many than that!" cried Tuiatafu,
speaking words of wisdom, and departed in anger. But the two others
proceeded on their fatal errand; signed the convention, writing
themselves king and vice-king, as they now believed themselves to be no
longer; and with childish perfidy took part in a scene of
"reconciliation" at the German consulate.

Malietoa supposed himself betrayed by Tamasese. Consul Churchward states
with precision that the document was sold by a scribe for thirty-six
dollars. Twelve days later at least, November 22nd, the text of the
address to Great Britain came into the hands of Dr. Stuebel. The Germans
may have been wrong before; they were now in the right to be angry. They
had been publicly, solemnly, and elaborately fooled; the treaty and the
reconciliation were both fraudulent, with the broad, farcical
fraudulency of children and barbarians. This history is much from the
outside; it is the digested report of eye-witnesses; it can be rarely
corrected from state papers; and as to what consuls felt and thought, or
what instructions they acted under, I must still be silent or proceed by
guess. It is my guess that Stuebel now decided Malietoa Laupepa to be a
man impossible to trust and unworthy to be dealt with. And it is certain
that the business of his deposition was put in hand at once. The
position of Weber, with his knowledge of things native, his prestige,
and his enterprising intellect, must have always made him influential
with the consul: at this juncture he was indispensable. Here was the
deed to be done; here the man of action. "Mr. Weber rested not," says
Laupepa. It was "like the old days of his own consulate," writes
Churchward. His messengers filled the isle; his house was thronged with
chiefs and orators; he sat close over his loom, delightedly weaving the
future. There was one thing requisite to the intrigue,--a native
pretender; and the very man, you would have said, stood waiting:
Mataafa, titular of Atua, descended from both the royal lines, late
joint king with Tamasese, fobbed off with nothing in the time of the
Lackawanna treaty, probably mortified by the circumstance, a chief with
a strong following, and in character and capacity high above the native
average. Yet when Weber's spiriting was done, and the curtain rose on
the set scene of the coronation, Mataafa was absent, and Tamasese stood
in his place. Malietoa was to be deposed for a piece of solemn and
offensive trickery, and the man