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 tragi-comic 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, bread-fruit,
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 new-comers? 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
horseback 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.