core of men showed at the turn of the road doubling back for
dear life, the pickets who had been dislodged and driven in by the
advancing whites. They had hardly leaped the wall, panting, and
crouching with the main body behind it, when the machine guns wheeled
into the open and began to fire. In the first murderous crash it seemed
as though nothing human could withstand them, and the blue-jackets,
dotted here and there in the grass, raised an exultant yell, and some
even sprang up in anticipation of the call to charge. But the men that
worked the guns had to stand exposed and helpless before a fire more
galling than their own. They began to drop, and those who were unhurt
disconcertedly turned and ran. A couple of officers sprang out of the
grass to take charge of the abandoned guns, managing in their flurry to
jam them both. For a minute they tinkered and hammered at the choked
mechanism, exposing themselves, as they did so, to the concentrated
volleys of a hundred Samoan rifles. Of a sudden, one clapped his hand to
his breast and sank on his knees; his comrade caught him round the body
and dragged him back, leaving the guns, now silent and useless, to shine
innocuously in the sun.

All this while the woods on either hand reverberated with the volleys
and the cheers of an extended battle, and a haze of powder smoke
drifted above the tree tops. No one knew how the day was going, and the
most conflicting rumors ran like wildfire through the Mataafa lines
together with the names of such an one killed and such an one wounded.
Dodging the bullets, Fetuao flitted about with water for the parched
fighters, passing the news and rolling cigarettes for such of the
wounded as were not too far gone to care for them. Occasionally she
ferreted out a trembling wretch in the rear and drove him to the front
with taunts; or, if he were too panic-stricken to get up, she had no
compunction in thrashing him with a stick until he did so. The little
savage was beside herself as she danced and sang like a wanton child in
the rain--a rain of Martini and Lee-Remington balls stinging the air all
about her.

After the machine guns were put out of action the fight became a rifle
duel, which went on briskly for upward of an hour. Again and again the
whites rose in the grass, blundered forward and took cover, each rush
stemmed by the Oas, who, darting up from their wall, gave volley for
volley at point-blank range. Standing in a slop of blood, the