the front, and lay under them,
men and women together, through a long night of furious squalls and
furious and useless volleys. Meanwhile the older folk trailed back into
Apia in the rain; they talked as they went of who had fallen and what
heads had been taken upon either side--they seemed to know by name the
losses upon both; and drenched with wet and broken with excitement and
fatigue, they crawled into the verandahs of the town to eat and sleep.
The morrow broke grey and drizzly, but as so often happens in the
islands, cleared up into a glorious day. During the night, the majority
of the defenders had taken advantage of the rain and darkness and stolen
from their forts unobserved. The rallying sign of the Tamaseses had been
a white handkerchief. With the dawn, the de Coetlogons from the English
consulate beheld the ground strewn with these badges discarded; and
close by the house, a belated turncoat was still changing white for red.
Matautu was lost; Tamasese was confined to Mulinuu; and by nine o'clock
two Mataafa villages paraded the streets of Apia, taking possession. The
cost of this respectable success in ammunition must have been enormous;
in life it was but small. Some compute forty killed on either side,
others forty on both, three or four being women and one a white man,
master of a schooner from Fiji. Nor was the number even of the wounded
at all proportionate to the surprising din and fury of the affair while
it lasted.

CHAPTER VI

LAST EXPLOITS OF BECKER

_September--November_ 1888

Brandeis had held all day by Mulinuu, expecting the reported real
attack. He woke on the 13th to find himself cut off on that unwatered
promontory, and the Mataafa villagers parading Apia. The same day Fritze
received a letter from Mataafa summoning him to withdraw his party from
the isthmus; and Fritze, as if in answer, drew in his ship into the
small harbour close to Mulinuu, and trained his port battery to assist
in the defence. From a step so decisive, it might be thought the German
plans were unaffected by the disastrous issue of the battle. I conceive
nothing would be further from the truth. Here was Tamasese penned on
Mulinuu with his troops; Apia, from which alone these could be
subsisted, in the hands of the enemy; a battle imminent, in which the
German vessel must apparently take part with men and battery, and the
buildings of the German firm were apparently destined to be the first
target of fire. Un