rted piece of coast, they seemed indifferent to the events
which had thus left them solitary, and, as the daughter said, did not
know where Mataafa was, nor where Tamasese.

It is the official Samoan pretension that the Germans fired first at
Fangalii. In view of all German and some native testimony, the text of
Fritze's orders, and the probabilities of the case, no honest mind will
believe it for a moment. Certainly the Samoans fired first. As certainly
they were betrayed into the engagement in the agitation of the moment,
and it was not till afterwards that they understood what they had done.
Then, indeed, all Samoa drew a breath of wonder and delight. The
invincible had fallen; the men of the vaunted war-ships had been met in
the field by the braves of Mataafa: a superstition was no more. Conceive
this people steadily as schoolboys; and conceive the elation in any
school if the head boy should suddenly arise and drive the rector from
the schoolhouse. I have received one instance of the feeling instantly
aroused. There lay at the time in the consular hospital an old chief who
was a pet of the colonel's. News reached him of the glorious event; he
was sick, he thought himself sinking, sent for the colonel, and gave him
his gun. "Don't let the Germans get it," said the old gentleman, and
having received a promise, was at peace.

CHAPTER IX

"FUROR CONSULARIS"

_December_ 1888 _to March_ 1889

Knappe, in the _Adler,_ with a flag of truce at the fore, was entering
Laulii Bay when the _Eber_ brought him the news of the night's reverse.
His heart was doubtless wrung for his young countrymen who had been
butchered and mutilated in the dark woods, or now lay suffering, and
some of them dying, on the ship. And he must have been startled as he
recognised his own position. He had gone too far; he had stumbled into
war, and, what was worse, into defeat; he had thrown away German lives
for less than nothing, and now saw himself condemned either to accept
defeat, or to kick and pummel his failure into something like success;
either to accept defeat, or take frenzy for a counsellor. Yesterday, in
cold blood, he had judged it necessary to have the woods to the westward
guarded lest the evacuation of Laulii should prove only the peril of
Apia. To-day, in the irritation and alarm of failure, he forgot or
despised his previous reasoning, and, though his detachment was beat
back to the ships, proceeded with the remainder of h