ur 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 mea