be numbered for Mataafa, the
whites promising that he who had most voices should be king? And when
all Samoa cried out 'Mataafa!' at the numbering place (all except the
little handful of the Tuamasanga), lo! the word was given that
Tanumafili was appointed after all, and that the white manner of choice
was to be disregarded!"

Jack sighed as he took the flag and went out with it. He realized that
his old life was at an end, and that a new one, full of uncertainty and
danger, was to date from the time he hoisted this bit of bunting. He
trimmed a straight piece of _fuafua_ for a staff, and as he did so he
cursed the missionaries for meddlers and the treaty officials for crazy
fools. When the flag was at last in place, Fetuao and he drew away to
get a better view of it from the beach. Standing there, in silence they
watched the vivid colors flaunt and flutter against the wooded hills
behind, while Jack, with a seaman's instinctive reverence for the flag,
bared his head, and Fetuao clapped her hands with delight.

"Is it not beautiful!--" she cried, "as starry as the nights before we
were married, Jack, when we used to walk together, here and there, like
uncaring children."

Her husband did not answer; and as she turned and looked up into his
face she saw that his eyes were wet with tears.

IV

The two months that followed were the most terrible in the history of
Samoa. A handful of exasperated whites--treaty officials, missionaries,
and consuls--were determined to foist Tanumafili on the unwilling
natives of the group, and backed by three men-of-war, they declared
Mataafa a rebel and plunged the country into a disastrous and sanguinary
war. England and America, in the person of their respective naval
commanders, vied with one another in their self-appointed task; and
while the Germans stood aloof, protesting and aghast, our ships ravaged
the Samoan coast, burning, bombarding, and destroying with
indiscriminate fury. In this savage conflict, so unjust in its
inception, so frightful in its effects on an unoffending people, the
Samoans showed an extraordinary spirit in defending what all men hold
most dear. Driven from the shore by our guns, they massed their warriors
behind Apia, and on ground of their own choosing gave obstinate battle
to the invaders.

It is not the writer's purpose to follow the varying stages of this
ignoble quarrel, in which blood flowed like water in our vain attempts
to force the unwilling