Things were now at a deadlock; and Becker astonished every one by
agreeing to a meeting on the 14th.  It seems he knew what to expect.
Writing on the 13th at least, he prophesies that the meeting will be held
in vain, that the municipality must lapse, and the government of Tamasese
step in.  On the 14th, Sewall left his consulate in time, and walked some
part of the way to the place of meeting in company with Wilson, the
English pro-consul.  But he had forgotten a paper, and in an evil hour
returned for it alone.  Wilson arrived without him, and Becker broke up
the meeting for want of a quorum.  There was some unedifying disputation
as to whether he had waited ten or twenty minutes, whether he had been
officially or unofficially informed by Wilson that Sewall was on the way,
whether the statement had been made to himself or to Weber {1} in answer
to a question, and whether he had heard Wilson's answer or only Weber's
question: all otiose; if he heard the question, he was bound to have
waited for the answer; if he heard it not, he should have put it himself;
and it was the manifest truth that he rejoiced in his occasion.  "Sir,"
he wrote to Sewall, "I have the honour to inform you that, to my regret,
I am obliged to consider the municipal government to be provisionally in
abeyance since you have withdrawn your consent to the continuation of Mr.
Martin in his position as magistrate, and since you have refused to take
part in the meeting of the municipal board agreed to for the purpose of
electing a magistrate.  The government of the town and district of the
municipality rests, as long as the municipality is in abeyance, with the
Samoan government.  The Samoan government has taken over the
administration, and has applied to the commander of the imperial German
squadron for assistance in the preservation of good order."  This letter
was not delivered until 4 P.M.  By three, sailors had been landed.
Already German colours flew over Tamasese's headquarters at Mulinuu, and
German guards had occupied the hospital, the German consulate, and the
municipal gaol and court-house, where they stood to arms under the flag
of Tamasese.  The same day Sewall wrote to protest.  Receiving no reply,
he issued on the morrow a proclamation bidding all Americans look to
himself alone.  On the 26th, he wrote again to Becker, and on the 27th
received this genial reply: "Sir, your high favour of the 26th of this
month, I give myself the honour of acknowledging.  At the same time I
acknowledge the receipt of your high favour of the 14th October in reply
to my communication of the same date, which contained the information of
the suspension of the arrangements for the municipal government."  There
the correspondence ceased.  And on the 18th January came the last step of
this irritating intrigue when Tamasese appointed a judge--and the judge
proved to be Martin.

Thus was the adventure of the Castle Municipal achieved by Sir Becker the
chivalrous.  The taxes of Apia, the gaol, the police, all passed into the
hands of Tamasese-Brandeis; a German was secured upon the bench; and the
German flag might wave over her puppet unquestioned.  But there is a law
of human nature which diplomatists should be taught at school, and it
seems they are not; that men can tolerate bare injustice, but not the
combination of injustice and subterfuge.  Hence the chequered career of
the thimble-rigger.  Had the municipality been seized by open force,
there might have been complaint, it would not have aroused the same
lasting grudge.

This grudge was an ill gift to bring to Brandeis, who had trouble enough
in front of him without.  He was an alien, he was supported by the guns
of alien war-ships, and he had come to do an alien's work, highly needful
for Samoa, but essentially unpopular with all Samoans.  The law to be
enforced, causes of dispute between white and brown to be eliminated,
taxes to be raised, a central power created, the country opened up, the
native race taught industry: all these were detestable to the natives,
and to all of these he must set his hand.  The more I learn of his brief
term of rule, the more I learn to admire him, and to wish we had his
like.

In the face of bitter native opposition, he got some roads accomplished.
He set up beacons.  The taxes he enforced with necessary vigour.  By the
6th of January, Aua and Fangatonga, districts in Tutuila, having made a
difficulty, Brandeis is down at the island in a schooner, with the
_Adler_ at his heels, seizes the chief Maunga, fines the recalcitrant
districts in three hundred dollars for expenses, and orders all to be in
by April 20th, which if it is not, "not one thing will be done," he
proclaimed, "but war declared against you, and the principal chiefs taken
to a distant island."  He forbade mortgages of copra, a frequent source
of trickery and quarrel; and to clear off those already contracted,
passed a severe but salutary law.  Each individual or family was first to
pay off its own obligation; that settled, the free man was to pay for the
indebted village, the free village for the indebted province, and one
island for another.  Samoa, he declared, should be free of debt within a
year.  Had he given it three years, and gone more gently, I believe it
might have been accomplished.  To make it the more possible, he sought to
interdict the natives from buying cotton stuffs and to oblige them to
dress (at least for the time) in their own tapa.  He laid the beginnings
of a royal territorial army.  The first draft was in his hands drilling.
But it was not so much on drill that he depended; it was his hope to
kindle in these men an _esprit de corps_, which should weaken the old
local jealousies and bonds, and found a central or national party in the
islands.  Looking far before, and with a wisdom beyond that of many
merchants, he had condemned the single dependence placed on copra for the
national livelihood.  His recruits, even as they drilled, were taught to
plant cacao.  Each, his term of active service finished, should return to
his own land and plant and cultivate a stipulated area.  Thus, as the
young men continued to pass through the army, habits of discipline and
industry, a central sentiment, the principles of the new culture, and
actual gardens of cacao, should be concurrently spread over the face of
the islands.

Tamasese received, including his household expenses, 1960 dollars a year;
Brandeis, 2400.  All such disproportions are regrettable, but this is not
extreme: we have seen horses of a different colour since then.  And the
Tamaseseites, with true Samoan ostentation, offered to increase the
salary of their white premier: an offer he had the wisdom and good
feeling to refuse.  A European chief of police received twelve hundred.
There were eight head judges, one to each province, and appeal lay from
the district judge to the provincial, thence to Mulinuu.  From all
salaries (I gather) a small monthly guarantee was withheld.  The army was
to cost from three to four thousand, Apia (many whites refusing to pay
taxes since the suppression of the municipality) might cost three
thousand more: Sir Becker's high feat of arms coming expensive (it will
be noticed) even in money.  The whole outlay was estimated at
twenty-seven thousand; and the revenue forty thousand: a sum Samoa is
well able to pay.

Such were the arrangements and some of the ideas of this strong, ardent,
and sanguine man.  Of criticisms upon his conduct, beyond the general
consent that he was rather harsh and in too great a hurry, few are
articulate.  The native paper of complaints was particularly childish.
Out of twenty-three counts, the first two refer to the private character
of Brandeis and Tamasese.  Three complain that Samoan officials were kept
in the dark as to the finances; one, of the tapa law; one, of the direct
appointment of chiefs by Tamasese-Brandeis, the sort of mistake into
which Europeans in the South Seas fall so readily; one, of the enforced
labour of chiefs; one, of the taxes; and one, of the roads.  This I may
give in full from the very lame translation in the American white book.
"The roads that were made were called the Government Roads; they were six
fathoms wide.  Their making caused much damage to Samoa's lands and what
was planted on it.  The Samoans cried on account of their lands, which
were taken high-handedly and abused.  They again cried on account of the
loss of what they had planted, which was now thrown away in a high-handed
way, without any regard being shown or question asked of the owner of the
land, or any compensation offered for the damage done.  This was
different with foreigners' land; in their case permission was first asked
to make the roads; the foreigners were paid for any destruction made."
The sting of this count was, I fancy, in the last clause.  No less than
six articles complain of the administration of the law; and I believe
that was never satisfactory.  Brandeis told me himself he was never yet
satisfied with any native judge.  And men say (and it seems to fit in
well with his hasty and eager character) that he would legislate by word
of mouth; sometimes forget what he had said; and, on the same question
arising in another province, decide it perhaps otherwise.  I gather, on
the whole, our artillery captain was not great in law.  Two articles
refer to a matter I must deal with more at length, and rather from the
point of view of the white residents.

The common charge against Brandeis was that of favouring the German firm.
Coming as he did, this was inevitable.  Weber had bought Steinberger with
hard cash; that was matter of history.  The present government he did not
even require to buy, having founded it by his intrigues, and introduced
the premier to Samoa through the doors of his own office.  And the effect
of the initial blunder was kept alive by the chatter of the clerks in bar-
rooms, boasting themselves of the new government and prophesying
annihilation to all rivals.  The time of raising a tax is the harvest of
the merchants; it is the time when copra will be made, and must be sold;
and the intention of the German firm, first in the time of Steinberger,
and again in April and May, 1888, with Brandeis, was to seize and handle
the whole operation.  Their chief rivals were the Messrs. MacArthur; and
it seems beyond question that provincial governors more than once issued
orders forbidding Samoans to take money from "the New Zealand firm."
These, when they were brought to his notice, Brandeis disowned, and he is
entitled to be heard.  No man can live long in Samoa and not have his
honesty impugned.  But the accusations against Brandeis's veracity are
both few and obscure.  I believe he was as straight as his sword.  The
governors doubtless issued these orders, but there were plenty besides
Brandeis to suggest them.  Every wandering clerk from the firm's office,
every plantation manager, would be dinning the same story in the native
ear.  And here again the initial blunder hung about the neck of Brandeis,
a ton's weight.  The natives, as well as the whites, had seen their
premier masquerading on a stool in the office; in the eyes of the
natives, as well as in those of the whites, he must always have retained
the mark of servitude from that ill-judged passage; and they would be
inclined to look behind and above him, to the great house of _Misi Ueba_.
The government was like a vista of puppets.  People did not trouble with
Tamasese, if they got speech with Brandeis; in the same way, they might
not always trouble to ask Brandeis, if they had a hint direct from _Misi
Ueba_.  In only one case, though it seems to have had many developments,
do I find the premier personally committed.  The MacArthurs claimed the
copra of Fasitotai on a district mortgage of three hundred dollars.  The
German firm accepted a mortgage of the whole province of Aana, claimed
the copra of Fasitotai as that of a part of Aana, and were supported by
the government.  Here Brandeis was false to his own principle, that
personal and village debts should come before provincial.  But the case
occurred before the promulgation of the law, and was, as a matter of
fact, the cause of it; so the most we can say is that he changed his
mind, and changed it for the better.  If the history of his government be
considered--how it originated in an intrigue between the firm and the
consulate, and was (for the firm's sake alone) supported by the consulate
with foreign bayonets--the existence of the least doubt on the man's
action must seem marvellous.  We should have looked to find him playing
openly and wholly into their hands; that he did not, implies great
independence and much secret friction; and I believe (if the truth were
known) the firm would be found to have been disgusted with the
stubbornness of its intended tool, and Brandeis often impatient of the
demands of his creators.

But I may seem to exaggerate the degree of white opposition.  And it is
true that before fate overtook the Brandeis government, it appeared to
enjoy the fruits of victory in Apia; and one dissident, the unconquerable
Moors, stood out alone to refuse his taxes.  But the victory was in
appearance only; the opposition was latent; it found vent in talk, and
thus reacted on the natives; upon the least excuse, it was ready to flame
forth again.  And this is the more singular because some were far from
out of sympathy with the native policy pursued.  When I met Captain
Brandeis, he was amazed at my attitude.  "Whom did you find in Apia to
tell you so much good of me?" he asked.  I named one of my informants.
"He?" he cried.  "If he thought all that, why did he not help me?"  I
told him as well as I was able.  The man was a merchant.  He beheld in
the government of Brandeis a government created by and for the firm who
were his rivals.  If Brandeis were minded to deal fairly, where was the
probability that he would be allowed?  If Brandeis insisted and were
strong enough to prevail, what guarantee that, as soon as the government
were fairly accepted, Brandeis might not be removed?  Here was the
attitude of the hour; and I am glad to find it clearly set forth in a
despatch of Sewall's, June 18th, 1888, when he commends the law against
mortgages, and goes on: "Whether the author of this law will carry out
the good intentions which he professes--whether he will be allowed to do
so, if he desires, against the opposition of those who placed him in
power and protect him in the possession of it--may well be doubted."
Brandeis had come to Apia in the firm's livery.  Even while he promised
neutrality in commerce, the clerks were prating a different story in the
bar-rooms; and the late high feat of the knight-errant, Becker, had
killed all confidence in Germans at the root.  By these three impolicies,
the German adventure in Samoa was defeated.

I imply that the handful of whites were the true obstacle, not the
thousands of malcontent Samoans; for had the whites frankly accepted
Brandeis, the path of Germany was clear, and the end of their policy,
however troublesome might be its course, was obvious.  But this is not to
say that the natives were content.  In a sense, indeed, their opposition
was continuous.  There will always be opposition in Samoa when taxes are
imposed; and the deportation of Malietoa stuck in men's throats.  Tuiatua
Mataafa refused to act under the new government from the beginning, and
Tamasese usurped his place and title.  As early as February, I find him
signing himself "Tuiaana _Tuiatua_ Tamasese," the first step on a
dangerous path.  Asi, like Mataafa, disclaimed his chiefship and declared
himself a private person; but he was more rudely dealt with.  German
sailors surrounded his house in the night, burst in, and dragged the
women out of the mosquito nets--an offence against Samoan manners.  No
Asi was to be found; but at last they were shown his fishing-lights on
the reef, rowed out, took him as he was, and carried him on board a man-
of-war, where he was detained some while between-decks.  At last, January
16th, after a farewell interview over the ship's side with his wife, he
was discharged into a ketch, and along with two other chiefs, Maunga and
Tuiletu-funga, deported to the Marshalls.  The blow struck fear upon all
sides.  Le Mamea (a very able chief) was secretly among the malcontents.
His family and followers murmured at his weakness; but he continued,
throughout the duration of the government, to serve Brandeis with
trembling.  A circus coming to Apia, he seized at the pretext for escape,
and asked leave to accept an engagement in the company.  "I will not
allow you to make a monkey of yourself," said Brandeis; and the phrase
had a success throughout the islands, pungent expressions being so much
admired by the natives that they cannot refrain from repeating them, even
when they have been levelled at themselves.  The assumption of the Atua
_name_ spread discontent in that province; many chiefs from thence were
convicted of disaffection, and condemned to labour with their hands upon
the roads--a great shock to the Samoan sense of the becoming, which was
rendered the more sensible by the death of one of the number at his task.
Mataafa was involved in the same trouble.  His disaffected speech at a
meeting of Atua chiefs was betrayed by the girls that made the kava, and
the man of the future was called to Apia on safe-conduct, but, after an
interview, suffered to return to his lair.  The peculiarly tender
treatment of Mataafa must be explained by his relationship to Tamasese.
Laupepa was of Malietoa blood.  The hereditary retainers of the Tupua
would see him exiled even with some complacency.  But Mataafa was Tupua
himself; and Tupua men would probably have murmured, and would perhaps
have mutinied, had he been harshly dealt with.

The native opposition, I say, was in a sense continuous.  And it kept
continuously growing.  The sphere of Brandeis was limited to Mulinuu and
the north central quarters of Upolu--practically what is shown upon the
map opposite.  There the taxes were expanded; in the out-districts, men
paid their money and saw no return.  Here the eye and hand of the
dictator were ready to correct the scales of justice; in the
out-districts, all things lay at the mercy of the native magistrates, and
their oppressions increased with the course of time and the experience of
impunity.  In the spring of the year, a very intelligent observer had
occasion to visit many places in the island of Savaii.  "Our lives are
not worth living," was the burthen of the popular complaint.  "We are
groaning under the oppression of these men.  We would rather die than
continue to endure it."  On his return to Apia, he made haste to
communicate his impressions to Brandeis.  Brandeis replied in an epigram:
"Where there has been anarchy in a country, there must be oppression for
a time."  But unfortunately the terms of the epigram may be reversed; and
personal supervision would have been more in season than wit.  The same
observer who conveyed to him this warning thinks that, if Brandeis had
himself visited the districts and inquired into complaints, the blow
might yet have been averted and the government saved.  At last, upon a
certain unconstitutional act of Tamasese, the discontent took life and
fire.  The act was of his own conception; the dull dog was ambitious.
Brandeis declares he would not be dissuaded; perhaps his adviser did not
seriously try, perhaps did not dream that in that welter of
contradictions, the Samoan constitution, any one point would be
considered sacred.  I have told how Tamasese assumed the title of
Tuiatua.  In August 1888 a year after his installation, he took a more
formidable step and assumed that of Malietoa.  This name, as I have said,
is of peculiar honour; it had been given to, it had never been taken
from, the exiled Laupepa; those in whose grant it lay, stood punctilious
upon their rights; and Tamasese, as the representative of their natural
opponents, the Tupua line, was the last who should have had it.  And
there was yet more, though I almost despair to make it thinkable by
Europeans.  Certain old mats are handed down, and set huge store by; they
may be compared to coats of arms or heirlooms among ourselves; and to the
horror of more than one-half of Samoa, Tamasese, the head of the Tupua,
began collecting Malietoa mats.  It was felt that the cup was full, and
men began to prepare secretly for rebellion.  The history of the month of
August is unknown to whites; it passed altogether in the covert of the
woods or in the stealthy councils of Samoans.  One ominous sign was to be
noted; arms and ammunition began to be purchased or inquired about; and
the more wary traders ordered fresh consignments of material of war.  But
the rest was silence; the government slept in security; and Brandeis was
summoned at last from a public dinner, to find rebellion organised, the
woods behind Apia full of insurgents, and a plan prepared, and in the
very article of execution, to surprise and seize Mulinuu.  The timely
discovery averted all; and the leaders hastily withdrew towards the south
side of the island, leaving in the bush a rear-guard under a young man of
the name of Saifaleupolu.  According to some accounts, it scarce numbered
forty; the leader was no great chief, but a handsome, industrious lad who
seems to have been much beloved.  And upon this obstacle Brandeis fell.
It is the man's fault to be too impatient of results; his public
intention to free Samoa of all debt within the year, depicts him; and
instead of continuing to temporise and let his enemies weary and
disperse, he judged it politic to strike a blow.  He struck it, with what
seemed to be success, and the sound of it roused Samoa to rebellion.

About two in the morning of August 31st, Apia was wakened by men
marching.  Day came, and Brandeis and his war-party were already long
disappeared in the woods.  All morning belated Tamaseseites were still to
be seen running with their guns.  All morning shots were listened for in
vain; but over the top of the forest, far up the mountain, smoke was for
some time observed to hang.  About ten a dead man was carried in, lashed
under a pole like a dead pig, his rosary (for he was a Catholic) hanging
nearly to the ground.  Next came a young fellow wounded, sitting in a
rope swung from a pole; two fellows bearing him, two running behind for a
relief.  At last about eleven, three or four heavy volleys and a great
shouting were heard from the bush town Tanungamanono; the affair was
over, the victorious force, on the march back, was there celebrating its
victory by the way.  Presently after, it marched through Apia, five or
six hundred strong, in tolerable order and strutting with the ludicrous
assumption of the triumphant islander.  Women who had been buying bread
ran and gave them loaves.  At the tail end came Brandeis himself, smoking
a cigar, deadly pale, and with perhaps an increase of his usual nervous
manner.  One spoke to him by the way.  He expressed his sorrow the action
had been forced on him.  "Poor people, it's all the worse for them!" he
said.  "It'll have to be done another way now."  And it was supposed by
his hearer that he referred to intervention from the German war-ships.  He
meant, he said, to put a stop to head-hunting; his men had taken two that
day, he added, but he had not suffered them to bring them in, and they
had been left in Tanungamanono.  Thither my informant rode, was attracted
by the sound of wailing, and saw in a house the two heads washed and
combed, and the sister of one of the dead lamenting in the island fashion
and kissing the cold face.  Soon after, a small grave was dug, the heads
were buried in a beef box, and the pastor read the service.  The body of
Saifaleupolu himself was recovered unmutilated, brought down from the
forest, and buried behind Apia.

The same afternoon, the men of Vaimaunga were ordered to report in
Mulinuu, where Tamasese's flag was half-masted for the death of a chief
in the skirmish.  Vaimaunga is that district of Taumasanga which includes
the bay and the foothills behind Apia; and both province and district are
strong Malietoa.  Not one man, it is said, obeyed the summons.  Night
came, and the town lay in unusual silence; no one abroad; the blinds down
around the native houses, the men within sleeping on their arms; the old
women keeping watch in pairs.  And in the course of the two following
days all Vaimaunga was gone into the bush, the very gaoler setting free
his prisoners and joining them in their escape.  Hear the words of the
chiefs in the 23rd article of their complaint: "Some of the chiefs fled
to the bush from fear of being reported, fear of German men-of-war,
constantly being accused, etc., and Brandeis commanded that they were to
be shot on sight.  This act was carried out by Brandeis on the 31st day
of August, 1888.  After this we evaded these laws; we could not stand
them; our patience was worn out with the constant wickedness of Tamasese
and Brandeis.  We were tired out and could stand no longer the acts of
these two men."

So through an ill-timed skirmish, two severed heads, and a dead body, the
rule of Brandeis came to a sudden end.  We shall see him a while longer
fighting for existence in a losing battle; but his government--take it
for all in all, the most promising that has ever been in these unlucky
islands--was from that hour a piece of history.




CHAPTER V--THE BATTLE OF MATAUTU


_September 1888_

The revolution had all the character of a popular movement.  Many of the
high chiefs were detained in Mulinuu; the commons trooped to the bush
under inferior leaders.  A camp was chosen near Faleula, threatening
Mulinuu, well placed for the arrival of recruits and close to a German
plantation from which the force could be subsisted.  Manono came, all
Tuamasanga, much of Savaii, and part of Aana, Tamasese's own government
and titular seat.  Both sides were arming.  It was a brave day for the
trader, though not so brave as some that followed, when a single
cartridge is said to have been sold for twelve cents currency--between
nine and ten cents gold.  Yet even among the traders a strong party
feeling reigned, and it was the common practice to ask a purchaser upon
which side he meant to fight.

On September 5th, Brandeis published a letter: "To the chiefs of
Tuamasanga, Manono, and Faasaleleanga in the Bush: Chiefs, by authority
of his majesty Tamasese, the king of Samoa, I make known to you all that
the German man-of-war is about to go together with a Samoan fleet for the
purpose of burning Manono.  After this island is all burnt, 'tis good if
the people return to Manono and live quiet.  To the people of
Faasaleleanga I say, return to your houses and stop there.  The same to
those belonging to Tuamasanga.  If you obey this instruction, then you
will all be forgiven; if you do not obey, then all your villages will be
burnt like Manono.  These instructions are made in truth in the sight of
God in the Heaven."  The same morning, accordingly, the _Adler_ steamed
out of the bay with a force of Tamasese warriors and some native boats in
tow, the Samoan fleet in question.  Manono was shelled; the Tamasese
warriors, under the conduct of a Manono traitor, who paid before many
days the forfeit of his blood, landed and did some damage, but were
driven away by the sight of a force returning from the mainland; no one
was hurt, for the women and children, who alone remained on the island,
found a refuge in the bush; and the _Adler_ and her acolytes returned the
same evening.  The letter had been energetic; the performance fell below
the programme.  The demonstration annoyed and yet re-assured the
insurgents, and it fully disclosed to the Germans a new enemy.

Captain Yon Widersheim had been relieved.  His successor, Captain Fritze,
was an officer of a different stamp.  I have nothing to say of him but
good; he seems to have obeyed the consul's requisitions with secret
distaste; his despatches were of admirable candour; but his habits were
retired, he spoke little English, and was far indeed from inheriting von
Widersheim's close relations with Commander Leary.  It is believed by
Germans that the American officer resented what he took to be neglect.  I
mention this, not because I believe it to depict Commander Leary, but
because it is typical of a prevailing infirmity among Germans in Samoa.
Touchy themselves, they read all history in the light of personal
affronts and tiffs; and I find this weakness indicated by the big thumb
of Bismarck, when he places "sensitiveness to small
disrespects--_Empfindlichkeit ueber Mangel an Respect_," among the causes
of the wild career of Knappe.  Whatever the cause, at least, the natives
had no sooner taken arms than Leary appeared with violence upon that
side.  As early as the 3rd, he had sent an obscure but menacing despatch
to Brandeis.  On the 6th, he fell on Fritze in the matter of the Manono
bombardment.  "The revolutionists," he wrote, "had an armed force in the
field within a few miles of this harbour, when the vessels under your
command transported the Tamasese troops to a neighbouring island with the
avowed intention of making war on the isolated homes of the women and
children of the enemy.  Being the only other representative of a naval
power now present in this harbour, for the sake of humanity I hereby
respectfully and solemnly protest in the name of the United States of
America and of the civilised world in general against the use of a
national war-vessel for such services as were yesterday rendered by the
German corvette _Adler_."  Fritze's reply, to the effect that he is under
the orders of the consul and has no right of choice, reads even humble;
perhaps he was not himself vain of the exploit, perhaps not prepared to
see it thus described in words.  From that moment Leary was in the front
of the row.  His name is diagnostic, but it was not required; on every
step of his subsequent action in Samoa Irishman is writ large; over all
his doings a malign spirit of humour presided.  No malice was too small
for him, if it were only funny.  When night signals were made from
Mulinuu, he would sit on his own poop and confound them with gratuitous
rockets.  He was at the pains to write a letter and address it to "the
High Chief Tamasese"--a device as old at least as the wars of Robert
Bruce--in order to bother the officials of the German post-office, in
whose hands he persisted in leaving it, although the address was death to
them and the distribution of letters in Samoa formed no part of their
profession.  His great masterwork of pleasantry, the Scanlon affair, must
be narrated in its place.  And he was no less bold than comical.  The
_Adams_ was not supposed to be a match for the _Adler_; there was no
glory to be gained in beating her; and yet I have heard naval officers
maintain she might have proved a dangerous antagonist in narrow waters
and at short range.  Doubtless Leary thought so.  He was continually
daring Fritze to come on; and already, in a despatch of the 9th, I find
Becker complaining of his language in the hearing of German officials,
and how he had declared that, on the _Adler_ again interfering, he would
interfere himself, "if he went to the bottom for it--_und wenn sein
Schiff dabei zu Grunde ginge_."  Here is the style of opposition which
has the merit of being frank, not that of being agreeable.  Becker was
annoying, Leary infuriating; there is no doubt that the tempers in the
German consulate were highly ulcerated; and if war between the two
countries did not follow, we must set down the praise to the forbearance
of the German navy.  This is not the last time that I shall have to
salute the merits of that service.

The defeat and death of Saifaleupolu and the burning of Manono had thus
passed off without the least advantage to Tamasese.  But he still held
the significant position of Mulinuu, and Brandeis was strenuous to make
it good.  The whole peninsula was surrounded with a breastwork; across
the isthmus it was six feet high and strengthened with a ditch; and the
beach was staked against landing.  Weber's land claim--the same that now
broods over the village in the form of a signboard--then appeared in a
more military guise; the German flag was hoisted, and German sailors
manned the breastwork at the isthmus--"to protect German property" and
its trifling parenthesis, the king of Samoa.  Much vigilance reigned and,
in the island fashion, much wild firing.  And in spite of all, desertion
was for a long time daily.  The detained high chiefs would go to the
beach on the pretext of a natural occasion, plunge in the sea, and
swimming across a broad, shallow bay of the lagoon, join the rebels on
the Faleula side.  Whole bodies of warriors, sometimes hundreds strong,
departed with their arms and ammunition.  On the 7th of September, for
instance, the day after Leary's letter, Too and Mataia left with their
contingents, and the whole Aana people returned home in a body to hold a
parliament.  Ten days later, it is true, a part of them returned to their
duty; but another part branched off by the way and carried their
services, and Tamasese's dear-bought guns, to Faleula.

On the 8th, there was a defection of a different kind, but yet sensible.
The High Chief Seumanu had been still detained in Mulinuu under anxious
observation.  His people murmured at his absence, threatened to "take
away his name," and had already attempted a rescue.  The adventure was
now taken in hand by his wife Faatulia, a woman of much sense and spirit
and a strong partisan; and by her contrivance, Seumanu gave his guardians
the slip and rejoined his clan at Faleula.  This process of winnowing was
of course counterbalanced by another of recruitment.  But the harshness
of European and military rule had made Brandeis detested and Tamasese
unpopular with many; and the force on Mulinuu is thought to have done
little more than hold its own.  Mataafa sympathisers set it down at about
two or three thousand.  I have no estimate from the other side; but
Becker admits they were not strong enough to keep the field in the open.

The political significance of Mulinuu was great, but in a military sense
the position had defects.  If it was difficult to carry, it was easy to
blockade: and to be hemmed in on that narrow finger of land were an
inglorious posture for the monarch of Samoa.  The peninsula, besides, was
scant of food and destitute of water.  Pressed by these considerations,
Brandeis extended his lines till he had occupied the whole foreshore of
Apia bay and the opposite point, Matautu.  His men were thus drawn out
along some three nautical miles of irregular beach, everywhere with their
backs to the sea, and without means of communication or mutual support
except by water.  The extension led to fresh sorrows.  The Tamasese men
quartered themselves in the houses of the absent men of the Vaimaunga.
Disputes arose with English and Americans.  Leary interposed in a loud
voice of menace.  It was said the firm profited by the confusion to
buttress up imperfect land claims; I am sure the other whites would not
be far behind the firm.  Properties were fenced in, fences and houses
were torn down, scuffles ensued.  The German example at Mulinuu was
followed with laughable unanimity; wherever an Englishman or an American
conceived himself to have a claim, he set up the emblem of his country;
and the beach twinkled with the flags of nations.

All this, it will be observed, was going forward in that neutral
territory, sanctified by treaty against the presence of armed Samoans.
The insurgents themselves looked on in wonder: on the 4th, trembling to
transgress against the great Powers, they had written for a delimitation
of the _Eleele Sa_; and Becker, in conversation with the British consul,
replied that he recognised none.  So long as Tamasese held the ground,
this was expedient.  But suppose Tamasese worsted, it might prove awkward
for the stores, mills, and offices of a great German firm, thus bared of
shelter by the act of their own consul.

On the morning of the 9th September, just ten days after the death of
Saifaleupolu, Mataafa, under the name of Malietoa To'oa Mataafa, was
crowned king at Faleula.  On the 11th he wrote to the British and
American consuls: "Gentlemen, I write this letter to you two very humbly
and entreatingly, on account of this difficulty that has come before me.
I desire to know from you two gentlemen the truth where the boundaries of
the neutral territory are.  You will observe that I am now at Vaimoso [a
step nearer the enemy], and I have stopped here until I knew what you say
regarding the neutral territory.  I wish to know where I can go, and
where the forbidden ground is, for I do not wish to go on any neutral
territory, or on any foreigner's property.  I do not want to offend any
of the great Powers.  Another thing I would like.  Would it be possible
for you three consuls to make Tamasese remove from German property? for I
am in awe of going on German land."  He must have received a reply
embodying Becker's renunciation of the principle, at once; for he broke
camp the same day, and marched eastward through the bush behind Apia.

Brandeis, expecting attack, sought to improve his indefensible position.
He reformed his centre by the simple expedient of suppressing it.  Apia
was evacuated.  The two flanks, Mulinuu and Matautu, were still held and
fortified, Mulinuu (as I have said) to the isthmus, Matautu on a line
from the bayside to the little river Fuisa.  The centre was represented
by the trajectory of a boat across the bay from one flank to another, and
was held (we may say) by the German war-ship.  Mataafa decided (I am
assured) to make a feint on Matautu, induce Brandeis to deplete Mulinuu
in support, and then fall upon and carry that.  And there is no doubt in
my mind that such a plan was bruited abroad, for nothing but a belief in
it could explain the behaviour of Brandeis on the 12th.  That it was
seriously entertained by Mataafa I stoutly disbelieve; the German flag
and sailors forbidding the enterprise in Mulinuu.  So that we may call
this false intelligence the beginning and the end of Mataafa's strategy.

The whites who sympathised with the revolt were uneasy and impatient.
They will still tell you, though the dates are there to show them wrong,
that Mataafa, even after his coronation, delayed extremely: a proof of
how long two days may seem to last when men anticipate events.  On the
evening of the 11th, while the new king was already on the march, one of
these walked into Matautu.  The moon was bright.  By the way he observed
the native houses dark and silent; the men had been about a fortnight in
the bush, but now the women and children were gone also; at which he
wondered.  On the sea-beach, in the camp of the Tamaseses, the solitude
was near as great; he saw three or four men smoking before the British
consulate, perhaps a dozen in all; the rest were behind in the bush upon
their line of forts.  About the midst he sat down, and here a woman drew
near to him.  The moon shone in her face, and he knew her for a
householder near by, and a partisan of Mataafa's.  She looked about her
as she came, and asked him, trembling, what he did in the camp of
Tamasese.  He was there after news, he told her.  She took him by the
hand.  "You must not stay here, you will get killed," she said.  "The
bush is full of our people, the others are watching them, fighting may
begin at any moment, and we are both here too long."  So they set off
together; and she told him by the way that she had came to the hostile
camp with a present of bananas, so that the Tamasese men might spare her
house.  By the Vaisingano they met an old man, a woman, and a child; and
these also she warned and turned back.  Such is the strange part played
by women among the scenes of Samoan warfare, such were the liberties then
permitted to the whites, that these two could pass the lines, talk
together in Tamasese's camp on the eve of an engagement, and pass forth
again bearing intelligence, like privileged spies.  And before a few
hours the white man was in direct communication with the opposing
general.  The next morning he was accosted "about breakfast-time" by two
natives who stood leaning against the pickets of a public-house, where
the Siumu road strikes in at right angles to the main street of Apia.
They told him battle was imminent, and begged him to pass a little way
inland and speak with Mataafa.  The road is at this point broad and
fairly good, running between thick groves of cocoa-palm and breadfruit.  A
few hundred yards along this the white man passed a picket of four armed
warriors, with red handkerchiefs and their faces blackened in the form of
a full beard, the Mataafa rallying signs for the day; a little farther
on, some fifty; farther still, a hundred; and at last a quarter of a mile
of them sitting by the wayside armed and blacked.

Near by, in the verandah of a house on a knoll, he found Mataafa seated
in white clothes, a Winchester across his knees.  His men, he said, were
still arriving from behind, and there was a turning movement in operation
beyond the Fuisa, so that the Tamaseses should be assailed at the same
moment from the south and east.  And this is another indication that the
attack on Matautu was the true attack; had any design on Mulinuu been in
the wind, not even a Samoan general would have detached these troops upon
the other side.  While they still spoke, five Tamasese women were brought
in with their hands bound; they had been stealing "our" bananas.

All morning the town was strangely deserted, the very children gone.  A
sense of expectation reigned, and sympathy for the attack was expressed
publicly.  Some men with unblacked faces came to Moors's store for
biscuit.  A native woman, who was there marketing, inquired after the
news, and, hearing that the battle was now near at hand, "Give them two
more tins," said she; "and don't put them down to my husband--he would
growl; put them down to me."  Between twelve and one, two white men
walked toward Matautu, finding as they went no sign of war until they had
passed the Vaisingano and come to the corner of a by-path leading to the
bush.  Here were four blackened warriors on guard,--the extreme left wing
of the Mataafa force, where it touched the waters of the bay.  Thence the
line (which the white men followed) stretched inland among bush and
marsh, facing the forts of the Tamaseses.  The warriors lay as yet
inactive behind trees; but all the young boys and harlots of Apia toiled
in the front upon a trench, digging with knives and cocoa-shells; and a
continuous stream of children brought them water.  The young sappers
worked crouching; from the outside only an occasional head, or a hand
emptying a shell of earth, was visible; and their enemies looked on inert
from the line of the opposing forts.  The lists were not yet prepared,
the tournament was not yet open; and the attacking force was suffered to
throw up works under the silent guns of the defence.  But there is an end
even to the delay of islanders.  As the white men stood and looked, the
Tamasese line thundered into a volley; it was answered; the crowd of
silent workers broke forth in laughter and cheers; and the battle had
begun.

Thenceforward, all day and most of the next night, volley followed
volley; and pounds of lead and pounds sterling of money continued to be
blown into the air without cessation and almost without result.  Colonel
de Coetlogon, an old soldier, described the noise as deafening.  The
harbour was all struck with shots; a man was knocked over on the German
war-ship; half Apia was under fire; and a house was pierced beyond the
Mulivai.  All along the two lines of breastwork, the entrenched enemies
exchanged this hail of balls; and away on the east of the battle the
fusillade was maintained, with equal spirit, across the narrow barrier of
the Fuisa.  The whole rear of the Tamaseses was enfiladed by this flank
fire; and I have seen a house there, by the river brink, that was riddled
with bullets like a piece of worm-eaten wreck-wood.  At this point of the
field befell a trait of Samoan warfare worth recording.  Taiese (brother
to Siteoni already mentioned) shot a Tamasese man.  He saw him fall, and,
inflamed with the lust of glory, passed the river single-handed in that
storm of missiles to secure the head.  On the farther bank, as was but
natural, he fell himself; he who had gone to take a trophy remained to
afford one; and the Mataafas, who had looked on exulting in the prospect
of a triumph, saw themselves exposed instead to a disgrace.  Then rose
one Vingi, passed the deadly water, swung the body of Taiese on his back,
and returned unscathed to his own side, the head saved, the corpse filled
with useless bullets.

At this rate of practice, the ammunition soon began to run low, and from
an early hour of the afternoon, the Malietoa stores were visited by
customers in search of more.  An elderly man came leaping and cheering,
his gun in one hand, a basket of three heads in the other.  A fellow came
shot through the forearm.  "It doesn't hurt now," he said, as he bought
his cartridges; "but it will hurt to-morrow, and I want to fight while I
can."  A third followed, a mere boy, with the end of his nose shot off:
"Have you any painkiller? give it me quick, so that I can get back to
fight."  On either side, there was the same delight in sound and smoke
and schoolboy cheering, the same unsophisticated ardour of battle; and
the misdirected skirmish proceeded with a din, and was illustrated with
traits of bravery that would have fitted a Waterloo or a Sedan.

I have said how little I regard the alleged plan of battle.  At least it
was now all gone to water.  The whole forces of Mataafa had leaked out,
man by man, village by village, on the so-called false attack.  They were
all pounding for their lives on the front and the left flank of Matautu.
About half-past three they enveloped the right flank also.  The defenders
were driven back along the beach road as far as the pilot station at the
turn of the land.  From this also they were dislodged, stubbornly
fighting.  One, it is told, retreated to his middle in the lagoon; stood
there, loading and firing, till he fell; and his body was found on the
morrow pierced with four mortal wounds.  The Tamasese force was now
enveloped on three sides; it was besides almost cut off from the sea; and
across its whole rear and only way of retreat a fire of hostile bullets
crossed from east and west, in the midst of which men were surprised to
observe the birds continuing to sing, and a cow grazed all afternoon
unhurt.  Doubtless here was the defence in a poor way; but then the
attack was in irons.  For the Mataafas about the pilot house could
scarcely advance beyond without coming under the fire of their own men
from the other side of the Fuisa; and there was not enough organisation,
perhaps not enough authority, to divert or to arrest that fire.

The progress of the fight along the beach road was visible from Mulinuu,
and Brandeis despatched ten boats of reinforcements.  They crossed the
harbour, paused for a while beside the _Adler_--it is supposed for
ammunition--and drew near the Matautu shore.  The Mataafa men lay close
among the shore-side bushes, expecting their arrival; when a silly lad,
in mere lightness of heart, fired a shot in the air.  My native friend,
Mrs. Mary Hamilton, ran out of her house and gave the culprit a good
shaking: an episode in the midst of battle as incongruous as the grazing
cow.  But his sillier comrades followed his example; a harmless volley
warned the boats what they might expect; and they drew back and passed
outside the reef for the passage of the Fuisa.  Here they came under the
fire of the right wing of the Mataafas on the river-bank.  The beach,
raked east and west, appeared to them no place to land on.  And they hung
off in the deep water of the lagoon inside the barrier reef, feebly
fusillading the pilot house.

Between four and five, the Fabeata regiment (or folk of that village) on
the Mataafa left, which had been under arms all day, fell to be withdrawn
for rest and food; the Siumu regiment, which should have relieved it, was
not ready or not notified in time; and the Tamaseses, gallantly profiting
by the mismanagement, recovered the most of the ground in their proper
right.  It was not for long.  They lost it again, yard by yard and from
house to house, till the pilot station was once more in the hands of the
Mataafas.  This is the last definite incident in the battle.  The
vicissitudes along the line of the entrenchments remain concealed from us
under the cover of the forest.  Some part of the Tamasese position there
appears to have been carried, but what part, or at what hour, or whether
the advantage was maintained, I have never learned.  Night and rain, but
not silence, closed upon the field.  The trenches were deep in mud; but
the younger folk wrecked the houses in the neighbourhood, carried the
roofs to 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.