotion and audacity have been spent in vain.
+His name still lives in the songs of Samoa.  One, that I have
+heard, tells of Misi Ueba and a biscuit-box--the suggesting
+incident being long since forgotten.  Another sings plaintively how
+all things, land and food and property, pass progressively, as by a
+law of nature, into the hands of Misi Ueba, and soon nothing will
+be left for Samoans.  This is an epitaph the man would have
+enjoyed.
+
+At one period of his career, Weber combined the offices of director
+of the firm and consul for the City of Hamburg.  No question but he
+then drove very hard.  Germans admit that the combination was
+unfortunate; and it was a German who procured its overthrow.
+Captain Zembsch superseded him with an imperial appointment, one
+still remembered in Samoa as "the gentleman who acted justly."
+There was no house to be found, and the new consul must take up his
+quarters at first under the same roof with Weber.  On several
+questions, in which the firm was vitally interested, Zembsch
+embraced the contrary opinion.  Riding one day with an Englishman
+in Vailele plantation, he was startled by a burst of screaming,
+leaped from the saddle, ran round a house, and found an overseer
+beating one of the thralls.  He punished the overseer, and, being a
+kindly and perhaps not a very diplomatic man, talked high of what
+he felt and what he might consider it his duty to forbid or to
+enforce.  The firm began to look askance at such a consul; and
+worse was behind.  A number of deeds being brought to the consulate
+for registration, Zembsch detected certain transfers of land in
+which the date, the boundaries, the measure, and the consideration
+were all blank.  He refused them with an indignation which he does
+not seem to have been able to keep to himself; and, whether or not
+by his fault, some of these unfortunate documents became public.
+It was plain that the relations between the two flanks of the
+German invasion, the diplomatic and the commercial, were strained
+to bursting.  But Weber was a man ill to conquer.  Zembsch was
+recalled; and from that time forth, whether through influence at
+home, or by the solicitations of Weber on the spot, the German
+consulate has shown itself very apt to play the game of the German
+firm.  That game, we may say, was twofold,--the first part even
+praiseworthy, the second at least natural.  On the one part, they
+desired an efficient native administration, to open up the country
+and punish crime; they wished, on the other, to extend their own
+provinces and to curtail the dealings of their rivals.  In the
+first, they had the jealous and diffident sympathy of all whites;
+in the second, they had all whites banded together against them for
+their lives and livelihoods.  It was thus a game of Beggar my
+Neighbour between a large merchant and some small ones.  Had it so
+remained, it would still have been a cut-throat quarrel.  But when
+the consulate appeared to be concerned, when the war-ships of the
+German Empire were thought to fetch and carry for the firm, the
+rage of the independent traders broke beyond restraint.  And,
+largely from the national touchiness and the intemperate speech of
+German clerks, this scramble among dollar-hunters assumed the
+appearance of an inter-racial war.
+
+The firm, with the indomitable Weber at its head and the consulate
+at its back--there has been the chief enemy at Samoa.  No English
+reader can fail to be reminded of John Company; and if the Germans
+appear to have been not so successful, we can only wonder that our
+own blunders and brutalities were less severely punished.  Even on
+the field of Samoa, though German faults and aggressors make up the
+burthen of my story, they have been nowise alone.  Three nations
+were engaged in this infinitesimal affray, and not one appears with
+credit.  They figure but as the three ruffians of the elder play-
+wrights.  The United States have the cleanest hands, and even
+theirs are not immaculate.  It was an ambiguous business when a
+private American adventurer was landed with his pieces of artillery
+from an American war-ship, and became prime minister to the king.
+It is true (even if he were ever really supported) that he was soon
+dropped and had soon sold himself for money to the German firm.  I
+will leave it to the reader whether this trait dignifies or not the
+wretched story.  And the end of it spattered the credit alike of
+England and the States, when this man (the premier of a friendly
+sovereign) was kidnapped and deported, on the requisition of an
+American consul, by the captain of an English war-ship.  I shall
+have to tell, as I proceed, of villages shelled on very trifling
+grounds by Germans; the like has been done of late years, though in
+a better quarrel, by ourselves of England.  I shall have to tell
+how the Germans landed and shed blood at Fangalii; it was only in
+1876 that we British had our own misconceived little massacre at
+Mulinuu.  I shall have to tell how the Germans bludgeoned Malietoa
+with a sudden call for money; it was something of the suddenest
+that Sir Arthur Gordon himself, smarting under a sensible public
+affront, made and enforced a somewhat similar demand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE SORROWS OF LAUPEPA, 1883 TO 1887
+
+
+
+You ride in a German plantation and see no bush, no soul stirring;
+only acres of empty sward, miles of cocoa-nut alley:  a desert of
+food.  In the eyes of the Samoan the place has the attraction of a
+park for the holiday schoolboy, of a granary for mice.  We must add
+the yet more lively allurement of a haunted house, for over these
+empty and silent miles there broods the fear of the negrito
+cannibal.  For the Samoan besides, there is something barbaric,
+unhandsome, and absurd in the idea of thus growing food only to
+send it from the land and sell it.  A man at home who should turn
+all Yorkshire into one wheatfield, and annually burn his harvest on
+the altar of Mumbo-Jumbo, might impress ourselves not much
+otherwise.  And the firm which does these things is quite
+extraneous, a wen that might be excised to-morrow without loss but
+to itself; few natives drawing from it so much as day's wages; and
+the rest beholding in it only the occupier of their acres.  The
+nearest villages have suffered most; they see over the hedge the
+lands of their ancestors waving with useless cocoa-palms; and the
+sales were often questionable, and must still more often appear so
+to regretful natives, spinning and improving yarns about the
+evening lamp.  At the worst, then, to help oneself from the
+plantation will seem to a Samoan very like orchard-breaking to the
+British schoolboy; at the best, it will be thought a gallant Robin-
+Hoodish readjustment of a public wrong.
+
+And there is more behind.  Not only is theft from the plantations
+regarded rather as a lark and peccadillo, the idea of theft in
+itself is not very clearly present to these communists; and as to
+the punishment of crime in general, a great gulf of opinion divides
+the natives from ourselves.  Indigenous punishments were short and
+sharp.  Death, deportation by the primitive method of setting the
+criminal to sea in a canoe, fines, and in Samoa itself the penalty
+of publicly biting a hot, ill-smelling root, comparable to a rough
+forfeit in a children's game--these are approved.  The offender is
+killed, or punished and forgiven.  We, on the other hand, harbour
+malice for a period of years:  continuous shame attaches to the
+criminal; even when he is doing his best--even when he is
+submitting to the worst form of torture, regular work--he is to
+stand aside from life and from his family in dreadful isolation.
+These ideas most Polynesians have accepted in appearance, as they
+accept other ideas of the whites; in practice, they reduce it to a
+farce.  I have heard the French resident in the Marquesas in talk
+with the French gaoler of Tai-o-hae:  "Eh bien, ou sont vos
+prisonnieres?--Je crois, mon commandant, qu'elles sont allees
+quelque part faire une visite."  And the ladies would be welcome.
+This is to take the most savage of Polynesians; take some of the
+most civilised.  In Honolulu, convicts labour on the highways in
+piebald clothing, gruesome and ridiculous; and it is a common sight
+to see the family of such an one troop out, about the dinner hour,
+wreathed with flowers and in their holiday best, to picnic with
+their kinsman on the public wayside.  The application of these
+outlandish penalties, in fact, transfers the sympathy to the
+offender.  Remember, besides, that the clan system, and that
+imperfect idea of justice which is its worst feature, are still
+lively in Samoa; that it is held the duty of a judge to favour
+kinsmen, of a king to protect his vassals; and the difficulty of
+getting a plantation thief first caught, then convicted, and last
+of all punished, will appear.
+
+During the early 'eighties, the Germans looked upon this system
+with growing irritation.  They might see their convict thrust in
+gaol by the front door; they could never tell how soon he was
+enfranchised by the back; and they need not be the least surprised
+if they met him, a few days after, enjoying the delights of a
+malanga.  It was a banded conspiracy, from the king and the vice-
+king downward, to evade the law and deprive the Germans of their
+profits.  In 1883, accordingly, the consul, Dr. Stuebel, extorted a
+convention on the subject, in terms of which Samoans convicted of
+offences against German subjects were to be confined in a private
+gaol belonging to the German firm.  To Dr. Stuebel it seemed simple
+enough:  the offenders were to be effectually punished, the
+sufferers partially indemnified.  To the Samoans, the thing
+appeared no less simple, but quite different:  "Malietoa was
+selling Samoans to Misi Ueba."  What else could be expected?  Here
+was a private corporation engaged in making money; to it was
+delegated, upon a question of profit and loss, one of the functions
+of the Samoan crown; and those who make anomalies must look for
+comments.  Public feeling ran unanimous and high.  Prisoners who
+escaped from the private gaol were not recaptured or not returned
+and Malietoa hastened to build a new prison of his own, whither he
+conveyed, or pretended to convey, the fugitives.  In October 1885 a
+trenchant state paper issued from the German consulate.  Twenty
+prisoners, the consul wrote, had now been at large for eight months
+from Weber's prison.  It was pretended they had since then
+completed their term of punishment elsewhere.  Dr. Stuebel did not
+seek to conceal his incredulity; but he took ground beyond; he
+declared the point irrelevant.  The law was to be enforced.  The
+men were condemned to a certain period in Weber's prison; they had
+run away; they must now be brought back and (whatever had become of
+them in the interval) work out the sentence.  Doubtless Dr.
+Stuebel's demands were substantially just; but doubtless also they
+bore from the outside a great appearance of harshness; and when the
+king submitted, the murmurs of the people increased.
+
+But Weber was not yet content.  The law had to be enforced;
+property, or at least the property of the firm, must be respected.
+And during an absence of the consul's, he seems to have drawn up
+with his own hand, and certainly first showed to the king, in his
+own house, a new convention.  Weber here and Weber there.  As an
+able man, he was perhaps in the right to prepare and propose
+conventions.  As the head of a trading company, he seems far out of
+his part to be communicating state papers to a sovereign.  The
+administration of justice was the colour, and I am willing to
+believe the purpose, of the new paper; but its effect was to depose
+the existing government.  A council of two Germans and two Samoans
+were to be invested with the right to make laws and impose taxes as
+might be "desirable for the common interest of the Samoan
+government and the German residents."  The provisions of this
+council the king and vice-king were to sign blindfold.  And by a
+last hardship, the Germans, who received all the benefit, reserved
+a right to recede from the agreement on six months' notice; the
+Samoans, who suffered all the loss, were bound by it in perpetuity.
+I can never believe that my friend Dr. Stuebel had a hand in
+drafting these proposals; I am only surprised he should have been a
+party to enforcing them, perhaps the chief error in these islands
+of a man who has made few.  And they were enforced with a rigour
+that seems injudicious.  The Samoans (according to their own
+account) were denied a copy of the document; they were certainly
+rated and threatened; their deliberation was treated as contumacy;
+two German war-ships lay in port, and it was hinted that these
+would shortly intervene.
+
+Succeed in frightening a child, and he takes refuge in duplicity.
+"Malietoa," one of the chiefs had written, "we know well we are in
+bondage to the great governments."  It was now thought one tyrant
+might be better than three, and any one preferable to Germany.  On
+the 5th November 1885, accordingly, Laupepa, Tamasese, and forty-
+eight high chiefs met in secret, and the supremacy of Samoa was
+secretly offered to Great Britain for the second time in history.
+Laupepa and Tamasese still figured as king and vice-king in the
+eyes of Dr. Stuebel; in their own, they had secretly abdicated,
+were become private persons, and might do what they pleased without
+binding or dishonouring their country.  On the morrow, accordingly,
+they did public humiliation in the dust before the consulate, and
+five days later signed the convention.  The last was done, it is
+claimed, upon an impulse.  The humiliation, which it appeared to
+the Samoans so great a thing to offer, to the practical mind of Dr.
+Stuebel seemed a trifle to receive; and the pressure was continued
+and increased.  Laupepa and Tamasese were both heavy, well-meaning,
+inconclusive men.  Laupepa, educated for the ministry, still bears
+some marks of it in character and appearance; Tamasese was in
+private of an amorous and sentimental turn, but no one would have
+guessed it from his solemn and dull countenance.  Impossible to
+conceive two less dashing champions for a threatened race; and
+there is no doubt they were reduced to the extremity of muddlement
+and childish fear.  It was drawing towards night on the 10th, when
+this luckless pair and a chief of the name of Tuiatafu, set out for
+the German consulate, still minded to temporise.  As they went,
+they discussed their case with agitation.  They could see the
+lights of the German war-ships as they walked--an eloquent
+reminder.  And it was then that Tamasese proposed to sign the
+convention.  "It will give us peace for the day," said Laupepa,
+"and afterwards Great Britain must decide."--"Better fight Germany
+than that!" cried Tuiatafu, speaking words of wisdom, and departed
+in anger.  But the two others proceeded on their fatal errand;
+signed the convention, writing themselves king and vice-king, as
+they now believed themselves to be no longer; and with childish
+perfidy took part in a scene of "reconciliation" at the German
+consulate.
+
+Malietoa supposed himself betrayed by Tamasese.  Consul Churchward
+states with precision that the document was sold by a scribe for
+thirty-six dollars.  Twelve days later at least, November 22nd, the
+text of the address to Great Britain came into the hands of Dr.
+Stuebel.  The Germans may have been wrong before; they were now in
+the right to be angry.  They had been publicly, solemnly, and
+elaborately fooled; the treaty and the reconciliation were both
+fraudulent, with the broad, farcical fraudulency of children and
+barbarians.  This history is much from the outside; it is the
+digested report of eye-witnesses; it can be rarely corrected from
+state papers; and as to what consuls felt and thought, or what
+instructions they acted under, I must still be silent or proceed by
+guess.  It is my guess that Stuebel now decided Malietoa Laupepa to
+be a man impossible to trust and unworthy to be dealt with.  And it
+is certain that the business of his deposition was put in hand at
+once.  The position of Weber, with his knowledge of things native,
+his prestige, and his enterprising intellect, must have always made
+him influential with the consul:  at this juncture he was
+indispensable.  Here was the deed to be done; here the man of
+action.  "Mr. Weber rested not," says Laupepa.  It was "like the
+old days of his own consulate," writes Churchward.  His messengers
+filled the isle; his house was thronged with chiefs and orators; he
+sat close over his loom, delightedly weaving the future.  There was
+one thing requisite to the intrigue,--a native pretender; and the
+very man, you would have said, stood waiting:  Mataafa, titular of
+Atua, descended from both the royal lines, late joint king with
+Tamasese, fobbed off with nothing in the time of the Lackawanna
+treaty, probably mortified by the circumstance, a chief with a
+strong following, and in character and capacity high above the
+native average.  Yet when Weber's spiriting was done, and the
+curtain rose on the set scene of the coronation, Mataafa was
+absent, and Tamasese stood in his place.  Malietoa was to be
+deposed for a piece of solemn and offensive trickery, and the man
+selected to replace him was his sole partner and accomplice in the
+act.  For so strange a choice, good ground must have existed; but
+it remains conjectural:  some supposing Mataafa scratched as too
+independent; others that Tamasese had indeed betrayed Laupepa, and
+his new advancement was the price of his treachery.
+
+So these two chiefs began to change places like the scales of a
+balance, one down, the other up.  Tamasese raised his flag (Jan.
+28th, 1886) in Leulumoenga, chief place of his own province of
+Aana, usurped the style of king, and began to collect and arm a
+force.  Weber, by the admission of Stuebel, was in the market
+supplying him with weapons; so were the Americans; so, but for our
+salutary British law, would have been the British; for wherever
+there is a sound of battle, there will the traders be gathered
+together selling arms.  A little longer, and we find Tamasese
+visited and addressed as king and majesty by a German commodore.
+Meanwhile, for the unhappy Malietoa, the road led downward.  He was
+refused a bodyguard.  He was turned out of Mulinuu, the seat of his
+royalty, on a land claim of Weber's, fled across the Mulivai, and
+"had the coolness" (German expression) to hoist his flag in Apia.
+He was asked "in the most polite manner," says the same account--
+"in the most delicate manner in the world," a reader of Marryat
+might be tempted to amend the phrase,--to strike his flag in his
+own capital; and on his "refusal to accede to this request," Dr.
+Stuebel appeared himself with ten men and an officer from the
+cruiser Albatross; a sailor climbed into the tree and brought down
+the flag of Samoa, which was carefully folded, and sent, "in the
+most polite manner," to its owner.  The consuls of England and the
+States were there (the excellent gentlemen!) to protest.  Last, and
+yet more explicit, the German commodore who visited the be-titled
+Tamasese, addressed the king--we may surely say the late king--as
+"the High Chief Malietoa."
+
+Had he no party, then?  At that time, it is probable, he might have
+called some five-sevenths of Samoa to his standard.  And yet he sat
+there, helpless monarch, like a fowl trussed for roasting.  The
+blame lies with himself, because he was a helpless creature; it
+lies also with England and the States.  Their agents on the spot
+preached peace (where there was no peace, and no pretence of it)
+with eloquence and iteration.  Secretary Bayard seems to have felt
+a call to join personally in the solemn farce, and was at the
+expense of a telegram in which he assured the sinking monarch it
+was "for the higher interests of Samoa" he should do nothing.
+There was no man better at doing that; the advice came straight
+home, and was devoutly followed.  And to be just to the great
+Powers, something was done in Europe; a conference was called, it
+was agreed to send commissioners to Samoa, and the decks had to be
+hastily cleared against their visit.  Dr. Stuebel had attached the
+municipality of Apia and hoisted the German war-flag over Mulinuu;
+the American consul (in a sudden access of good service) had flown
+the stars and stripes over Samoan colours; on either side these
+steps were solemnly retracted.  The Germans expressly disowned
+Tamasese; and the islands fell into a period of suspense, of some
+twelve months' duration, during which the seat of the history was
+transferred to other countries and escapes my purview.  Here on the
+spot, I select three incidents:  the arrival on the scene of a new
+actor, the visit of the Hawaiian embassy, and the riot on the
+Emperor's birthday.  The rest shall be silence; only it must be
+borne in view that Tamasese all the while continued to strengthen
+himself in Leulumoenga, and Laupepa sat inactive listening to the
+song of consuls.
+
+Captain Brandeis.  The new actor was Brandeis, a Bavarian captain
+of artillery, of a romantic and adventurous character.  He had
+served with credit in war; but soon wearied of garrison life,
+resigned his battery, came to the States, found employment as a
+civil engineer, visited Cuba, took a sub-contract on the Panama
+canal, caught the fever, and came (for the sake of the sea voyage)
+to Australia.  He had that natural love for the tropics which lies
+so often latent in persons of a northern birth; difficulty and
+danger attracted him; and when he was picked out for secret duty,
+to be the hand of Germany in Samoa, there is no doubt but he
+accepted the post with exhilaration.  It is doubtful if a better
+choice could have been made.  He had courage, integrity, ideas of
+his own, and loved the employment, the people, and the place.  Yet
+there was a fly in the ointment.  The double error of unnecessary
+stealth and of the immixture of a trading company in political
+affairs, has vitiated, and in the end defeated, much German policy.
+And Brandeis was introduced to the islands as a clerk, and sent
+down to Leulumoenga (where he was soon drilling the troops and
+fortifying the position of the rebel king) as an agent of the
+German firm.  What this mystification cost in the end I shall tell
+in another place; and even in the beginning, it deceived no one.
+Brandeis is a man of notable personal appearance; he looks the part
+allotted him; and the military clerk was soon the centre of
+observation and rumour.  Malietoa wrote and complained of his
+presence to Becker, who had succeeded Dr. Stuebel in the consulate.
+Becker replied, "I have nothing to do with the gentleman Brandeis.
+Be it well known that the gentleman Brandeis has no appointment in
+a military character, but resides peaceably assisting the
+government of Leulumoenga in their work, for Brandeis is a quiet,
+sensible gentleman."  And then he promised to send the vice-consul
+to "get information of the captain's doings":  surely
+supererogation of deceit.
+
+The Hawaiian Embassy.  The prime minister of the Hawaiian kingdom
+was, at this period, an adventurer of the name of Gibson.  He
+claimed, on the strength of a romantic story, to be the heir of a
+great English house.  He had played a part in a revolt in Java, had
+languished in Dutch fetters, and had risen to be a trusted agent of
+Brigham Young, the Utah president.  It was in this character of a
+Mormon emissary that he first came to the islands of Hawaii, where
+he collected a large sum of money for the Church of the Latter Day
+Saints.  At a given moment, he dropped his saintship and appeared
+as a Christian and the owner of a part of the island of Lanai.  The
+steps of the transformation are obscure; they seem, at least, to
+have been ill-received at Salt Lake; and there is evidence to the
+effect that he was followed to the islands by Mormon assassins.
+His first attempt on politics was made under the auspices of what
+is called the missionary party, and the canvass conducted largely
+(it is said with tears) on the platform at prayer-meetings.  It
+resulted in defeat.  Without any decency of delay he changed his
+colours, abjured the errors of reform, and, with the support of the
+Catholics, rose to the chief power.  In a very brief interval he
+had thus run through the gamut of religions in the South Seas.  It
+does not appear that he was any more particular in politics, but he
+was careful to consult the character and prejudices of the late
+king, Kalakaua.  That amiable, far from unaccomplished, but too
+convivial sovereign, had a continued use for money:  Gibson was
+observant to keep him well supplied.  Kalakaua (one of the most
+theoretical of men) was filled with visionary schemes for the
+protection and development of the Polynesian race:  Gibson fell in
+step with him; it is even thought he may have shared in his
+illusions.  The king and minister at least conceived between them a
+scheme of island confederation--the most obvious fault of which was
+that it came too late--and armed and fitted out the cruiser
+Kaimiloa, nest-egg of the future navy of Hawaii.  Samoa, the most
+important group still independent, and one immediately threatened
+with aggression, was chosen for the scene of action.  The Hon. John
+E. Bush, a half-caste Hawaiian, sailed (December 1887) for Apia as
+minister-plenipotentiary, accompanied by a secretary of legation,
+Henry F. Poor; and as soon as she was ready for sea, the war-ship
+followed in support.  The expedition was futile in its course,
+almost tragic in result.  The Kaimiloa was from the first a scene
+of disaster and dilapidation:  the stores were sold; the crew
+revolted; for a great part of a night she was in the hands of
+mutineers, and the secretary lay bound upon the deck.  The mission,
+installing itself at first with extravagance in Matautu, was helped
+at last out of the island by the advances of a private citizen.
+And they returned from dreams of Polynesian independence to find
+their own city in the hands of a clique of white shopkeepers, and
+the great Gibson once again in gaol.  Yet the farce had not been
+quite without effect.  It had encouraged the natives for the
+moment, and it seems to have ruffled permanently the temper of the
+Germans.  So might a fly irritate Caesar.
+
+The arrival of a mission from Hawaii would scarce affect the
+composure of the courts of Europe.  But in the eyes of Polynesians
+the little kingdom occupies a place apart.  It is there alone that
+men of their race enjoy most of the advantages and all the pomp of
+independence; news of Hawaii and descriptions of Honolulu are
+grateful topics in all parts of the South Seas; and there is no
+better introduction than a photograph in which the bearer shall be
+represented in company with Kalakaua.  Laupepa was, besides, sunk
+to the point at which an unfortunate begins to clutch at straws,
+and he received the mission with delight.  Letters were exchanged
+between him and Kalakaua; a deed of confederation was signed, 17th
+February 1887, and the signature celebrated in the new house of the
+Hawaiian embassy with some original ceremonies.  Malietoa Laupepa
+came, attended by his ministry, several hundred chiefs, two guards,
+and six policemen.  Always decent, he withdrew at an early hour; by
+those that remained, all decency appears to have been forgotten;
+high chiefs were seen to dance; and day found the house carpeted
+with slumbering grandees, who must be roused, doctored with coffee,
+and sent home.  As a first chapter in the history of Polynesian
+Confederation, it was hardly cheering, and Laupepa remarked to one
+of the embassy, with equal dignity and sense:  "If you have come
+here to teach my people to drink, I wish you had stayed away."
+
+The Germans looked on from the first with natural irritation that a
+power of the powerlessness of Hawaii should thus profit by its
+undeniable footing in the family of nations, and send embassies,
+and make believe to have a navy, and bark and snap at the heels of
+the great German Empire.  But Becker could not prevent the hunted
+Laupepa from taking refuge in any hole that offered, and he could
+afford to smile at the fantastic orgie in the embassy.  It was
+another matter when the Hawaiians approached the intractable
+Mataafa, sitting still in his Atua government like Achilles in his
+tent, helping neither side, and (as the Germans suspected) keeping
+the eggs warm for himself.  When the Kaimiloa steamed out of Apia
+on this visit, the German war-ship Adler followed at her heels; and
+Mataafa was no sooner set down with the embassy than he was
+summoned and ordered on board by two German officers.  The step is
+one of those triumphs of temper which can only be admired.  Mataafa
+is entertaining the plenipotentiary of a sovereign power in treaty
+with his own king, and the captain of a German corvette orders him
+to quit his guests.
+
+But there was worse to come.  I gather that Tamasese was at the
+time in the sulks.  He had doubtless been promised prompt aid and a
+prompt success; he had seen himself surreptitiously helped,
+privately ordered about, and publicly disowned; and he was still
+the king of nothing more than his own province, and already the
+second in command of Captain Brandeis.  With the adhesion of some
+part of his native cabinet, and behind the back of his white
+minister, he found means to communicate with the Hawaiians.  A
+passage on the Kaimiloa, a pension, and a home in Honolulu were the
+bribes proposed; and he seems to have been tempted.  A day was set
+for a secret interview.  Poor, the Hawaiian secretary, and J. D.
+Strong, an American painter attached to the embassy in the
+surprising quality of "Government Artist," landed with a Samoan
+boat's-crew in Aana; and while the secretary hid himself, according
+to agreement, in the outlying home of an English settler, the
+artist (ostensibly bent on photography) entered the headquarters of
+the rebel king.  It was a great day in Leulumoenga; three hundred
+recruits had come in, a feast was cooking; and the photographer, in
+view of the native love of being photographed, was made entirely
+welcome.  But beneath the friendly surface all were on the alert.
+The secret had leaked out:  Weber beheld his plans threatened in
+the root; Brandeis trembled for the possession of his slave and
+sovereign; and the German vice-consul, Mr. Sonnenschein, had been
+sent or summoned to the scene of danger.
+
+It was after dark, prayers had been said and the hymns sung through
+all the village, and Strong and the German sat together on the mats
+in the house of Tamasese, when the events began.  Strong speaks
+German freely, a fact which he had not disclosed, and he was scarce
+more amused than embarrassed to be able to follow all the evening
+the dissension and the changing counsels of his neighbours.  First
+the king himself was missing, and there was a false alarm that he
+had escaped and was already closeted with Poor.  Next came certain
+intelligence that some of the ministry had run the blockade, and
+were on their way to the house of the English settler.  Thereupon,
+in spite of some protests from Tamasese, who tried to defend the
+independence of his cabinet, Brandeis gathered a posse of warriors,
+marched out of the village, brought back the fugitives, and clapped
+them in the corrugated iron shanty which served as gaol.  Along
+with these he seems to have seized Billy Coe, interpreter to the
+Hawaiians; and Poor, seeing his conspiracy public, burst with his
+boat's-crew into the town, made his way to the house of the native
+prime minister, and demanded Coe's release.  Brandeis hastened to
+the spot, with Strong at his heels; and the two principals being
+both incensed, and Strong seriously alarmed for his friend's
+safety, there began among them a scene of great intemperance.  At
+one point, when Strong suddenly disclosed his acquaintance with
+German, it attained a high style of comedy; at another, when a
+pistol was most foolishly drawn, it bordered on drama; and it may
+be said to have ended in a mixed genus, when Poor was finally
+packed into the corrugated iron gaol along with the forfeited
+ministers.  Meanwhile the captain of his boat, Siteoni, of whom I
+shall have to tell again, had cleverly withdrawn the boat's-crew at
+an early stage of the quarrel.  Among the population beyond
+Tamasese's marches, he collected a body of armed men, returned
+before dawn to Leulumoenga, demolished the corrugated iron gaol,
+and liberated the Hawaiian secretary and the rump of the rebel
+cabinet.  No opposition was shown; and doubtless the rescue was
+connived at by Brandeis, who had gained his point.  Poor had the
+face to complain the next day to Becker; but to compete with Becker
+in effrontery was labour lost.  "You have been repeatedly warned,
+Mr. Poor, not to expose yourself among these savages," said he.
+
+Not long after, the presence of the Kaimiloa was made a casus belli
+by the Germans; and the rough-and-tumble embassy withdrew, on
+borrowed money, to find their own government in hot water to the
+neck.
+
+
+The Emperor's Birthday.  It is possible, and it is alleged, that
+the Germans entered into the conference with hope.  But it is
+certain they were resolved to remain prepared for either fate.  And
+I take the liberty of believing that Laupepa was not forgiven his
+duplicity; that, during this interval, he stood marked like a tree
+for felling; and that his conduct was daily scrutinised for further
+pretexts of offence.  On the evening of the Emperor's birthday,
+March 22nd, 1887, certain Germans were congregated in a public bar.
+The season and the place considered, it is scarce cynical to assume
+they had been drinking; nor, so much being granted, can it be
+thought exorbitant to suppose them possibly in fault for the
+squabble that took place.  A squabble, I say; but I am willing to
+call it a riot.  And this was the new fault of Laupepa; this it is
+that was described by a German commodore as "the trampling upon by
+Malietoa of the German Emperor."  I pass the rhetoric by to examine
+the point of liability.  Four natives were brought to trial for
+this horrid fact:  not before a native judge, but before the German
+magistrate of the tripartite municipality of Apia.  One was
+acquitted, one condemned for theft, and two for assault.  On
+appeal, not to Malietoa, but to the three consuls, the case was by
+a majority of two to one returned to the magistrate and (as far as
+I can learn) was then allowed to drop.  Consul Becker himself laid
+the chief blame on one of the policemen of the municipality, a
+half-white of the name of Scanlon.  Him he sought to have
+discharged, but was again baffled by his brother consuls.  Where,
+in all this, are we to find a corner of responsibility for the king
+of Samoa?  Scanlon, the alleged author of the outrage, was a half-
+white; as Becker was to learn to his cost, he claimed to be an
+American subject; and he was not even in the king's employment.
+Apia, the scene of the outrage, was outside the king's jurisdiction
+by treaty; by the choice of Germany, he was not so much as allowed
+to fly his flag there.  And the denial of justice (if justice were
+denied) rested with the consuls of Britain and the States.
+
+But when a dog is to be beaten, any stick will serve.  In the
+meanwhile, on the proposition of Mr. Bayard, the Washington
+conference on Samoan affairs was adjourned till autumn, so that
+"the ministers of Germany and Great Britain might submit the
+protocols to their respective Governments."  "You propose that the
+conference is to adjourn and not to be broken up?" asked Sir Lionel
+West.  "To adjourn for the reasons stated," replied Bayard.  This
+was on July 26th; and, twenty-nine days later, by Wednesday the
+24th of August, Germany had practically seized Samoa.  For this
+flagrant breach of faith one excuse is openly alleged; another
+whispered.  It is openly alleged that Bayard had shown himself
+impracticable; it is whispered that the Hawaiian embassy was an
+expression of American intrigue, and that the Germans only did as
+they were done by.  The sufficiency of these excuses may be left to
+the discretion of the reader.  But, however excused, the breach of
+faith was public and express; it must have been deliberately
+predetermined and it was resented in the States as a deliberate
+insult.
+
+By the middle of August 1887 there were five sail of German war-
+ships in Apia bay:  the Bismarck, of 3000 tons displacement; the
+Carola, the Sophie, and the Olga, all considerable ships; and the
+beautiful Adler, which lies there to this day, kanted on her beam,
+dismantled, scarlet with rust, the day showing through her ribs.
+They waited inactive, as a burglar waits till the patrol goes by.
+And on the 23rd, when the mail had left for Sydney, when the eyes
+of the world were withdrawn, and Samoa plunged again for a period
+of weeks into her original island-obscurity, Becker opened his
+guns.  The policy was too cunning to seem dignified; it gave to
+conduct which would otherwise have seemed bold and even brutally
+straightforward, the appearance of a timid ambuscade; and helped to
+shake men's reliance on the word of Germany.  On the day named, an
+ultimatum reached Malietoa at Afenga, whither he had retired months
+before to avoid friction.  A fine of one thousand dollars and an
+ifo, or public humiliation, were demanded for the affair of the
+Emperor's birthday.  Twelve thousand dollars were to be "paid
+quickly" for thefts from German plantations in the course of the
+last four years.  "It is my opinion that there is nothing just or
+correct in Samoa while you are at the head of the government,"
+concluded Becker.  "I shall be at Afenga in the morning of to-
+morrow, Wednesday, at 11 A.M."  The blow fell on Laupepa (in his
+own expression) "out of the bush"; the dilatory fellow had seen
+things hang over so long, he had perhaps begun to suppose they
+might hang over for ever; and here was ruin at the door.  He rode
+at once to Apia, and summoned his chiefs.  The council lasted all
+night long.  Many voices were for defiance.  But Laupepa had grown
+inured to a policy of procrastination; and the answer ultimately
+drawn only begged for delay till Saturday, the 27th.  So soon as it
+was signed, the king took horse and fled in the early morning to
+Afenga; the council hastily dispersed; and only three chiefs, Selu,
+Seumanu, and Le Mamea, remained by the government building,
+tremulously expectant of the result.
+
+By seven the letter was received.  By 7.30 Becker arrived in
+person, inquired for Laupepa, was evasively answered, and declared
+war on the spot.  Before eight, the Germans (seven hundred men and
+six guns) came ashore and seized and hoisted German colours on the
+government building.  The three chiefs had made good haste to
+escape; but a considerable booty was made of government papers,
+fire-arms, and some seventeen thousand cartridges.  Then followed a
+scene which long rankled in the minds of the white inhabitants,
+when the German marines raided the town in search of Malietoa,
+burst into private houses, and were accused (I am willing to
+believe on slender grounds) of violence to private persons.
+
+On the morrow, the 25th, one of the German war-ships, which had
+been despatched to Leulumoenga over night re-entered the bay,
+flying the Tamasese colours at the fore.  The new king was given a
+royal salute of twenty-one guns, marched through the town by the
+commodore and a German guard of honour, and established on Mulinuu
+with two or three hundred warriors.  Becker announced his
+recognition to the other consuls.  These replied by proclaiming
+Malietoa, and in the usual mealy-mouthed manner advised Samoans to
+do nothing.  On the 27th martial law was declared; and on the 1st
+September the German squadron dispersed about the group, bearing
+along with them the proclamations of the new king.  Tamasese was
+now a great man, to have five iron war-ships for his post-runners.
+But the moment was critical.  The revolution had to be explained,
+the chiefs persuaded to assemble at a fono summoned for the 15th;
+and the ships carried not only a store of printed documents, but a
+squad of Tamasese orators upon their round.
+
+Such was the German coup d'etat.  They had declared war with a
+squadron of five ships upon a single man; that man, late king of
+the group, was in hiding on the mountains; and their own nominee,
+backed by German guns and bayonets, sat in his stead in Mulinuu.
+
+One of the first acts of Malietoa, on fleeing to the bush, was to
+send for Mataafa twice:  "I am alone in the bush; if you do not
+come quickly you will find me bound."  It is to be understood the
+men were near kinsmen, and had (if they had nothing else) a common
+jealousy.  At the urgent cry, Mataafa set forth from Falefa, and
+came to Mulinuu to Tamasese.  "What is this that you and the German
+commodore have decided on doing?" he inquired.  "I am going to obey
+the German consul," replied Tamasese, "whose wish it is that I
+should be the king and that all Samoa should assemble here."  "Do
+not pursue in wrath against Malietoa," said Mataafa "but try to
+bring about a compromise, and form a united government."  "Very
+well," said Tamasese, "leave it to me, and I will try."  From
+Mulinuu, Mataafa went on board the Bismarck, and was graciously
+received.  "Probably," said the commodore, "we shall bring about a
+reconciliation of all Samoa through you"; and then asked his
+visitor if he bore any affection to Malietoa.  "Yes," said Mataafa.
+"And to Tamasese?"  "To him also; and if you desire the weal of
+Samoa, you will allow either him or me to bring about a
+reconciliation."  "If it were my will," said the commodore, "I
+would do as you say.  But I have no will in the matter.  I have
+instructions from the Kaiser, and I cannot go back again from what
+I have been sent to do."  "I thought you would be commanded," said
+Mataafa, "if you brought about the weal of Samoa."  "I will tell
+you," said the commodore.  "All shall go quietly.  But there is one
+thing that must be done:  Malietoa must be deposed.  I will do
+nothing to him beyond; he will only be kept on board for a couple
+of months and be well treated, just as we Germans did to the French
+chief [Napoleon III.] some time ago, whom we kept a while and cared
+for well."  Becker was no less explicit:  war, he told Sewall,
+should not cease till the Germans had custody of Malietoa and
+Tamasese should be recognised.
+
+Meantime, in the Malietoa provinces, a profound impression was
+received.  People trooped to their fugitive sovereign in the bush.
+Many natives in Apia brought their treasures, and stored them in
+the houses of white friends.  The Tamasese orators were sometimes
+ill received.  Over in Savaii, they found the village of Satupaitea
+deserted, save for a few lads at cricket.  These they harangued,
+and were rewarded with ironical applause; and the proclamation, as
+soon as they had departed, was torn down.  For this offence the
+village was ultimately burned by German sailors, in a very decent
+and orderly style, on the 3rd September.  This was the dinner-bell
+of the fono on the 15th.  The threat conveyed in the terms of the
+summons--"If any government district does not quickly obey this
+direction, I will make war on that government district"--was thus
+commented on and reinforced.  And the meeting was in consequence
+well attended by chiefs of all parties.  They found themselves
+unarmed among the armed warriors of Tamasese and the marines of the
+German squadron, and under the guns of five strong ships.  Brandeis
+rose; it was his first open appearance, the German firm signing its
+revolutionary work.  His words were few and uncompromising:  "Great
+are my thanks that the chiefs and heads of families of the whole of
+Samoa are assembled here this day.  It is strictly forbidden that
+any discussion should take place as to whether it is good or not
+that Tamasese is king of Samoa, whether at this fono or at any
+future fono.  I place for your signature the following:  'We inform
+all the people of Samoa of what follows:  (1) The government of
+Samoa has been assumed by King Tuiaana Tamasese.  (2) By order of
+the king, it was directed that a fono should take place to-day,
+composed of the chiefs and heads of families, and we have obeyed
+the summons.  We have signed our names under this, 15th September
+1887."  Needs must under all these guns; and the paper was signed,
+but not without open sullenness.  The bearing of Mataafa in
+particular was long remembered against him by the Germans.  "Do you
+not see the king?" said the commodore reprovingly.  "His father was
+no king," was the bold answer.  A bolder still has been printed,
+but this is Mataafa's own recollection of the passage.  On the next
+day, the chiefs were all ordered back to shake hands with Tamasese.
+Again they obeyed; but again their attitude was menacing, and some,
+it is said, audibly murmured as they gave their hands.
+
+It is time to follow the poor Sheet of Paper (literal meaning of
+Laupepa), who was now to be blown so broadly over the face of
+earth.  As soon as news reached him of the declaration of war, he
+fled from Afenga to Tanungamanono, a hamlet in the bush, about a
+mile and a half behind Apia, where he lurked some days.  On the
+24th, Selu, his secretary, despatched to the American consul an
+anxious appeal, his majesty's "cry and prayer" in behalf of "this
+weak people."  By August 30th, the Germans had word of his lurking-
+place, surrounded the hamlet under cloud of night, and in the early
+morning burst with a force of sailors on the houses.  The people
+fled on all sides, and were fired upon.  One boy was shot in the
+hand, the first blood of the war.  But the king was nowhere to be
+found; he had wandered farther, over the woody mountains, the
+backbone of the land, towards Siumu and Safata.  Here, in a safe
+place, he built himself a town in the forest, where he received a
+continual stream of visitors and messengers.  Day after day the
+German blue-jackets were employed in the hopeless enterprise of
+beating the forests for the fugitive; day after day they were
+suffered to pass unhurt under the guns of ambushed Samoans; day
+after day they returned, exhausted and disappointed, to Apia.
+Seumanu Tafa, high chief of Apia, was known to be in the forest
+with the king; his wife, Fatuila, was seized, imprisoned in the
+German hospital, and when it was thought her spirit was
+sufficiently reduced, brought up for cross-examination.  The wise
+lady confined herself in answer to a single word.  "Is your husband
+near Apia?"  "Yes."  "Is he far from Apia?"  "Yes." "Is he with the
+king?"  "Yes."  "Are he and the king in different places?"  "Yes."
+Whereupon the witness was discharged.  About the 10th of September,
+Laupepa was secretly in Apia at the American consulate with two
+companions.  The German pickets were close set and visited by a
+strong patrol; and on his return, his party was observed and hailed
+and fired on by a sentry.  They ran away on all fours in the dark,
+and so doing plumped upon another sentry, whom Laupepa grappled and
+flung in a ditch; for the Sheet of Paper, although infirm of
+character, is, like most Samoans, of an able body.  The second
+sentry (like the first) fired after his assailants at random in the
+dark; and the two shots awoke the curiosity of Apia.  On the
+afternoon of the 16th, the day of the hand-shakings, Suatele, a
+high chief, despatched two boys across the island with a letter.
+They were most of the night upon the road; it was near three in the
+morning before the sentries in the camp of Malietoa beheld their
+lantern drawing near out of the wood; but the king was at once
+awakened.  The news was decisive and the letter peremptory; if
+Malietoa did not give himself up before ten on the morrow, he was
+told that great sorrows must befall his country.  I have not been
+able to draw Laupepa as a hero; but he is a man of certain virtues,
+which the Germans had now given him an occasion to display.
+Without hesitation he sacrificed himself, penned his touching
+farewell to Samoa, and making more expedition than the messengers,
+passed early behind Apia to the banks of the Vaisingano.  As he
+passed, he detached a messenger to Mataafa at the Catholic mission.
+Mataafa followed by the same road, and the pair met at the river-
+side and went and sat together in a house.  All present were in
+tears.  "Do not let us weep," said the talking man, Lauati.  "We
+have no cause for shame.  We do not yield to Tamasese, but to the
+invincible strangers."  The departing king bequeathed the care of
+his country to Mataafa; and when the latter sought to console him
+with the commodore's promises, he shook his head, and declared his
+assurance that he was going to a life of exile, and perhaps to
+death.  About two o'clock the meeting broke up; Mataafa returned to
+the Catholic mission by the back of the town; and Malietoa
+proceeded by the beach road to the German naval hospital, where he
+was received (as he owns, with perfect civility) by Brandeis.
+About three, Becker brought him forth again.  As they went to the
+wharf, the people wept and clung to their departing monarch.  A
+boat carried him on board the Bismarck, and he vanished from his
+countrymen.  Yet it was long rumoured that he still lay in the
+harbour; and so late as October 7th, a boy, who had been paddling
+round the Carola, professed to have seen and spoken with him.  Here
+again the needless mystery affected by the Germans bitterly
+disserved them.  The uncertainty which thus hung over Laupepa's
+fate, kept his name continually in men's mouths.  The words of his
+farewell rang in their ears:  "To all Samoa:  On account of my
+great love to my country and my great affection to all Samoa, this
+is the reason that I deliver up my body to the German government.
+That government may do as they wish to me.  The reason of this is,
+because I do not desire that the blood of Samoa shall be spilt for
+me again.  But I do not know what is my offence which has caused
+their anger to me and to my country."  And then, apostrophising the
+different provinces:  "Tuamasanga, farewell!  Manono and family,
+farewell!  So, also, Salafai, Tutuila, Aana, and Atua, farewell!
+If we do not again see one another in this world, pray that we may
+be again together above."  So the sheep departed with the halo of a
+saint, and men thought of him as of some King Arthur snatched into
+Avilion.
+
+On board the Bismarck, the commodore shook hands with him, told him
+he was to be "taken away from all the chiefs with whom he had been
+accustomed," and had him taken to the wardroom under guard.  The
+next day he was sent to sea in the Adler.  There went with him his
+brother Moli, one Meisake, and one Alualu, half-caste German, to
+interpret.  He was respectfully used; he dined in the stern with
+the officers, but the boys dined "near where the fire was."  They
+come to a "newly-formed place" in Australia, where the Albatross
+was lying, and a British ship, which he knew to be a man-of-war
+"because the officers were nicely dressed and wore epaulettes."
+Here he was transhipped, "in a boat with a screen," which he
+supposed was to conceal him from the British ship; and on board the
+Albatross was sent below and told he must stay there till they had
+sailed.  Later, however, he was allowed to come on deck, where he
+found they had rigged a screen (perhaps an awning) under which he
+walked, looking at "the newly-formed settlement," and admiring a
+big house "where he was sure the governor lived."  From Australia,
+they sailed some time, and reached an anchorage where a consul-
+general came on board, and where Laupepa was only allowed on deck
+at night.  He could then see the lights of a town with wharves; he
+supposes Cape Town.  Off the Cameroons they anchored or lay-to, far
+at sea, and sent a boat ashore to see (he supposes) that there was
+no British man-of-war.  It was the next morning before the boat
+returned, when the Albatross stood in and came to anchor near
+another German ship.  Here Alualu came to him on deck and told him
+this was the place.  "That is an astonishing thing," said he.  "I
+thought I was to go to Germany, I do not know what this means; I do
+not know what will be the end of it; my heart is troubled."
+Whereupon Alualu burst into tears.  A little after, Laupepa was
+called below to the captain and the governor.  The last addressed
+him:  "This is my own place, a good place, a warm place.  My house
+is not yet finished, but when it is, you shall live in one of my
+rooms until I can make a house for you."  Then he was taken ashore
+and brought to a tall, iron house.  "This house is regulated," said
+the governor; "there is no fire allowed to burn in it."  In one
+part of this house, weapons of the government were hung up; there
+was a passage, and on the other side of the passage, fifty
+criminals were chained together, two and two, by the ankles.  The
+windows were out of reach; and there was only one door, which was
+opened at six in the morning and shut again at six at night.  All
+day he had his liberty, went to the Baptist Mission, and walked
+about viewing the negroes, who were "like the sand on the seashore"
+for number.  At six they were called into the house and shut in for
+the night without beds or lights.  "Although they gave me no
+light," said he, with a smile, "I could see I was in a prison."
+Good food was given him:  biscuits, "tea made with warm water,"
+beef, etc.; all excellent.  Once, in their walks, they spied a
+breadfruit tree bearing in the garden of an English merchant, ran
+back to the prison to get a shilling, and came and offered to
+purchase.  "I am not going to sell breadfruit to you people," said
+the merchant; "come and take what you like."  Here Malietoa
+interrupted himself to say it was the only tree bearing in the
+Cameroons.  "The governor had none, or he would have given it to
+me."  On the passage from the Cameroons to Germany, he had great
+delight to see the cliffs of England.  He saw "the rocks shining in
+the sun, and three hours later was surprised to find them sunk in
+the heavens."  He saw also wharves and immense buildings; perhaps
+Dover and its castle.  In Hamburg, after breakfast, Mr. Weber, who
+had now finally "ceased from troubling" Samoa, came on board, and
+carried him ashore "suitably" in a steam launch to "a large house
+of the government," where he stayed till noon.  At noon Weber told
+him he was going to "the place where ships are anchored that go to
+Samoa," and led him to "a very magnificent house, with carriages
+inside and a wonderful roof of glass"; to wit, the railway station.
+They were benighted on the train, and then went in "something with
+a house, drawn by horses, which had windows and many decks";
+plainly an omnibus.  Here (at Bremen or Bremerhaven, I believe)
+they stayed some while in "a house of five hundred rooms"; then
+were got on board the Nurnberg (as they understood) for Samoa,
+anchored in England on a Sunday, were joined en route by the famous
+Dr. Knappe, passed through "a narrow passage where they went very
+slow and which was just like a river," and beheld with exhilarated
+curiosity that Red Sea of which they had learned so much in their
+Bibles.  At last, "at the hour when the fires burn red," they came
+to a place where was a German man-of-war.  Laupepa was called, with
+one of the boys, on deck, when he found a German officer awaiting
+him, and a steam launch alongside, and was told he must now leave
+his brother and go elsewhere.  "I cannot go like this," he cried.
+"You must let me see my brother and the other old men"--a term of
+courtesy.  Knappe, who seems always to have been good-natured,
+revised his orders, and consented not only to an interview, but to
+allow Moli to continue to accompany the king.  So these two were
+carried to the man-of-war, and sailed many a day, still supposing
+themselves bound for Samoa; and lo! she came to a country the like
+of which they had never dreamed of, and cast anchor in the great
+lagoon of Jaluit; and upon that narrow land the exiles were set on
+shore.  This was the part of his captivity on which he looked back
+with the most bitterness.  It was the last, for one thing, and he
+was worn down with the long suspense, and terror, and deception.
+He could not bear the brackish water; and though "the Germans were
+still good to him, and gave him beef and biscuit and tea," he
+suffered from the lack of vegetable food.
+
+Such is the narrative of this simple exile.  I have not sought to
+correct it by extraneous testimony.  It is not so much the facts
+that are historical, as the man's attitude.  No one could hear this
+tale as he originally told it in my hearing--I think none can read
+it as here condensed and unadorned--without admiring the fairness
+and simplicity of the Samoan; and wondering at the want of heart--
+or want of humour--in so many successive civilised Germans, that
+they should have continued to surround this infant with the secrecy
+of state.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--BRANDEIS
+September '87 to August '88
+
+
+
+So Tamasese was on the throne, and Brandeis behind it; and I have
+now to deal with their brief and luckless reign.  That it was the
+reign of Brandeis needs not to be argued:  the policy is throughout
+that of an able, over-hasty white, with eyes and ideas.  But it
+should be borne in mind that he had a double task, and must first
+lead his sovereign, before he could begin to drive their common
+subjects.  Meanwhile, he himself was exposed (if all tales be true)
+to much dictation and interference, and to some "cumbrous aid,"
+from the consulate and the firm.  And to one of these aids, the
+suppression of the municipality, I am inclined to attribute his
+ultimate failure.
+
+The white enemies of the new regimen were of two classes.  In the
+first stood Moors and the employes of MacArthur, the two chief
+rivals of the firm, who saw with jealousy a clerk (or a so-called
+clerk) of their competitors advanced to the chief power.  The
+second class, that of the officials, numbered at first exactly one.
+Wilson, the English acting consul, is understood to have held
+strict orders to help Germany.  Commander Leary, of the Adams, the
+American captain, when he arrived, on the 16th October, and for
+some time after, seemed devoted to the German interest, and spent
+his days with a German officer, Captain Von Widersheim, who was
+deservedly beloved by all who knew him.  There remains the American
+consul-general, Harold Marsh Sewall, a young man of high spirit and
+a generous disposition.  He had obeyed the orders of his government
+with a grudge; and looked back on his past action with regret
+almost to be called repentance.  From the moment of the declaration
+of war against Laupepa, we find him standing forth in bold,
+consistent, and sometimes rather captious opposition, stirring up
+his government at home with clear and forcible despatches, and on
+the spot grasping at every opportunity to thrust a stick into the
+German wheels.  For some while, he and Moors fought their difficult
+battle in conjunction; in the course of which, first one, and then
+the other, paid a visit home to reason with the authorities at
+Washington; and during the consul's absence, there was found an
+American clerk in Apia, William Blacklock, to perform the duties of
+the office with remarkable ability and courage.  The three names
+just brought together, Sewall, Moors, and Blacklock, make the head
+and front of the opposition; if Tamasese fell, if Brandeis was
+driven forth, if the treaty of Berlin was signed, theirs is the
+blame or the credit.
+
+To understand the feelings of self-reproach and bitterness with
+which Sewall took the field, the reader must see Laupepa's letter
+of farewell to the consuls of England and America.  It is singular
+that this far from brilliant or dignified monarch, writing in the
+forest, in heaviness of spirit and under pressure for time, should
+have left behind him not only one, but two remarkable and most
+effective documents.  The farewell to his people was touching; the
+farewell to the consuls, for a man of the character of Sewall, must
+have cut like a whip.  "When the chief Tamasese and others first
+moved the present troubles," he wrote, "it was my wish to punish
+them and put an end to the rebellion; but I yielded to the advice
+of the British and American consuls.  Assistance and protection was
+repeatedly promised to me and my government, if I abstained from
+bringing war upon my country.  Relying upon these promises, I did
+not put down the rebellion.  Now I find that war has been made upon
+me by the Emperor of Germany, and Tamasese has been proclaimed king
+of Samoa.  I desire to remind you of the promises so frequently
+made by your government, and trust that you will so far redeem them
+as to cause the lives and liberties of my chiefs and people to be
+respected."
+
+Sewall's immediate adversary was, of course, Becker.  I have formed
+an opinion of this gentleman, largely from his printed despatches,
+which I am at a loss to put in words.  Astute, ingenious, capable,
+at moments almost witty with a kind of glacial wit in action, he
+displayed in the course of this affair every description of
+capacity but that which is alone useful and which springs from a
+knowledge of men's natures.  It chanced that one of Sewall's early
+moves played into his hands, and he was swift to seize and to
+improve the advantage.  The neutral territory and the tripartite
+municipality of Apia were eyesores to the German consulate and
+Brandeis.  By landing Tamasese's two or three hundred warriors at
+Mulinuu, as Becker himself owns, they had infringed the treaties,
+and Sewall entered protest twice.  There were two ways of escaping
+this dilemma:  one was to withdraw the warriors; the other, by some
+hocus-pocus, to abrogate the neutrality.  And the second had
+subsidiary advantages:  it would restore the taxes of the richest
+district in the islands to the Samoan king; and it would enable
+them to substitute over the royal seat the flag of Germany for the
+new flag of Tamasese.  It is true (and it was the subject of much
+remark) that these two could hardly be distinguished by the naked
+eye; but their effects were different.  To seat the puppet king on
+German land and under German colours, so that any rebellion was
+constructive war on Germany, was a trick apparently invented by
+Becker, and which we shall find was repeated and persevered in till
+the end.
+
+Otto Martin was at this time magistrate in the municipality.  The
+post was held in turn by the three nationalities; Martin had served
+far beyond his term, and should have been succeeded months before
+by an American.  To make the change it was necessary to hold a
+meeting of the municipal board, consisting of the three consuls,
+each backed by an assessor.  And for some time these meetings had
+been evaded or refused by the German consul.  As long as it was
+agreed to continue Martin, Becker had attended regularly; as soon
+as Sewall indicated a wish for his removal, Becker tacitly
+suspended the municipality by refusing to appear.  This policy was
+now the more necessary; for if the whole existence of the
+municipality were a check on the freedom of the new government, it
+was plainly less so when the power to enforce and punish lay in
+German hands.  For some while back the Malietoa flag had been flown
+on the municipal building:  Becker denies this; I am sorry; my
+information obliges me to suppose he is in error.  Sewall, with
+post-mortem loyalty to the past, insisted that this flag should be
+continued.  And Becker immediately made his point.  He declared,
+justly enough, that the proposal was hostile, and argued that it
+was impossible he should attend a meeting under a flag with which
+his sovereign was at war.  Upon one occasion of urgency, he was
+invited to meet the two other consuls at the British consulate;
+even this he refused; and for four months the municipality
+slumbered, Martin still in office.  In the month of October, in
+consequence, the British and American ratepayers announced they
+would refuse to pay.  Becker doubtless rubbed his hands.  On
+Saturday, the 10th, the chief Tamaseu, a Malietoa man of substance
+and good character, was arrested on a charge of theft believed to
+be vexatious, and cast by Martin into the municipal prison.  He
+sent to Moors, who was his tenant and owed him money at the time,
+for bail.  Moors applied to Sewall, ranking consul.  After some
+search, Martin was found and refused to consider bail before the
+Monday morning.  Whereupon Sewall demanded the keys from the
+gaoler, accepted Moors's verbal recognisances, and set Tamaseu
+free.
+
+Things were now at a deadlock; and Becker astonished every one by
+agreeing to a meeting on the 14th.  It seems he knew what to
+expect.  Writing on the 13th at least, he prophesies that the
+meeting will be held in vain, that the municipality must lapse, and
+the government of Tamasese step in.  On the 14th, Sewall left his
+consulate in time, and walked some part of the way to the place of
+meeting in company with Wilson, the English pro-consul.  But he had
+forgotten a paper, and in an evil hour returned for it alone.
+Wilson arrived without him, and Becker broke up the meeting for
+want of a quorum.  There was some unedifying disputation as to
+whether he had waited ten or twenty minutes, whether he had been
+officially or unofficially informed by Wilson that Sewall was on
+the way, whether the statement had been made to himself or to Weber
+{1} in answer to a question, and whether he had heard Wilson's
+answer or only Weber's question:  all otiose; if he heard the
+question, he was bound to have waited for the answer; if he heard
+it not, he should have put it himself; and it was the manifest
+truth that he rejoiced in his occasion.  "Sir," he wrote to Sewall,
+"I have the honour to inform you that, to my regret, I am obliged
+to consider the municipal government to be provisionally in
+abeyance since you have withdrawn your consent to the continuation
+of Mr. Martin in his position as magistrate, and since you have
+refused to take part in the meeting of the municipal board agreed
+to for the purpose of electing a magistrate.  The government of the
+town and district of the municipality rests, as long as the
+municipality is in abeyance, with the Samoan government.  The
+Samoan government has taken over the administration, and has
+applied to the commander of the imperial German squadron for
+assistance in the preservation of good order."  This letter was not
+delivered until 4 P.M.  By three, sailors had been landed.  Already
+German colours flew over Tamasese's headquarters at Mulinuu, and
+German guards had occupied the hospital, the German consulate, and
+the municipal gaol and court-house, where they stood to arms under
+the flag of Tamasese.  The same day Sewall wrote to protest.
+Receiving no reply, he issued on the morrow a proclamation bidding
+all Americans look to himself alone.  On the 26th, he wrote again
+to Becker, and on the 27th received this genial reply:  "Sir, your
+high favour of the 26th of this month, I give myself the honour of
+acknowledging.  At the same time I acknowledge the receipt of your
+high favour of the 14th October in reply to my communication of the
+same date, which contained the information of the suspension of the
+arrangements for the municipal government."  There the
+correspondence ceased.  And on the 18th January came the last step
+of this irritating intrigue when Tamasese appointed a judge--and
+the judge proved to be Martin.
+
+Thus was the adventure of the Castle Municipal achieved by Sir
+Becker the chivalrous.  The taxes of Apia, the gaol, the police,
+all passed into the hands of Tamasese-Brandeis; a German was
+secured upon the bench; and the German flag might wave over her
+puppet unquestioned.  But there is a law of human nature which
+diplomatists should be taught at school, and it seems they are not;
+that men can tolerate bare injustice, but not the combination of
+injustice and subterfuge.  Hence the chequered career of the
+thimble-rigger.  Had the municipality been seized by open force,
+there might have been complaint, it would not have aroused the same
+lasting grudge.
+
+This grudge was an ill gift to bring to Brandeis, who had trouble
+enough in front of him without.  He was an alien, he was supported
+by the guns of alien war-ships, and he had come to do an alien's
+work, highly needful for Samoa, but essentially unpopular with all
+Samoans.  The law to be enforced, causes of dispute between white
+and brown to be eliminated, taxes to be raised, a central power
+created, the country opened up, the native race taught industry:
+all these were detestable to the natives, and to all of these he
+must set his hand.  The more I learn of his brief term of rule, the
+more I learn to admire him, and to wish we had his like.
+
+In the face of bitter native opposition, he got some roads
+accomplished.  He set up beacons.  The taxes he enforced with
+necessary vigour.  By the 6th of January, Aua and Fangatonga,
+districts in Tutuila, having made a difficulty, Brandeis is down at
+the island in a schooner, with the Adler at his heels, seizes the
+chief Maunga, fines the recalcitrant districts in three hundred
+dollars for expenses, and orders all to be in by April 20th, which
+if it is not, "not one thing will be done," he proclaimed, "but war
+declared against you, and the principal chiefs taken to a distant
+island."  He forbade mortgages of copra, a frequent source of
+trickery and quarrel; and to clear off those already contracted,
+passed a severe but salutary law.  Each individual or family was
+first to pay off its own obligation; that settled, the free man was
+to pay for the indebted village, the free village for the indebted
+province, and one island for another.  Samoa, he declared, should
+be free of debt within a year.  Had he given it three years, and
+gone more gently, I believe it might have been accomplished.  To
+make it the more possible, he sought to interdict the natives from
+buying cotton stuffs and to oblige them to dress (at least for the
+time) in their own tapa.  He laid the beginnings of a royal
+territorial army.  The first draft was in his hands drilling.  But
+it was not so much on drill that he depended; it was his hope to
+kindle in these men an esprit de corps, which should weaken the old
+local jealousies and bonds, and found a central or national party
+in the islands.  Looking far before, and with a wisdom beyond that
+of many merchants, he had condemned the single dependence placed on
+copra for the national livelihood.  His recruits, even as they
+drilled, were taught to plant cacao.  Each, his term of active
+service finished, should return to his own land and plant and
+cultivate a stipulated area.  Thus, as the young men continued to
+pass through the army, habits of discipline and industry, a central
+sentiment, the principles of the new culture, and actual gardens of
+cacao, should be concurrently spread over the face of the islands.
+
+Tamasese received, including his household expenses, 1960 dollars a
+year; Brandeis, 2400.  All such disproportions are regrettable, but
+this is not extreme:  we have seen horses of a different colour
+since then.  And the Tamaseseites, with true Samoan ostentation,
+offered to increase the salary of their white premier:  an offer he
+had the wisdom and good feeling to refuse.  A European chief of
+police received twelve hundred.  There were eight head judges, one
+to each province, and appeal lay from the district judge to the
+provincial, thence to Mulinuu.  From all salaries (I gather) a
+small monthly guarantee was withheld.  The army was to cost from
+three to four thousand, Apia (many whites refusing to pay taxes
+since the suppression of the municipality) might cost three
+thousand more:  Sir Becker's high feat of arms coming expensive (it
+will be noticed) even in money.  The whole outlay was estimated at
+twenty-seven thousand; and the revenue forty thousand:  a sum Samoa
+is well able to pay.
+
+Such were the arrangements and some of the ideas of this strong,
+ardent, and sanguine man.  Of criticisms upon his conduct, beyond
+the general consent that he was rather harsh and in too great a
+hurry, few are articulate.  The native paper of complaints was
+particularly childish.  Out of twenty-three counts, the first two
+refer to the private character of Brandeis and Tamasese.  Three
+complain that Samoan officials were kept in the dark as to the
+finances; one, of the tapa law; one, of the direct appointment of
+chiefs by Tamasese-Brandeis, the sort of mistake into which
+Europeans in the South Seas fall so readily; one, of the enforced
+labour of chiefs; one, of the taxes; and one, of the roads.  This I
+may give in full from the very lame translation in the American
+white book.  "The roads that were made were called the Government
+Roads; they were six fathoms wide.  Their making caused much damage
+to Samoa's lands and what was planted on it.  The Samoans cried on
+account of their lands, which were taken high-handedly and abused.
+They again cried on account of the loss of what they had planted,
+which was now thrown away in a high-handed way, without any regard
+being shown or question asked of the owner of the land, or any
+compensation offered for the damage done.  This was different with
+foreigners' land; in their case permission was first asked to make
+the roads; the foreigners were paid for any destruction made."  The
+sting of this count was, I fancy, in the last clause.  No less than
+six articles complain of the administration of the law; and I
+believe that was never satisfactory.  Brandeis told me himself he
+was never yet satisfied with any native judge.  And men say (and it
+seems to fit in well with his hasty and eager character) that he
+would legislate by word of mouth; sometimes forget what he had
+said; and, on the same question arising in another province, decide
+it perhaps otherwise.  I gather, on the whole, our artillery
+captain was not great in law.  Two articles refer to a matter I
+must deal with more at length, and rather from the point of view of
+the white residents.
+
+The common charge against Brandeis was that of favouring the German
+firm.  Coming as he did, this was inevitable.  Weber had bought
+Steinberger with hard cash; that was matter of history.  The
+present government he did not even require to buy, having founded
+it by his intrigues, and introduced the premier to Samoa through
+the doors of his own office.  And the effect of the initial blunder
+was kept alive by the chatter of the clerks in bar-rooms, boasting
+themselves of the new government and prophesying annihilation to
+all rivals.  The time of raising a tax is the harvest of the
+merchants; it is the time when copra will be made, and must be
+sold; and the intention of the German firm, first in the time of
+Steinberger, and again in April and May, 1888, with Brandeis, was
+to seize and handle the whole operation.  Their chief rivals were
+the Messrs. MacArthur; and it seems beyond question that provincial
+governors more than once issued orders forbidding Samoans to take
+money from "the New Zealand firm."  These, when they were brought
+to his notice, Brandeis disowned, and he is entitled to be heard.
+No man can live long in Samoa and not have his honesty impugned.
+But the accusations against Brandeis's veracity are both few and
+obscure.  I believe he was as straight as his sword.  The governors
+doubtless issued these orders, but there were plenty besides
+Brandeis to suggest them.  Every wandering clerk from the firm's
+office, every plantation manager, would be dinning the same story
+in the native ear.  And here again the initial blunder hung about
+the neck of Brandeis, a ton's weight.  The natives, as well as the
+whites, had seen their premier masquerading on a stool in the
+office; in the eyes of the natives, as well as in those of the
+whites, he must always have retained the mark of servitude from
+that ill-judged passage; and they would be inclined to look behind
+and above him, to the great house of Misi Ueba.  The government was
+like a vista of puppets.  People did not trouble with Tamasese, if
+they got speech with Brandeis; in the same way, they might not
+always trouble to ask Brandeis, if they had a hint direct from Misi
+Ueba.  In only one case, though it seems to have had many
+developments, do I find the premier personally committed.  The
+MacArthurs claimed the copra of Fasitotai on a district mortgage of
+three hundred dollars.  The German firm accepted a mortgage of the
+whole province of Aana, claimed the copra of Fasitotai as that of a
+part of Aana, and were supported by the government.  Here Brandeis
+was false to his own principle, that personal and village debts
+should come before provincial.  But the case occurred before the
+promulgation of the law, and was, as a matter of fact, the cause of
+it; so the most we can say is that he changed his mind, and changed
+it for the better.  If the history of his government be considered-
+-how it originated in an intrigue between the firm and the
+consulate, and was (for the firm's sake alone) supported by the
+consulate with foreign bayonets--the existence of the least doubt
+on the man's action must seem marvellous.  We should have looked to
+find him playing openly and wholly into their hands; that he did
+not, implies great independence and much secret friction; and I
+believe (if the truth were known) the firm would be found to have
+been disgusted with the stubbornness of its intended tool, and
+Brandeis often impatient of the demands of his creators.
+
+But I may seem to exaggerate the degree of white opposition.  And
+it is true that before fate overtook the Brandeis government, it
+appeared to enjoy the fruits of victory in Apia; and one dissident,
+the unconquerable Moors, stood out alone to refuse his taxes.  But
+the victory was in appearance only; the opposition was latent; it
+found vent in talk, and thus reacted on the natives; upon the least
+excuse, it was ready to flame forth again.  And this is the more
+singular because some were far from out of sympathy with the native
+policy pursued.  When I met Captain Brandeis, he was amazed at my
+attitude.  "Whom did you find in Apia to tell you so much good of
+me?" he asked.  I named one of my informants.  "He?" he cried.  "If
+he thought all that, why did he not help me?"  I told him as well
+as I was able.  The man was a merchant.  He beheld in the
+government of Brandeis a government created by and for the firm who
+were his rivals.  If Brandeis were minded to deal fairly, where was
+the probability that he would be allowed?  If Brandeis insisted and
+were strong enough to prevail, what guarantee that, as soon as the
+government were fairly accepted, Brandeis might not be removed?
+Here was the attitude of the hour; and I am glad to find it clearly
+set forth in a despatch of Sewall's, June 18th, 1888, when he
+commends the law against mortgages, and goes on:  "Whether the
+author of this law will carry out the good intentions which he
+professes--whether he will be allowed to do so, if he desires,
+against the opposition of those who placed him in power and protect
+him in the possession of it--may well be doubted."  Brandeis had
+come to Apia in the firm's livery.  Even while he promised
+neutrality in commerce, the clerks were prating a different story
+in the bar-rooms; and the late high feat of the knight-errant,
+Becker, had killed all confidence in Germans at the root.  By these
+three impolicies, the German adventure in Samoa was defeated.
+
+I imply that the handful of whites were the true obstacle, not the
+thousands of malcontent Samoans; for had the whites frankly
+accepted Brandeis, the path of Germany was clear, and the end of
+their policy, however troublesome might be its course, was obvious.
+But this is not to say that the natives were content.  In a sense,
+indeed, their opposition was continuous.  There will always be
+opposition in Samoa when taxes are imposed; and the deportation of
+Malietoa stuck in men's throats.  Tuiatua Mataafa refused to act
+under the new government from the beginning, and Tamasese usurped
+his place and title.  As early as February, I find him signing
+himself "Tuiaana Tuiatua Tamasese," the first step on a dangerous
+path.  Asi, like Mataafa, disclaimed his chiefship and declared
+himself a private person; but he was more rudely dealt with.
+German sailors surrounded his house in the night, burst in, and
+dragged the women out of the mosquito nets--an offence against
+Samoan manners.  No Asi was to be found; but at last they were
+shown his fishing-lights on the reef, rowed out, took him as he
+was, and carried him on board a man-of-war, where he was detained
+some while between-decks.  At last, January 16th, after a farewell
+interview over the ship's side with his wife, he was discharged
+into a ketch, and along with two other chiefs, Maunga and Tuiletu-
+funga, deported to the Marshalls.  The blow struck fear upon all
+sides.  Le Mamea (a very able chief) was secretly among the
+malcontents.  His family and followers murmured at his weakness;
+but he continued, throughout the duration of the government, to
+serve Brandeis with trembling.  A circus coming to Apia, he seized
+at the pretext for escape, and asked leave to accept an engagement
+in the company.  "I will not allow you to make a monkey of
+yourself," said Brandeis; and the phrase had a success throughout
+the islands, pungent expressions being so much admired by the
+natives that they cannot refrain from repeating them, even when
+they have been levelled at themselves.  The assumption of the Atua
+name spread discontent in that province; many chiefs from thence
+were convicted of disaffection, and condemned to labour with their
+hands upon the roads--a great shock to the Samoan sense of the
+becoming, which was rendered the more sensible by the death of one
+of the number at his task.  Mataafa was involved in the same
+trouble.  His disaffected speech at a meeting of Atua chiefs was
+betrayed by the girls that made the kava, and the man of the future
+was called to Apia on safe-conduct, but, after an interview,
+suffered to return to his lair.  The peculiarly tender treatment of
+Mataafa must be explained by his relationship to Tamasese.  Laupepa
+was of Malietoa blood.  The hereditary retainers of the Tupua would
+see him exiled even with some complacency.  But Mataafa was Tupua
+himself; and Tupua men would probably have murmured, and would
+perhaps have mutinied, had he been harshly dealt with.
+
+The native opposition, I say, was in a sense continuous.  And it
+kept continuously growing.  The sphere of Brandeis was limited to
+Mulinuu and the north central quarters of Upolu--practically what
+is shown upon the map opposite.  There the taxes were expanded; in
+the out-districts, men paid their money and saw no return.  Here
+the eye and hand of the dictator were ready to correct the scales
+of justice; in the out-districts, all things lay at the mercy of
+the native magistrates, and their oppressions increased with the
+course of time and the experience of impunity.  In the spring of
+the year, a very intelligent observer had occasion to visit many
+places in the island of Savaii.  "Our lives are not worth living,"
+was the burthen of the popular complaint.  "We are groaning under
+the oppression of these men.  We would rather die than continue to
+endure it."  On his return to Apia, he made haste to communicate
+his impressions to Brandeis.  Brandeis replied in an epigram:
+"Where there has been anarchy in a country, there must be
+oppression for a time."  But unfortunately the terms of the epigram
+may be reversed; and personal supervision would have been more in
+season than wit.  The same observer who conveyed to him this
+warning thinks that, if Brandeis had himself visited the districts
+and inquired into complaints, the blow might yet have been averted
+and the government saved.  At last, upon a certain unconstitutional
+act of Tamasese, the discontent took life and fire.  The act was of
+his own conception; the dull dog was ambitious.  Brandeis declares
+he would not be dissuaded; perhaps his adviser did not seriously
+try, perhaps did not dream that in that welter of contradictions,
+the Samoan constitution, any one point would be considered sacred.
+I have told how Tamasese assumed the title of Tuiatua.  In August
+1888 a year after his installation, he took a more formidable step
+and assumed that of Malietoa.  This name, as I have said, is of
+peculiar honour; it had been given to, it had never been taken
+from, the exiled Laupepa; those in whose grant it lay, stood
+punctilious upon their rights; and Tamasese, as the representative
+of their natural opponents, the Tupua line, was the last who should
+have had it.  And there was yet more, though I almost despair to
+make it thinkable by Europeans.  Certain old mats are handed down,
+and set huge store by; they may be compared to coats of arms or
+heirlooms among ourselves; and to the horror of more than one-half
+of Samoa, Tamasese, the head of the Tupua, began collecting
+Malietoa mats.  It was felt that the cup was full, and men began to
+prepare secretly for rebellion.  The history of the month of August
+is unknown to whites; it passed altogether in the covert of the
+woods or in the stealthy councils of Samoans.  One ominous sign was
+to be noted; arms and ammunition began to be purchased or inquired
+about; and the more wary traders ordered fresh consignments of
+material of war.  But the rest was silence; the government slept in
+security; and Brandeis was summoned at last from a public dinner,
+to find rebellion organised, the woods behind Apia full of
+insurgents, and a plan prepared, and in the very article of
+execution, to surprise and seize Mulinuu.  The timely discovery
+averted all; and the leaders hastily withdrew towards the south
+side of the island, leaving in the bush a rear-guard under a young
+man of the name of Saifaleupolu.  According to some accounts, it
+scarce numbered forty; the leader was no great chief, but a
+handsome, industrious lad who seems to have been much beloved.  And
+upon this obstacle Brandeis fell.  It is the man's fault to be too
+impatient of results; his public intention to free Samoa of all
+debt within the year, depicts him; and instead of continuing to
+temporise and let his enemies weary and disperse, he judged it
+politic to strike a blow.  He struck it, with what seemed to be
+success, and the sound of it roused Samoa to rebellion.
+
+About two in the morning of August 31st, Apia was wakened by men
+marching.  Day came, and Brandeis and his war-party were already
+long disappeared in the woods.  All morning belated Tamaseseites
+were still to be seen running with their guns.  All morning shots
+were listened for in vain; but over the top of the forest, far up
+the mountain, smoke was for some time observed to hang.  About ten
+a dead man was carried in, lashed under a pole like a dead pig, his
+rosary (for he was a Catholic) hanging nearly to the ground.  Next
+came a young fellow wounded, sitting in a rope swung from a pole;
+two fellows bearing him, two running behind for a relief.  At last
+about eleven, three or four heavy volleys and a great shouting were
+heard from the bush town Tanungamanono; the affair was over, the
+victorious force, on the march back, was there celebrating its
+victory by the way.  Presently after, it marched through Apia, five
+or six hundred strong, in tolerable order and strutting with the
+ludicrous assumption of the triumphant islander.  Women who had
+been buying bread ran and gave them loaves.  At the tail end came
+Brandeis himself, smoking a cigar, deadly pale, and with perhaps an
+increase of his usual nervous manner.  One spoke to him by the way.
+He expressed his sorrow the action had been forced on him.  "Poor
+people, it's all the worse for them!" he said.  "It'll have to be
+done another way now."  And it was supposed by his hearer that he
+referred to intervention from the German war-ships.  He meant, he
+said, to put a stop to head-hunting; his men had taken two that
+day, he added, but he had not suffered them to bring them in, and
+they had been left in Tanungamanono.  Thither my informant rode,
+was attracted by the sound of walling, and saw in a house the two
+heads washed and combed, and the sister of one of the dead
+lamenting in the island fashion and kissing the cold face.  Soon
+after, a small grave was dug, the heads were buried in a beef box,
+and the pastor read the service.  The body of Saifaleupolu himself
+was recovered unmutilated, brought down from the forest, and buried
+behind Apia.
+
+The same afternoon, the men of Vaimaunga were ordered to report in
+Mulinuu, where Tamasese's flag was half-masted for the death of a
+chief in the skirmish.  Vaimaunga is that district of Taumasanga
+which includes the bay and the foothills behind Apia; and both
+province and district are strong Malietoa.  Not one man, it is
+said, obeyed the summons.  Night came, and the town lay in unusual
+silence; no one abroad; the blinds down around the native houses,
+the men within sleeping on their arms; the old women keeping watch
+in pairs.  And in the course of the two following days all
+Vaimaunga was gone into the bush, the very gaoler setting free his
+prisoners and joining them in their escape.  Hear the words of the
+chiefs in the 23rd article of their complaint:  "Some of the chiefs
+fled to the bush from fear of being reported, fear of German men-
+of-war, constantly being accused, etc., and Brandeis commanded that
+they were to be shot on sight.  This act was carried out by
+Brandeis on the 31st day of August, 1888.  After this we evaded
+these laws; we could not stand them; our patience was worn out with
+the constant wickedness of Tamasese and Brandeis.  We were tired
+out and could stand no longer the acts of these two men."
+
+So through an ill-timed skirmish, two severed heads, and a dead
+body, the rule of Brandeis came to a sudden end.  We shall see him
+a while longer fighting for existence in a losing battle; but his
+government--take it for all in all, the most promising that has
+ever been in these unlucky islands--was from that hour a piece of
+history.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--THE BATTLE OF MATAUTU
+September 1888
+
+
+
+The revolution had all the character of a popular movement.  Many
+of the high chiefs were detained in Mulinuu; the commons trooped to
+the bush under inferior leaders.  A camp was chosen near Faleula,
+threatening Mulinuu, well placed for the arrival of recruits and
+close to a German plantation from which the force could be
+subsisted.  Manono came, all Tuamasanga, much of Savaii, and part
+of Aana, Tamasese's own government and titular seat.  Both sides
+were arming.  It was a brave day for the trader, though not so
+brave as some that followed, when a single cartridge is said to
+have been sold for twelve cents currency--between nine and ten
+cents gold.  Yet even among the traders a strong party feeling
+reigned, and it was the common practice to ask a purchaser upon
+which side he meant to fight.
+
+On September 5th, Brandeis published a letter:  "To the chiefs of
+Tuamasanga, Manono, and Faasaleleanga in the Bush:  Chiefs, by
+authority of his majesty Tamasese, the king of Samoa, I make known
+to you all that the German man-of-war is about to go together with
+a Samoan fleet for the purpose of burning Manono.  After this
+island is all burnt, 'tis good if the people return to Manono and
+live quiet.  To the people of Faasaleleanga I say, return to your
+houses and stop there.  The same to those belonging to Tuamasanga.
+If you obey this instruction, then you will all be forgiven; if you
+do not obey, then all your villages will be burnt like Manono.
+These instructions are made in truth in the sight of God in the
+Heaven."  The same morning, accordingly, the Adler steamed out of
+the bay with a force of Tamasese warriors and some native boats in
+tow, the Samoan fleet in question.  Manono was shelled; the
+Tamasese warriors, under the conduct of a Manono traitor, who paid
+before many days the forfeit of his blood, landed and did some
+damage, but were driven away by the sight of a force returning from
+the mainland; no one was hurt, for the women and children, who
+alone remained on the island, found a refuge in the bush; and the
+Adler and her acolytes returned the same evening.  The letter had
+been energetic; the performance fell below the programme.  The
+demonstration annoyed and yet re-assured the insurgents, and it
+fully disclosed to the Germans a new enemy.
+
+Captain Yon Widersheim had been relieved.  His successor, Captain
+Fritze, was an officer of a different stamp.  I have nothing to say
+of him but good; he seems to have obeyed the consul's requisitions
+with secret distaste; his despatches were of admirable candour; but
+his habits were retired, he spoke little English, and was far
+indeed from inheriting von Widersheim's close relations with
+Commander Leary.  It is believed by Germans that the American
+officer resented what he took to be neglect.  I mention this, not
+because I believe it to depict Commander Leary, but because it is
+typical of a prevailing infirmity among Germans in Samoa.  Touchy
+themselves, they read all history in the light of personal affronts
+and tiffs; and I find this weakness indicated by the big thumb of
+Bismarck, when he places "sensitiveness to small disrespects--
+Empfindlichkeit ueber Mangel an Respect," among the causes of the
+wild career of Knappe.  Whatever the cause, at least, the natives
+had no sooner taken arms than Leary appeared with violence upon
+that side.  As early as the 3rd, he had sent an obscure but
+menacing despatch to Brandeis.  On the 6th, he fell on Fritze in
+the matter of the Manono bombardment.  "The revolutionists," he
+wrote, "had an armed force in the field within a few miles of this
+harbour, when the vessels under your command transported the
+Tamasese troops to a neighbouring island with the avowed intention
+of making war on the isolated homes of the women and children of
+the enemy.  Being the only other representative of a naval power
+now present in this harbour, for the sake of humanity I hereby
+respectfully and solemnly protest in the name of the United States
+of America and of the civilised world in general against the use of
+a national war-vessel for such services as were yesterday rendered
+by the German corvette Adler."  Fritze's reply, to the effect that
+he is under the orders of the consul and has no right of choice,
+reads even humble; perhaps he was not himself vain of the exploit,
+perhaps not prepared to see it thus described in words.  From that
+moment Leary was in the front of the row.  His name is diagnostic,
+but it was not required; on every step of his subsequent action in
+Samoa Irishman is writ large; over all his doings a malign spirit
+of humour presided.  No malice was too small for him, if it were
+only funny.  When night signals were made from Mulinuu, he would
+sit on his own poop and confound them with gratuitous rockets.  He
+was at the pains to write a letter and address it to "the High
+Chief Tamasese"--a device as old at least as the wars of Robert
+Bruce--in order to bother the officials of the German post-office,
+in whose hands he persisted in leaving it, although the address was
+death to them and the distribution of letters in Samoa formed no
+part of their profession.  His great masterwork of pleasantry, the
+Scanlon affair, must be narrated in its place.  And he was no less
+bold than comical.  The Adams was not supposed to be a match for
+the Adler; there was no glory to be gained in beating her; and yet
+I have heard naval officers maintain she might have proved a
+dangerous antagonist in narrow waters and at short range.
+Doubtless Leary thought so.  He was continually daring Fritze to
+come on; and already, in a despatch of the 9th, I find Becker
+complaining of his language in the hearing of German officials, and
+how he had declared that, on the Adler again interfering, he would
+interfere himself, "if he went to the bottom for it--und wenn sein
+Schiff dabei zu Grunde ginge."  Here is the style of opposition
+which has the merit of being frank, not that of being agreeable.
+Becker was annoying, Leary infuriating; there is no doubt that the
+tempers in the German consulate were highly ulcerated; and if war
+between the two countries did not follow, we must set down the
+praise to the forbearance of the German navy.  This is not the last
+time that I shall have to salute the merits of that service.
+
+The defeat and death of Saifaleupolu and the burning of Manono had
+thus passed off without the least advantage to Tamasese.  But he
+still held the significant position of Mulinuu, and Brandeis was
+strenuous to make it good.  The whole peninsula was surrounded with
+a breastwork; across the isthmus it was six feet high and
+strengthened with a ditch; and the beach was staked against
+landing.  Weber's land claim--the same that now broods over the
+village in the form of a signboard--then appeared in a more
+military guise; the German flag was hoisted, and German sailors
+manned the breastwork at the isthmus--"to protect German property"
+and its trifling parenthesis, the king of Samoa.  Much vigilance
+reigned and, in the island fashion, much wild firing.  And in spite
+of all, desertion was for a long time daily.  The detained high
+chiefs would go to the beach on the pretext of a natural occasion,
+plunge in the sea, and swimming across a broad, shallow bay of the
+lagoon, join the rebels on the Faleula side.  Whole bodies of
+warriors, sometimes hundreds strong, departed with their arms and
+ammunition.  On the 7th of September, for instance, the day after
+Leary's letter, Too and Mataia left with their contingents, and the
+whole Aana people returned home in a body to hold a parliament.
+Ten days later, it is true, a part of them returned to their duty;
+but another part branched off by the way and carried their
+services, and Tamasese's dear-bought guns, to Faleula.
+
+On the 8th, there was a defection of a different kind, but yet
+sensible.  The High Chief Seumanu had been still detained in
+Mulinuu under anxious observation.  His people murmured at his
+absence, threatened to "take away his name," and had already
+attempted a rescue.  The adventure was now taken in hand by his
+wife Faatulia, a woman of much sense and spirit and a strong
+partisan; and by her contrivance, Seumanu gave his guardians the
+slip and rejoined his clan at Faleula.  This process of winnowing
+was of course counterbalanced by another of recruitment.  But the
+harshness of European and military rule had made Brandeis detested
+and Tamasese unpopular with many; and the force on Mulinuu is
+thought to have done little more than hold its own.  Mataafa
+sympathisers set it down at about two or three thousand.  I have no
+estimate from the other side; but Becker admits they were not
+strong enough to keep the field in the open.
+
+The political significance of Mulinuu was great, but in a military
+sense the position had defects.  If it was difficult to carry, it
+was easy to blockade:  and to be hemmed in on that narrow finger of
+land were an inglorious posture for the monarch of Samoa.  The
+peninsula, besides, was scant of food and destitute of water.
+Pressed by these considerations, Brandeis extended his lines till
+he had occupied the whole foreshore of Apia bay and the opposite
+point, Matautu.  His men were thus drawn out along some three
+nautical miles of irregular beach, everywhere with their backs to
+the sea, and without means of communication or mutual support
+except by water.  The extension led to fresh sorrows.  The Tamasese
+men quartered themselves in the houses of the absent men of the
+Vaimaunga.  Disputes arose with English and Americans.  Leary
+interposed in a loud voice of menace.  It was said the firm
+profited by the confusion to buttress up imperfect land claims; I
+am sure the other whites would not be far behind the firm.
+Properties were fenced in, fences and houses were torn down,
+scuffles ensued.  The German example at Mulinuu was followed with
+laughable unanimity; wherever an Englishman or an American
+conceived himself to have a claim, he set up the emblem of his
+country; and the beach twinkled with the flags of nations.
+
+All this, it will be observed, was going forward in that neutral
+territory, sanctified by treaty against the presence of armed
+Samoans.  The insurgents themselves looked on in wonder:  on the
+4th, trembling to transgress against the great Powers, they had
+written for a delimitation of the Eleele Sa; and Becker, in
+conversation with the British consul, replied that he recognised
+none.  So long as Tamasese held the ground, this was expedient.
+But suppose Tamasese worsted, it might prove awkward for the
+stores, mills, and offices of a great German firm, thus bared of
+shelter by the act of their own consul.
+
+On the morning of the 9th September, just ten days after the death
+of Saifaleupolu, Mataafa, under the name of Malietoa To'oa Mataafa,
+was crowned king at Faleula.  On the 11th he wrote to the British
+and American consuls:  "Gentlemen, I write this letter to you two
+very humbly and entreatingly, on account of this difficulty that
+has come before me.  I desire to know from you two gentlemen the
+truth where the boundaries of the neutral territory are.  You will
+observe that I am now at Vaimoso [a step nearer the enemy], and I
+have stopped here until I knew what you say regarding the neutral
+territory.  I wish to know where I can go, and where the forbidden
+ground is, for I do not wish to go on any neutral territory, or on
+any foreigner's property.  I do not want to offend any of the great
+Powers.  Another thing I would like.  Would it be possible for you
+three consuls to make Tamasese remove from German property? for I
+am in awe of going on German land."  He must have received a reply
+embodying Becker's renunciation of the principle, at once; for he
+broke camp the same day, and marched eastward through the bush
+behind Apia.
+
+Brandeis, expecting attack, sought to improve his indefensible
+position.  He reformed his centre by the simple expedient of
+suppressing it.  Apia was evacuated.  The two flanks, Mulinuu and
+Matautu, were still held and fortified, Mulinuu (as I have said) to
+the isthmus, Matautu on a line from the bayside to the little river
+Fuisa.  The centre was represented by the trajectory of a boat
+across the bay from one flank to another, and was held (we may say)
+by the German war-ship.  Mataafa decided (I am assured) to make a
+feint on Matautu, induce Brandeis to deplete Mulinuu in support,
+and then fall upon and carry that.  And there is no doubt in my
+mind that such a plan was bruited abroad, for nothing but a belief
+in it could explain the behaviour of Brandeis on the 12th.  That it
+was seriously entertained by Mataafa I stoutly disbelieve; the
+German flag and sailors forbidding the enterprise in Mulinuu.  So
+that we may call this false intelligence the beginning and the end
+of Mataafa's strategy.
+
+The whites who sympathised with the revolt were uneasy and
+impatient.  They will still tell you, though the dates are there to
+show them wrong, that Mataafa, even after his coronation, delayed
+extremely:  a proof of how long two days may seem to last when men
+anticipate events.  On the evening of the 11th, while the new king
+was already on the march, one of these walked into Matautu.  The
+moon was bright.  By the way he observed the native houses dark and
+silent; the men had been about a fortnight in the bush, but now the
+women and children were gone also; at which he wondered.  On the
+sea-beach, in the camp of the Tamaseses, the solitude was near as
+great; he saw three or four men smoking before the British
+consulate, perhaps a dozen in all; the rest were behind in the bush
+upon their line of forts.  About the midst he sat down, and here a
+woman drew near to him.  The moon shone in her face, and he knew
+her for a householder near by, and a partisan of Mataafa's.  She
+looked about her as she came, and asked him, trembling, what he did
+in the camp of Tamasese.  He was there after news, he told her.
+She took him by the hand.  "You must not stay here, you will get
+killed," she said.  "The bush is full of our people, the others are
+watching them, fighting may begin at any moment, and we are both
+here too long."  So they set off together; and she told him by the
+way that she had came to the hostile camp with a present of
+bananas, so that the Tamasese men might spare her house.  By the
+Vaisingano they met an old man, a woman, and a child; and these
+also she warned and turned back.  Such is the strange part played
+by women among the scenes of Samoan warfare, such were the
+liberties then permitted to the whites, that these two could pass
+the lines, talk together in Tamasese's camp on the eve of an
+engagement, and pass forth again bearing intelligence, like
+privileged spies.  And before a few hours the white man was in
+direct communication with the opposing general.  The next morning
+he was accosted "about breakfast-time" by two natives who stood
+leaning against the pickets of a public-house, where the Siumu road
+strikes in at right angles to the main street of Apia.  They told
+him battle was imminent, and begged him to pass a little way inland
+and speak with Mataafa.  The road is at this point broad and fairly
+good, running between thick groves of cocoa-palm and breadfruit.  A
+few hundred yards along this the white man passed a picket of four
+armed warriors, with red handkerchiefs and their faces blackened in
+the form of a full beard, the Mataafa rallying signs for the day; a
+little farther on, some fifty; farther still, a hundred; and at
+last a quarter of a mile of them sitting by the wayside armed and
+blacked.
+
+Near by, in the verandah of a house on a knoll, he found Mataafa
+seated in white clothes, a Winchester across his knees.  His men,
+he said, were still arriving from behind, and there was a turning
+movement in operation beyond the Fuisa, so that the Tamaseses
+should be assailed at the same moment from the south and east.  And
+this is another indication that the attack on Matautu was the true
+attack; had any design on Mulinuu been in the wind, not even a
+Samoan general would have detached these troops upon the other
+side.  While they still spoke, five Tamasese women were brought in
+with their hands bound; they had been stealing "our" bananas.
+
+All morning the town was strangely deserted, the very children
+gone.  A sense of expectation reigned, and sympathy for the attack
+was expressed publicly.  Some men with unblacked faces came to
+Moors's store for biscuit.  A native woman, who was there
+marketing, inquired after the news, and, hearing that the battle
+was now near at hand, "Give them two more tins," said she; "and
+don't put them down to my husband--he would growl; put them down to
+me."  Between twelve and one, two white men walked toward Matautu,
+finding as they went no sign of war until they had passed the
+Vaisingano and come to the corner of a by-path leading to the bush.
+Here were four blackened warriors on guard,--the extreme left wing
+of the Mataafa force, where it touched the waters of the bay.
+Thence the line (which the white men followed) stretched inland
+among bush and marsh, facing the forts of the Tamaseses.  The
+warriors lay as yet inactive behind trees; but all the young boys
+and harlots of Apia toiled in the front upon a trench, digging with
+knives and cocoa-shells; and a continuous stream of children
+brought them water.  The young sappers worked crouching; from the
+outside only an occasional head, or a hand emptying a shell of
+earth, was visible; and their enemies looked on inert from the line
+of the opposing forts.  The lists were not yet prepared, the
+tournament was not yet open; and the attacking force was suffered
+to throw up works under the silent guns of the defence.  But there
+is an end even to the delay of islanders.  As the white men stood
+and looked, the Tamasese line thundered into a volley; it was
+answered; the crowd of silent workers broke forth in laughter and
+cheers; and the battle had begun.
+
+Thenceforward, all day and most of the next night, volley followed
+volley; and pounds of lead and pounds sterling of money continued
+to be blown into the air without cessation and almost without
+result.  Colonel de Coetlogon, an old soldier, described the noise
+as deafening.  The harbour was all struck with shots; a man was
+knocked over on the German war-ship; half Apia was under fire; and
+a house was pierced beyond the Mulivai.  All along the two lines of
+breastwork, the entrenched enemies exchanged this hail of balls;
+and away on the east of the battle the fusillade was maintained,
+with equal spirit, across the narrow barrier of the Fuisa.  The
+whole rear of the Tamaseses was enfiladed by this flank fire; and I
+have seen a house there, by the river brink, that was riddled with
+bullets like a piece of worm-eaten wreck-wood.  At this point of
+the field befell a trait of Samoan warfare worth recording.  Taiese
+(brother to Siteoni already mentioned) shot a Tamasese man.  He saw
+him fall, and, inflamed with the lust of glory, passed the river
+single-handed in that storm of missiles to secure the head.  On the
+farther bank, as was but natural, he fell himself; he who had gone
+to take a trophy remained to afford one; and the Mataafas, who had
+looked on exulting in the prospect of a triumph, saw themselves
+exposed instead to a disgrace.  Then rose one Vingi, passed the
+deadly water, swung the body of Taiese on his back, and returned
+unscathed to his own side, the head saved, the corpse filled with
+useless bullets.
+
+At this rate of practice, the ammunition soon began to run low, and
+from an early hour of the afternoon, the Malietoa stores were
+visited by customers in search of more.  An elderly man came
+leaping and cheering, his gun in one hand, a basket of three heads
+in the other.  A fellow came shot through the forearm.  "It doesn't
+hurt now," he said, as he bought his cartridges; "but it will hurt
+to-morrow, and I want to fight while I can."  A third followed, a
+mere boy, with the end of his nose shot off:  "Have you any
+painkiller? give it me quick, so that I can get back to fight."  On
+either side, there was the same delight in sound and smoke and
+schoolboy cheering, the same unsophisticated ardour of battle; and
+the misdirected skirmish proceeded with a din, and was illustrated
+with traits of bravery that would have fitted a Waterloo or a
+Sedan.
+
+I have said how little I regard the alleged plan of battle.  At
+least it was now all gone to water.  The whole forces of Mataafa
+had leaked out, man by man, village by village, on the so-called
+false attack.  They were all pounding for their lives on the front
+and the left flank of Matautu.  About half-past three they
+enveloped the right flank also.  The defenders were driven back
+along the beach road as far as the pilot station at the turn of the
+land.  From this also they were dislodged, stubbornly fighting.
+One, it Is told, retreated to his middle in the lagoon; stood
+there, loading and firing, till he fell; and his body was found on
+the morrow pierced with four mortal wounds.  The Tamasese force was
+now enveloped on three sides; it was besides almost cut off from
+the sea; and across its whole rear and only way of retreat a fire
+of hostile bullets crossed from east and west, in the midst of
+which men were surprised to observe the birds continuing to sing,
+and a cow grazed all afternoon unhurt.  Doubtless here was the
+defence in a poor way; but then the attack was in irons.  For the
+Mataafas about the pilot house could scarcely advance beyond
+without coming under the fire of their own men from the other side
+of the Fuisa; and there was not enough organisation, perhaps not
+enough authority, to divert or to arrest that fire.
+
+The progress of the fight along the beach road was visible from
+Mulinuu, and Brandeis despatched ten boats of reinforcements.  They
+crossed the harbour, paused for a while beside the Adler--it is
+supposed for ammunition--and drew near the Matautu shore.  The
+Mataafa men lay close among the shore-side bushes, expecting their
+arrival; when a silly lad, in mere lightness of heart, fired a shot
+in the air.  My native friend, Mrs. Mary Hamilton, ran out of her
+house and gave the culprit a good shaking:  an episode in the midst
+of battle as incongruous as the grazing cow.  But his sillier
+comrades followed his example; a harmless volley warned the boats
+what they might expect; and they drew back and passed outside the
+reef for the passage of the Fuisa.  Here they came under the fire
+of the right wing of the Mataafas on the river-bank.  The beach,
+raked east and west, appeared to them no place to land on.  And
+they hung off in the deep water of the lagoon inside the barrier
+reef, feebly fusillading the pilot house.
+
+Between four and five, the Fabeata regiment (or folk of that
+village) on the Mataafa left, which had been under arms all day,
+fell to be withdrawn for rest and food; the Siumu regiment, which
+should have relieved it, was not ready or not notified in time; and
+the Tamaseses, gallantly profiting by the mismanagement, recovered
+the most of the ground in their proper right.  It was not for long.
+They lost it again, yard by yard and from house to house, till the
+pilot station was once more in the hands of the Mataafas.  This is
+the last definite incident in the battle.  The vicissitudes along
+the line of the entrenchments remain concealed from us under the
+cover of the forest.  Some part of the Tamasese position there
+appears to have been carried, but what part, or at what hour, or
+whether the advantage was maintained, I have never learned.  Night
+and rain, but not silence, closed upon the field.  The trenches
+were deep in mud; but the younger folk wrecked the houses in the
+neighbourhood, carried the roofs to the front, and lay under them,
+men and women together, through a long night of furious squalls and
+furious and useless volleys.  Meanwhile the older folk trailed back
+into Apia in the rain; they talked as they went of who had fallen
+and what heads had been taken upon either side--they seemed to know
+by name the losses upon both; and drenched with wet and broken with
+excitement and fatigue, they crawled into the verandahs of the town
+to eat and sleep.  The morrow broke grey and drizzly, but as so
+often happens in the islands, cleared up into a glorious day.
+During the night, the majority of the defenders had taken advantage
+of the rain and darkness and stolen from their forts unobserved.
+The rallying sign of the Tamaseses had been a white handkerchief.
+With the dawn, the de Coetlogons from the English consulate beheld
+the ground strewn with these badges discarded; and close by the
+house, a belated turncoat was still changing white for red.
+Matautu was lost; Tamasese was confined to Mulinuu; and by nine
+o'clock two Mataafa villages paraded the streets of Apia, taking
+possession.  The cost of this respectable success in ammunition
+must have been enormous; in life it was but small.  Some compute
+forty killed on either side, others forty on both, three or four
+being women and one a white man, master of a schooner from Fiji.
+Nor was the number even of the wounded at all proportionate to the
+surprising din and fury of the affair while it lasted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--LAST EXPLOITS OF BECKER
+September--November 1888
+
+
+
+Brandeis had held all day by Mulinuu, expecting the reported real
+attack.  He woke on the 13th to find himself cut off on that
+unwatered promontory, and the Mataafa villagers parading Apia.  The
+same day Fritze received a letter from Mataafa summoning him to
+withdraw his party from the isthmus; and Fritze, as if in answer,
+drew in his ship into the small harbour close to Mulinuu, and
+trained his port battery to assist in the defence.  From a step so
+decisive, it might be thought the German plans were unaffected by
+the disastrous issue of the battle.  I conceive nothing would be
+further from the truth.  Here was Tamasese penned on Mulinuu with
+his troops; Apia, from which alone these could be subsisted, in the
+hands of the enemy; a battle imminent, in which the German vessel
+must apparently take part with men and battery, and the buildings
+of the German firm were apparently destined to be the first target
+of fire.  Unless Becker re-established that which he had so lately
+and so artfully thrown down--the neutral territory--the firm would
+have to suffer.  If he re-established it, Tamasese must retire from
+Mulinuu.  If Becker saved his goose, he lost his cabbage.  Nothing
+so well depicts the man's effrontery as that he should have
+conceived the design of saving both,--of re-establishing only so
+much of the neutral territory as should hamper Mataafa, and leaving
+in abeyance all that could incommode Tamasese.  By drawing the
+boundary where he now proposed, across the isthmus, he protected
+the firm, drove back the Mataafas out of almost all that they had
+conquered, and, so far from disturbing Tamasese, actually fortified
+him in his old position.
+
+The real story of the negotiations that followed we shall perhaps
+never learn.  But so much is plain:  that while Becker was thus
+outwardly straining decency in the interest of Tamasese, he was
+privately intriguing, or pretending to intrigue, with Mataafa.  In
+his despatch of the 11th, he had given an extended criticism of
+that chieftain, whom he depicts as very dark and artful; and while
+admitting that his assumption of the name of Malietoa might raise
+him up followers, predicted that he could not make an orderly
+government or support himself long in sole power "without very
+energetic foreign help."  Of what help was the consul thinking?
+There was no helper in the field but Germany.  On the 15th he had
+an interview with the victor; told him that Tamasese's was the only
+government recognised by Germany, and that he must continue to
+recognise it till he received "other instructions from his
+government, whom he was now advising of the late events"; refused,
+accordingly, to withdraw the guard from the isthmus; and desired
+Mataafa, "until the arrival of these fresh instructions," to
+refrain from an attack on Mulinuu.  One thing of two:  either this
+language is extremely perfidious, or Becker was preparing to change
+sides.  The same detachment appears in his despatch of October 7th.
+He computes the losses of the German firm with an easy
+cheerfulness.  If Tamasese get up again (gelingt die
+Wiederherstellung der Regierung Tamasese's), Tamasese will have to
+pay.  If not, then Mataafa.  This is not the language of a
+partisan.  The tone of indifference, the easy implication that the
+case of Tamasese was already desperate, the hopes held secretly
+forth to Mataafa and secretly reported to his government at home,
+trenchantly contrast with his external conduct.  At this very time
+he was feeding Tamasese; he had German sailors mounting guard on
+Tamasese's battlements; the German war-ship lay close in, whether
+to help or to destroy.  If he meant to drop the cause of Tamasese,
+he had him in a corner, helpless, and could stifle him without a
+sob.  If he meant to rat, it was to be with every condition of
+safety and every circumstance of infamy.
+
+Was it conceivable, then, that he meant it?  Speaking with a
+gentleman who was in the confidence of Dr. Knappe:  "Was it not a
+pity," I asked, "that Knappe did not stick to Becker's policy of
+supporting Mataafa?"  "You are quite wrong there; that was not
+Knappe's doing," was the reply.  "Becker had changed his mind
+before Knappe came."  Why, then, had he changed it?  This
+excellent, if ignominious, idea once entertained, why was it let
+drop?  It is to be remembered there was another German in the
+field, Brandeis, who had a respect, or rather, perhaps, an
+affection, for Tamasese, and who thought his own honour and that of
+his country engaged in the support of that government which they
+had provoked and founded.  Becker described the captain to Laupepa
+as "a quiet, sensible gentleman."  If any word came to his ears of
+the intended manoeuvre, Brandeis would certainly show himself very
+sensible of the affront; but Becker might have been tempted to
+withdraw his former epithet of quiet.  Some such passage, some such
+threatened change of front at the consulate, opposed with outcry,
+would explain what seems otherwise inexplicable, the bitter,
+indignant, almost hostile tone of a subsequent letter from Brandeis
+to Knappe--"Brandeis's inflammatory letter," Bismarck calls it--the
+proximate cause of the German landing and reverse at Fangalii.
+
+But whether the advances of Becker were sincere or not--whether he
+meditated treachery against the old king or was practising
+treachery upon the new, and the choice is between one or other--no
+doubt but he contrived to gain his points with Mataafa, prevailing
+on him to change his camp for the better protection of the German
+plantations, and persuading him (long before he could persuade his
+brother consuls) to accept that miraculous new neutral territory of
+his, with a piece cut out for the immediate needs of Tamasese.
+
+During the rest of September, Tamasese continued to decline.  On
+the 19th one village and half of another deserted him; on the 22nd
+two more.  On the 21st the Mataafas burned his town of Leulumoenga,
+his own splendid house flaming with the rest; and there are few
+things of which a native thinks more, or has more reason to think
+well, than of a fine Samoan house.  Tamasese women and children
+were marched up the same day from Atua, and handed over with their
+sleeping-mats to Mulinuu:  a most unwelcome addition to a party
+already suffering from want.  By the 20th, they were being watered
+from the Adler.  On the 24th the Manono fleet of sixteen large
+boats, fortified and rendered unmanageable with tons of firewood,
+passed to windward to intercept supplies from Atua.  By the 27th
+the hungry garrison flocked in great numbers to draw rations at the
+German firm.  On the 28th the same business was repeated with a
+different issue.  Mataafas crowded to look on; words were
+exchanged, blows followed; sticks, stones, and bottles were caught
+up; the detested Brandeis, at great risk, threw himself between the
+lines and expostulated with the Mataafas--his only personal
+appearance in the wars, if this could be called war.  The same
+afternoon, the Tamasese boats got in with provisions, having passed
+to seaward of the lumbering Manono fleet; and from that day on,
+whether from a high degree of enterprise on the one side or a great
+lack of capacity on the other, supplies were maintained from the
+sea with regularity.  Thus the spectacle of battle, or at least of
+riot, at the doors of the German firm was not repeated.  But the
+memory must have hung heavy on the hearts, not of the Germans only,
+but of all Apia.  The Samoans are a gentle race, gentler than any
+in Europe; we are often enough reminded of the circumstance, not
+always by their friends.  But a mob is a mob, and a drunken mob is
+a drunken mob, and a drunken mob with weapons in its hands is a
+drunken mob with weapons in its hands, all the world over:
+elementary propositions, which some of us upon these islands might
+do worse than get by rote, but which must have been evident enough
+to Becker.  And I am amazed by the man's constancy, that, even
+while blows were going at the door of that German firm which he was
+in Samoa to protect, he should have stuck to his demands.  Ten days
+before, Blacklock had offered to recognise the old territory,
+including Mulinuu, and Becker had refused, and still in the midst
+of these "alarums and excursions," he continued to refuse it.
+
+On October 2nd, anchored in Apia bay H.B.M.S. Calliope, Captain
+Kane, carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Fairfax, and the gunboat
+Lizard, Lieutenant-Commander Pelly.  It was rumoured the admiral
+had come to recognise the government of Tamasese, I believe in
+error.  And at least the day for that was quite gone by; and he
+arrived not to salute the king's accession, but to arbitrate on his
+remains.  A conference of the consuls and commanders met on board
+the Calliope, October 4th, Fritze alone being absent, although
+twice invited:  the affair touched politics, his consul was to be
+there; and even if he came to the meeting (so he explained to
+Fairfax) he would have no voice in its deliberations.  The parties
+were plainly marked out:  Blacklock and Leary maintaining their
+offer of the old neutral territory, and probably willing to expand
+or to contract it to any conceivable extent, so long as Mulinuu was
+still included; Knappe offered (if the others liked) to include
+"the whole eastern end of the island," but quite fixed upon the one
+point that Mulinuu should be left out; the English willing to meet
+either view, and singly desirous that Apia should be neutralised.
+The conclusion was foregone.  Becker held a trump card in the
+consent of Mataafa; Blacklock and Leary stood alone, spoke with all
+ill grace, and could not long hold out.  Becker had his way; and
+the neutral boundary was chosen just where he desired:  across the
+isthmus, the firm within, Mulinuu without.  He did not long enjoy
+the fruits of victory.
+
+On the 7th, three days after the meeting, one of the Scanlons
+(well-known and intelligent half-castes) came to Blacklock with a
+complaint.  The Scanlon house stood on the hither side of the
+Tamasese breastwork, just inside the newly accepted territory, and
+within easy range of the firm.  Armed men, to the number of a
+hundred, had issued from Mulinuu, had "taken charge" of the house,
+had pointed a gun at Scanlon's head, and had twice "threatened to
+kill" his pigs.  I hear elsewhere of some effects (Gegenstande)
+removed.  At the best a very pale atrocity, though we shall find
+the word employed.  Germans declare besides that Scanlon was no
+American subject; they declare the point had been decided by court-
+martial in 1875; that Blacklock had the decision in the consular
+archives; and that this was his reason for handing the affair to
+Leary.  It is not necessary to suppose so.  It is plain he thought
+little of the business; thought indeed nothing of it; except in so
+far as armed men had entered the neutral territory from Mulinuu;
+and it was on this ground alone, and the implied breach of Becker's
+engagement at the conference, that he invited Leary's attention to
+the tale.  The impish ingenuity of the commander perceived in it
+huge possibilities of mischief.  He took up the Scanlon outrage,
+the atrocity of the threatened pigs; and with that poor instrument-
+-I am sure, to his own wonder--drove Tamasese out of Mulinuu.  It
+was "an intrigue," Becker complains.  To be sure it was; but who
+was Becker to be complaining of intrigue?
+
+On the 7th Leary laid before Fritze the following conundrum:  "As
+the natives of Mulinuu appear to be under the protection of the
+Imperial German naval guard belonging to the vessel under your
+command, I have the honour to request you to inform me whether or
+not they are under such protection?  Amicable relations," pursued
+the humorist, "amicable relations exist between the government of
+the United States and His Imperial German Majesty's government, but
+we do not recognise Tamasese's government, and I am desirous of
+locating the responsibility for violations of American rights."
+Becker and Fritze lost no time in explanation or denial, but went
+straight to the root of the matter and sought to buy off Scanlon.
+Becker declares that every reparation was offered.  Scanlon takes a
+pride to recapitulate the leases and the situations he refused, and
+the long interviews in which he was tempted and plied with drink by
+Becker or Beckmann of the firm.  No doubt, in short, that he was
+offered reparation in reason and out of reason, and, being
+thoroughly primed, refused it all.  Meantime some answer must be
+made to Leary; and Fritze repeated on the 8th his oft-repeated
+assurances that he was not authorised to deal with politics.  The
+same day Leary retorted:  "The question is not one of diplomacy nor
+of politics.  It is strictly one of military jurisdiction and
+responsibility.  Under the shadow of the German fort at Mulinuu,"
+continued the hyperbolical commander, "atrocities have been
+committed. . . . And I again have the honour respectfully to
+request to be informed whether or not the armed natives at Mulinuu
+are under the protection of the Imperial German naval guard
+belonging to the vessel under your command."  To this no answer was
+vouchsafed till the 11th, and then in the old terms; and meanwhile,
+on the 10th, Leary got into his gaiters--the sure sign, as was both
+said and sung aboard his vessel, of some desperate or some amusing
+service--and was set ashore at the Scanlons' house.  Of this he
+took possession at the head of an old woman and a mop, and was seen
+from the Tamasese breastwork directing operations and plainly
+preparing to install himself there in a military posture.  So much
+he meant to be understood; so much he meant to carry out, and an
+armed party from the Adams was to have garrisoned on the morrow the
+scene of the atrocity.  But there is no doubt he managed to convey
+more.  No doubt he was a master in the art of loose speaking, and
+could always manage to be overheard when he wanted; and by this, or
+some other equally unofficial means, he spread the rumour that on
+the morrow he was to bombard.
+
+The proposed post, from its position, and from Leary's well-
+established character as an artist in mischief, must have been
+regarded by the Germans with uneasiness.  In the bombardment we can
+scarce suppose them to have believed.  But Tamasese must have both
+believed and trembled.  The prestige of the European Powers was
+still unbroken.  No native would then have dreamed of defying these
+colossal ships, worked by mysterious powers, and laden with
+outlandish instruments of death.  None would have dreamed of
+resisting those strange but quite unrealised Great Powers,
+understood (with difficulty) to be larger than Tonga and Samoa put
+together, and known to be prolific of prints, knives, hard biscuit,
+picture-books, and other luxuries, as well as of overbearing men
+and inconsistent orders.  Laupepa had fallen in ill-blood with one
+of them; his only idea of defence had been to throw himself in the
+arms of another; his name, his rank, and his great following had
+not been able to preserve him; and he had vanished from the eyes of
+men--as the Samoan thinks of it, beyond the sky.  Asi, Maunga,
+Tuiletu-funga, had followed him in that new path of doom.  We have
+seen how carefully Mataafa still walked, how he dared not set foot
+on the neutral territory till assured it was no longer sacred, how
+he withdrew from it again as soon as its sacredness had been
+restored, and at the bare word of a consul (however gilded with
+ambiguous promises) paused in his course of victory and left his
+rival unassailed in Mulinuu.  And now it was the rival's turn.
+Hitherto happy in the continued support of one of the white Powers,
+he now found himself--or thought himself--threatened with war by no
+less than two others.
+
+Tamasese boats as they passed Matautu were in the habit of firing
+on the shore, as like as not without particular aim, and more in
+high spirits than hostility.  One of these shots pierced the house
+of a British subject near the consulate; the consul reported to
+Admiral Fairfax; and, on the morning of the 10th, the admiral
+despatched Captain Kane of the Calliope to Mulinuu.  Brandeis met
+the messenger with voluble excuses and engagements for the future.
+He was told his explanations were satisfactory so far as they went,
+but that the admiral's message was to Tamasese, the de facto king.
+Brandeis, not very well assured of his puppet's courage, attempted
+in vain to excuse him from appearing.  No de facto king, no
+message, he was told:  produce your de facto king.  And Tamasese
+had at last to be produced.  To him Kane delivered his errand:
+that the Lizard was to remain for the protection of British
+subjects; that a signalman was to be stationed at the consulate;
+that, on any further firing from boats, the signalman was to notify
+the Lizard and she to fire one gun, on which all boats must lower
+sail and come alongside for examination and the detection of the
+guilty; and that, "in the event of the boats not obeying the gun,
+the admiral would not be responsible for the consequences."  It was
+listened to by Brandeis and Tamasese "with the greatest attention."
+Brandeis, when it was done, desired his thanks to the admiral for
+the moderate terms of his message, and, as Kane went to his boat,
+repeated the expression of his gratitude as though he meant it,
+declaring his own hands would be thus strengthened for the
+maintenance of discipline.  But I have yet to learn of any
+gratitude on the part of Tamasese.  Consider the case of the poor
+owlish man hearing for the first time our diplomatic commonplaces.
+The admiral would not be answerable for the consequences.  Think of
+it!  A devil of a position for a de facto king.  And here, the same
+afternoon, was Leary in the Scalon house, mopping it out for
+unknown designs by the hands of an old woman, and proffering
+strange threats of bloodshed.  Scanlon and his pigs, the admiral
+and his gun, Leary and his bombardment,--what a kettle of fish!
+
+I dwell on the effect on Tamasese.  Whatever the faults of Becker,
+he was not timid; he had already braved so much for Mulinuu that I
+cannot but think he might have continued to hold up his head even
+after the outrage of the pigs, and that the weakness now shown
+originated with the king.  Late in the night, Blacklock was wakened
+to receive a despatch addressed to Leary.  "You have asked that I
+and my government go away from Mulinuu, because you pretend a man
+who lives near Mulinuu and who is under your protection, has been
+threatened by my soldiers.  As your Excellency has forbidden the
+man to accept any satisfaction, and as I do not wish to make war
+against the United States, I shall remove my government from
+Mulinuu to another place."  It was signed by Tamasese, but I think
+more heads than his had wagged over the direct and able letter.  On
+the morning of the 11th, accordingly, Mulinuu the much defended lay
+desert.  Tamasese and Brandeis had slipped to sea in a schooner;
+their troops had followed them in boats; the German sailors and
+their war-flag had returned on board the Adler; and only the German
+merchant flag blew there for Weber's land-claim.  Mulinuu, for
+which Becker had intrigued so long and so often, for which he had
+overthrown the municipality, for which he had abrogated and refused
+and invented successive schemes of neutral territory, was now no
+more to the Germans than a very unattractive, barren peninsula and
+a very much disputed land-claim of Mr. Weber's.  It will scarcely
+be believed that the tale of the Scanlon outrages was not yet
+finished.  Leary had gained his point, but Scanlon had lost his
+compensation.  And it was months later, and this time in the shape
+of a threat of bombardment in black and white, that Tamasese heard
+the last of the absurd affair.  Scanlon had both his fun and his
+money, and Leary's practical joke was brought to an artistic end.
+
+Becker sought and missed an instant revenge.  Mataafa, a devout
+Catholic, was in the habit of walking every morning to mass from
+his camp at Vaiala beyond Matautu to the mission at the Mulivai.
+He was sometimes escorted by as many as six guards in uniform, who
+displayed their proficiency in drill by perpetually shifting arms
+as they marched.  Himself, meanwhile, paced in front, bareheaded
+and barefoot, a staff in his hand, in the customary chief's dress
+of white kilt, shirt, and jacket, and with a conspicuous rosary
+about his neck.  Tall but not heavy, with eager eyes and a marked
+appearance of courage and capacity, Mataafa makes an admirable
+figure in the eyes of Europeans; to those of his countrymen, he may
+seem not always to preserve that quiescence of manner which is
+thought becoming in the great.  On the morning of October 16th he
+reached the mission before day with two attendants, heard mass, had
+coffee with the fathers, and left again in safety.  The smallness
+of his following we may suppose to have been reported.  He was
+scarce gone, at least, before Becker had armed men at the mission
+gate and came in person seeking him.
+
+The failure of this attempt doubtless still further exasperated the
+consul, and he began to deal as in an enemy's country.  He had
+marines from the Adler to stand sentry over the consulate and
+parade the streets by threes and fours.  The bridge of the
+Vaisingano, which cuts in half the English and American quarters,
+he closed by proclamation and advertised for tenders to demolish
+it.  On the 17th Leary and Pelly landed carpenters and repaired it
+in his teeth.  Leary, besides, had marines under arms, ready to
+land them if it should be necessary to protect the work.  But
+Becker looked on without interference, perhaps glad enough to have
+the bridge repaired; for even Becker may not always have offended
+intentionally.  Such was now the distracted posture of the little
+town:  all government extinct, the German consul patrolling it with
+armed men and issuing proclamations like a ruler, the two other
+Powers defying his commands, and at least one of them prepared to
+use force in the defiance.  Close on its skirts sat the warriors of
+Mataafa, perhaps four thousand strong, highly incensed against the
+Germans, having all to gain in the seizure of the town and firm,
+and, like an army in a fairy tale, restrained by the air-drawn
+boundary of the neutral ground.
+
+I have had occasion to refer to the strange appearance in these
+islands of an American adventurer with a battery of cannon.  The
+adventurer was long since gone, but his guns remained, and one of
+them was now to make fresh history.  It had been cast overboard by
+Brandeis on the outer reef in the course of this retreat; and word
+of it coming to the ears of the Mataafas, they thought it natural
+that they should serve themselves the heirs of Tamasese.  On the
+23rd a Manono boat of the kind called taumualua dropped down the
+coast from Mataafa's camp, called in broad day at the German
+quarter of the town for guides, and proceeded to the reef.  Here,
+diving with a rope, they got the gun aboard; and the night being
+then come, returned by the same route in the shallow water along
+shore, singing a boat-song.  It will be seen with what childlike
+reliance they had accepted the neutrality of Apia bay; they came
+for the gun without concealment, laboriously dived for it in broad
+day under the eyes of the town and shipping, and returned with it,
+singing as they went.  On Grevsmuhl's wharf, a light showed them a
+crowd of German blue-jackets clustered, and a hail was heard.
+"Stop the singing so that we may hear what is said," said one of
+the chiefs in the taumualua.  The song ceased; the hail was heard
+again, "Au mai le fana--bring the gun"; and the natives report
+themselves to have replied in the affirmative, and declare that
+they had begun to back the boat.  It is perhaps not needful to
+believe them.  A volley at least was fired from the wharf, at about
+fifty yards' range and with a very ill direction, one bullet
+whistling over Pelly's head on board the Lizard.  The natives
+jumped overboard; and swimming under the lee of the taumualua
+(where they escaped a second volley) dragged her towards the east.
+As soon as they were out of range and past the Mulivai, the German
+border, they got on board and (again singing--though perhaps a
+different song) continued their return along the English and
+American shore.  Off Matautu they were hailed from the seaward by
+one of the Adler's boats, which had been suddenly despatched on the
+sound of the firing or had stood ready all evening to secure the
+gun.  The hail was in German; the Samoans knew not what it meant,
+but took the precaution to jump overboard and swim for land.  Two
+volleys and some dropping shot were poured upon them in the water;
+but they dived, scattered, and came to land unhurt in different
+quarters of Matautu.  The volleys, fired inshore, raked the
+highway, a British house was again pierced by numerous bullets, and
+these sudden sounds of war scattered consternation through the
+town.
+
+Two British subjects, Hetherington-Carruthers, a solicitor, and
+Maben, a land-surveyor--the first being in particular a man well
+versed in the native mind and language--hastened at once to their
+consul; assured him the Mataafas would be roused to fury by this
+onslaught in the neutral zone, that the German quarter would be
+certainly attacked, and the rest of the town and white inhabitants
+exposed to a peril very difficult of estimation; and prevailed upon
+him to intrust them with a mission to the king.  By the time they
+reached headquarters, the warriors were already taking post round
+Matafele, and the agitation of Mataafa himself was betrayed in the
+fact that he spoke with the deputation standing and gun in hand:  a
+breach of high-chief dignity perhaps unparalleled.  The usual
+result, however, followed:  the whites persuaded the Samoan; and
+the attack was countermanded, to the benefit of all concerned, and
+not least of Mataafa.  To the benefit of all, I say; for I do not
+think the Germans were that evening in a posture to resist; the
+liquor-cellars of the firm must have fallen into the power of the
+insurgents; and I will repeat my formula that a mob is a mob, a
+drunken mob is a drunken mob, and a drunken mob with weapons in its
+hands is a drunken mob with weapons in its hands, all the world
+over.
+
+In the opinion of some, then, the town had narrowly escaped
+destruction, or at least the miseries of a drunken sack.  To the
+knowledge of all, the air of the neutral territory had once more
+whistled with bullets.  And it was clear the incident must have
+diplomatic consequences.  Leary and Pelly both protested to Fritze.
+Leary announced he should report the affair to his government "as a
+gross violation of the principles of international law, and as a
+breach of the neutrality."  "I positively decline the protest,"
+replied Fritze, "and cannot fail to express my astonishment at the
+tone of your last letter."  This was trenchant.  It may be said,
+however, that Leary was already out of court; that, after the night
+signals and the Scanlon incident, and so many other acts of
+practical if humorous hostility, his position as a neutral was no
+better than a doubtful jest.  The case with Pelly was entirely
+different; and with Pelly, Fritze was less well inspired.  In his
+first note, he was on the old guard; announced that he had acted on
+the requisition of his consul, who was alone responsible on "the
+legal side"; and declined accordingly to discuss "whether the lives
+of British subjects were in danger, and to what extent armed
+intervention was necessary."  Pelly replied judiciously that he had
+nothing to do with political matters, being only responsible for
+the safety of Her Majesty's ships under his command and for the
+lives and property of British subjects; that he had considered his
+protest a purely naval one; and as the matter stood could only
+report the case to the admiral on the station.  "I have the
+honour," replied Fritze, "to refuse to entertain the protest
+concerning the safety of Her Britannic Majesty's ship Lizard as
+being a naval matter.  The safety of Her Majesty's ship Lizard was
+never in the least endangered.  This was guaranteed by the
+disciplined fire of a few shots under the direction of two
+officers."  This offensive note, in view of Fritze's careful and
+honest bearing among so many other complications, may be attributed
+to some misunderstanding.  His small knowledge of English perhaps
+failed him.  But I cannot pass it by without remarking how far too
+much it is the custom of German officials to fall into this style.
+It may be witty, I am sure it is not wise.  It may be sometimes
+necessary to offend for a definite object, it can never be
+diplomatic to offend gratuitously.
+
+Becker was more explicit, although scarce less curt.  And his
+defence may be divided into two statements:  first, that the
+taumualua was proceeding to land with a hostile purpose on Mulinuu;
+second, that the shots complained of were fired by the Samoans.
+The second may be dismissed with a laugh.  Human nature has laws.
+And no men hitherto discovered, on being suddenly challenged from
+the sea, would have turned their backs upon the challenger and
+poured volleys on the friendly shore.  The first is not extremely
+credible, but merits examination.  The story of the recovered gun
+seems straightforward; it is supported by much testimony, the
+diving operations on the reef seem to have been watched from shore
+with curiosity; it is hard to suppose that it does not roughly
+represent the fact.  And yet if any part of it be true, the whole
+of Becker's explanation falls to the ground.  A boat which had
+skirted the whole eastern coast of Mulinuu, and was already
+opposite a wharf in Matafele, and still going west, might have been
+guilty on a thousand points--there was one on which she was
+necessarily innocent; she was necessarily innocent of proceeding on
+Mulinuu.  Or suppose the diving operations, and the native
+testimony, and Pelly's chart of the boat's course, and the boat
+itself, to be all stages of some epidemic hallucination or steps in
+a conspiracy--suppose even a second taumualua to have entered Apia
+bay after nightfall, and to have been fired upon from Grevsmuhl's
+wharf in the full career of hostilities against Mulinuu--suppose
+all this, and Becker is not helped.  At the time of the first fire,
+the boat was off Grevsmuhl's wharf.  At the time of the second (and
+that is the one complained of) she was off Carruthers's wharf in
+Matautu.  Was she still proceeding on Mulinuu?  I trow not.  The
+danger to German property was no longer imminent, the shots had
+been fired upon a very trifling provocation, the spirit implied was
+that of designed disregard to the neutrality.  Such was the
+impression here on the spot; such in plain terms the statement of
+Count Hatzfeldt to Lord Salisbury at home:  that the neutrality of
+Apia was only "to prevent the natives from fighting," not the
+Germans; and that whatever Becker might have promised at the
+conference, he could not "restrict German war-vessels in their
+freedom of action."
+
+There was nothing to surprise in this discovery; and had events
+been guided at the same time with a steady and discreet hand, it
+might have passed with less observation.  But the policy of Becker
+was felt to be not only reckless, it was felt to be absurd also.
+Sudden nocturnal onfalls upon native boats could lead, it was felt,
+to no good end whether of peace or war; they could but exasperate;
+they might prove, in a moment, and when least expected, ruinous.
+To those who knew how nearly it had come to fighting, and who
+considered the probable result, the future looked ominous.  And
+fear was mingled with annoyance in the minds of the Anglo-Saxon
+colony.  On the 24th, a public meeting appealed to the British and
+American consuls.  At half-past seven in the evening guards were
+landed at the consulates.  On the morrow they were each fortified
+with sand-bags; and the subjects informed by proclamation that
+these asylums stood open to them on any alarm, and at any hour of
+the day or night.  The social bond in Apia was dissolved.  The
+consuls, like barons of old, dwelt each in his armed citadel.  The
+rank and file of the white nationalities dared each other, and
+sometimes fell to on the street like rival clansmen.  And the
+little town, not by any fault of the inhabitants, rather by the act
+of Becker, had fallen back in civilisation about a thousand years.
+
+There falls one more incident to be narrated, and then I can close
+with this ungracious chapter.  I have mentioned the name of the new
+English consul.  It is already familiar to English readers; for the
+gentleman who was fated to undergo some strange experiences in Apia
+was the same de Coetlogon who covered Hicks's flank at the time of
+the disaster in the desert, and bade farewell to Gordon in Khartoum
+before the investment.  The colonel was abrupt and testy; Mrs. de
+Coetlogon was too exclusive for society like that of Apia; but
+whatever their superficial disabilities, it is strange they should
+have left, in such an odour of unpopularity, a place where they set
+so shining an example of the sterling virtues.  The colonel was
+perhaps no diplomatist; he was certainly no lawyer; but he
+discharged the duties of his office with the constancy and courage
+of an old soldier, and these were found sufficient.  He and his
+wife had no ambition to be the leaders of society; the consulate
+was in their time no house of feasting; but they made of it that
+house of mourning to which the preacher tells us it is better we
+should go.  At an early date after the battle of Matautu, it was
+opened as a hospital for the wounded.  The English and Americans
+subscribed what was required for its support.  Pelly of the Lizard
+strained every nerve to help, and set up tents on the lawn to be a
+shelter for the patients.  The doctors of the English and American
+ships, and in particular Dr. Oakley of the Lizard, showed
+themselves indefatigable.  But it was on the de Coetlogons that the
+distress fell.  For nearly half a year, their lawn, their verandah,
+sometimes their rooms, were cumbered with the sick and dying, their
+ears were filled with the complaints of suffering humanity, their
+time was too short for the multiplicity of pitiful duties.  In Mrs.
+de Coetlogon, and her helper, Miss Taylor, the merit of this
+endurance was perhaps to be looked for; in a man of the colonel's
+temper, himself painfully suffering, it was viewed with more
+surprise, if with no more admiration.  Doubtless all had their
+reward in a sense of duty done; doubtless, also, as the days
+passed, in the spectacle of many traits of gratitude and patience,
+and in the success that waited on their efforts.  Out of a hundred
+cases treated, only five died.  They were all well-behaved, though
+full of childish wiles.  One old gentleman, a high chief, was
+seized with alarming symptoms of belly-ache whenever Mrs. de
+Coetlogon went her rounds at night:  he was after brandy.  Others
+were insatiable for morphine or opium.  A chief woman had her foot
+amputated under chloroform.  "Let me see my foot!  Why does it not
+hurt?" she cried.  "It hurt so badly before I went to sleep."
+Siteoni, whose name has been already mentioned, had his shoulder-
+blade excised, lay the longest of any, perhaps behaved the worst,
+and was on all these grounds the favourite.  At times he was
+furiously irritable, and would rail upon his family and rise in bed
+until he swooned with pain.  Once on the balcony he was thought to
+be dying, his family keeping round his mat, his father exhorting
+him to be prepared, when Mrs. de Coetlogon brought him round again
+with brandy and smelling-salts.  After discharge, he returned upon
+a visit of gratitude; and it was observed, that instead of coming
+straight to the door, he went and stood long under his umbrella on
+that spot of ground where his mat had been stretched and he had
+endured pain so many months.  Similar visits were the rule, I
+believe without exception; and the grateful patients loaded Mrs. de
+Coetlogon with gifts which (had that been possible in Polynesia)
+she would willingly have declined, for they were often of value to
+the givers.
+
+The tissue of my story is one of rapacity, intrigue, and the
+triumphs of temper; the hospital at the consulate stands out almost
+alone as an episode of human beauty, and I dwell on it with
+satisfaction.  But it was not regarded at the time with universal
+favour; and even to-day its institution is thought by many to have
+been impolitic.  It was opened, it stood open, for the wounded of
+either party.  As a matter of fact it was never used but by the
+Mataafas, and the Tamaseses were cared for exclusively by German
+doctors.  In the progressive decivilisation of the town, these
+duties of humanity became thus a ground of quarrel.  When the
+Mataafa hurt were first brought together after the battle of
+Matautu, and some more or less amateur surgeons were dressing
+wounds on a green by the wayside, one from the German consulate
+went by in the road.  "Why don't you let the dogs die?" he asked.
+"Go to hell," was the rejoinder.  Such were the amenities of Apia.
+But Becker reserved for himself the extreme expression of this
+spirit.  On November 7th hostilities began again between the Samoan
+armies, and an inconclusive skirmish sent a fresh crop of wounded
+to the de Coetlogons.  Next door to the consulate, some native
+houses and a chapel (now ruinous) stood on a green.  Chapel and
+houses were certainly Samoan, but the ground was under a land-claim
+of the German firm; and de Coetlogon wrote to Becker requesting
+permission (in case it should prove necessary) to use these
+structures for his wounded.  Before an answer came, the hospital
+was startled by the appearance of a case of gangrene, and the
+patient was hastily removed into the chapel.  A rebel laid on
+German ground--here was an atrocity!  The day before his own
+relief, November 11th, Becker ordered the man's instant removal.
+By his aggressive carriage and singular mixture of violence and
+cunning, he had already largely brought about the fall of Brandeis,
+and forced into an attitude of hostility the whole non-German
+population of the islands.  Now, in his last hour of office, by
+this wanton buffet to his English colleague, he prepared a
+continuance of evil days for his successor.  If the object of
+diplomacy be the organisation of failure in the midst of hate, he
+was a great diplomatist.  And amongst a certain party on the beach
+he is still named as the ideal consul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--THE SAMOAN CAMPS
+November 1888
+
+
+
+When Brandeis and Tamasese fled by night from Mulinuu, they carried
+their wandering government some six miles to windward, to a
+position above Lotoanuu.  For some three miles to the eastward of
+Apia, the shores of Upolu are low and the ground rises with a
+gentle acclivity, much of which waves with German plantations.  A
+barrier reef encloses a lagoon passable for boats:  and the
+traveller skims there, on smooth, many-tinted shallows, between the
+wall of the breakers on the one hand, and on the other a succession
+of palm-tree capes and cheerful beach-side villages.  Beyond the
+great plantation of Vailele, the character of the coast is changed.
+The barrier reef abruptly ceases, the surf beats direct upon the
+shore; and the mountains and untenanted forest of the interior
+descend sheer into the sea.  The first mountain promontory is
+Letongo.  The bay beyond is called Laulii, and became the
+headquarters of Mataafa.  And on the next projection, on steep,
+intricate ground, veiled in forest and cut up by gorges and
+defiles, Tamasese fortified his lines.  This greenwood citadel,
+which proved impregnable by Samoan arms, may be regarded as his
+front; the sea covered his right; and his rear extended along the
+coast as far as Saluafata, and thus commanded and drew upon a rich
+country, including the plain of Falefa.
+
+He was left in peace from 11th October till November 6th.  But his
+adversary is not wholly to be blamed for this delay, which depended
+upon island etiquette.  His Savaii contingent had not yet come in,
+and to have moved again without waiting for them would have been
+surely to offend, perhaps to lose them.  With the month of November
+they began to arrive:  on the 2nd twenty boats, on the 3rd twenty-
+nine, on the 5th seventeen.  On the 6th the position Mataafa had so
+long occupied on the skirts of Apia was deserted; all that day and
+night his force kept streaming eastward to Laulii; and on the 7th
+the siege of Lotoanuu was opened with a brisk skirmish.
+
+Each side built forts, facing across the gorge of a brook.  An
+endless fusillade and shouting maintained the spirit of the
+warriors; and at night, even if the firing slackened, the pickets
+continued to exchange from either side volleys of songs and pungent
+pleasantries.  Nearer hostilities were rendered difficult by the
+nature of the ground, where men must thread dense bush and clamber
+on the face of precipices.  Apia was near enough; a man, if he had
+a dollar or two, could walk in before a battle and array himself in
+silk or velvet.  Casualties were not common; there was nothing to
+cast gloom upon the camps, and no more danger than was required to
+give a spice to the perpetual firing.  For the young warriors it
+was a period of admirable enjoyment.  But the anxiety of Mataafa
+must have been great and growing.  His force was now considerable.
+It was scarce likely he should ever have more.  That he should be
+long able to supply them with ammunition seemed incredible; at the
+rates then or soon after current, hundreds of pounds sterling might
+be easily blown into the air by the skirmishers in the course of a
+few days.  And in the meanwhile, on the mountain opposite, his
+outnumbered adversary held his ground unshaken.
+
+By this time the partisanship of the whites was unconcealed.
+Americans supplied Mataafa with ammunition; English and Americans
+openly subscribed together and sent boat-loads of provisions to his
+camp.  One such boat started from Apia on a day of rain; it was
+pulled by six oars, three being paid by Moors, three by the
+MacArthurs; Moors himself and a clerk of the MacArthurs' were in
+charge; and the load included not only beef and biscuit, but three
+or four thousand rounds of ammunition.  They came ashore in Laulii,
+and carried the gift to Mataafa.  While they were yet in his house
+a bullet passed overhead; and out of his door they could see the
+Tamasese pickets on the opposite hill.  Thence they made their way
+to the left flank of the Mataafa position next the sea.  A Tamasese
+barricade was visible across the stream.  It rained, but the
+warriors crowded in their shanties, squatted in the mud, and
+maintained an excited conversation.  Balls flew; either faction,
+both happy as lords, spotting for the other in chance shots, and
+missing.  One point is characteristic of that war; experts in
+native feeling doubt if it will characterise the next.  The two
+white visitors passed without and between the lines to a rocky
+point upon the beach.  The person of Moors was well known; the
+purpose of their coming to Laulii must have been already bruited
+abroad; yet they were not fired upon.  From the point they spied a
+crow's nest, or hanging fortification, higher up; and, judging it
+was a good position for a general view, obtained a guide.  He led
+them up a steep side of the mountain, where they must climb by
+roots and tufts of grass; and coming to an open hill-top with some
+scattered trees, bade them wait, let him draw the fire, and then be
+swift to follow.  Perhaps a dozen balls whistled about him ere he
+had crossed the dangerous passage and dropped on the farther side
+into the crow's-nest; the white men, briskly following, escaped
+unhurt.  The crow's-nest was built like a bartizan on the
+precipitous front of the position.  Across the ravine, perhaps at
+five hundred yards, heads were to be seen popping up and down in a
+fort of Tamesese's.  On both sides the same enthusiasm without
+council, the same senseless vigilance, reigned.  Some took aim;
+some blazed before them at a venture.  Now--when a head showed on
+the other side--one would take a crack at it, remarking that it
+would never do to "miss a chance."  Now they would all fire a
+volley and bob down; a return volley rang across the ravine, and
+was punctually answered:  harmless as lawn-tennis.  The whites
+expostulated in vain.  The warriors, drunken with noise, made
+answer by a fresh general discharge and bade their visitors run
+while it was time.  Upon their return to headquarters, men were
+covering the front with sheets of coral limestone, two balls having
+passed through the house in the interval.  Mataafa sat within, over
+his kava bowl, unmoved.  The picture is of a piece throughout:
+excellent courage, super-excellent folly, a war of school-children;
+expensive guns and cartridges used like squibs or catherine-wheels
+on Guy Fawkes's Day.
+
+On the 20th Mataafa changed his attack.  Tamasese's front was
+seemingly impregnable.  Something must be tried upon his rear.
+There was his bread-basket; a small success in that direction would
+immediately curtail his resources; and it might be possible with
+energy to roll up his line along the beach and take the citadel in
+reverse.  The scheme was carried out as might be expected from
+these childish soldiers.  Mataafa, always uneasy about Apia, clung
+with a portion of his force to Laulii; and thus, had the foe been
+enterprising, exposed himself to disaster.  The expedition fell
+successfully enough on Saluafata and drove out the Tamaseses with a
+loss of four heads; but so far from improving the advantage,
+yielded immediately to the weakness of the Samoan warrior, and
+ranged farther east through unarmed populations, bursting with
+shouts and blackened faces into villages terrified or admiring,
+making spoil of pigs, burning houses, and destroying gardens.  The
+Tamasese had at first evacuated several beach towns in succession,
+and were still in retreat on Lotoanuu; finding themselves
+unpursued, they reoccupied them one after another, and re-
+established their lines to the very borders of Saluafata.  Night
+fell; Mataafa had taken Saluafata, Tamasese had lost it; and that
+was all.  But the day came near to have a different and very
+singular issue.  The village was not long in the hands of the
+Mataafas, when a schooner, flying German colours, put into the bay
+and was immediately surrounded by their boats.  It chanced that
+Brandeis was on board.  Word of it had gone abroad, and the boats
+as they approached demanded him with threats.  The late premier,
+alone, entirely unarmed, and a prey to natural and painful
+feelings, concealed himself below.  The captain of the schooner
+remained on deck, pointed to the German colours, and defied
+approaching boats.  Again the prestige of a great Power triumphed;
+the Samoans fell back before the bunting; the schooner worked out
+of the bay; Brandeis escaped.  He himself apprehended the worst if
+he fell into Samoan hands; it is my diffident impression that his
+life would have been safe.
+
+On the 22nd, a new German war-ship, the Eber, of tragic memory,
+came to Apia from the Gilberts, where she had been disarming
+turbulent islands.  The rest of that day and all night she loaded
+stores from the firm, and on the morrow reached Saluafata bay.
+Thanks to the misconduct of the Mataafas, the most of the foreshore
+was still in the hands of the Tamaseses; and they were thus able to
+receive from the Eber both the stores and weapons.  The weapons had
+been sold long since to Tarawa, Apaiang, and Pleasant Island;
+places unheard of by the general reader, where obscure inhabitants
+paid for these instruments of death in money or in labour, misused
+them as it was known they would be misused, and had been disarmed
+by force.  The Eber had brought back the guns to a German counter,
+whence many must have been originally sold; and was here engaged,
+like a shopboy, in their distribution to fresh purchasers.  Such is
+the vicious circle of the traffic in weapons of war.  Another aid
+of a more metaphysical nature was ministered by the Eber to
+Tamasese, in the shape of uncountable German flags.  The full
+history of this epidemic of bunting falls to be told in the next
+chapter.  But the fact has to be chronicled here, for I believe it
+was to these flags that we owe the visit of the Adams, and my next
+and best authentic glance into a native camp.  The Adams arrived in
+Saluafata on the 26th.  On the morrow Leary and Moors landed at the
+village.  It was still occupied by Mataafas, mostly from Manono and
+Savaii, few in number, high in spirit.  The Tamasese pickets were
+meanwhile within musket range; there was maintained a steady
+sputtering of shots; and yet a party of Tamasese women were here on
+a visit to the women of Manono, with whom they sat talking and
+smoking, under the fire of their own relatives.  It was reported
+that Leary took part in a council of war, and promised to join with
+his broadside in the next attack.  It is certain he did nothing of
+the sort:  equally certain that, in Tamasese circles, he was firmly
+credited with having done so.  And this heightens the extraordinary
+character of what I have now to tell.  Prudence and delicacy alike
+ought to have forbid the camp of Tamasese to the feet of either
+Leary or Moors.  Moors was the original--there was a time when he
+had been the only--opponent of the puppet king.  Leary had driven
+him from the seat of government; it was but a week or two since he
+had threatened to bombard him in his present refuge.  Both were in
+close and daily council with his adversary, and it was no secret
+that Moors was supplying the latter with food.  They were
+partisans; it lacked but a hair that they should be called
+belligerents; it were idle to try to deny they were the most
+dangerous of spies.  And yet these two now sailed across the bay
+and landed inside the Tamasese lines at Salelesi.  On the very
+beach they had another glimpse of the artlessness of Samoan war.
+Hitherto the Tamasese fleet, being hardy and unencumbered, had made
+a fool of the huge floating forts upon the other side; and here
+they were tolling, not to produce another boat on their own pattern
+in which they had always enjoyed the advantage, but to make a new
+one the type of their enemies', of which they had now proved the
+uselessness for months.  It came on to rain as the Americans
+landed; and though none offered to oppose their coming ashore, none
+invited them to take shelter.  They were nowise abashed, entered a
+house unbidden, and were made welcome with obvious reserve.  The
+rain clearing off, they set forth westward, deeper into the heart
+of the enemies' position.  Three or four young men ran some way
+before them, doubtless to give warning; and Leary, with his
+indomitable taste for mischief, kept inquiring as he went after
+"the high chief" Tamasese.  The line of the beach was one
+continuous breastwork; some thirty odd iron cannon of all sizes and
+patterns stood mounted in embrasures; plenty grape and canister lay
+ready; and at every hundred yards or so the German flag was flying.
+The numbers of the guns and flags I give as I received them, though
+they test my faith.  At the house of Brandeis--a little,
+weatherboard house, crammed at the time with natives, men, women,
+and squalling children--Leary and Moors again asked for "the high
+chief," and, were again assured that he was farther on.  A little
+beyond, the road ran in one place somewhat inland, the two
+Americans had gone down to the line of the beach to continue their
+inspection of the breastwork, when Brandeis himself, in his shirt-
+sleeves and accompanied by several German officers, passed them by
+the line of the road.  The two parties saluted in silence.  Beyond
+Eva Point there was an observable change for the worse in the
+reception of the Americans; some whom they met began to mutter at
+Moors; and the adventurers, with tardy but commendable prudence,
+desisted from their search after the high chief, and began to
+retrace their steps.  On the return, Suatele and some chiefs were
+drinking kava in a "big house," and called them in to join--their
+only invitation.  But the night was closing, the rain had begun
+again:  they stayed but for civility, and returned on board the
+Adams, wet and hungry, and I believe delighted with their
+expedition.  It was perhaps the last as it was certainly one of the
+most extreme examples of that divinity which once hedged the white
+in Samoa.  The feeling was already different in the camp of
+Mataafa, where the safety of a German loiterer had been a matter of
+extreme concern.  Ten days later, three commissioners, an
+Englishman, an American, and a German, approached a post of
+Mataafas, were challenged by an old man with a gun, and mentioned
+in answer what they were.  "Ifea Siamani?  Which is the German?"
+cried the old gentleman, dancing, and with his finger on the
+trigger; and the commissioners stood somewhile in a very anxious
+posture, till they were released by the opportune arrival of a
+chief.  It was November the 27th when Leary and Moors completed
+their absurd excursion; in about three weeks an event was to befall
+which changed at once, and probably for ever, the relations of the
+natives and the whites.
+
+By the 28th Tamasese had collected seventeen hundred men in the
+trenches before Saluafata, thinking to attack next day.  But the
+Mataafas evacuated the place in the night.  At half-past five on
+the morning of the 29th a signal-gun was fired in the trenches at
+Laulii, and the Tamasese citadel was assaulted and defended with a
+fury new among Samoans.  When the battle ended on the following
+day, one or more outworks remained in the possession of Mataafa.
+Another had been taken and lost as many as four times.  Carried
+originally by a mixed force from Savaii and Tuamasanga, the
+victors, instead of completing fresh defences or pursuing their
+advantage, fell to eat and smoke and celebrate their victory with
+impromptu songs.  In this humour a rally of the Tamaseses smote
+them, drove them out pell-mell, and tumbled them into the ravine,
+where many broke their heads and legs.  Again the work was taken,
+again lost.  Ammunition failed the belligerents; and they fought
+hand to hand in the contested fort with axes, clubs, and clubbed
+rifles.  The sustained ardour of the engagement surprised even
+those who were engaged; and the butcher's bill was counted
+extraordinary by Samoans.  On December 1st the women of either side
+collected the headless bodies of the dead, each easily identified
+by the name tattooed on his forearm.  Mataafa is thought to have
+lost sixty killed; and the de Coetlogons' hospital received three
+women and forty men.  The casualties on the Tamasese side cannot be
+accepted, but they were presumably much less.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--AFFAIRS OF LAULII AND FANGALII
+November-December 1888
+
+
+
+For Becker I have not been able to conceal my distaste, for he
+seems to me both false and foolish.  But of his successor, the
+unfortunately famous Dr. Knappe, we may think as of a good enough
+fellow driven distraught.  Fond of Samoa and the Samoans, he
+thought to bring peace and enjoy popularity among the islanders; of
+a genial, amiable, and sanguine temper, he made no doubt but he
+could repair the breach with the English consul.  Hope told a
+flattering tale.  He awoke to find himself exchanging defiances
+with de Coetlogon, beaten in the field by Mataafa, surrounded on
+the spot by general exasperation, and disowned from home by his own
+government.  The history of his administration leaves on the mind
+of the student a sentiment of pity scarcely mingled.
+
+On Blacklock he did not call, and, in view of Leary's attitude, may
+be excused.  But the English consul was in a different category.
+England, weary of the name of Samoa, and desirous only to see peace
+established, was prepared to wink hard during the process and to
+welcome the result of any German settlement.  It was an
+unpardonable fault in Becker to have kicked and buffeted his ready-
+made allies into a state of jealousy, anger, and suspicion.  Knappe
+set himself at once to efface these impressions, and the English
+officials rejoiced for the moment in the change.  Between Knappe
+and de Coetlogon there seems to have been mutual sympathy; and, in
+considering the steps by which they were led at last into an
+attitude of mutual defiance, it must be remembered that both the
+men were sick,--Knappe from time to time prostrated with that
+formidable complaint, New Guinea fever, and de Coetlogon throughout
+his whole stay in the islands continually ailing.
+
+Tamasese was still to be recognised, and, if possible, supported:
+such was the German policy.  Two days after his arrival,
+accordingly, Knappe addressed to Mataafa a threatening despatch.
+The German plantation was suffering from the proximity of his "war-
+party."  He must withdraw from Laulii at once, and, whithersoever
+he went, he must approach no German property nor so much as any
+village where there was a German trader.  By five o'clock on the
+morrow, if he were not gone, Knappe would turn upon him "the
+attention of the man-of-war" and inflict a fine.  The same evening,
+November 14th, Knappe went on board the Adler, which began to get
+up steam.
+
+Three months before, such direct intervention on the part of
+Germany would have passed almost without protest; but the hour was
+now gone by.  Becker's conduct, equally timid and rash, equally
+inconclusive and offensive, had forced the other nations into a
+strong feeling of common interest with Mataafa.  Even had the
+German demands been moderate, de Coetlogon could not have forgotten
+the night of the taumualua, nor how Mataafa had relinquished, at
+his request, the attack upon the German quarter.  Blacklock, with
+his driver of a captain at his elbow, was not likely to lag behind.
+And Mataafa having communicated Knappe's letter, the example of the
+Germans was on all hands exactly followed; the consuls hastened on
+board their respective war-ships, and these began to get up steam.
+About midnight, in a pouring rain, Pelly communicated to Fritze his
+intention to follow him and protect British interests; and Knappe
+replied that he would come on board the Lizard and see de Coetlogon
+personally.  It was deep in the small hours, and de Coetlogon had
+been long asleep, when he was wakened to receive his colleague; but
+he started up with an old soldier's readiness.  The conference was
+long.  De Coetlogon protested, as he did afterwards in writing,
+against Knappe's claim:  the Samoans were in a state of war; they
+had territorial rights; it was monstrous to prevent them from
+entering one of their own villages because a German trader kept the
+store; and in case property suffered, a claim for compensation was
+the proper remedy.  Knappe argued that this was a question between
+Germans and Samoans, in which de Coetlogon had nothing to see; and
+that he must protect German property according to his instructions.
+To which de Coetlogon replied that he was himself in the same
+attitude to the property of the British; that he understood Knappe
+to be intending hostilities against Laulii; that Laulii was
+mortgaged to the MacArthurs; that its crops were accordingly
+British property; and that, while he was ever willing to recognise
+the territorial rights of the Samoans, he must prevent that
+property from being molested "by any other nation."  "But if a
+German man-of-war does it?" asked Knappe.--"We shall prevent it to
+the best of our ability," replied the colonel.  It is to the credit
+of both men that this trying interview should have been conducted
+and concluded without heat; but Knappe must have returned to the
+Adler with darker anticipations.
+
+At sunrise on the morning of the 15th, the three ships, each loaded
+with its consul, put to sea.  It is hard to exaggerate the peril of
+the forenoon that followed, as they lay off Laulii.  Nobody desired
+a collision, save perhaps the reckless Leary; but peace and war
+trembled in the balance; and when the Adler, at one period, lowered
+her gun ports, war appeared to preponderate.  It proved, however,
+to be a last--and therefore surely an unwise--extremity.  Knappe
+contented himself with visiting the rival kings, and the three
+ships returned to Apia before noon.  Beyond a doubt, coming after
+Knappe's decisive letter of the day before, this impotent
+conclusion shook the credit of Germany among the natives of both
+sides; the Tamaseses fearing they were deserted, the Mataafas (with
+secret delight) hoping they were feared.  And it gave an impetus to
+that ridiculous business which might have earned for the whole
+episode the name of the war of flags.  British and American flags
+had been planted the night before, and were seen that morning
+flying over what they claimed about Laulii.  British and American
+passengers, on the way up and down, pointed out from the decks of
+the war-ships, with generous vagueness, the boundaries of
+problematical estates.  Ten days later, the beach of Saluafata bay
+fluttered (as I have told in the last chapter) with the flag of
+Germany.  The Americans riposted with a claim to Tamasese's camp,
+some small part of which (says Knappe) did really belong to "an
+American nigger."  The disease spread, the flags were multiplied,
+the operations of war became an egg-dance among miniature neutral
+territories; and though all men took a hand in these proceedings,
+all men in turn were struck with their absurdity.  Mullan, Leary's
+successor, warned Knappe, in an emphatic despatch, not to squander
+and discredit the solemnity of that emblem which was all he had to
+be a defence to his own consulate.  And Knappe himself, in his
+despatch of March 21st, 1889, castigates the practice with much
+sense.  But this was after the tragicomic culmination had been
+reached, and the burnt rags of one of these too-frequently
+mendacious signals gone on a progress to Washington, like Caesar's
+body, arousing indignation where it came.  To such results are
+nations conducted by the patent artifices of a Becker.
+
+The discussion of the morning, the silent menace and defiance of
+the voyage to Laulii, might have set the best-natured by the ears.
+But Knappe and de Coetlogon took their difference in excellent
+part.  On the morrow, November 16th, they sat down together with
+Blacklock in conference.  The English consul introduced his
+colleagues, who shook hands.  If Knappe were dead-weighted with the
+inheritance of Becker, Blacklock was handicapped by reminiscences
+of Leary; it is the more to the credit of this inexperienced man
+that he should have maintained in the future so excellent an
+attitude of firmness and moderation, and that when the crash came,
+Knappe and de Coetlogon, not Knappe and Blacklock, were found to be
+the protagonists of the drama.  The conference was futile.  The
+English and American consuls admitted but one cure of the evils of
+the time:  that the farce of the Tamasese monarchy should cease.
+It was one which the German refused to consider.  And the agents
+separated without reaching any result, save that diplomatic
+relations had been restored between the States and Germany, and
+that all three were convinced of their fundamental differences.
+
+Knappe and de Coetlogon were still friends; they had disputed and
+differed and come within a finger's breadth of war, and they were
+still friends.  But an event was at hand which was to separate them
+for ever.  On December 4th came the Royalist, Captain Hand, to
+relieve the Lizard.  Pelly of course had to take his canvas from
+the consulate hospital; but he had in charge certain awnings
+belonging to the Royalist, and with these they made shift to cover
+the wounded, at that time (after the fight at Laulii) more than
+usually numerous.  A lieutenant came to the consulate, and
+delivered (as I have received it) the following message:  "Captain
+Hand's compliments, and he says you must get rid of these niggers
+at once, and he will help you to do it."  Doubtless the reply was
+no more civil than the message.  The promised "help," at least,
+followed promptly.  A boat's crew landed and the awnings were
+stripped from the wounded, Hand himself standing on the colonel's
+verandah to direct operations.  It were fruitless to discuss this
+passage from the humanitarian point of view, or from that of formal
+courtesy.  The mind of the new captain was plainly not directed to
+these objects.  But it is understood that he considered the
+existence of a hospital a source of irritation to Germans and a
+fault in policy.  His own rude act proved in the result far more
+impolitic.  The hospital had now been open some two months, and de
+Coetlogon was still on friendly terms with Knappe, and he and his
+wife were engaged to dine with him that day.  By the morrow that
+was practically ended.  For the rape of the awnings had two
+results:  one, which was the fault of de Coetlogon, not at all of
+Hand, who could not have foreseen it; the other which it was his
+duty to have seen and prevented.  The first was this:  the de
+Coetlogons found themselves left with their wounded exposed to the
+inclemencies of the season; they must all be transported into the
+house and verandah; in the distress and pressure of this task, the
+dinner engagement was too long forgotten; and a note of excuse did
+not reach the German consulate before the table was set, and Knappe
+dressed to receive his visitors.  The second consequence was
+inevitable.  Captain Hand was scarce landed ere it became public
+(was "sofort bekannt," writes Knappe) that he and the consul were
+in opposition.  All that had been gained by the demonstration at
+Laulii was thus immediately cast away; de Coetlogon's prestige was
+lessened; and it must be said plainly that Hand did less than
+nothing to restore it.  Twice indeed he interfered, both times with
+success; and once, when his own person had been endangered, with
+vehemence; but during all the strange doings I have to narrate, he
+remained in close intimacy with the German consulate, and on one
+occasion may be said to have acted as its marshal.  After the worst
+is over, after Bismarck has told Knappe that "the protests of his
+English colleague were grounded," that his own conduct "has not
+been good," and that in any dispute which may arise he "will find
+himself in the wrong," Knappe can still plead in his defence that
+Captain Hand "has always maintained friendly intercourse with the
+German authorities."  Singular epitaph for an English sailor.  In
+this complicity on the part of Hand we may find the reason--and I
+had almost said, the excuse--of much that was excessive in the
+bearing of the unfortunate Knappe.
+
+On the 11th December, Mataafa received twenty-eight thousand
+cartridges, brought into the country in salt-beef kegs by the
+British ship Richmond.  This not only sharpened the animosity
+between whites; following so closely on the German fizzle at
+Laulii, it raised a convulsion in the camp of Tamasese.  On the
+13th Brandeis addressed to Knappe his famous and fatal letter.  I
+may not describe it as a letter of burning words, but it is plainly
+dictated by a burning heart.  Tamasese and his chiefs, he
+announces, are now sick of the business, and ready to make peace
+with Mataafa.  They began the war relying upon German help; they
+now see and say that "e faaalo Siamani i Peritania ma America, that
+Germany is subservient to England and the States."  It is grimly
+given to be understood that the despatch is an ultimatum, and a
+last chance is being offered for the recreant ally to fulfil her
+pledge.  To make it more plain, the document goes on with a kind of
+bilious irony:  "The two German war-ships now in Samoa are here for
+the protection of German property alone; and when the Olga shall
+have arrived" [she arrived on the morrow] "the German war-ships
+will continue to do against the insurgents precisely as little as
+they have done heretofore."  Plant flags, in fact.
+
+Here was Knappe's opportunity, could he have stooped to seize it.
+I find it difficult to blame him that he could not.  Far from being
+so inglorious as the treachery once contemplated by Becker, the
+acceptance of this ultimatum would have been still in the nature of
+a disgrace.  Brandeis's letter, written by a German, was hard to
+swallow.  It would have been hard to accept that solution which
+Knappe had so recently and so peremptorily refused to his brother
+consuls.  And he was tempted, on the other hand, by recent changes.
+There was no Pelly to support de Coetlogon, who might now be
+disregarded.  Mullan, Leary's successor, even if he were not
+precisely a Hand, was at least no Leary; and even if Mullan should
+show fight, Knappe had now three ships and could defy or sink him
+without danger.  Many small circumstances moved him in the same
+direction.  The looting of German plantations continued; the whole
+force of Mataafa was to a large extent subsisted from the crops of
+Vailele; and armed men were to be seen openly plundering bananas,
+breadfruit, and cocoa-nuts under the walls of the plantation
+building.  On the night of the 13th the consulate stable had been
+broken into and a horse removed.  On the 16th there was a riot in
+Apia between half-castes and sailors from the new ship Olga, each
+side claiming that the other was the worse of drink, both (for a
+wager) justly.  The multiplication of flags and little neutral
+territories had, besides, begun to irritate the Samoans.  The
+protests of German settlers had been received uncivilly.  On the
+16th the Mataafas had again sought to land in Saluafata bay, with
+the manifest intention to attack the Tamaseses, or (in other words)
+"to trespass on German lands, covered, as your Excellency knows,
+with flags."  I quote from his requisition to Fritze, December
+17th.  Upon all these considerations, he goes on, it is necessary
+to bring the fighting to an end.  Both parties are to be disarmed
+and returned to their villages--Mataafa first.  And in case of any
+attempt upon Apia, the roads thither are to be held by a strong
+landing-party.  Mataafa was to be disarmed first, perhaps rightly
+enough in his character of the last insurgent.  Then was to have
+come the turn of Tamasese; but it does not appear the disarming
+would have had the same import or have been gone about in the same
+way.  Germany was bound to Tamasese.  No honest man would dream of
+blaming Knappe because he sought to redeem his country's word.  The
+path he chose was doubtless that of honour, so far as honour was
+still left.  But it proved to be the road to ruin.
+
+Fritze, ranking German officer, is understood to have opposed the
+measure.  His attitude earned him at the time unpopularity among
+his country-people on the spot, and should now redound to his
+credit.  It is to be hoped he extended his opposition to some of
+the details.  If it were possible to disarm Mataafa at all, it must
+be done rather by prestige than force.  A party of blue-jackets
+landed in Samoan bush, and expected to hold against Samoans a
+multiplicity of forest paths, had their work cut out for them.  And
+it was plain they should be landed in the light of day, with a
+discouraging openness, and even with parade.  To sneak ashore by
+night was to increase the danger of resistance and to minimise the
+authority of the attack.  The thing was a bluff, and it is
+impossible to bluff with stealth.  Yet this was what was tried.  A
+landing-party was to leave the Olga in Apia bay at two in the
+morning; the landing was to be at four on two parts of the
+foreshore of Vailele.  At eight they were to be joined by a second
+landing-party from the Eber.  By nine the Olgas were to be on the
+crest of Letongo Mountain, and the Ebers to be moving round the
+promontory by the seaward paths, "with measures of precaution,"
+disarming all whom they encountered.  There was to be no firing
+unless fired upon.  At the appointed hour (or perhaps later) on the
+morning of the 19th, this unpromising business was put in hand, and
+there moved off from the Olga two boats with some fifty blue-
+jackets between them, and a praam or punt containing ninety,--the
+boats and the whole expedition under the command of Captain-
+Lieutenant Jaeckel, the praam under Lieutenant Spengler.  The men
+had each forty rounds, one day's provisions, and their flasks
+filled.
+
+In the meanwhile, Mataafa sympathisers about Apia were on the
+alert.  Knappe had informed the consuls that the ships were to put
+to sea next day for the protection of German property; but the
+Tamaseses had been less discreet.  "To-morrow at the hour of
+seven," they had cried to their adversaries, "you will know of a
+difficulty, and our guns shall be made good in broken bones."  An
+accident had pointed expectation towards Apia.  The wife of Le
+Mamea washed for the German ships--a perquisite, I suppose, for her
+husband's unwilling fidelity.  She sent a man with linen on board
+the Adler, where he was surprised to see Le Mamea in person, and to
+be himself ordered instantly on shore.  The news spread.  If Mamea
+were brought down from Lotoanuu, others might have come at the same
+time.  Tamasese himself and half his army might perhaps lie
+concealed on board the German ships.  And a watch was accordingly
+set and warriors collected along the line of the shore.  One
+detachment lay in some rifle-pits by the mouth of the Fuisa.  They
+were commanded by Seumanu; and with his party, probably as the most
+contiguous to Apia, was the war-correspondent, John Klein.  Of
+English birth, but naturalised American, this gentleman had been
+for some time representing the New York World in a very effective
+manner, always in the front, living in the field with the Samoans,
+and in all vicissitudes of weather, toiling to and fro with his
+despatches.  His wisdom was perhaps not equal to his energy.  He
+made himself conspicuous, going about armed to the teeth in a boat
+under the stars and stripes; and on one occasion, when he supposed
+himself fired upon by the Tamaseses, had the petulance to empty his
+revolver in the direction of their camp.  By the light of the moon,
+which was then nearly down, this party observed the Olga's two
+boats and the praam, which they described as "almost sinking with
+men," the boats keeping well out towards the reef, the praam at the
+moment apparently heading for the shore.  An extreme agitation
+seems to have reigned in the rifle-pits.  What were the newcomers?
+What was their errand?  Were they Germans or Tamaseses?  Had they a
+mind to attack?  The praam was hailed in Samoan and did not answer.
+It was proposed to fire upon her ere she drew near.  And at last,
+whether on his own suggestion or that of Seumanu, Klein hailed her
+in English, and in terms of unnecessary melodrama.  "Do not try to
+land here," he cried.  "If you do, your blood will be upon your
+head."  Spengler, who had never the least intention to touch at the
+Fuisa, put up the head of the praam to her true course and
+continued to move up the lagoon with an offing of some seventy or
+eighty yards.  Along all the irregularities and obstructions of the
+beach, across the mouth of the Vaivasa, and through the startled
+village of Matafangatele, Seumanu, Klein, and seven or eight others
+raced to keep up, spreading the alarm and rousing reinforcements as
+they went.  Presently a man on horse-back made his appearance on
+the opposite beach of Fangalii.  Klein and the natives distinctly
+saw him signal with a lantern; which is the more strange, as the
+horseman (Captain Hufnagel, plantation manager of Vailele) had
+never a lantern to signal with.  The praam kept in.  Many men in
+white were seen to stand up, step overboard, and wade to shore.  At
+the same time the eye of panic descried a breastwork of "foreign
+stone" (brick) upon the beach.  Samoans are prepared to-day to
+swear to its existence, I believe conscientiously, although no such
+thing was ever made or ever intended in that place.  The hour is
+doubtful.  "It was the hour when the streak of dawn is seen, the
+hour known in the warfare of heathen times as the hour of the night
+attack," says the Mataafa official account.  A native whom I met on
+the field declared it was at cock-crow.  Captain Hufnagel, on the
+other hand, is sure it was long before the day.  It was dark at
+least, and the moon down.  Darkness made the Samoans bold;
+uncertainty as to the composition and purpose of the landing-party
+made them desperate.  Fire was opened on the Germans, one of whom
+was here killed.  The Germans returned it, and effected a lodgment
+on the beach; and the skirmish died again to silence.  It was at
+this time, if not earlier, that Klein returned to Apia.
+
+Here, then, were Spengler and the ninety men of the praam, landed
+on the beach in no very enviable posture, the woods in front filled
+with unnumbered enemies, but for the time successful.  Meanwhile,
+Jaeckel and the boats had gone outside the reef, and were to land
+on the other side of the Vailele promontory, at Sunga, by the
+buildings of the plantation.  It was Hufnagel's part to go and meet
+them.  His way led straight into the woods and through the midst of
+the Samoans, who had but now ceased firing.  He went in the saddle
+and at a foot's pace, feeling speed and concealment to be equally
+helpless, and that if he were to fall at all, he had best fall with
+dignity.  Not a shot was fired at him; no effort made to arrest him
+on his errand.  As he went, he spoke and even jested with the
+Samoans, and they answered in good part.  One fellow was leaping,
+yelling, and tossing his axe in the air, after the way of an
+excited islander.  "Faimalosi! go it!" said Hufnagel, and the
+fellow laughed and redoubled his exertions.  As soon as the boats
+entered the lagoon, fire was again opened from the woods.  The
+fifty blue-jackets jumped overboard, hove down the boats to be a
+shield, and dragged them towards the landing-place.  In this way,
+their rations, and (what was more unfortunate) some of their
+miserable provision of forty rounds got wetted; but the men came to
+shore and garrisoned the plantation house without a casualty.
+Meanwhile the sound of the firing from Sunga immediately renewed
+the hostilities at Fangalii.  The civilians on shore decided that
+Spengler must be at once guided to the house, and Haideln, the
+surveyor, accepted the dangerous errand.  Like Hufnagel, he was
+suffered to pass without question through the midst of these
+platonic enemies.  He found Spengler some way inland on a knoll,
+disastrously engaged, the woods around him filled with Samoans, who
+were continuously reinforced.  In three successive charges,
+cheering as they ran, the blue-jackets burst through their
+scattered opponents, and made good their junction with Jaeckel.
+Four men only remained upon the field, the other wounded being
+helped by their comrades or dragging themselves painfully along.
+
+The force was now concentrated in the house and its immediate patch
+of garden.  Their rear, to the seaward, was unmolested; but on
+three sides they were beleaguered.  On the left, the Samoans
+occupied and fired from some of the plantation offices.  In front,
+a long rising crest of land in the horse-pasture commanded the
+house, and was lined with the assailants.  And on the right, the
+hedge of the same paddock afforded them a dangerous cover.  It was
+in this place that a Samoan sharpshooter was knocked over by
+Jaeckel with his own hand.  The fire was maintained by the Samoans
+in the usual wasteful style.  The roof was made a sieve; the balls
+passed clean through the house; Lieutenant Sieger, as he lay,
+already dying, on Hufnagel's bed, was despatched with a fresh
+wound.  The Samoans showed themselves extremely enterprising:
+pushed their lines forward, ventured beyond cover, and continually
+threatened to envelop the garden.  Thrice, at least, it was
+necessary to repel them by a sally.  The men were brought into the
+house from the rear, the front doors were thrown suddenly open, and
+the gallant blue-jackets issued cheering:  necessary, successful,
+but extremely costly sorties.  Neither could these be pushed far.
+The foes were undaunted; so soon as the sailors advanced at all
+deep in the horse-pasture, the Samoans began to close in upon both
+flanks; and the sally had to be recalled.  To add to the dangers of
+the German situation, ammunition began to run low; and the
+cartridge-boxes of the wounded and the dead had been already
+brought into use before, at about eight o'clock, the Eber steamed
+into the bay.  Her commander, Wallis, threw some shells into
+Letongo, one of which killed five men about their cooking-pot.  The
+Samoans began immediately to withdraw; their movements were
+hastened by a sortie, and the remains of the landing-party brought
+on board.  This was an unfortunate movement; it gave an
+irremediable air of defeat to what might have been else claimed for
+a moderate success.  The blue-jackets numbered a hundred and forty
+all told; they were engaged separately and fought under the worst
+conditions, in the dark and among woods; their position in the
+house was scarce tenable; they lost in killed and wounded fifty-
+six,--forty per cent.; and their spirit to the end was above
+question.  Whether we think of the poor sailor lads, always so
+pleasantly behaved in times of peace, or whether we call to mind
+the behaviour of the two civilians, Haideln and Hufnagel, we can
+only regret that brave men should stand to be exposed upon so poor
+a quarrel, or lives cast away upon an enterprise so hopeless.
+
+News of the affair reached Apia early, and Moors, always curious of
+these spectacles of war, was immediately in the saddle.  Near
+Matafangatele he met a Manono chief, whom he asked if there were
+any German dead.  "I think there are about thirty of them knocked
+over," said he.  "Have you taken their heads?" asked Moors.  "Yes,"
+said the chief.  "Some foolish people did it, but I have stopped
+them.  We ought not to cut off their heads when they do not cut off
+ours."  He was asked what had been done with the heads.  "Two have
+gone to Mataafa," he replied, "and one is buried right under where
+your horse is standing, in a basket wrapped in tapa."  This was
+afterwards dug up, and I am told on native authority that, besides
+the three heads, two ears were taken.  Moors next asked the Manono
+man how he came to be going away.  "The man-of-war is throwing
+shells," said he.  "When they stopped firing out of the house, we
+stopped firing also; so it was as well to scatter when the shells
+began.  We could have killed all the white men.  I wish they had
+been Tamaseses."  This is an ex parte statement, and I give it for
+such; but the course of the affair, and in particular the
+adventures of Haideln and Hufnagel, testify to a surprising lack of
+animosity against the Germans.  About the same time or but a little
+earlier than this conversation, the same spirit was being
+displayed.  Hufnagel, with a party of labour, had gone out to bring
+in the German dead, when he was surprised to be suddenly fired on
+from the wood.  The boys he had with him were not negritos, but
+Polynesians from the Gilbert Islands; and he suddenly remembered
+that these might be easily mistaken for a detachment of Tamaseses.
+Bidding his boys conceal themselves in a thicket, this brave man
+walked into the open.  So soon as he was recognised, the firing
+ceased, and the labourers followed him in safety.  This is
+chivalrous war; but there was a side to it less chivalrous.  As
+Moors drew nearer to Vailele, he began to meet Samoans with hats,
+guns, and even shirts, taken from the German sailors.  With one of
+these who had a hat and a gun he stopped and spoke.  The hat was
+handed up for him to look at; it had the late owner's name on the
+inside.  "Where is he?" asked Moors.  "He is dead; I cut his head
+off."  "You shot him?"  "No, somebody else shot him in the hip.
+When I came, he put up his hands, and cried:  'Don't kill me; I am
+a Malietoa man.'  I did not believe him, and I cut his head
+off...... Have you any ammunition to fit that gun?"  "I do not
+know."  "What has become of the cartridge-belt?"  "Another fellow
+grabbed that and the cartridges, and he won't give them to me."  A
+dreadful and silly picture of barbaric war.  The words of the
+German sailor must be regarded as imaginary:  how was the poor lad
+to speak native, or the Samoan to understand German?  When Moors
+came as far as Sunga, the Eber was yet in the bay, the smoke of
+battle still lingered among the trees, which were themselves marked
+with a thousand bullet-wounds.  But the affair was over, the
+combatants, German and Samoan, were all gone, and only a couple of
+negrito labour boys lurked on the scene.  The village of Letongo
+beyond was equally silent; part of it was wrecked by the shells of
+the Eber, and still smoked; the inhabitants had fled.  On the beach
+were the native boats, perhaps five thousand dollars' worth,
+deserted by the Mataafas and overlooked by the Germans, in their
+common hurry to escape.  Still Moors held eastward by the sea-
+paths.  It was his hope to get a view from the other side of the
+promontory, towards Laulii.  In the way he found a house hidden in
+the wood and among rocks, where an aged and sick woman was being
+tended by her elderly daughter.  Last lingerers in that deserted
+piece of coast, they seemed indifferent to the events which had
+thus left them solitary, and, as the daughter said, did not know
+where Mataafa was, nor where Tamasese.
+
+It is the official Samoan pretension that the Germans fired first
+at Fangalii.  In view of all German and some native testimony, the
+text of Fritze's orders, and the probabilities of the case, no
+honest mind will believe it for a moment.  Certainly the Samoans
+fired first.  As certainly they were betrayed into the engagement
+in the agitation of the moment, and it was not till afterwards that
+they understood what they had done.  Then, indeed, all Samoa drew a
+breath of wonder and delight.  The invincible had fallen; the men
+of the vaunted war-ships had been met in the field by the braves of
+Mataafa:  a superstition was no more.  Conceive this people
+steadily as schoolboys; and conceive the elation in any school if
+the head boy should suddenly arise and drive the rector from the
+schoolhouse.  I have received one instance of the feeling instantly
+aroused.  There lay at the time in the consular hospital an old
+chief who was a pet of the colonel's.  News reached him of the
+glorious event; he was sick, he thought himself sinking, sent for
+the colonel, and gave him his gun.  "Don't let the Germans get it,"
+said the old gentleman, and having received a promise, was at
+peace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--"FUROR CONSULARIS"
+December 1888 to March 1889
+
+
+
+Knappe, in the Adler, with a flag of truce at the fore, was
+entering Laulii Bay when the Eber brought him the news of the
+night's reverse.  His heart was doubtless wrung for his young
+countrymen who had been butchered and mutilated in the dark woods,
+or now lay suffering, and some of them dying, on the ship.  And he
+must have been startled as he recognised his own position.  He had
+gone too far; he had stumbled into war, and, what was worse, into
+defeat; he had thrown away German lives for less than nothing, and
+now saw himself condemned either to accept defeat, or to kick and
+pummel his failure into something like success; either to accept
+defeat, or take frenzy for a counsellor.  Yesterday, in cold blood,
+he had judged it necessary to have the woods to the westward
+guarded lest the evacuation of Laulii should prove only the peril
+of Apia.  To-day, in the irritation and alarm of failure, he forgot
+or despised his previous reasoning, and, though his detachment was
+beat back to the ships, proceeded with the remainder of his maimed
+design.  The only change he made was to haul down the flag of
+truce.  He had now no wish to meet with Mataafa.  Words were out of
+season, shells must speak.
+
+At this moment an incident befell him which must have been trying
+to his self-command.  The new American ship Nipsic entered Laulii
+Bay; her commander, Mullan, boarded the Adler to protest, succeeded
+in wresting from Knappe a period of delay in order that the women
+might be spared, and sent a lieutenant to Mataafa with a warning.
+The camp was already excited by the news and the trophies of
+Fangalii.  Already Tamasese and Lotoanuu seemed secondary
+objectives to the Germans and Apia.  Mullan's message put an end to
+hesitation.  Laulii was evacuated.  The troops streamed westward by
+the mountain side, and took up the same day a strong position about
+Tanungamanono and Mangiangi, some two miles behind Apia, which they
+threatened with the one hand, while with the other they continued
+to draw their supplies from the devoted plantations of the German
+firm.  Laulii, when it was shelled, was empty.  The British flags
+were, of course, fired upon; and I hear that one of them was struck
+down, but I think every one must be privately of the mind that it
+was fired upon and fell, in a place where it had little business to
+be shown.
+
+Such was the military epilogue to the ill-judged adventure of
+Fangalii; it was difficult for failure to be more complete.  But
+the other consequences were of a darker colour and brought the
+whites immediately face to face in a spirit of ill-favoured
+animosity.  Knappe was mourning the defeat and death of his
+country-folk, he was standing aghast over the ruin of his own
+career, when Mullan boarded him.  The successor of Leary served
+himself, in that bitter moment, heir to Leary's part.  And in
+Mullan, Knappe saw more even than the successor of Leary,--he saw
+in him the representative of Klein.  Klein had hailed the praam
+from the rifle-pits; he had there uttered ill-chosen words,
+unhappily prophetic; it is even likely that he was present at the
+time of the first fire.  To accuse him of the design and conduct of
+the whole attack was but a step forward; his own vapouring served
+to corroborate the accusation; and it was not long before the
+German consulate was in possession of sworn native testimony in
+support.  The worth of native testimony is small, the worth of
+white testimony not overwhelming; and I am in the painful position
+of not being able to subscribe either to Klein's own account of the
+affair or to that of his accusers.  Klein was extremely flurried;
+his interest as a reporter must have tempted him at first to make
+the most of his share in the exploit, the immediate peril in which
+he soon found himself to stand must have at least suggested to him
+the idea of minimising it; one way and another, he is not a good
+witness.  As for the natives, they were no doubt cross-examined in
+that hall of terror, the German consulate, where they might be
+trusted to lie like schoolboys, or (if the reader prefer it) like
+Samoans.  By outside white testimony, it remains established for me
+that Klein returned to Apia either before or immediately after the
+first shots.  That he ever sought or was ever allowed a share in
+the command may be denied peremptorily; but it is more than likely
+that he expressed himself in an excited manner and with a highly
+inflammatory effect upon his hearers.  He was, at least, severely
+punished.  The Germans, enraged by his provocative behaviour and
+what they thought to be his German birth, demanded him to be tried
+before court-martial; he had to skulk inside the sentries of the
+American consulate, to be smuggled on board a war-ship, and to be
+carried almost by stealth out of the island; and what with the
+agitations of his mind, and the results of a marsh fever contracted
+in the lines of Mataafa, reached Honolulu a very proper object of
+commiseration.  Nor was Klein the only accused:  de Coetlogon was
+himself involved.  As the boats passed Matautu, Knappe declares a
+signal was made from the British consulate.  Perhaps we should
+rather read "from its neighbourhood"; since, in the general warding
+of the coast, the point of Matautu could scarce have been
+neglected.  On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Samoans,
+in the anxiety of that night of watching and fighting, crowded to
+the friendly consul for advice.  Late in the night, the wounded
+Siteoni, lying on the colonel's verandah, one corner of which had
+been blinded down that he might sleep, heard the coming and going
+of bare feet and the voices of eager consultation.  And long after,
+a man who had been discharged from the colonel's employment took
+upon himself to swear an affidavit as to the nature of the advice
+then given, and to carry the document to the German consul.  It was
+an act of private revenge; it fell long out of date in the good
+days of Dr. Stuebel, and had no result but to discredit the
+gentleman who volunteered it.  Colonel de Coetlogon had his faults,
+but they did not touch his honour; his bare word would always
+outweigh a waggon-load of such denunciations; and he declares his
+behaviour on that night to have been blameless.  The question was
+besides inquired into on the spot by Sir John Thurston, and the
+colonel honourably acquitted.  But during the weeks that were now
+to follow, Knappe believed the contrary; he believed not only that
+Moors and others had supplied ammunition and Klein commanded in the
+field, but that de Coetlogon had made the signal of attack; that
+though his blue-jackets had bled and fallen against the arms of
+Samoans, these were supplied, inspired, and marshalled by Americans
+and English.
+
+The legend was the more easily believed because it embraced and was
+founded upon so much truth.  Germans lay dead, the German wounded
+groaned in their cots; and the cartridges by which they fell had
+been sold by an American and brought into the country in a British
+bottom.  Had the transaction been entirely mercenary, it would
+already have been hard to swallow; but it was notoriously not so.
+British and Americans were notoriously the partisans of Mataafa.
+They rejoiced in the result of Fangalii, and so far from seeking to
+conceal their rejoicing, paraded and displayed it.  Calumny ran
+high.  Before the dead were buried, while the wounded yet lay in
+pain and fever, cowardly accusations of cowardice were levelled at
+the German blue-jackets.  It was said they had broken and run
+before their enemies, and that they had huddled helpless like sheep
+in the plantation house.  Small wonder if they had; small wonder
+had they been utterly destroyed.  But the fact was heroically
+otherwise; and these dastard calumnies cut to the blood.  They are
+not forgotten; perhaps they will never be forgiven.
+
+In the meanwhile, events were pressing towards a still more
+trenchant opposition.  On the 20th, the three consuls met and
+parted without agreement, Knappe announcing that he had lost men
+and must take the matter in his own hands to avenge their death.
+On the 21st the Olga came before Matafangatele, ordered the
+delivery of all arms within the hour, and at the end of that
+period, none being brought, shelled and burned the village.  The
+shells fell for the most part innocuous; an eyewitness saw children
+at play beside the flaming houses; not a soul was injured; and the
+one noteworthy event was the mutilation of Captain Hamilton's
+American flag.  In one sense an incident too small to be
+chronicled, in another this was of historic interest and import.
+These rags of tattered bunting occasioned the display of a new
+sentiment in the United States; and the republic of the West,
+hitherto so apathetic and unwieldy, but already stung by German
+nonchalance, leaped to its feet for the first time at the news of
+this fresh insult.  As though to make the inefficiency of the war-
+ships more apparent, three shells were thrown inland at Mangiangi;
+they flew high over the Mataafa camp, where the natives could "hear
+them singing" as they flew, and fell behind in the deep romantic
+valley of the Vaisingano.  Mataafa had been already summoned on
+board the Adler; his life promised if he came, declared "in danger"
+if he came not; and he had declined in silence the unattractive
+invitation.  These fresh hostile acts showed him that the worst had
+come.  He was in strength, his force posted along the whole front
+of the mountain behind Apia, Matautu occupied, the Siumu road lined
+up to the houses of the town with warriors passionate for war.  The
+occasion was unique, and there is no doubt that he designed to
+seize it.  The same day of this bombardment, he sent word bidding
+all English and Americans wear a black band upon their arm, so that
+his men should recognise and spare them.  The hint was taken, and
+the band worn for a continuance of days.  To have refused would
+have been insane; but to consent was unhappily to feed the
+resentment of the Germans by a fresh sign of intelligence with
+their enemies, and to widen the breach between the races by a fresh
+and a scarce pardonable mark of their division.  The same day again
+the Germans repeated one of their earlier offences by firing on a
+boat within the harbour.  Times were changed; they were now at war
+and in peril, the rigour of military advantage might well be seized
+by them and pardoned by others; but it so chanced that the bullets
+flew about the ears of Captain Hand, and that commander is said to
+have been insatiable of apologies.  The affair, besides, had a
+deplorable effect on the inhabitants.  A black band (they saw)
+might protect them from the Mataafas, not from undiscriminating
+shots.  Panic ensued.  The war-ships were open to receive the
+fugitives, and the gentlemen who had made merry over Fangalii were
+seen to thrust each other from the wharves in their eagerness to
+flee Apia.  I willingly drop the curtain on the shameful picture.
+
+Meanwhile, on the German side of the bay, a more manly spirit was
+exhibited in circumstances of alarming weakness.  The plantation
+managers and overseers had all retreated to Matafele, only one (I
+understand) remaining at his post.  The whole German colony was
+thus collected in one spot, and could count and wonder at its
+scanty numbers.  Knappe declares (to my surprise) that the war-
+ships could not spare him more than fifty men a day.  The great
+extension of the German quarter, he goes on, did not "allow a full
+occupation of the outer line"; hence they had shrunk into the
+western end by the firm buildings, and the inhabitants were warned
+to fall back on this position, in the case of an alert.  So that he
+who had set forth, a day or so before, to disarm the Mataafas in
+the open field, now found his resources scarce adequate to garrison
+the buildings of the firm.  But Knappe seemed unteachable by fate.
+It is probable he thought he had
+
+
+"Already waded in so deep,
+Returning were as tedious as go o'er";
+
+
+it is certain that he continued, on the scene of his defeat and in
+the midst of his weakness, to bluster and menace like a conqueror.
+Active war, which he lacked the means of attempting, was
+continually threatened.  On the 22nd he sought the aid of his
+brother consuls to maintain the neutral territory against Mataafa;
+and at the same time, as though meditating instant deeds of
+prowess, refused to be bound by it himself.  This singular
+proposition was of course refused:  Blacklock remarking that he had
+no fear of the natives, if these were let alone; de Coetlogon
+refusing in the circumstances to recognise any neutral territory at
+all.  In vain Knappe amended and baited his proposal with the offer
+of forty-eight or ninety-six hours' notice, according as his
+objective should be near or within the boundary of the Eleele Sa.
+It was rejected; and he learned that he must accept war with all
+its consequences--and not that which he desired--war with the
+immunities of peace.
+
+This monstrous exigence illustrates the man's frame of mind.  It
+has been still further illuminated in the German white-book by
+printing alongside of his despatches those of the unimpassioned
+Fritze.  On January 8th the consulate was destroyed by fire.
+Knappe says it was the work of incendiaries, "without doubt";
+Fritze admits that "everything seems to show" it was an accident.
+"Tamasese's people fit to bear arms," writes Knappe, "are certainly
+for the moment equal to Mataafa's," though restrained from battle
+by the lack of ammunition.  "As for Tamasese," says Fritze of the
+same date, "he is now but a phantom--dient er nur als Gespenst.
+His party, for practical purposes, is no longer large.  They
+pretend ammunition to be lacking, but what they lack most is good-
+will.  Captain Brandeis, whose influence is now small, declares
+they can no longer sustain a serious engagement, and is himself in
+the intention of leaving Samoa by the Lubeck of the 5th February."
+And Knappe, in the same despatch, confutes himself and confirms the
+testimony of his naval colleague, by the admission that "the re-
+establishment of Tamasese's government is, under present
+circumstances, not to be thought of."  Plainly, then, he was not so
+much seeking to deceive others, as he was himself possessed; and we
+must regard the whole series of his acts and despatches as the
+agitations of a fever.
+
+The British steamer Richmond returned to Apia, January 15th.  On
+the last voyage she had brought the ammunition already so
+frequently referred to; as a matter of fact, she was again bringing
+contraband of war.  It is necessary to be explicit upon this, which
+served as spark to so great a flame of scandal.  Knappe was
+justified in interfering; he would have been worthy of all
+condemnation if he had neglected, in his posture of semi-
+investment, a precaution so elementary; and the manner in which he
+set about attempting it was conciliatory and almost timid.  He
+applied to Captain Hand, and begged him to accept himself the duty
+of "controlling" the discharge of the Richmond's cargo.  Hand was
+unable to move without his consul; and at night an armed boat from
+the Germans boarded, searched, and kept possession of, the
+suspected ship.  The next day, as by an after-thought, war and
+martial law were proclaimed for the Samoan Islands, the
+introduction of contraband of war forbidden, and ships and boats
+declared liable to search.  "All support of the rebels will be
+punished by martial law," continued the proclamation, "no matter to
+what nationality the person [Thater] may belong."
+
+Hand, it has been seen, declined to act in the matter of the
+Richmond without the concurrence of his consul; but I have found no
+evidence that either Hand or Knappe communicated with de Coetlogon,
+with whom they were both at daggers drawn.  First the seizure and
+next the proclamation seem to have burst on the English consul from
+a clear sky; and he wrote on the same day, throwing doubt on
+Knappe's authority to declare war.  Knappe replied on the 20th that
+the Imperial German Government had been at war as a matter of fact
+since December 19th, and that it was only for the convenience of
+the subjects of other states that he had been empowered to make a
+formal declaration.  "From that moment," he added, "martial law
+prevails in Samoa."  De Coetlogon instantly retorted, declining
+martial law for British subjects, and announcing a proclamation in
+that sense.  Instantly, again, came that astonishing document,
+Knappe's rejoinder, without pause, without reflection--the pens
+screeching on the paper, the messengers (you would think) running
+from consulate to consulate:  "I have had the honour to receive
+your Excellency's [Hochwohlgeboren] agreeable communication of to-
+day.  Since, on the ground of received instructions, martial law
+has been declared in Samoa, British subjects as well as others fall
+under its application.  I warn you therefore to abstain from such a
+proclamation as you announce in your letter.  It will be such a
+piece of business as shall make yourself answerable under martial
+law.  Besides, your proclamation will be disregarded."  De
+Coetlogon of course issued his proclamation at once, Knappe
+retorted with another, and night closed on the first stage of this
+insane collision.  I hear the German consul was on this day
+prostrated with fever; charity at least must suppose him hardly
+answerable for his language.
+
+Early on the 21st, Mr. Mansfield Gallien, a passing traveller, was
+seized in his berth on board the Richmond, and carried, half-
+dressed, on board a German war-ship.  His offence was, in the
+circumstances and after the proclamation, substantial.  He had gone
+the day before, in the spirit of a tourist to Mataafa's camp, had
+spoken with the king, and had even recommended him an appeal to Sir
+George Grey.  Fritze, I gather, had been long uneasy; this arrest
+on board a British ship fitted the measure.  Doubtless, as he had
+written long before, the consul alone was responsible "on the legal
+side"; but the captain began to ask himself, "What next?"--
+telegraphed direct home for instructions, "Is arrest of foreigners
+on foreign vessels legal?"--and was ready, at a word from Captain
+Hand, to discharge his dangerous prisoner.  The word in question
+(so the story goes) was not without a kind of wit.  "I wish you
+would set that man ashore," Hand is reported to have said,
+indicating Gallien; "I wish you would set that man ashore, to save
+me the trouble."  The same day de Coetlogon published a
+proclamation requesting captains to submit to search for contraband
+of war.
+
+On the 22nd the Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser was suppressed
+by order of Fritze.  I have hitherto refrained from mentioning the
+single paper of our islands, that I might deal with it once for
+all.  It is of course a tiny sheet; but I have often had occasion
+to wonder at the ability of its articles, and almost always at the
+decency of its tone.  Officials may at times be a little roughly,
+and at times a little captiously, criticised; private persons are
+habitually respected; and there are many papers in England, and
+still more in the States, even of leading organs in chief cities,
+that might envy, and would do well to imitate, the courtesy and
+discretion of the Samoa Times.  Yet the editor, Cusack, is only an
+amateur in journalism, and a carpenter by trade.  His chief fault
+is one perhaps inevitable in so small a place--that he seems a
+little in the leading of a clique; but his interest in the public
+weal is genuine and generous.  One man's meat is another man's
+poison:  Anglo-Saxons and Germans have been differently brought up.
+To our galled experience the paper appears moderate; to their
+untried sensations it seems violent.  We think a public man fair
+game; we think it a part of his duty, and I am told he finds it a
+part of his reward, to be continually canvassed by the press.  For
+the Germans, on the other hand, an official wears a certain
+sacredness; when he is called over the coals, they are shocked, and
+(if the official be a German) feel that Germany itself has been
+insulted.  The Samoa Times had been long a mountain of offence.
+Brandeis had imported from the colonies another printer of the name
+of Jones, to deprive Cusack of the government printing.  German
+sailors had come ashore one day, wild with offended patriotism, to
+punish the editor with stripes, and the result was delightfully
+amusing.  The champions asked for the English printer.  They were
+shown the wrong man, and the blows intended for Cusack had hailed
+on the shoulders of his rival Jones.  On the 12th, Cusack had
+reprinted an article from a San Francisco paper; the Germans had
+complained; and de Coetlogon, in a moment of weakness, had fined
+the editor twenty pounds.  The judgment was afterwards reversed in
+Fiji; but even at the time it had not satisfied the Germans.  And
+so now, on the third day of martial law, the paper was suppressed.
+Here we have another of these international obscurities.  To Fritze
+the step seemed natural and obvious; for Anglo-Saxons it was a hand
+laid upon the altar; and the month was scarce out before the voice
+of Senator Frye announced to his colleagues that free speech had
+been suppressed in Samoa.
+
+Perhaps we must seek some similar explanation for Fritze's short-
+lived code, published and withdrawn the next day, the 23rd.  Fritze
+himself was in no humour for extremities.  He was much in the
+position of a lieutenant who should perceive his captain urging the
+ship upon the rocks.  It is plain he had lost all confidence in his
+commanding officer "upon the legal side"; and we find him writing
+home with anxious candour.  He had understood that martial law
+implied military possession; he was in military possession of
+nothing but his ship, and shrewdly suspected that his martial
+jurisdiction should be confined within the same limits.  "As a
+matter of fact," he writes, "we do not occupy the territory, and
+cannot give foreigners the necessary protection, because Mataafa
+and his people can at any moment forcibly interrupt me in my
+jurisdiction."  Yet in the eyes of Anglo-Saxons the severity of his
+code appeared burlesque.  I give but three of its provisions.  The
+crime of inciting German troops "by any means, as, for instance,
+informing them of proclamations by the enemy," was punishable with
+death; that of "publishing or secretly distributing anything,
+whether printed or written, bearing on the war," with prison or
+deportation; and that of calling or attending a public meeting,
+unless permitted, with the same.  Such were the tender mercies of
+Knappe, lurking in the western end of the German quarter, where
+Mataafa could "at any moment" interrupt his jurisdiction.
+
+On the 22nd (day of the suppression of the Times) de Coetlogon
+wrote to inquire if hostilities were intended against Great
+Britain, which Knappe on the same day denied.  On the 23rd de
+Coetlogon sent a complaint of hostile acts, such as the armed and
+forcible entry of the Richmond before the declaration and arrest of
+Gallien.  In his reply, dated the 24th, Knappe took occasion to
+repeat, although now with more self-command, his former threat
+against de Coetlogon.  "I am still of the opinion," he writes,
+"that even foreign consuls are liable to the application of martial
+law, if they are guilty of offences against the belligerent state."
+The same day (24th) de Coetlogon complained that Fletcher, manager
+for Messrs. MacArthur, had been summoned by Fritze.  In answer,
+Knappe had "the honour to inform your Excellency that since the
+declaration of the state of war, British subjects are liable to
+martial law, and Mr. Fletcher will be arrested if he does not
+appear."  Here, then, was the gauntlet thrown down, and de
+Coetlogon was burning to accept it.  Fletcher's offence was this.
+Upon the 22nd a steamer had come in from Wellington, specially
+chartered to bring German despatches to Apia.  The rumour came
+along with her from New Zealand that in these despatches Knappe
+would find himself rebuked, and Fletcher was accused of having
+"interested himself in the spreading of this rumour."  His arrest
+was actually ordered, when Hand succeeded in persuading him to
+surrender.  At the German court, the case was dismissed "wegen
+Nichtigkeit"; and the acute stage of these distempers may be said
+to have ended.  Blessed are the peacemakers.  Hand had perhaps
+averted a collision.  What is more certain, he had offered to the
+world a perfectly original reading of the part of British seaman.
+
+Hand may have averted a collision, I say; but I am tempted to
+believe otherwise.  I am tempted to believe the threat to arrest
+Fletcher was the last mutter of the declining tempest and a mere
+sop to Knappe's self-respect.  I am tempted to believe the rumour
+in question was substantially correct, and the steamer from
+Wellington had really brought the German consul grounds for
+hesitation, if not orders to retreat.  I believe the unhappy man to
+have awakened from a dream, and to have read ominous writing on the
+wall.  An enthusiastic popularity surrounded him among the Germans.
+It was natural.  Consul and colony had passed through an hour of
+serious peril, and the consul had set the example of undaunted
+courage.  He was entertained at dinner.  Fritze, who was known to
+have secretly opposed him, was scorned and avoided.  But the clerks
+of the German firm were one thing, Prince Bismarck was another; and
+on a cold review of these events, it is not improbable that Knappe
+may have envied the position of his naval colleague.  It is
+certain, at least, that he set himself to shuffle and capitulate;
+and when the blow fell, he was able to reply that the martial law
+business had in the meanwhile come right; that the English and
+American consular courts stood open for ordinary cases and that in
+different conversations with Captain Hand, "who has always
+maintained friendly intercourse with the German authorities," it
+had been repeatedly explained that only the supply of weapons and
+ammunition, or similar aid and support, was to come under German
+martial law.  Was it weapons or ammunition that Fletcher had
+supplied?  But it is unfair to criticise these wrigglings of an
+unfortunate in a false position.
+
+In a despatch of the 23rd, which has not been printed, Knappe had
+told his story:  how he had declared war, subjected foreigners to
+martial law, and been received with a counter-proclamation by the
+English consul; and how (in an interview with Mataafa chiefs at the
+plantation house of Motuotua, of which I cannot find the date) he
+had demanded the cession of arms and of ringleaders for punishment,
+and proposed to assume the government of the islands.  On February
+12th he received Bismarck's answer:  "You had no right to take
+foreigners from the jurisdiction of their consuls.  The protest of
+your English colleague is grounded.  In disputes which may arise
+from this cause you will find yourself in the wrong.  The demand
+formulated by you, as to the assumption of the government of Samoa
+by Germany, lay outside of your instructions and of our design.
+Take it immediately back.  If your telegram is here rightly
+understood, I cannot call your conduct good."  It must be a hard
+heart that does not sympathise with Knappe in the hour when he
+received this document.  Yet it may be said that his troubles were
+still in the beginning.  Men had contended against him, and he had
+not prevailed; he was now to be at war with the elements, and find
+his name identified with an immense disaster.
+
+One more date, however, must be given first.  It was on February
+27th that Fritze formally announced martial law to be suspended,
+and himself to have relinquished the control of the police.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--THE HURRICANE
+March 1889
+
+
+
+The so-called harbour of Apia is formed in part by a recess of the
+coast-line at Matautu, in part by the slim peninsula of Mulinuu,
+and in part by the fresh waters of the Mulivai and Vaisingano.  The
+barrier reef--that singular breakwater that makes so much of the
+circuit of Pacific islands--is carried far to sea at Matautu and
+Mulinuu; inside of these two horns it runs sharply landward, and
+between them it is burst or dissolved by the fresh water.  The
+shape of the enclosed anchorage may be compared to a high-
+shouldered jar or bottle with a funnel mouth.  Its sides are almost
+everywhere of coral; for the reef not only bounds it to seaward and
+forms the neck and mouth, but skirting about the beach, it forms
+the bottom also.  As in the bottle of commerce, the bottom is re-
+entrant, and the shore-reef runs prominently forth into the basin
+and makes a dangerous cape opposite the fairway of the entrance.
+Danger is, therefore, on all hands.  The entrance gapes three
+cables wide at the narrowest, and the formidable surf of the
+Pacific thunders both outside and in.  There are days when speech
+is difficult in the chambers of shore-side houses; days when no
+boat can land, and when men are broken by stroke of sea against the
+wharves.  As I write these words, three miles in the mountains, and
+with the land-breeze still blowing from the island summit, the
+sound of that vexed harbour hums in my ears.  Such a creek in my
+native coast of Scotland would scarce be dignified with the mark of
+an anchor in the chart; but in the favoured climate of Samoa, and
+with the mechanical regularity of the winds in the Pacific, it
+forms, for ten or eleven months out of the twelve, a safe if hardly
+a commodious port.  The ill-found island traders ride there with
+their insufficient moorings the year through, and discharge, and
+are loaded, without apprehension.  Of danger, when it comes, the
+glass gives timely warning; and that any modern war-ship, furnished
+with the power of steam, should have been lost in Apia, belongs not
+so much to nautical as to political history.
+
+The weather throughout all that winter (the turbulent summer of the
+islands) was unusually fine, and the circumstance had been
+commented on as providential, when so many Samoans were lying on
+their weapons in the bush.  By February it began to break in
+occasional gales.  On February 10th a German brigantine was driven
+ashore.  On the 14th the same misfortune befell an American
+brigantine and a schooner.  On both these days, and again on the
+7th March, the men-of-war must steam to their anchors.  And it was
+in this last month, the most dangerous of the twelve, that man's
+animosities crowded that indentation of the reef with costly,
+populous, and vulnerable ships.
+
+I have shown, perhaps already at too great a length, how violently
+passion ran upon the spot; how high this series of blunders and
+mishaps had heated the resentment of the Germans against all other
+nationalities and of all other nationalities against the Germans.
+But there was one country beyond the borders of Samoa where the
+question had aroused a scarce less angry sentiment.  The breach of
+the Washington Congress, the evidence of Sewall before a sub-
+committee on foreign relations, the proposal to try Klein before a
+military court, and the rags of Captain Hamilton's flag, had
+combined to stir the people of the States to an unwonted fervour.
+Germany was for the time the abhorred of nations.  Germans in
+America publicly disowned the country of their birth.  In Honolulu,
+so near the scene of action, German and American young men fell to
+blows in the street.  In the same city, from no traceable source,
+and upon no possible authority, there arose a rumour of tragic news
+to arrive by the next occasion, that the Nipsic had opened fire on
+the Adler, and the Adler had sunk her on the first reply.
+Punctually on the day appointed, the news came; and the two
+nations, instead of being plunged into war, could only mingle tears
+over the loss of heroes.
+
+By the second week in March three American ships were in Apia bay,-
+-the Nipsic, the Vandalia, and the Trenton, carrying the flag of
+Rear-Admiral Kimberley; three German,--the Adler, the Eber, and the
+Olga; and one British,--the Calliope, Captain Kane.  Six merchant-
+men, ranging from twenty-five up to five hundred tons, and a number
+of small craft, further encumbered the anchorage.  Its capacity is
+estimated by Captain Kane at four large ships; and the latest
+arrivals, the Vandalia and Trenton, were in consequence excluded,
+and lay without in the passage.  Of the seven war-ships, the
+seaworthiness of two was questionable:  the Trenton's, from an
+original defect in her construction, often reported, never
+remedied--her hawse-pipes leading in on the berth-deck; the Eber's,
+from an injury to her screw in the blow of February 14th.  In this
+overcrowding of ships in an open entry of the reef, even the eye of
+the landsman could spy danger; and Captain-Lieutenant Wallis of the
+Eber openly blamed and lamented, not many hours before the
+catastrophe, their helpless posture.  Temper once more triumphed.
+The army of Mataafa still hung imminent behind the town; the German
+quarter was still daily garrisoned with fifty sailors from the
+squadron; what was yet more influential, Germany and the States, at
+least in Apia bay, were on the brink of war, viewed each other with
+looks of hatred, and scarce observed the letter of civility.  On
+the day of the admiral's arrival, Knappe failed to call on him, and
+on the morrow called on him while he was on shore.  The slight was
+remarked and resented, and the two squadrons clung more obstinately
+to their dangerous station.
+
+On the 15th the barometer fell to 29.11 in. by 2 P.M.  This was the
+moment when every sail in port should have escaped.  Kimberley, who
+flew the only broad pennant, should certainly have led the way:  he
+clung, instead, to his moorings, and the Germans doggedly followed
+his example:  semi-belligerents, daring each other and the violence
+of heaven.  Kane, less immediately involved, was led in error by
+the report of residents and a fallacious rise in the glass; he
+stayed with the others, a misjudgment that was like to cost him
+dear.  All were moored, as is the custom in Apia, with two anchors
+practically east and west, clear hawse to the north, and a kedge
+astern.  Topmasts were struck, and the ships made snug.  The night
+closed black, with sheets of rain.  By midnight it blew a gale; and
+by the morning watch, a tempest.  Through what remained of
+darkness, the captains impatiently expected day, doubtful if they
+were dragging, steaming gingerly to their moorings, and afraid to
+steam too much.
+
+Day came about six, and presented to those on shore a seizing and
+terrific spectacle.  In the pressure of the squalls the bay was
+obscured as if by midnight, but between them a great part of it was
+clearly if darkly visible amid driving mist and rain.  The wind
+blew into the harbour mouth.  Naval authorities describe it as of
+hurricane force.  It had, however, few or none of the effects on
+shore suggested by that ominous word, and was successfully
+withstood by trees and buildings.  The agitation of the sea, on the
+other hand, surpassed experience and description.  Seas that might
+have awakened surprise and terror in the midst of the Atlantic
+ranged bodily and (it seemed to observers) almost without
+diminution into the belly of that flask-shaped harbour; and the
+war-ships were alternately buried from view in the trough, or seen
+standing on end against the breast of billows.
+
+The Trenton at daylight still maintained her position in the neck
+of the bottle.  But five of the remaining ships tossed, already
+close to the bottom, in a perilous and helpless crowd; threatening
+ruin to each other as they tossed; threatened with a common and
+imminent destruction on the reefs.  Three had been already in
+collision:  the Olga was injured in the quarter, the Adler had lost
+her bowsprit; the Nipsic had lost her smoke-stack, and was making
+steam with difficulty, maintaining her fire with barrels of pork,
+and the smoke and sparks pouring along the level of the deck.  For
+the seventh war-ship the day had come too late; the Eber had
+finished her last cruise; she was to be seen no more save by the
+eyes of divers.  A coral reef is not only an instrument of
+destruction, but a place of sepulchre; the submarine cliff is
+profoundly undercut, and presents the mouth of a huge antre in
+which the bodies of men and the hulls of ships are alike hurled
+down and buried.  The Eber had dragged anchors with the rest; her
+injured screw disabled her from steaming vigorously up; and a
+little before day she had struck the front of the coral, come off,
+struck again, and gone down stern foremost, oversetting as she
+went, into the gaping hollow of the reef.  Of her whole complement
+of nearly eighty, four souls were cast alive on the beach; and the
+bodies of the remainder were, by the voluminous outpouring of the
+flooded streams, scoured at last from the harbour, and strewed
+naked on the seaboard of the island.
+
+Five ships were immediately menaced with the same destruction.  The
+Eber vanished--the four poor survivors on shore--read a dreadful
+commentary on their danger; which was swelled out of all proportion
+by the violence of their own movements as they leaped and fell
+among the billows.  By seven the Nipsic was so fortunate as to
+avoid the reef and beach upon a space of sand; where she was
+immediately deserted by her crew, with the assistance of Samoans,
+not without loss of life.  By about eight it was the turn of the
+Adler.  She was close down upon the reef; doomed herself, it might
+yet be possible to save a portion of her crew; and for this end
+Captain Fritze placed his reliance on the very hugeness of the seas
+that threatened him.  The moment was watched for with the anxiety
+of despair, but the coolness of disciplined courage.  As she rose
+on the fatal wave, her moorings were simultaneously slipped; she
+broached to in rising; and the sea heaved her bodily upward and
+cast her down with a concussion on the summit of the reef, where
+she lay on her beam-ends, her back broken, buried in breaching
+seas, but safe.  Conceive a table:  the Eber in the darkness had
+been smashed against the rim and flung below; the Adler, cast free
+in the nick of opportunity, had been thrown upon the top.  Many
+were injured in the concussion; many tossed into the water; twenty
+perished.  The survivors crept again on board their ship, as it now
+lay, and as it still remains, keel to the waves, a monument of the
+sea's potency.  In still weather, under a cloudless sky, in those
+seasons when that ill-named ocean, the Pacific, suffers its vexed
+shores to rest, she lies high and dry, the spray scarce touching
+her--the hugest structure of man's hands within a circuit of a
+thousand miles--tossed up there like a schoolboy's cap upon a
+shelf; broken like an egg; a thing to dream of.
+
+The unfriendly consuls of Germany and Britain were both that
+morning in Matautu, and both displayed their nobler qualities.  De
+Coetlogon, the grim old soldier, collected his family and kneeled
+with them in an agony of prayer for those exposed.  Knappe, more
+fortunate in that he was called to a more active service, must,
+upon the striking of the Adler, pass to his own consulate.  From
+this he was divided by the Vaisingano, now a raging torrent,
+impetuously charioting the trunks of trees.  A kelpie might have
+dreaded to attempt the passage; we may conceive this brave but
+unfortunate and now ruined man to have found a natural joy in the
+exposure of his life; and twice that day, coming and going, he
+braved the fury of the river.  It was possible, in spite of the
+darkness of the hurricane and the continual breaching of the seas,
+to remark human movements on the Adler; and by the help of Samoans,
+always nobly forward in the work, whether for friend or enemy,
+Knappe sought long to get a line conveyed from shore, and was for
+long defeated.  The shore guard of fifty men stood to their arms
+the while upon the beach, useless themselves, and a great deterrent
+of Samoan usefulness.  It was perhaps impossible that this mistake
+should be avoided.  What more natural, to the mind of a European,
+than that the Mataafas should fall upon the Germans in this hour of
+their disadvantage?  But they had no other thought than to assist;
+and those who now rallied beside Knappe braved (as they supposed)
+in doing so a double danger, from the fury of the sea and the
+weapons of their enemies.  About nine, a quarter-master swam
+ashore, and reported all the officers and some sixty men alive but
+in pitiable case; some with broken limbs, others insensible from
+the drenching of the breakers.  Later in the forenoon, certain
+valorous Samoans succeeded in reaching the wreck and returning with
+a line; but it was speedily broken; and all subsequent attempts
+proved unavailing, the strongest adventurers being cast back again
+by the bursting seas.  Thenceforth, all through that day and night,
+the deafened survivors must continue to endure their martyrdom; and
+one officer died, it was supposed from agony of mind, in his
+inverted cabin.
+
+Three ships still hung on the next margin of destruction, steaming
+desperately to their moorings, dashed helplessly together.  The
+Calliope was the nearest in; she had the Vandalia close on her port
+side and a little ahead, the Olga close a-starboard, the reef under
+her heel; and steaming and veering on her cables, the unhappy ship
+fenced with her three dangers.  About a quarter to nine she carried
+away the Vandalia's quarter gallery with her jib-boom; a moment
+later, the Olga had near rammed her from the other side.  By nine
+the Vandalia dropped down on her too fast to be avoided, and
+clapped her stern under the bowsprit of the English ship, the
+fastenings of which were burst asunder as she rose.  To avoid
+cutting her down, it was necessary for the Calliope to stop and
+even to reverse her engines; and her rudder was at the moment--or
+it seemed so to the eyes of those on board--within ten feet of the
+reef.  "Between the Vandalia and the reef" (writes Kane, in his
+excellent report) "it was destruction."  To repeat Fritze's
+manoeuvre with the Adler was impossible; the Calliope was too
+heavy.  The one possibility of escape was to go out.  If the
+engines should stand, if they should have power to drive the ship
+against wind and sea, if she should answer the helm, if the wheel,
+rudder, and gear should hold out, and if they were favoured with a
+clear blink of weather in which to see and avoid the outer reef--
+there, and there only, were safety.  Upon this catalogue of "ifs"
+Kane staked his all.  He signalled to the engineer for every pound
+of steam--and at that moment (I am told) much of the machinery was
+already red-hot.  The ship was sheered well to starboard of the
+Vandalia, the last remaining cable slipped.  For a time--and there
+was no onlooker so cold-blooded as to offer a guess at its
+duration--the Calliope lay stationary; then gradually drew ahead.
+The highest speed claimed for her that day is of one sea-mile an
+hour.  The question of times and seasons, throughout all this
+roaring business, is obscured by a dozen contradictions; I have but
+chosen what appeared to be the most consistent; but if I am to pay
+any attention to the time named by Admiral Kimberley, the Calliope,
+in this first stage of her escape, must have taken more than two
+hours to cover less than four cables.  As she thus crept seaward,
+she buried bow and stem alternately under the billows.
+
+In the fairway of the entrance the flagship Trenton still held on.
+Her rudder was broken, her wheel carried away; within she was
+flooded with water from the peccant hawse-pipes; she had just made
+the signal "fires extinguished," and lay helpless, awaiting the
+inevitable end.  Between this melancholy hulk and the external reef
+Kane must find a path.  Steering within fifty yards of the reef
+(for which she was actually headed) and her foreyard passing on the
+other hand over the Trenton's quarter as she rolled, the Calliope
+sheered between the rival dangers, came to the wind triumphantly,
+and was once more pointed for the sea and safety.  Not often in
+naval history was there a moment of more sickening peril, and it
+was dignified by one of those incidents that reconcile the
+chronicler with his otherwise abhorrent task.  From the doomed
+flagship the Americans hailed the success of the English with a
+cheer.  It was led by the old admiral in person, rang out over the
+storm with holiday vigour, and was answered by the Calliopes with
+an emotion easily conceived.  This ship of their kinsfolk was
+almost the last external object seen from the Calliope for hours;
+immediately after, the mists closed about her till the morrow.  She
+was safe at sea again--una de multis--with a damaged foreyard, and
+a loss of all the ornamental work about her bow and stern, three
+anchors, one kedge-anchor, fourteen lengths of chain, four boats,
+the jib-boom, bobstay, and bands and fastenings of the bowsprit.
+
+Shortly after Kane had slipped his cable, Captain Schoonmaker,
+despairing of the Vandalia, succeeded in passing astern of the
+Olga, in the hope to beach his ship beside the Nipsic.  At a
+quarter to eleven her stern took the reef, her hand swung to
+starboard, and she began to fill and settle.  Many lives of brave
+men were sacrificed in the attempt to get a line ashore; the
+captain, exhausted by his exertions, was swept from deck by a sea;
+and the rail being soon awash, the survivors took refuge in the
+tops.
+
+Out of thirteen that had lain there the day before, there were now
+but two ships afloat in Apia harbour, and one of these was doomed
+to be the bane of the other.  About 3 P.M. the Trenton parted one
+cable, and shortly after a second.  It was sought to keep her head
+to wind with storm-sails and by the ingenious expedient of filling
+the rigging with seamen; but in the fury of the gale, and in that
+sea, perturbed alike by the gigantic billows and the volleying
+discharges of the rivers, the rudderless ship drove down stern
+foremost into the inner basin; ranging, plunging, and striking like
+a frightened horse; drifting on destruction for herself and
+bringing it to others.  Twice the Olga (still well under command)
+avoided her impact by the skilful use of helm and engines.  But
+about four the vigilance of the Germans was deceived, and the ships
+collided; the Olga cutting into the Trenton's quarters, first from
+one side, then from the other, and losing at the same time two of
+her own cables.  Captain von Ehrhardt instantly slipped the
+remainder of his moorings, and setting fore and aft canvas, and
+going full steam ahead, succeeded in beaching his ship in Matautu;
+whither Knappe, recalled by this new disaster, had returned.  The
+berth was perhaps the best in the harbour, and von Ehrhardt
+signalled that ship and crew were in security.
+
+The Trenton, guided apparently by an under-tow or eddy from the
+discharge of the Vaisingano, followed in the course of the Nipsic
+and Vandalia, and skirted south-eastward along the front of the
+shore reef, which her keel was at times almost touching.  Hitherto
+she had brought disaster to her foes; now she was bringing it to
+friends.  She had already proved the ruin of the Olga, the one ship
+that had rid out the hurricane in safety; now she beheld across her
+course the submerged Vandalia, the tops filled with exhausted
+seamen.  Happily the approach of the Trenton was gradual, and the
+time employed to advantage.  Rockets and lines were thrown into the
+tops of the friendly wreck; the approach of danger was transformed
+into a means of safety; and before the ships struck, the men from
+the Vandalia's main and mizzen masts, which went immediately by the
+board in the collision, were already mustered on the Trenton's
+decks.  Those from the foremast were next rescued; and the flagship
+settled gradually into a position alongside her neighbour, against
+which she beat all night with violence.  Out of the crew of the
+Vandalia forty-three had perished; of the four hundred and fifty on
+board the Trenton, only one.
+
+The night of the 16th was still notable for a howling tempest and
+extraordinary floods of rain.  It was feared the wreck could scarce
+continue to endure the breaching of the seas; among the Germans,
+the fate of those on board the Adler awoke keen anxiety; and
+Knappe, on the beach of Matautu, and the other officers of his
+consulate on that of Matafele, watched all night.  The morning of
+the 17th displayed a scene of devastation rarely equalled:  the
+Adler high and dry, the Olga and Nipsic beached, the Trenton partly
+piled on the Vandalia and herself sunk to the gun-deck; no sail
+afloat; and the beach heaped high with the debris of ships and the
+wreck of mountain forests.  Already, before the day, Seumanu, the
+chief of Apia, had gallantly ventured forth by boat through the
+subsiding fury of the seas, and had succeeded in communicating with
+the admiral; already, or as soon after as the dawn permitted,
+rescue lines were rigged, and the survivors were with difficulty
+and danger begun to be brought to shore.  And soon the cheerful
+spirit of the admiral added a new feature to the scene.  Surrounded
+as he was by the crews of two wrecked ships, he paraded the band of
+the Trenton, and the bay was suddenly enlivened with the strains of
+"Hail Columbia."
+
+During a great part of the day the work of rescue was continued,
+with many instances of courage and devotion; and for a long time
+succeeding, the almost inexhaustible harvest of the beach was to be
+reaped.  In the first employment, the Samoans earned the gratitude
+of friend and foe; in the second, they surprised all by an
+unexpected virtue, that of honesty.  The greatness of the disaster,
+and the magnitude of the treasure now rolling at their feet, may
+perhaps have roused in their bosoms an emotion too serious for the
+rule of greed, or perhaps that greed was for the moment satiated.
+Sails that twelve strong Samoans could scarce drag from the water,
+great guns (one of which was rolled by the sea on the body of a
+man, the only native slain in all the hurricane), an infinite
+wealth of rope and wood, of tools and weapons, tossed upon the
+beach.  Yet I have never heard that much was stolen; and beyond
+question, much was very honestly returned.  On both accounts, for
+the saving of life and the restoration of property, the government
+of the United States showed themselves generous in reward.  A fine
+boat was fitly presented to Seumanu; and rings, watches, and money
+were lavished on all who had assisted.  The Germans also gave money
+at the rate (as I receive the tale) of three dollars a head for
+every German saved.  The obligation was in this instance
+incommensurably deep, those with whom they were at war had saved
+the German blue-jackets at the venture of their lives; Knappe was,
+besides, far from ungenerous; and I can only explain the niggard
+figure by supposing it was paid from his own pocket.  In one case,
+at least, it was refused.  "I have saved three Germans," said the
+rescuer; "I will make you a present of the three."
+
+The crews of the American and German squadrons were now cast, still
+in a bellicose temper, together on the beach.  The discipline of
+the Americans was notoriously loose; the crew of the Nipsic had
+earned a character for lawlessness in other ports; and recourse was
+had to stringent and indeed extraordinary measures.  The town was
+divided in two camps, to which the different nationalities were
+confined.  Kimberley had his quarter sentinelled and patrolled.
+Any seaman disregarding a challenge was to be shot dead; any
+tavern-keeper who sold spirits to an American sailor was to have
+his tavern broken and his stock destroyed.  Many of the publicans
+were German; and Knappe, having narrated these rigorous but
+necessary dispositions, wonders (grinning to himself over his
+despatch) how far these Americans will go in their assumption of
+jurisdiction over Germans.  Such as they were, the measures were
+successful.  The incongruous mass of castaways was kept in peace,
+and at last shipped in peace out of the islands.
+
+Kane returned to Apia on the 19th, to find the Calliope the sole
+survivor of thirteen sail.  He thanked his men, and in particular
+the engineers, in a speech of unusual feeling and beauty, of which
+one who was present remarked to another, as they left the ship,
+"This has been a means of grace."  Nor did he forget to thank and
+compliment the admiral; and I cannot deny myself the pleasure of
+transcribing from Kimberley's reply some generous and engaging
+words.  "My dear captain," he wrote, "your kind note received.  You
+went out splendidly, and we all felt from our hearts for you, and
+our cheers came with sincerity and admiration for the able manner
+in which you handled your ship.  We could not have been gladder if
+it had been one of our ships, for in a time like that I can truly
+say with old Admiral Josiah Latnall, 'that blood is thicker than
+water.'"  One more trait will serve to build up the image of this
+typical sea-officer.  A tiny schooner, the Equator, Captain Edwin
+Reid, dear to myself from the memories of a six months' cruise,
+lived out upon the high seas the fury of that tempest which had
+piled with wrecks the harbour of Apia, found a refuge in Pango-
+Pango, and arrived at last in the desolated port with a welcome and
+lucrative cargo of pigs.  The admiral was glad to have the pigs;
+but what most delighted the man's noble and childish soul, was to
+see once more afloat the colours of his country.
+
+Thus, in what seemed the very article of war, and within the
+duration of a single day, the sword-arm of each of the two angry
+Powers was broken; their formidable ships reduced to junk; their
+disciplined hundreds to a horde of castaways, fed with difficulty,
+and the fear of whose misconduct marred the sleep of their
+commanders.  Both paused aghast; both had time to recognise that
+not the whole Samoan Archipelago was worth the loss in men and
+costly ships already suffered.  The so-called hurricane of March
+16th made thus a marking epoch in world-history; directly, and at
+once, it brought about the congress and treaty of Berlin;
+indirectly, and by a process still continuing, it founded the
+modern navy of the States.  Coming years and other historians will
+declare the influence of that.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--LAUPEPA AND MATAAFA
+1889-1892
+
+
+
+With the hurricane, the broken war-ships, and the stranded sailors,
+I am at an end of violence, and my tale flows henceforth among
+carpet incidents.  The blue-jackets on Apia beach were still
+jealously held apart by sentries, when the powers at home were
+already seeking a peaceable solution.  It was agreed, so far as
+might be, to obliterate two years of blundering; and to resume in
+1889, and at Berlin, those negotiations which had been so unhappily
+broken off at Washington in 1887.  The example thus offered by
+Germany is rare in history; in the career of Prince Bismarck, so
+far as I am instructed, it should stand unique.  On a review of
+these two years of blundering, bullying, and failure in a little
+isle of the Pacific, he seems magnanimously to have owned his
+policy was in the wrong.  He left Fangalii unexpiated; suffered
+that house of cards, the Tamasese government, to fall by its own
+frailty and without remark or lamentation; left the Samoan question
+openly and fairly to the conference:  and in the meanwhile, to
+allay the local heats engendered by Becker and Knappe, he sent to
+Apia that invaluable public servant, Dr. Stuebel.  I should be a
+dishonest man if I did not bear testimony to the loyalty since
+shown by Germans in Samoa.  Their position was painful; they had
+talked big in the old days, now they had to sing small.  Even
+Stuebel returned to the islands under the prejudice of an
+unfortunate record.  To the minds of the Samoans his name
+represented the beginning of their sorrows; and in his first term
+of office he had unquestionably driven hard.  The greater his merit
+in the surprising success of the second.  So long as he stayed, the
+current of affairs moved smoothly; he left behind him on his
+departure all men at peace; and whether by fortune, or for the want
+of that wise hand of guidance, he was scarce gone before the clouds
+began to gather once more on our horizon.
+
+Before the first convention, Germany and the States hauled down
+their flags.  It was so done again before the second; and Germany,
+by a still more emphatic step of retrogression, returned the exile
+Laupepa to his native shores.  For two years the unfortunate man
+had trembled and suffered in the Cameroons, in Germany, in the
+rainy Marshalls.  When he left (September 1887) Tamasese was king,
+served by five iron war-ships; his right to rule (like a dogma of
+the Church) was placed outside dispute; the Germans were still, as
+they were called at that last tearful interview in the house by the
+river, "the invincible strangers"; the thought of resistance, far
+less the hope of success, had not yet dawned on the Samoan mind.
+He returned (November 1889) to a changed world.  The Tupua party
+was reduced to sue for peace, Brandeis was withdrawn, Tamasese was
+dying obscurely of a broken heart; the German flag no longer waved
+over the capital; and over all the islands one figure stood
+supreme.  During Laupepa's absence this man had succeeded him in
+all his honours and titles, in tenfold more than all his power and
+popularity.  He was the idol of the whole nation but the rump of
+the Tamaseses, and of these he was already the secret admiration.
+In his position there was but one weak point,--that he had even
+been tacitly excluded by the Germans.  Becker, indeed, once
+coquetted with the thought of patronising him; but the project had
+no sequel, and it stands alone.  In every other juncture of history
+the German attitude has been the same.  Choose whom you will to be
+king; when he has failed, choose whom you please to succeed him;
+when the second fails also, replace the first:  upon the one
+condition, that Mataafa be excluded.  "Pourvu qu'il sache signer!"-
+-an official is said to have thus summed up the qualifications
+necessary in a Samoan king.  And it was perhaps feared that Mataafa
+could do no more and might not always do so much.  But this
+original diffidence was heightened by late events to something
+verging upon animosity.  Fangalii was unavenged:  the arms of
+Mataafa were
+
+
+Nondum inexpiatis uncta cruoribus,
+Still soiled with the unexpiated blood
+
+
+of German sailors; and though the chief was not present in the
+field, nor could have heard of the affair till it was over, he had
+reaped from it credit with his countrymen and dislike from the
+Germans.
+
+I may not say that trouble was hoped.  I must say--if it were not
+feared, the practice of diplomacy must teach a very hopeful view of
+human nature.  Mataafa and Laupepa, by the sudden repatriation of
+the last, found themselves face to face in conditions of
+exasperating rivalry.  The one returned from the dead of exile to
+find himself replaced and excelled.  The other, at the end of a
+long, anxious, and successful struggle, beheld his only possible
+competitor resuscitated from the grave.  The qualities of both, in
+this difficult moment, shone out nobly.  I feel I seem always less
+than partial to the lovable Laupepa; his virtues are perhaps not
+those which chiefly please me, and are certainly not royal; but he
+found on his return an opportunity to display the admirable
+sweetness of his nature.  The two entered into a competition of
+generosity, for which I can recall no parallel in history, each
+waiving the throne for himself, each pressing it upon his rival;
+and they embraced at last a compromise the terms of which seem to
+have been always obscure and are now disputed.  Laupepa at least
+resumed his style of King of Samoa; Mataafa retained much of the
+conduct of affairs, and continued to receive much of the attendance
+and respect befitting royalty; and the two Malietoas, with so many
+causes of disunion, dwelt and met together in the same town like
+kinsmen.  It was so, that I first saw them; so, in a house set
+about with sentries--for there was still a haunting fear of
+Germany,--that I heard them relate their various experience in the
+past; heard Laupepa tell with touching candour of the sorrows of
+his exile, and Mataafa with mirthful simplicity of his resources
+and anxieties in the war.  The relation was perhaps too beautiful
+to last; it was perhaps impossible but the titular king should grow
+at last uneasily conscious of the maire de palais at his side, or
+the king-maker be at last offended by some shadow of distrust or
+assumption in his creature.  I repeat the words king-maker and
+creature; it is so that Mataafa himself conceives of their
+relation:  surely not without justice; for, had he not contended
+and prevailed, and been helped by the folly of consuls and the fury
+of the storm, Laupepa must have died in exile.
+
+Foreigners in these islands know little of the course of native
+intrigue.  Partly the Samoans cannot explain, partly they will not
+tell.  Ask how much a master can follow of the puerile politics in
+any school; so much and no more we may understand of the events
+which surround and menace us with their results.  The missions may
+perhaps have been to blame.  Missionaries are perhaps apt to meddle
+overmuch outside their discipline; it is a fault which should be
+judged with mercy; the problem is sometimes so insidiously
+presented that even a moderate and able man is betrayed beyond his
+own intention; and the missionary in such a land as Samoa is
+something else besides a minister of mere religion; he represents
+civilisation, he is condemned to be an organ of reform, he could
+scarce evade (even if he desired) a certain influence in political
+affairs.  And it is believed, besides, by those who fancy they
+know, that the effective force of division between Mataafa and
+Laupepa came from the natives rather than from whites.  Before the
+end of 1890, at least, it began to be rumoured that there was
+dispeace between the two Malietoas; and doubtless this had an
+unsettling influence throughout the islands.  But there was another
+ingredient of anxiety.  The Berlin convention had long closed its
+sittings; the text of the Act had been long in our hands;
+commissioners were announced to right the wrongs of the land
+question, and two high officials, a chief justice and a president,
+to guide policy and administer law in Samoa.  Their coming was
+expected with an impatience, with a childishness of trust, that can
+hardly be exaggerated.  Months passed, these angel-deliverers still
+delayed to arrive, and the impatience of the natives became changed
+to an ominous irritation.  They have had much experience of being
+deceived, and they began to think they were deceived again.  A
+sudden crop of superstitious stories buzzed about the islands.
+Rivers had come down red; unknown fishes had been taken on the reef
+and found to be marked with menacing runes; a headless lizard
+crawled among chiefs in council; the gods of Upolu and Savaii made
+war by night, they swam the straits to battle, and, defaced by
+dreadful wounds, they had besieged the house of a medical
+missionary.  Readers will remember the portents in mediaeval
+chronicles, or those in Julius Caesar when
+
+
+"Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds
+In ranks and squadrons."
+
+
+And doubtless such fabrications are, in simple societies, a natural
+expression of discontent; and those who forge, and even those who
+spread them, work towards a conscious purpose.
+
+Early in January 1891 this period of expectancy was brought to an
+end by the arrival of Conrad Cedarcrantz, chief justice of Samoa.
+The event was hailed with acclamation, and there was much about the
+new official to increase the hopes already entertained.  He was
+seen to be a man of culture and ability; in public, of an excellent
+presence--in private, of a most engaging cordiality.  But there was
+one point, I scarce know whether to say of his character or policy,
+which immediately and disastrously affected public feeling in the
+islands.  He had an aversion, part judicial, part perhaps
+constitutional, to haste; and he announced that, until he should
+have well satisfied his own mind, he should do nothing; that he
+would rather delay all than do aught amiss.  It was impossible to
+hear this without academical approval; impossible to hear it
+without practical alarm.  The natives desired to see activity; they
+desired to see many fair speeches taken on a body of deeds and
+works of benefit.  Fired by the event of the war, filled with
+impossible hopes, they might have welcomed in that hour a ruler of
+the stamp of Brandeis, breathing hurry, perhaps dealing blows.  And
+the chief justice, unconscious of the fleeting opportunity, ripened
+his opinions deliberately in Mulinuu; and had been already the
+better part of half a year in the islands before he went through
+the form of opening his court.  The curtain had risen; there was no
+play.  A reaction, a chill sense of disappointment, passed about
+the island; and intrigue, one moment suspended, was resumed.
+
+In the Berlin Act, the three Powers recognise, on the threshold,
+"the independence of the Samoan government, and the free right of
+the natives to elect their chief or king and choose their form of
+government."  True, the text continues that, "in view of the
+difficulties that surround an election in the present disordered
+condition of the government," Malietoa Laupepa shall be recognised
+as king, "unless the three Powers shall by common accord otherwise
+declare."  But perhaps few natives have followed it so far, and
+even those who have, were possibly all cast abroad again by the
+next clause:  "and his successor shall be duly elected according to
+the laws and customs of Samoa."  The right to elect, freely given
+in one sentence, was suspended in the next, and a line or so
+further on appeared to be reconveyed by a side-wind.  The reason
+offered for suspension was ludicrously false; in May 1889, when Sir
+Edward Malet moved the matter in the conference, the election of
+Mataafa was not only certain to have been peaceful, it could not
+have been opposed; and behind the English puppet it was easy to
+suspect the hand of Germany.  No one is more swift to smell
+trickery than a Samoan; and the thought, that, under the long,
+bland, benevolent sentences of the Berlin Act, some trickery lay
+lurking, filled him with the breath of opposition.  Laupepa seems
+never to have been a popular king.  Mataafa, on the other hand,
+holds an unrivalled position in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen;
+he was the hero of the war, he had lain with them in the bush, he
+had borne the heat and burthen of the day; they began to claim that
+he should enjoy more largely the fruits of victory; his exclusion
+was believed to be a stroke of German vengeance, his elevation to
+the kingship was looked for as the fitting crown and copestone of
+the Samoan triumph; and but a little after the coming of the chief
+justice, an ominous cry for Mataafa began to arise in the islands.
+It is difficult to see what that official could have done but what
+he did.  He was loyal, as in duty bound, to the treaty and to
+Laupepa; and when the orators of the important and unruly islet of
+Manono demanded to his face a change of kings, he had no choice but
+to refuse them, and (his reproof being unheeded) to suspend the
+meeting.  Whether by any neglect of his own or the mere force of
+circumstance, he failed, however, to secure the sympathy, failed
+even to gain the confidence, of Mataafa.  The latter is not without
+a sense of his own abilities or of the great service he has
+rendered to his native land.  He felt himself neglected; at the
+very moment when the cry for his elevation rang throughout the
+group he thought himself made little of on Mulinuu; and he began to
+weary of his part.  In this humour, he was exposed to a temptation
+which I must try to explain, as best I may be able, to Europeans.
+
+The bestowal of the great name, Malietoa, is in the power of the
+district of Malie, some seven miles to the westward of Apia.  The
+most noisy and conspicuous supporters of that party are the
+inhabitants of Manono.  Hence in the elaborate, allusive oratory of
+Samoa, Malie is always referred to by the name of Pule (authority)
+as having the power of the name, and Manono by that of Ainga (clan,
+sept, or household) as forming the immediate family of the chief.
+But these, though so important, are only small communities; and
+perhaps the chief numerical force of the Malietoas inhabits the
+island of Savaii.  Savaii has no royal name to bestow, all the five
+being in the gift of different districts of Upolu; but she has the
+weight of numbers, and in these latter days has acquired a certain
+force by the preponderance in her councils of a single man, the
+orator Lauati.  The reader will now understand the peculiar
+significance of a deputation which should embrace Lauati and the
+orators of both Malie and Manono, how it would represent all that
+is most effective on the Malietoa side, and all that is most
+considerable in Samoan politics, except the opposite feudal party
+of the Tupua.  And in the temptation brought to bear on Mataafa,
+even the Tupua was conjoined.  Tamasese was dead.  His followers
+had conceived a not unnatural aversion to all Germans, from which
+only the loyal Brandeis is excepted; and a not unnatural admiration
+for their late successful adversary.  Men of his own blood and
+clan, men whom he had fought in the field, whom he had driven from
+Matautu, who had smitten him back time and again from before the
+rustic bulwarks of Lotoanuu, they approached him hand in hand with
+their ancestral enemies and concurred in the same prayer.  The
+treaty (they argued) was not carried out.  The right to elect their
+king had been granted them; or if that were denied or suspended,
+then the right to elect "his successor."  They were dissatisfied
+with Laupepa, and claimed, "according to the laws and customs of
+Samoa," duly to appoint another.  The orators of Malie declared
+with irritation that their second appointment was alone valid and
+Mataafa the sole Malietoa; the whole body of malcontents named him
+as their choice for king; and they requested him in consequence to
+leave Apia and take up his dwelling in Malie, the name-place of
+Malietoa; a step which may be described, to European ears, as
+placing before the country his candidacy for the crown.
+
+I do not know when the proposal was first made.  Doubtless the
+disaffection grew slowly, every trifle adding to its force;
+doubtless there lingered for long a willingness to give the new
+government a trial.  The chief justice at least had been nearly
+five months in the country, and the president, Baron Senfft von
+Pilsach, rather more than a month before the mine was sprung.  On
+May 31, 1891, the house of Mataafa was found empty, he and his
+chiefs had vanished from Apia, and, what was worse, three
+prisoners, liberated from the gaol, had accompanied them in their
+secession; two being political offenders, and the third (accused of
+murder) having been perhaps set free by accident.  Although the
+step had been discussed in certain quarters, it took all men by
+surprise.  The inhabitants at large expected instant war.  The
+officials awakened from a dream to recognise the value of that
+which they had lost.  Mataafa at Vaiala, where he was the pledge of
+peace, had perhaps not always been deemed worthy of particular
+attention; Mataafa at Malie was seen, twelve hours too late, to be
+an altogether different quantity.  With excess of zeal on the other
+side, the officials trooped to their boats and proceeded almost in
+a body to Malie, where they seem to have employed every artifice of
+flattery and every resource of eloquence upon the fugitive high
+chief.  These courtesies, perhaps excessive in themselves, had the
+unpardonable fault of being offered when too late.  Mataafa showed
+himself facile on small issues, inflexible on the main; he restored
+the prisoners, he returned with the consuls to Apia on a flying
+visit; he gave his word that peace should be preserved--a pledge in
+which perhaps no one believed at the moment, but which he has since
+nobly redeemed.  On the rest he was immovable; he had cast the die,
+he had declared his candidacy, he had gone to Malie.  Thither,
+after his visit to Apia, he returned again; there he has
+practically since resided.
+
+Thus was created in the islands a situation, strange in the
+beginning, and which, as its inner significance is developed,
+becomes daily stranger to observe.  On the one hand, Mataafa sits
+in Malie, assumes a regal state, receives deputations, heads his
+letters "Government of Samoa," tacitly treats the king as a co-
+ordinate; and yet declares himself, and in many ways conducts
+himself, as a law-abiding citizen.  On the other, the white
+officials in Mulinuu stand contemplating the phenomenon with eyes
+of growing stupefaction; now with symptoms of collapse, now with
+accesses of violence.  For long, even those well versed in island
+manners and the island character daily expected war, and heard
+imaginary drums beat in the forest.  But for now close upon a year,
+and against every stress of persuasion and temptation, Mataafa has
+been the bulwark of our peace.  Apia lay open to be seized, he had
+the power in his hand, his followers cried to be led on, his
+enemies marshalled him the same way by impotent examples; and he
+has never faltered.  Early in the day, a white man was sent from
+the government of Mulinuu to examine and report upon his actions:
+I saw the spy on his return; "It was only our rebel that saved us,"
+he said, with a laugh.  There is now no honest man in the islands
+but is well aware of it; none but knows that, if we have enjoyed
+during the past eleven months the conveniences of peace, it is due
+to the forbearance of "our rebel."  Nor does this part of his
+conduct stand alone.  He calls his party at Malie the government,--
+"our government,"--but he pays his taxes to the government at
+Mulinuu.  He takes ground like a king; he has steadily and blandly
+refused to obey all orders as to his own movements or behaviour;
+but upon requisition he sends offenders to be tried under the chief
+justice.
+
+We have here a problem of conduct, and what seems an image of
+inconsistency, very hard at the first sight to be solved by any
+European.  Plainly Mataafa does not act at random.  Plainly, in the
+depths of his Samoan mind, he regards his attitude as regular and
+constitutional.  It may be unexpected, it may be inauspicious, it
+may be undesirable; but he thinks it--and perhaps it is--in full
+accordance with those "laws and customs of Samoa" ignorantly
+invoked by the draughtsmen of the Berlin Act.  The point is worth
+an effort of comprehension; a man's life may yet depend upon it.
+Let us conceive, in the first place, that there are five separate
+kingships in Samoa, though not always five different kings; and
+that though one man, by holding the five royal names, might become
+king in ALL PARTS of Samoa, there is perhaps no such matter as a
+kingship of all Samoa.  He who holds one royal name would be, upon
+this view, as much a sovereign person as he who should chance to
+hold the other four; he would have less territory and fewer
+subjects, but the like independence and an equal royalty.  Now
+Mataafa, even if all debatable points were decided against him, is
+still Tuiatua, and as such, on this hypothesis, a sovereign prince.
+In the second place, the draughtsmen of the Act, waxing exceeding
+bold, employed the word "election," and implicitly justified all
+precedented steps towards the kingship according with the "customs
+of Samoa."  I am not asking what was intended by the gentlemen who
+sat and debated very benignly and, on the whole, wisely in Berlin;
+I am asking what will be understood by a Samoan studying their
+literary work, the Berlin Act; I am asking what is the result of
+taking a word out of one state of society, and applying it to
+another, of which the writers know less than nothing, and no
+European knows much.  Several interpreters and several days were
+employed last September in the fruitless attempt to convey to the
+mind of Laupepa the sense of the word "resignation."  What can a
+Samoan gather from the words, ELECTION? ELECTION OF A KING?
+ELECTION OF A KING ACCORDING TO THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF SAMOA?
+What are the electoral measures, what is the method of canvassing,
+likely to be employed by two, three, four, or five, more or less
+absolute princelings, eager to evince each other?  And who is to
+distinguish such a process from the state of war?  In such
+international--or, I should say, interparochial--differences, the
+nearest we can come towards understanding is to appreciate the
+cloud of ambiguity in which all parties grope -
+
+
+"Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
+Half flying."
+
+
+Now, in one part of Mataafa's behaviour his purpose is beyond
+mistake.  Towards the provisions of the Berlin Act, his desire to
+be formally obedient is manifest.  The Act imposed the tax.  He has
+paid his taxes, although he thus contributes to the ways and means
+of his immediate rival.  The Act decreed the supreme court, and he
+sends his partisans to be tried at Mulinuu, although he thus places
+them (as I shall have occasion to show) in a position far from
+wholly safe.  From this literal conformity, in matters regulated,
+to the terms of the Berlin plenipotentiaries, we may plausibly
+infer, in regard to the rest, a no less exact observance of the
+famous and obscure "laws and customs of Samoa."
+
+But though it may be possible to attain, in the study, to some such
+adumbration of an understanding, it were plainly unfair to expect
+it of officials in the hurry of events.  Our two white officers
+have accordingly been no more perspicacious than was to be looked
+for, and I think they have sometimes been less wise.  It was not
+wise in the president to proclaim Mataafa and his followers rebels
+and their estates confiscated.  Such words are not respectable till
+they repose on force; on the lips of an angry white man, standing
+alone on a small promontory, they were both dangerous and absurd;
+they might have provoked ruin; thanks to the character of Mataafa,
+they only raised a smile and damaged the authority of government.
+And again it is not wise in the government of Mulinuu to have twice
+attempted to precipitate hostilities, once in Savaii, once here in
+the Tuamasanga.  The fate of the Savaii attempt I never heard; it
+seems to have been stillborn.  The other passed under my eyes.  A
+war-party was armed in Apia, and despatched across the island
+against Mataafa villages, where it was to seize the women and
+children.  It was absent for some days, engaged in feasting with
+those whom it went out to fight; and returned at last, innocuous
+and replete.  In this fortunate though undignified ending we may
+read the fact that the natives on Laupepa's side are sometimes more
+wise than their advisers.  Indeed, for our last twelve months of
+miraculous peace under what seem to be two rival kings, the credit
+is due first of all to Mataafa, and second to the half-heartedness,
+or the forbearance, or both, of the natives in the other camp.  The
+voice of the two whites has ever been for war.  They have published
+at least one incendiary proclamation; they have armed and sent into
+the field at least one Samoan war-party; they have continually
+besieged captains of war-ships to attack Malie, and the captains of
+the war-ships have religiously refused.  Thus in the last twelve
+months our European rulers have drawn a picture of themselves, as
+bearded like the pard, full of strange oaths, and gesticulating
+like semaphores; while over against them Mataafa reposes smilingly
+obstinate, and their own retainers surround them, frowningly inert.
+Into the question of motive I refuse to enter; but if we come to
+war in these islands, and with no fresh occasion, it will be a
+manufactured war, and one that has been manufactured, against the
+grain of opinion, by two foreigners.
+
+For the last and worst of the mistakes on the Laupepa side it would
+be unfair to blame any but the king himself.  Capable both of
+virtuous resolutions and of fits of apathetic obstinacy, His
+Majesty is usually the whip-top of competitive advisers; and his
+conduct is so unstable as to wear at times an appearance of
+treachery which would surprise himself if he could see it.  Take,
+for example, the experience of Lieutenant Ulfsparre, late chief of
+police, and (so to speak) commander of the forces.  His men were
+under orders for a certain hour; he found himself almost alone at
+the place of muster, and learned the king had sent the soldiery on
+errands.  He sought an audience, explained that he was here to
+implant discipline, that (with this purpose in view) his men could
+only receive orders through himself, and if that condition were not
+agreed to and faithfully observed, he must send in his papers.  The
+king was as usual easily persuaded, the interview passed and ended
+to the satisfaction of all parties engaged--and the bargain was
+kept for one day.  On the day after, the troops were again
+dispersed as post-runners, and their commander resigned.  With such
+a sovereign, I repeat, it would be unfair to blame any individual
+minister for any specific fault.  And yet the policy of our two
+whites against Mataafa has appeared uniformly so excessive and
+implacable, that the blame of the last scandal is laid generally at
+their doors.  It is yet fresh.  Lauati, towards the end of last
+year, became deeply concerned about the situation; and by great
+personal exertions and the charms of oratory brought Savaii and
+Manono into agreement upon certain terms of compromise:  Laupepa
+still to be king, Mataafa to accept a high executive office
+comparable to that of our own prime minister, and the two
+governments to coalesce.  Intractable Manono was a party.  Malie
+was said to view the proposal with resignation, if not relief.
+Peace was thought secure.  The night before the king was to receive
+Lauati, I met one of his company,--the family chief, Iina,--and we
+shook hands over the unexpected issue of our troubles.  What no one
+dreamed was that Laupepa would refuse.  And he did.  He refused
+undisputed royalty for himself and peace for these unhappy islands;
+and the two whites on Mulinuu rightly or wrongly got the blame of
+it.
+
+But their policy has another and a more awkward side.  About the
+time of the secession to Malie, many ugly things were said; I will
+not repeat that which I hope and believe the speakers did not
+wholly mean; let it suffice that, if rumour carried to Mataafa the
+language I have heard used in my own house and before my own native
+servants, he would be highly justified in keeping clear of Apia and
+the whites.  One gentleman whose opinion I respect, and am so bold
+as to hope I may in some points modify, will understand the
+allusion and appreciate my reserve.  About the same time there
+occurred an incident, upon which I must be more particular.  A was
+a gentleman who had long been an intimate of Mataafa's, and had
+recently (upon account, indeed, of the secession to Malie) more or
+less wholly broken off relations.  To him came one whom I shall
+call B with a dastardly proposition.  It may have been B's own, in
+which case he were the more unpardonable; but from the closeness of
+his intercourse with the chief justice, as well as from the terms
+used in the interview, men judged otherwise.  It was proposed that
+A should simulate a renewal of the friendship, decoy Mataafa to a
+suitable place, and have him there arrested.  What should follow in
+those days of violent speech was at the least disputable; and the
+proposal was of course refused.  "You do not understand," was the
+base rejoinder.  "YOU will have no discredit.  The Germans are to
+take the blame of the arrest." Of course, upon the testimony of a
+gentleman so depraved, it were unfair to hang a dog; and both the
+Germans and the chief justice must be held innocent.  But the chief
+justice has shown that he can himself be led, by his animosity
+against Mataafa, into questionable acts.  Certain natives of Malie
+were accused of stealing pigs; the chief justice summoned them
+through Mataafa; several were sent, and along with them a written
+promise that, if others were required, these also should be
+forthcoming upon requisition.  Such as came were duly tried and
+acquitted; and Mataafa's offer was communicated to the chief
+justice, who made a formal answer, and the same day (in pursuance
+of his constant design to have Malie attacked by war-ships)
+reported to one of the consuls that his warrant would not run in
+the country and that certain of the accused had been withheld.  At
+least, this is not fair dealing; and the next instance I have to
+give is possibly worse.  For one blunder the chief justice is only
+so far responsible, in that he was not present where it seems he
+should have been, when it was made.  He had nothing to do with the
+silly proscription of the Mataafas; he has always disliked the
+measure; and it occurred to him at last that he might get rid of
+this dangerous absurdity and at the same time reap a further
+advantage.  Let Mataafa leave Malie for any other district in
+Samoa; it should be construed as an act of submission and the
+confiscation and proscription instantly recalled.  This was
+certainly well devised; the government escaped from their own false
+position, and by the same stroke lowered the prestige of their
+adversaries.  But unhappily the chief justice did not put all his
+eggs in one basket.  Concurrently with these negotiations he began
+again to move the captain of one of the war-ships to shell the
+rebel village; the captain, conceiving the extremity wholly
+unjustified, not only refused these instances, but more or less
+publicly complained of their being made; the matter came to the
+knowledge of the white resident who was at that time playing the
+part of intermediary with Malie; and he, in natural anger and
+disgust, withdrew from the negotiation.  These duplicities, always
+deplorable when discovered, are never more fatal than with men
+imperfectly civilised.  Almost incapable of truth themselves, they
+cherish a particular score of the same fault in whites.  And
+Mataafa is besides an exceptional native.  I would scarce dare say
+of any Samoan that he is truthful, though I seem to have
+encountered the phenomenon; but I must say of Mataafa that he seems
+distinctly and consistently averse to lying.
+
+For the affair of the Manono prisoners, the chief justice is only
+again in so far answerable as he was at the moment absent from the
+seat of his duties; and the blame falls on Baron Senfft von
+Pilsach, president of the municipal council.  There were in Manono
+certain dissidents, loyal to Laupepa.  Being Manono people, I
+daresay they were very annoying to their neighbours; the majority,
+as they belonged to the same island, were the more impatient; and
+one fine day fell upon and destroyed the houses and harvests of the
+dissidents "according to the laws and customs of Samoa."  The
+president went down to the unruly island in a war-ship and was
+landed alone upon the beach.  To one so much a stranger to the
+mansuetude of Polynesians, this must have seemed an act of
+desperation; and the baron's gallantry met with a deserved success.
+The six ringleaders, acting in Mataafa's interest, had been guilty
+of a delict; with Mataafa's approval, they delivered themselves
+over to be tried.  On Friday, September 4, 1891, they were
+convicted before a native magistrate and sentenced to six months'
+imprisonment; or, I should rather say, detention; for it was
+expressly directed that they were to be used as gentlemen and not
+as prisoners, that the door was to stand open, and that all their
+wishes should be gratified.  This extraordinary sentence fell upon
+the accused like a thunderbolt.  There is no need to suppose
+perfidy, where a careless interpreter suffices to explain all; but
+the six chiefs claim to have understood their coming to Apia as an
+act of submission merely formal, that they came in fact under an
+implied indemnity, and that the president stood pledged to see them
+scatheless.  Already, on their way from the court-house, they were
+tumultuously surrounded by friends and clansmen, who pressed and
+cried upon them to escape; Lieutenant Ulfsparre must order his men
+to load; and with that the momentary effervescence died away.  Next
+day, Saturday, 5th, the chief justice took his departure from the
+islands--a step never yet explained and (in view of the doings of
+the day before and the remonstrances of other officials) hard to
+justify.  The president, an amiable and brave young man of singular
+inexperience, was thus left to face the growing difficulty by
+himself.  The clansmen of the prisoners, to the number of near upon
+a hundred, lay in Vaiusu, a village half way between Apia and
+Malie; there they talked big, thence sent menacing messages; the
+gaol should be broken in the night, they said, and the six martyrs
+rescued.  Allowance is to be made for the character of the people
+of Manono, turbulent fellows, boastful of tongue, but of late days
+not thought to be answerably bold in person.  Yet the moment was
+anxious.  The government of Mulinuu had gained an important moral
+victory by the surrender and condemnation of the chiefs; and it was
+needful the victory should be maintained.  The guard upon the gaol
+was accordingly strengthened; a war-party was sent to watch the
+Vaiusu road under Asi; and the chiefs of the Vaimaunga were
+notified to arm and assemble their men.  It must be supposed the
+president was doubtful of the loyalty of these assistants.  He
+turned at least to the war-ships, where it seems he was rebuffed;
+thence he fled into the arms of the wrecker gang, where he was
+unhappily more successful.  The government of Washington had
+presented to the Samoan king the wrecks of the Trenton and the
+Vandalia; an American syndicate had been formed to break them up;
+an experienced gang was in consequence settled in Apia and the
+report of submarine explosions had long grown familiar in the ears
+of residents.  From these artificers the president obtained a
+supply of dynamite, the needful mechanism, and the loan of a
+mechanic; the gaol was mined, and the Manono people in Vaiusu were
+advertised of the fact in a letter signed by Laupepa.  Partly by
+the indiscretion of the mechanic, who had sought to embolden
+himself (like Lady Macbeth) with liquor for his somewhat dreadful
+task, the story leaked immediately out and raised a very general,
+or I might say almost universal, reprobation.  Some blamed the
+proposed deed because it was barbarous and a foul example to set
+before a race half barbarous itself; others because it was illegal;
+others again because, in the face of so weak an enemy, it appeared
+pitifully pusillanimous; almost all because it tended to
+precipitate and embitter war.  In the midst of the turmoil he had
+raised, and under the immediate pressure of certain indignant white
+residents, the baron fell back upon a new expedient, certainly less
+barbarous, perhaps no more legal; and on Monday afternoon,
+September 7th, packed his six prisoners on board the cutter
+Lancashire Lass, and deported them to the neighbouring low-island
+group of the Tokelaus.  We watched her put to sea with mingled
+feelings.  Anything were better than dynamite, but this was not
+good.  The men had been summoned in the name of law; they had
+surrendered; the law had uttered its voice; they were under one
+sentence duly delivered; and now the president, by no right with
+which we were acquainted, had exchanged it for another.  It was
+perhaps no less fortunate, though it was more pardonable in a
+stranger, that he had increased the punishment to that which, in
+the eyes of Samoans, ranks next to death,--exile from their native
+land and friends.  And the Lancashire Lass appeared to carry away
+with her into the uttermost parts of the sea the honour of the
+administration and the prestige of the supreme court.
+
+The policy of the government towards Mataafa has thus been of a
+piece throughout; always would-be violent, it has been almost
+always defaced with some appearance of perfidy or unfairness.  The
+policy of Mataafa (though extremely bewildering to any white)
+appears everywhere consistent with itself, and the man's bearing
+has always been calm.  But to represent the fulness of the
+contrast, it is necessary that I should give some description of
+the two capitals, or the two camps, and the ways and means of the
+regular and irregular government.
+
+Mulinuu.  Mulinuu, the reader may remember, is a narrow finger of
+land planted in cocoa-palms, which runs forth into the lagoon
+perhaps three quarters of a mile.  To the east is the bay of Apia.
+To the west, there is, first of all, a mangrove swamp, the
+mangroves excellently green, the mud ink-black, and its face
+crawled upon by countless insects and black and scarlet crabs.
+Beyond the swamp is a wide and shallow bay of the lagoon, bounded
+to the west by Faleula Point.  Faleula is the next village to
+Malie; so that from the top of some tall palm in Malie it should be
+possible to descry against the eastern heavens the palms of
+Mulinuu.  The trade wind sweeps over the low peninsula and cleanses
+it from the contagion of the swamp.  Samoans have a quaint phrase
+in their language; when out of health, they seek exposed places on
+the shore "to eat the wind," say they; and there can be few better
+places for such a diet than the point of Mulinuu.
+
+Two European houses stand conspicuous on the harbour side; in
+Europe they would seem poor enough, but they are fine houses for
+Samoa.  One is new; it was built the other day under the apologetic
+title of a Government House, to be the residence of Baron Senfft.
+The other is historical; it was built by Brandeis on a mortgage,
+and is now occupied by the chief justice on conditions never
+understood, the rumour going uncontradicted that he sits rent free.
+I do not say it is true, I say it goes uncontradicted; and there is
+one peculiarity of our officials in a nutshell,--their remarkable
+indifference to their own character.  From the one house to the
+other extends a scattering village for the Faipule or native
+parliament men.  In the days of Tamasese this was a brave place,
+both his own house and those of the Faipule good, and the whole
+excellently ordered and approached by a sanded way.  It is now like
+a neglected bush-town, and speaks of apathy in all concerned.  But
+the chief scandal of Mulinuu is elsewhere.  The house of the
+president stands just to seaward of the isthmus, where the watch is
+set nightly, and armed men guard the uneasy slumbers of the
+government.  On the landward side there stands a monument to the
+poor German lads who fell at Fangalii, just beyond which the
+passer-by may chance to observe a little house standing back-ward
+from the road.  It is such a house as a commoner might use in a
+bush village; none could dream that it gave shelter even to a
+family chief; yet this is the palace of Malietoa-Natoaitele-
+Tamasoalii Laupepa, king of Samoa.  As you sit in his company under
+this humble shelter, you shall see, between the posts, the new
+house of the president.  His Majesty himself beholds it daily, and
+the tenor of his thoughts may be divined.  The fine house of a
+Samoan chief is his appropriate attribute; yet, after seventeen
+months, the government (well housed themselves) have not yet found-
+-have not yet sought--a roof-tree for their sovereign.  And the
+lodging is typical.  I take up the president's financial statement
+of September 8, 1891.  I find the king's allowance to figure at
+seventy-five dollars a month; and I find that he is further (though
+somewhat obscurely) debited with the salaries of either two or
+three clerks.  Take the outside figure, and the sum expended on or
+for His Majesty amounts to ninety-five dollars in the month.
+Lieutenant Ulfsparre and Dr. Hagberg (the chief justice's Swedish
+friends) drew in the same period one hundred and forty and one
+hundred dollars respectively on account of salary alone.  And it
+should be observed that Dr. Hagberg was employed, or at least paid,
+from government funds, in the face of His Majesty's express and
+reiterated protest.  In another column of the statement, one
+hundred and seventy-five dollars and seventy-five cents are debited
+for the chief justice's travelling expenses.  I am of the opinion
+that if His Majesty desired (or dared) to take an outing, he would
+be asked to bear the charge from his allowance.  But although I
+think the chief justice had done more nobly to pay for himself, I
+am far from denying that his excursions were well meant; he should
+indeed be praised for having made them; and I leave the charge out
+of consideration in the following statement.
+
+
+ON THE ONE HAND
+
+Salary of Chief Justice Cedarkrantz $500
+Salary of President Baron Senfft von Pilsach (about) 415
+Salary of Lieutenant Ulfsparre, Chief of Police 140
+Salary of Dr. Hagberg, Private Secretary to the Chief Justice 100
+
+Total monthly salary to four whites, one of them paid against His
+Majesty's protest $1155
+
+ON THE OTHER HAND
+
+Total monthly payments to and for His Majesty the King, including
+allowance and hire of three clerks, one of these placed under the
+rubric of extraordinary expenses $95
+
+
+This looks strange enough and mean enough already.  But we have
+ground of comparison in the practice of Brandeis.
+
+
+Brandeis, white prime minister $200
+Tamasese (about) 160
+White Chief of Police 100
+
+
+Under Brandeis, in other words, the king received the second
+highest allowance on the sheet; and it was a good second, and the
+third was a bad third.  And it must be borne in mind that Tamasese
+himself was pointed and laughed at among natives.  Judge, then,
+what is muttered of Laupepa, housed in his shanty before the
+president's doors like Lazarus before the doors of Dives; receiving
+not so much of his own taxes as the private secretary of the law
+officer; and (in actual salary) little more than half as much as
+his own chief of police.  It is known besides that he has protested
+in vain against the charge for Dr. Hagberg; it is known that he has
+himself applied for an advance and been refused.  Money is
+certainly a grave subject on Mulinuu; but respect costs nothing,
+and thrifty officials might have judged it wise to make up in extra
+politeness for what they curtailed of pomp or comfort.  One
+instance may suffice.  Laupepa appeared last summer on a public
+occasion; the president was there and not even the president rose
+to greet the entrance of the sovereign.  Since about the same
+period, besides, the monarch must be described as in a state of
+sequestration.  A white man, an Irishman, the true type of all that
+is most gallant, humorous, and reckless in his country, chose to
+visit His Majesty and give him some excellent advice (to make up
+his difference with Mataafa) couched unhappily in vivid and
+figurative language.  The adviser now sleeps in the Pacific, but
+the evil that he chanced to do lives after him.  His Majesty was
+greatly (and I must say justly) offended by the freedom of the
+expressions used; he appealed to his white advisers; and these,
+whether from want of thought or by design, issued an ignominious
+proclamation.  Intending visitors to the palace must appear before
+their consuls and justify their business.  The majesty of buried
+Samoa was henceforth only to be viewed (like a private collection)
+under special permit; and was thus at once cut off from the company
+and opinions of the self respecting.  To retain any dignity in such
+an abject state would require a man of very different virtues from
+those claimed by the not unvirtuous Laupepa.  He is not designed to
+ride the whirlwind or direct the storm, rather to be the ornament
+of private life.  He is kind, gentle, patient as Job, conspicuously
+well-intentioned, of charming manners; and when he pleases, he has
+one accomplishment in which he now begins to be alone--I mean that
+he can pronounce correctly his own beautiful language.
+
+The government of Brandeis accomplished a good deal and was
+continually and heroically attempting more.  The government of our
+two whites has confined itself almost wholly to paying and
+receiving salaries.  They have built, indeed, a house for the
+president; they are believed (if that be a merit) to have bought
+the local newspaper with government funds; and their rule has been
+enlivened by a number of scandals, into which I feel with relief
+that it is unnecessary I should enter.  Even if the three Powers do
+not remove these gentlemen, their absurd and disastrous government
+must perish by itself of inanition.  Native taxes (except perhaps
+from Mataafa, true to his own private policy) have long been beyond
+hope.  And only the other day (May 6th, 1892), on the expressed
+ground that there was no guarantee as to how the funds would be
+expended, and that the president consistently refused to allow the
+verification of his cash balances, the municipal council has
+negatived the proposal to call up further taxes from the whites.
+All is well that ends even ill, so that it end; and we believe that
+with the last dollar we shall see the last of the last functionary.
+Now when it is so nearly over, we can afford to smile at this
+extraordinary passage, though we must still sigh over the occasion
+lost.
+
+
+Malie.  The way to Malie lies round the shores of Faleula bay and
+through a succession of pleasant groves and villages.  The road,
+one of the works of Brandeis, is now cut up by pig fences.  Eight
+times you must leap a barrier of cocoa posts; the take-off and the
+landing both in a patch of mire planted with big stones, and the
+stones sometimes reddened with the blood of horses that have gone
+before.  To make these obstacles more annoying, you have sometimes
+to wait while a black boar clambers sedately over the so-called pig
+fence.  Nothing can more thoroughly depict the worst side of the
+Samoan character than these useless barriers which deface their
+only road.  It was one of the first orders issued by the government
+of Mulinuu after the coming of the chief justice, to have the
+passage cleared.  It is the disgrace of Mataafa that the thing is
+not yet done.
+
+The village of Malie is the scene of prosperity and peace.  In a
+very good account of a visit there, published in the Australasian,
+the writer describes it to be fortified; she must have been
+deceived by the appearance of some pig walls on the shore.  There
+is no fortification, no parade of war.  I understand that from one
+to five hundred fighting men are always within reach; but I have
+never seen more than five together under arms, and these were the
+king's guard of honour.  A Sabbath quiet broods over the well-
+weeded green, the picketed horses, the troops of pigs, the round or
+oval native dwellings.  Of these there are a surprising number,
+very fine of their sort:  yet more are in the building; and in the
+midst a tall house of assembly, by far the greatest Samoan
+structure now in these islands, stands about half finished and
+already makes a figure in the landscape.  No bustle is to be
+observed, but the work accomplished testifies to a still activity.
+
+The centre-piece of all is the high chief himself, Malietoa-
+Tuiatua-Tuiaana Mataafa, king--or not king--or king-claimant--of
+Samoa.  All goes to him, all comes from him.  Native deputations
+bring him gifts and are feasted in return.  White travellers, to
+their indescribable irritation, are (on his approach) waved from
+his path by his armed guards.  He summons his dancers by the note
+of a bugle.  He sits nightly at home before a semicircle of
+talking-men from many quarters of the islands, delivering and
+hearing those ornate and elegant orations in which the Samoan heart
+delights.  About himself and all his surroundings there breathes a
+striking sense of order, tranquillity, and native plenty.  He is of
+a tall and powerful person, sixty years of age, white-haired and
+with a white moustache; his eyes bright and quiet; his jaw
+perceptibly underhung, which gives him something of the expression
+of a benevolent mastiff; his manners dignified and a thought
+insinuating, with an air of a Catholic prelate.  He was never
+married, and a natural daughter attends upon his guests.  Long
+since he made a vow of chastity,--"to live as our Lord lived on
+this earth" and Polynesians report with bated breath that he has
+kept it.  On all such points, true to his Catholic training, he is
+inclined to be even rigid.  Lauati, the pivot of Savaii, has
+recently repudiated his wife and taken a fairer; and when I was
+last in Malie, Mataafa (with a strange superiority to his own
+interests) had but just despatched a reprimand.  In his immediate
+circle, in spite of the smoothness of his ways, he is said to be
+more respected than beloved; and his influence is the child rather
+of authority than popularity.  No Samoan grandee now living need
+have attempted that which he has accomplished during the last
+twelve months with unimpaired prestige, not only to withhold his
+followers from war, but to send them to be judged in the camp of
+their enemies on Mulinuu.  And it is a matter of debate whether
+such a triumph of authority were ever possible before.  Speaking
+for myself, I have visited and dwelt in almost every seat of the
+Polynesian race, and have met but one man who gave me a stronger
+impression of character and parts.
+
+About the situation, Mataafa expresses himself with unshaken peace.
+To the chief justice he refers with some bitterness; to Laupepa,
+with a smile, as "my poor brother."  For himself, he stands upon
+the treaty, and expects sooner or later an election in which he
+shall be raised to the chief power.  In the meanwhile, or for an
+alternative, he would willingly embrace a compromise with Laupepa;
+to which he would probably add one condition, that the joint
+government should remain seated at Malie, a sensible but not
+inconvenient distance from white intrigues and white officials.
+One circumstance in my last interview particularly pleased me.  The
+king's chief scribe, Esela, is an old employe under Tamasese, and
+the talk ran some while upon the character of Brandeis.  Loyalty in
+this world is after all not thrown away; Brandeis was guilty, in
+Samoan eyes, of many irritating errors, but he stood true to
+Tamasese; in the course of time a sense of this virtue and of his
+general uprightness has obliterated the memory of his mistakes; and
+it would have done his heart good if he could have heard his old
+scribe and his old adversary join in praising him.  "Yes,"
+concluded Mataafa, "I wish we had Planteisa back again."  A quelque
+chose malheur est bon.  So strong is the impression produced by the
+defects of Cedarcrantz and Baron Senfft, that I believe Mataafa far
+from singular in this opinion, and that the return of the upright
+Brandeis might be even welcome to many.
+
+I must add a last touch to the picture of Malie and the pretender's
+life.  About four in the morning, the visitor in his house will be
+awakened by the note of a pipe, blown without, very softly and to a
+soothing melody.  This is Mataafa's private luxury to lead on
+pleasant dreams.  We have a bird here in Samoa that about the same
+hour of darkness sings in the bush.  The father of Mataafa, while
+he lived, was a great friend and protector to all living creatures,
+and passed under the by-name of the King of Birds.  It may be it
+was among the woodland clients of the sire that the son acquired
+his fancy for this morning music.
+
+
+I have now sought to render without extenuation the impressions
+received:  of dignity, plenty, and peace at Malie, of bankruptcy
+and distraction at Mulinuu.  And I wish I might here bring to an
+end ungrateful labours.  But I am sensible that there remain two
+points on which it would be improper to be silent.  I should be
+blamed if I did not indicate a practical conclusion; and I should
+blame myself if I did not do a little justice to that tried company
+of the Land Commissioners.
+
+The Land Commission has been in many senses unfortunate.  The
+original German member, a gentleman of the name of Eggert, fell
+early into precarious health; his work was from the first
+interrupted, he was at last (to the regret of all that knew him)
+invalided home; and his successor had but just arrived.  In like
+manner, the first American commissioner, Henry C. Ide, a man of
+character and intelligence, was recalled (I believe by private
+affairs) when he was but just settling into the spirit of the work;
+and though his place was promptly filled by ex-Governor Ormsbee, a
+worthy successor, distinguished by strong and vivacious common
+sense, the break was again sensible.  The English commissioner, my
+friend Bazett Michael Haggard, is thus the only one who has
+continued at his post since the beginning.  And yet, in spite of
+these unusual changes, the Commission has a record perhaps
+unrivalled among international commissions.  It has been unanimous
+practically from the first until the last; and out of some four
+hundred cases disposed of, there is but one on which the members
+were divided.  It was the more unfortunate they should have early
+fallen in a difficulty with the chief justice.  The original ground
+of this is supposed to be a difference of opinion as to the import
+of the Berlin Act, on which, as a layman, it would be unbecoming if
+I were to offer an opinion.  But it must always seem as if the
+chief justice had suffered himself to be irritated beyond the
+bounds of discretion.  It must always seem as if his original
+attempt to deprive the commissioners of the services of a secretary
+and the use of a safe were even senseless; and his step in printing
+and posting a proclamation denying their jurisdiction were equally
+impolitic and undignified.  The dispute had a secondary result
+worse than itself.  The gentleman appointed to be Natives' Advocate
+shared the chief justice's opinion, was his close intimate, advised
+with him almost daily, and drifted at last into an attitude of
+opposition to his colleagues.  He suffered himself besides (being a
+layman in law) to embrace the interest of his clients with
+something of the warmth of a partisan.  Disagreeable scenes
+occurred in court; the advocate was more than once reproved, he was
+warned that his consultations with the judge of appeal tended to
+damage his own character and to lower the credit of the appellate
+court.  Having lost some cases on which he set importance, it
+should seem that he spoke unwisely among natives.  A sudden cry of
+colour prejudice went up; and Samoans were heard to assure each
+other that it was useless to appear before the Land Commission,
+which was sworn to support the whites.
+
+This deplorable state of affairs was brought to an end by the
+departure from Samoa of the Natives' Advocate.  He was succeeded
+pro tempore by a young New Zealander, E. W. Gurr, not much more
+versed in law than himself, and very much less so in Samoan.
+Whether by more skill or better fortune, Gurr has been able in the
+course of a few weeks to recover for the natives several important
+tracts of land; and the prejudice against the Commission seems to
+be abating as fast as it arose.  I should not omit to say that, in
+the eagerness of the original advocate, there was much that was
+amiable; nor must I fail to point out how much there was of
+blindness.  Fired by the ardour of pursuit, he seems to have
+regarded his immediate clients as the only natives extant and the
+epitome and emblem of the Samoan race.  Thus, in the case that was
+the most exclaimed against as "an injustice to natives," his
+client, Puaauli, was certainly nonsuited.  But in that intricate
+affair who lost the money?  The German firm.  And who got the land?
+Other natives.  To twist such a decision into evidence, either of a
+prejudice against Samoans or a partiality to whites, is to keep one
+eye shut and have the other bandaged.
+
+And lastly, one word as to the future.  Laupepa and Mataafa stand
+over against each other, rivals with no third competitor.  They may
+be said to hold the great name of Malietoa in commission; each has
+borne the style, each exercised the authority, of a Samoan king;
+one is secure of the small but compact and fervent following of the
+Catholics, the other has the sympathies of a large part of the
+Protestant majority, and upon any sign of Catholic aggression would
+have more.  With men so nearly balanced, it may be asked whether a
+prolonged successful exercise of power be possible for either.  In
+the case of the feeble Laupepa, it is certainly not; we have the
+proof before us.  Nor do I think we should judge, from what we see
+to-day, that it would be possible, or would continue to be
+possible, even for the kingly Mataafa.  It is always the easier
+game to be in opposition.  The tale of David and Saul would
+infallibly be re-enacted; once more we shall have two kings in the
+land,--the latent and the patent; and the house of the first will
+become once more the resort of "every one that is in distress, and
+every one that is in debt, and every one that is discontented."
+Against such odds it is my fear that Mataafa might contend in vain;
+it is beyond the bounds of my imagination that Laupepa should
+contend at all.  Foreign ships and bayonets is the cure proposed in
+Mulinuu.  And certainly, if people at home desire that money should
+be thrown away and blood shed in Samoa, an effect of a kind, and
+for the time, may be produced.  Its nature and prospective
+durability I will ask readers of this volume to forecast for
+themselves.  There is one way to peace and unity:  that Laupepa and
+Mataafa should be again conjoined on the best terms procurable.
+There may be other ways, although I cannot see them; but not even
+malevolence, not even stupidity, can deny that this is one.  It
+seems, indeed, so obvious, and sure, and easy, that men look about
+with amazement and suspicion, seeking some hidden motive why it
+should not be adopted.
+
+To Laupepa's opposition, as shown in the case of the Lauati scheme,
+no dweller in Samoa will give weight, for they know him to be as
+putty in the hands of his advisers.  It may be right, it may be
+wrong, but we are many of us driven to the conclusion that the
+stumbling-block is Fangalii, and that the memorial of that affair
+shadows appropriately the house of a king who reigns in right of
+it.  If this be all, it should not trouble us long.  Germany has
+shown she can be generous; it now remains for her only to forget a
+natural but certainly ill-grounded prejudice, and allow to him, who
+was sole king before the plenipotentiaries assembled, and who would
+be sole king to-morrow if the Berlin Act could be rescinded, a
+fitting share of rule.  The future of Samoa should lie thus in the
+hands of a single man, on whom the eyes of Europe are already
+fixed.  Great concerns press on his attention; the Samoan group, in
+his view, is but as a grain of dust; and the country where he
+reigns has bled on too many august scenes of victory to remember
+for ever a blundering skirmish in the plantation of Vailele.  It is
+to him--to the sovereign of the wise Stuebel and the loyal
+Brandeis,--that I make my appeal.
+
+May 25, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1} Brother and successor of Theodor.
+
+
+
+
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