is maimed design.
The only change he made was to haul down the flag of truce. He had now
no wish to meet with Mataafa. Words were out of season, shells must
speak.

At this moment an incident befell him which must have been trying to his
self-command. The new American ship _Nipsic_ entered Laulii Bay; her
commander, Mullan, boarded the _Adler_ to protest, succeeded in wresting
from Knappe a period of delay in order that the women might be spared,
and sent a lieutenant to Mataafa with a warning. The camp was already
excited by the news and the trophies of Fangalii. Already Tamasese and
Lotoanuu seemed secondary objectives to the Germans and Apia. Mullan's
message put an end to hesitation. Laulii was evacuated. The troops
streamed westward by the mountain side, and took up the same day a
strong position about Tanungamanono and Mangiangi, some two miles behind
Apia, which they threatened with the one hand, while with the other they
continued to draw their supplies from the devoted plantations of the
German firm. Laulii, when it was shelled, was empty. The British flags
were, of course, fired upon; and I hear that one of them was struck
down, but I think every one must be privately of the mind that it was
fired upon and fell, in a place where it had little business to be
shown.

Such was the military epilogue to the ill-judged adventure of Fangalii;
it was difficult for failure to be more complete. But the other
consequences were of a darker colour and brought the whites immediately
face to face in a spirit of ill-favoured animosity. Knappe was mourning
the defeat and death of his country-folk, he was standing aghast over
the ruin of his own career, when Mullan boarded him. The successor of
Leary served himself, in that bitter moment, heir to Leary's part. And
in Mullan, Knappe saw more even than the successor of Leary,--he saw in
him the representative of Klein. Klein had hailed the praam from the
rifle-pits; he had there uttered ill-chosen words, unhappily prophetic;
it is even likely that he was present at the time of the first fire. To
accuse him of the design and conduct of the whole attack was but a step
forward; his own vapouring served to corroborate the accusation; and it
was not long before the German consulate was in possession of sworn
native testimony in support. The worth of native testimony is small, the
worth of white testimony not overwhelming; and I am in the painful
position of not being able to subscri