ed his town of Leulumoenga, his own splendid
house flaming with the rest; and there are few things of which a native
thinks more, or has more reason to think well, than of a fine Samoan
house. Tamasese women and children were marched up the same day from
Atua, and handed over with their sleeping-mats to Mulinuu: a most
unwelcome addition to a party already suffering from want. By the 20th,
they were being watered from the _Adler_. On the 24th the Manono fleet
of sixteen large boats, fortified and rendered unmanageable with tons of
firewood, passed to windward to intercept supplies from Atua. By the
27th the hungry garrison flocked in great numbers to draw rations at the
German firm. On the 28th the same business was repeated with a different
issue. Mataafas crowded to look on; words were exchanged, blows
followed; sticks, stones, and bottles were caught up; the detested
Brandeis, at great risk, threw himself between the lines and
expostulated with the Mataafas--his only personal appearance in the
wars, if this could be called war. The same afternoon, the Tamasese
boats got in with provisions, having passed to seaward of the lumbering
Manono fleet; and from that day on, whether from a high degree of
enterprise on the one side or a great lack of capacity on the other,
supplies were maintained from the sea with regularity. Thus the
spectacle of battle, or at least of riot, at the doors of the German
firm was not repeated. But the memory must have hung heavy on the
hearts, not of the Germans only, but of all Apia. The Samoans are a
gentle race, gentler than any in Europe; we are often enough reminded of
the circumstance, not always by their friends. But a mob is a mob, and
a drunken mob is a drunken mob, and a drunken mob with weapons in its
hands is a drunken mob with weapons in its hands, all the world over:
elementary propositions, which some of us upon these islands might do
worse than get by rote, but which must have been evident enough to
Becker. And I am amazed by the man's constancy, that, even while blows
were going at the door of that German firm which he was in Samoa to
protect, he should have stuck to his demands. Ten days before, Blacklock
had offered to recognise the old territory, including Mulinuu, and
Becker had refused, and still in the midst of these "alarums and
excursions," he continued to refuse it.

On October 2nd, anchored in Apia bay H.B.M.S. _Calliope_, Captain Kane,
carrying the flag of Rear-Admir