?" asked Jack.

"He's a rebel," said Leicester, "and they've posted proclamations
against him on every cocoanut tree around the beach."

"And the natives, they won't let Tanumafili be king neither?" said Jack.

"That's him they're chasing into the sea this minute," explained
Leicester.

Jack looked perplexed. "I don't see why the Kanakas shouldn't have the
king they fancy," he remarked.

"To hear you talk, one would think you was a bloody Dutchman yourself,"
said Leicester.

"But the majority--" said Jack, "them two thousand----"

"The Chief Justice ruled them out on a technicality," said Leicester,
"and if the Supreme Court ain't right, who is? Do you think he's going
to give over this country to a papist? No, the only king here is
Tanumafili, and the men-of-war will reinstate him at the muzzle of their
guns. Then we'll see who's who in Samoar!"

Jack made his way across the street to the store where he usually sold
his copra. Bullets were pattering on the roof, and the trader himself, a
portly German in gold spectacles, was palpitating in a bomb-proof.

"I hope Mrs. Meyerfeld is well," said Jack, who in Samoa had grown
punctilious.

"Oh, mein Gott!" exclaimed Meyerfeld.

"And the children?--" inquired Jack, "Miss Hilda and Miss Theresa?"

"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.

"I have brought you forty bags of copra," said Jack.

"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.

"Don't you want it, then?" inquired Jack.

"Hear the pullets," quavered Meyerfeld.

"But forty bags," said Jack.

"I've no man, no noding," groaned the trader.

"Gome again negst week. Gome again after de war."

"I'll put it in the shed myself," said Jack.

He went out into the empty street and looked about him. The firing was
going on as hotly as ever, but except for a single limp figure, face
down in the dust, he failed to see the least sign of the contending
parties. From the direction of the Mulivai bridge he heard bursts of
cheering, with intermittent lulls and explosions as the battle rolled to
and fro. War on so small a scale is startlingly like murder, and Jack
shuddered as he went up to the corpse and turned it over. He returned to
his boat, and in a fever of activity unloaded his forty bags and
trundled them in batches into Meyerfeld's copra shed across the road. It
took half a dozen trips of the little flat-car to accomplish this task
single-handed, and then there was the further delay in weighing each bag
and checking off the