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 Pacifi