masese 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