oats held up their hands in horror, and
shut their eyes, while some of them ran to the boat and brought bonnets,
and boots, and cotton gowns, and pocket-handkerchiefs, and gave them to
the women. And the women, putting them on anyhow, walked about as proud
as peacocks; while the men in black coats explained that, unless they
wore these things, and did and refrained from many matters, they would
all be punished dreadfully after they were dead. Now, while the women
were crying at such glad tidings, came another awful crash and shock,
which indeed, like the previous noise that had frightened the dancers,
was produced by a ship's gun. And another cloud of black smoke floated
round the point, and another set of sailors got out and cut the branches
off a tree, and ran up a flag which was black and red and yellow. Then
those sailors (who had men with red beards and spectacles among them)
cried _Hock!_ and sang the _Wacht am Rhein_. Thereupon the sailors of
the first steamer, with a horrid yell, rushed on the tree under the new
flag, and were cutting it down, when some of the singers of the _Wacht
am Rhein_ pointed a curious little machine that way and began to turn
a handle. Thereon the most dreadful cracking sounds arose, cracking and
crashing; fire flew, and some of the first set of sailors fell down and
writhed on the sand, while the rest fled to their boat. Several of the
native women also fell down bleeding and dying in their new cotton gowns
and their bonnets, for they had been dancing about while the sailors
were hacking at the tree with the black and red and yellow flag.

Seeing all this, Queen Mab also saw that Samoa was no longer a place for
her. She did not understand what was happening, nor know that a peaceful
English annexation had been disturbed by a violent German annexation,
for which the English afterwards apologised. Queen Mab also conceived
a prejudice against missionaries, which, perhaps, was justified by her
experience. For, in the matter of missionaries, she was unlucky. The
specimens she had observed were of the wrong kind. She might have met
missionaries as learned as Mr. Codrington, as manly as Livingstone, as
brave and pure as Bishop Pattison> who was a martyr indeed, and gave
his life for the heathen people. Yes, Queen Mab was unlucky in her
missionaries.

CHAPTER II. -- DISILLUSIONS.

'The time is come,' the walrus said,
'To talk of many things.'
'Alice in Wonderland.'

It