By the 28th Tamasese had collected seventeen hundred men in the trenches
before Saluafata, thinking to attack next day.  But the Mataafas
evacuated the place in the night.  At half-past five on the morning of
the 29th a signal-gun was fired in the trenches at Laulii, and the
Tamasese citadel was assaulted and defended with a fury new among
Samoans.  When the battle ended on the following day, one or more
outworks remained in the possession of Mataafa.  Another had been taken
and lost as many as four times.  Carried originally by a mixed force from
Savaii and Tuamasanga, the victors, instead of completing fresh defences
or pursuing their advantage, fell to eat and smoke and celebrate their
victory with impromptu songs.  In this humour a rally of the Tamaseses
smote them, drove them out pell-mell, and tumbled them into the ravine,
where many broke their heads and legs.  Again the work was taken, again
lost.  Ammunition failed the belligerents; and they fought hand to hand
in the contested fort with axes, clubs, and clubbed rifles.  The
sustained ardour of the engagement surprised even those who were engaged;
and the butcher's bill was counted extraordinary by Samoans.  On December
1st the women of either side collected the headless bodies of the dead,
each easily identified by the name tattooed on his forearm.  Mataafa is
thought to have lost sixty killed; and the de Coetlogons' hospital
received three women and forty men.  The casualties on the Tamasese side
cannot be accepted, but they were presumably much less.




CHAPTER VIII--AFFAIRS OF LAULII AND FANGALII


_November-December_ 1888

For Becker I have not been able to conceal my distaste, for he seems to
me both false and foolish.  But of his successor, the unfortunately
famous Dr. Knappe, we may think as of a good enough fellow driven
distraught.  Fond of Samoa and the Samoans, he thought to bring peace and
enjoy popularity among the islanders; of a genial, amiable, and sanguine
temper, he made no doubt but he could repair the breach with the English
consul.  Hope told a flattering tale.  He awoke to find himself
exchanging defiances with de Coetlogon, beaten in the field by Mataafa,
surrounded on the spot by general exasperation, and disowned from home by
his own government.  The history of his administration leaves on the mind
of the student a sentiment of pity scarcely mingled.

On Blacklock he did not call, and, in view of Leary's attitude, may be
excused.  But the English consul was in a different category.  England,
weary of the name of Samoa, and desirous only to see peace established,
was prepared to wink hard during the process and to welcome the result of
any German settlement.  It was an unpardonable fault in Becker to have
kicked and buffeted his ready-made allies into a state of jealousy,
anger, and suspicion.  Knappe set himself at once to efface these
impressions, and the English officials rejoiced for the moment in the
change.  Between Knappe and de Coetlogon there seems to have been mutual
sympathy; and, in considering the steps by which they were led at last
into an attitude of mutual defiance, it must be remembered that both the
men were sick,--Knappe from time to time prostrated with that formidable
complaint, New Guinea fever, and de Coetlogon throughout his whole stay
in the islands continually ailing.

Tamasese was still to be recognised, and, if possible, supported: such
was the German policy.  Two days after his arrival, accordingly, Knappe
addressed to Mataafa a threatening despatch.  The German plantation was
suffering from the proximity of his "war-party."  He must withdraw from
Laulii at once, and, whithersoever he went, he must approach no German
property nor so much as any village where there was a German trader.  By
five o'clock on the morrow, if he were not gone, Knappe would turn upon
him "the attention of the man-of-war" and inflict a fine.  The same
evening, November 14th, Knappe went on board the _Adler_, which began to
get up steam.

Three months before, such direct intervention on the part of Germany
would have passed almost without protest; but the hour was now gone by.
Becker's conduct, equally timid and rash, equally inconclusive and
offensive, had forced the other nations into a strong feeling of common
interest with Mataafa.  Even had the German demands been moderate, de
Coetlogon could not have forgotten the night of the _taumualua_, nor how
Mataafa had relinquished, at his request, the attack upon the German
quarter.  Blacklock, with his driver of a captain at his elbow, was not
likely to lag behind.  And Mataafa having communicated Knappe's letter,
the example of the Germans was on all hands exactly followed; the consuls
hastened on board their respective war-ships, and these began to get up
steam.  About midnight, in a pouring rain, Pelly communicated to Fritze
his intention to follow him and protect British interests; and Knappe
replied that he would come on board the _Lizard_ and see de Coetlogon
personally.  It was deep in the small hours, and de Coetlogon had been
long asleep, when he was wakened to receive his colleague; but he started
up with an old soldier's readiness.  The conference was long.  De
Coetlogon protested, as he did afterwards in writing, against Knappe's
claim: the Samoans were in a state of war; they had territorial rights;
it was monstrous to prevent them from entering one of their own villages
because a German trader kept the store; and in case property suffered, a
claim for compensation was the proper remedy.  Knappe argued that this
was a question between Germans and Samoans, in which de Coetlogon had
nothing to see; and that he must protect German property according to his
instructions.  To which de Coetlogon replied that he was himself in the
same attitude to the property of the British; that he understood Knappe
to be intending hostilities against Laulii; that Laulii was mortgaged to
the MacArthurs; that its crops were accordingly British property; and
that, while he was ever willing to recognise the territorial rights of
the Samoans, he must prevent that property from being molested "by any
other nation."  "But if a German man-of-war does it?" asked Knappe.--"We
shall prevent it to the best of our ability," replied the colonel.  It is
to the credit of both men that this trying interview should have been
conducted and concluded without heat; but Knappe must have returned to
the _Adler_ with darker anticipations.

At sunrise on the morning of the 15th, the three ships, each loaded with
its consul, put to sea.  It is hard to exaggerate the peril of the
forenoon that followed, as they lay off Laulii.  Nobody desired a
collision, save perhaps the reckless Leary; but peace and war trembled in
the balance; and when the _Adler_, at one period, lowered her gun ports,
war appeared to preponderate.  It proved, however, to be a last--and
therefore surely an unwise--extremity.  Knappe contented himself with
visiting the rival kings, and the three ships returned to Apia before
noon.  Beyond a doubt, coming after Knappe's decisive letter of the day
before, this impotent conclusion shook the credit of Germany among the
natives of both sides; the Tamaseses fearing they were deserted, the
Mataafas (with secret delight) hoping they were feared.  And it gave an
impetus to that ridiculous business which might have earned for the whole
episode the name of the war of flags.  British and American flags had
been planted the night before, and were seen that morning flying over
what they claimed about Laulii.  British and American passengers, on the
way up and down, pointed out from the decks of the war-ships, with
generous vagueness, the boundaries of problematical estates.  Ten days
later, the beach of Saluafata bay fluttered (as I have told in the last
chapter) with the flag of Germany.  The Americans riposted with a claim
to Tamasese's camp, some small part of which (says Knappe) did really
belong to "an American nigger."  The disease spread, the flags were
multiplied, the operations of war became an egg-dance among miniature
neutral territories; and though all men took a hand in these proceedings,
all men in turn were struck with their absurdity.  Mullan, Leary's
successor, warned Knappe, in an emphatic despatch, not to squander and
discredit the solemnity of that emblem which was all he had to be a
defence to his own consulate.  And Knappe himself, in his despatch of
March 21st, 1889, castigates the practice with much sense.  But this was
after the tragicomic culmination had been reached, and the burnt rags of
one of these too-frequently mendacious signals gone on a progress to
Washington, like Caesar's body, arousing indignation where it came.  To
such results are nations conducted by the patent artifices of a Becker.

The discussion of the morning, the silent menace and defiance of the
voyage to Laulii, might have set the best-natured by the ears.  But
Knappe and de Coetlogon took their difference in excellent part.  On the
morrow, November 16th, they sat down together with Blacklock in
conference.  The English consul introduced his colleagues, who shook
hands.  If Knappe were dead-weighted with the inheritance of Becker,
Blacklock was handicapped by reminiscences of Leary; it is the more to
the credit of this inexperienced man that he should have maintained in
the future so excellent an attitude of firmness and moderation, and that
when the crash came, Knappe and de Coetlogon, not Knappe and Blacklock,
were found to be the protagonists of the drama.  The conference was
futile.  The English and American consuls admitted but one cure of the
evils of the time: that the farce of the Tamasese monarchy should cease.
It was one which the German refused to consider.  And the agents
separated without reaching any result, save that diplomatic relations had
been restored between the States and Germany, and that all three were
convinced of their fundamental differences.

Knappe and de Coetlogon were still friends; they had disputed and
differed and come within a finger's breadth of war, and they were still
friends.  But an event was at hand which was to separate them for ever.
On December 4th came the _Royalist_, Captain Hand, to relieve the
_Lizard_.  Pelly of course had to take his canvas from the consulate
hospital; but he had in charge certain awnings belonging to the
_Royalist_, and with these they made shift to cover the wounded, at that
time (after the fight at Laulii) more than usually numerous.  A
lieutenant came to the consulate, and delivered (as I have received it)
the following message: "Captain Hand's compliments, and he says you must
get rid of these niggers at once, and he will help you to do it."
Doubtless the reply was no more civil than the message.  The promised
"help," at least, followed promptly.  A boat's crew landed and the
awnings were stripped from the wounded, Hand himself standing on the
colonel's verandah to direct operations.  It were fruitless to discuss
this passage from the humanitarian point of view, or from that of formal
courtesy.  The mind of the new captain was plainly not directed to these
objects.  But it is understood that he considered the existence of a
hospital a source of irritation to Germans and a fault in policy.  His
own rude act proved in the result far more impolitic.  The hospital had
now been open some two months, and de Coetlogon was still on friendly
terms with Knappe, and he and his wife were engaged to dine with him that
day.  By the morrow that was practically ended.  For the rape of the
awnings had two results: one, which was the fault of de Coetlogon, not at
all of Hand, who could not have foreseen it; the other which it was his
duty to have seen and prevented.  The first was this: the de Coetlogons
found themselves left with their wounded exposed to the inclemencies of
the season; they must all be transported into the house and verandah; in
the distress and pressure of this task, the dinner engagement was too
long forgotten; and a note of excuse did not reach the German consulate
before the table was set, and Knappe dressed to receive his visitors.  The
second consequence was inevitable.  Captain Hand was scarce landed ere it
became public (was "_sofort bekannt_," writes Knappe) that he and the
consul were in opposition.  All that had been gained by the demonstration
at Laulii was thus immediately cast away; de Coetlogon's prestige was
lessened; and it must be said plainly that Hand did less than nothing to
restore it.  Twice indeed he interfered, both times with success; and
once, when his own person had been endangered, with vehemence; but during
all the strange doings I have to narrate, he remained in close intimacy
with the German consulate, and on one occasion may be said to have acted
as its marshal.  After the worst is over, after Bismarck has told Knappe
that "the protests of his English colleague were grounded," that his own
conduct "has not been good," and that in any dispute which may arise he
"will find himself in the wrong," Knappe can still plead in his defence
that Captain Hand "has always maintained friendly intercourse with the
German authorities."  Singular epitaph for an English sailor.  In this
complicity on the part of Hand we may find the reason--and I had almost
said, the excuse--of much that was excessive in the bearing of the
unfortunate Knappe.

On the 11th December, Mataafa received twenty-eight thousand cartridges,
brought into the country in salt-beef kegs by the British ship
_Richmond_.  This not only sharpened the animosity between whites;
following so closely on the German fizzle at Laulii, it raised a
convulsion in the camp of Tamasese.  On the 13th Brandeis addressed to
Knappe his famous and fatal letter.  I may not describe it as a letter of
burning words, but it is plainly dictated by a burning heart.  Tamasese
and his chiefs, he announces, are now sick of the business, and ready to
make peace with Mataafa.  They began the war relying upon German help;
they now see and say that "_e faaalo Siamani i Peritania ma America_,
that Germany is subservient to England and the States."  It is grimly
given to be understood that the despatch is an ultimatum, and a last
chance is being offered for the recreant ally to fulfil her pledge.  To
make it more plain, the document goes on with a kind of bilious irony:
"The two German war-ships now in Samoa are here for the protection of
German property alone; and when the _Olga_ shall have arrived" [she
arrived on the morrow] "the German war-ships will continue to do against
the insurgents precisely as little as they have done heretofore."  Plant
flags, in fact.

Here was Knappe's opportunity, could he have stooped to seize it.  I find
it difficult to blame him that he could not.  Far from being so
inglorious as the treachery once contemplated by Becker, the acceptance
of this ultimatum would have been still in the nature of a disgrace.
Brandeis's letter, written by a German, was hard to swallow.  It would
have been hard to accept that solution which Knappe had so recently and
so peremptorily refused to his brother consuls.  And he was tempted, on
the other hand, by recent changes.  There was no Pelly to support de
Coetlogon, who might now be disregarded.  Mullan, Leary's successor, even
if he were not precisely a Hand, was at least no Leary; and even if
Mullan should show fight, Knappe had now three ships and could defy or
sink him without danger.  Many small circumstances moved him in the same
direction.  The looting of German plantations continued; the whole force
of Mataafa was to a large extent subsisted from the crops of Vailele; and
armed men were to be seen openly plundering bananas, breadfruit, and
cocoa-nuts under the walls of the plantation building.  On the night of
the 13th the consulate stable had been broken into and a horse removed.
On the 16th there was a riot in Apia between half-castes and sailors from
the new ship _Olga_, each side claiming that the other was the worse of
drink, both (for a wager) justly.  The multiplication of flags and little
neutral territories had, besides, begun to irritate the Samoans.  The
protests of German settlers had been received uncivilly.  On the 16th the
Mataafas had again sought to land in Saluafata bay, with the manifest
intention to attack the Tamaseses, or (in other words) "to trespass on
German lands, covered, as your Excellency knows, with flags."  I quote
from his requisition to Fritze, December 17th.  Upon all these
considerations, he goes on, it is necessary to bring the fighting to an
end.  Both parties are to be disarmed and returned to their
villages--Mataafa first.  And in case of any attempt upon Apia, the roads
thither are to be held by a strong landing-party.  Mataafa was to be
disarmed first, perhaps rightly enough in his character of the last
insurgent.  Then was to have come the turn of Tamasese; but it does not
appear the disarming would have had the same import or have been gone
about in the same way.  Germany was bound to Tamasese.  No honest man
would dream of blaming Knappe because he sought to redeem his country's
word.  The path he chose was doubtless that of honour, so far as honour
was still left.  But it proved to be the road to ruin.

Fritze, ranking German officer, is understood to have opposed the
measure.  His attitude earned him at the time unpopularity among his
country-people on the spot, and should now redound to his credit.  It is
to be hoped he extended his opposition to some of the details.  If it
were possible to disarm Mataafa at all, it must be done rather by
prestige than force.  A party of blue-jackets landed in Samoan bush, and
expected to hold against Samoans a multiplicity of forest paths, had
their work cut out for them.  And it was plain they should be landed in
the light of day, with a discouraging openness, and even with parade.  To
sneak ashore by night was to increase the danger of resistance and to
minimise the authority of the attack.  The thing was a bluff, and it is
impossible to bluff with stealth.  Yet this was what was tried.  A
landing-party was to leave the _Olga_ in Apia bay at two in the morning;
the landing was to be at four on two parts of the foreshore of Vailele.
At eight they were to be joined by a second landing-party from the
_Eber_.  By nine the Olgas were to be on the crest of Letongo Mountain,
and the Ebers to be moving round the promontory by the seaward paths,
"with measures of precaution," disarming all whom they encountered.  There
was to be no firing unless fired upon.  At the appointed hour (or perhaps
later) on the morning of the 19th, this unpromising business was put in
hand, and there moved off from the _Olga_ two boats with some fifty blue-
jackets between them, and a _praam_ or punt containing ninety,--the boats
and the whole expedition under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Jaeckel,
the praam under Lieutenant Spengler.  The men had each forty rounds, one
day's provisions, and their flasks filled.

In the meanwhile, Mataafa sympathisers about Apia were on the alert.
Knappe had informed the consuls that the ships were to put to sea next
day for the protection of German property; but the Tamaseses had been
less discreet.  "To-morrow at the hour of seven," they had cried to their
adversaries, "you will know of a difficulty, and our guns shall be made
good in broken bones."  An accident had pointed expectation towards Apia.
The wife of Le Mamea washed for the German ships--a perquisite, I
suppose, for her husband's unwilling fidelity.  She sent a man with linen
on board the _Adler_, where he was surprised to see Le Mamea in person,
and to be himself ordered instantly on shore.  The news spread.  If Mamea
were brought down from Lotoanuu, others might have come at the same time.
Tamasese himself and half his army might perhaps lie concealed on board
the German ships.  And a watch was accordingly set and warriors collected
along the line of the shore.  One detachment lay in some rifle-pits by
the mouth of the Fuisa.  They were commanded by Seumanu; and with his
party, probably as the most contiguous to Apia, was the
war-correspondent, John Klein.  Of English birth, but naturalised
American, this gentleman had been for some time representing the _New
York World_ in a very effective manner, always in the front, living in
the field with the Samoans, and in all vicissitudes of weather, toiling
to and fro with his despatches.  His wisdom was perhaps not equal to his
energy.  He made himself conspicuous, going about armed to the teeth in a
boat under the stars and stripes; and on one occasion, when he supposed
himself fired upon by the Tamaseses, had the petulance to empty his
revolver in the direction of their camp.  By the light of the moon, which
was then nearly down, this party observed the _Olga's_ two boats and the
praam, which they described as "almost sinking with men," the boats
keeping well out towards the reef, the praam at the moment apparently
heading for the shore.  An extreme agitation seems to have reigned in the
rifle-pits.  What were the newcomers?  What was their errand?  Were they
Germans or Tamaseses?  Had they a mind to attack?  The praam was hailed
in Samoan and did not answer.  It was proposed to fire upon her ere she
drew near.  And at last, whether on his own suggestion or that of
Seumanu, Klein hailed her in English, and in terms of unnecessary
melodrama.  "Do not try to land here," he cried.  "If you do, your blood
will be upon your head."  Spengler, who had never the least intention to
touch at the Fuisa, put up the head of the praam to her true course and
continued to move up the lagoon with an offing of some seventy or eighty
yards.  Along all the irregularities and obstructions of the beach,
across the mouth of the Vaivasa, and through the startled village of
Matafangatele, Seumanu, Klein, and seven or eight others raced to keep
up, spreading the alarm and rousing reinforcements as they went.
Presently a man on horse-back made his appearance on the opposite beach
of Fangalii.  Klein and the natives distinctly saw him signal with a
lantern; which is the more strange, as the horseman (Captain Hufnagel,
plantation manager of Vailele) had never a lantern to signal with.  The
praam kept in.  Many men in white were seen to stand up, step overboard,
and wade to shore.  At the same time the eye of panic descried a
breastwork of "foreign stone" (brick) upon the beach.  Samoans are
prepared to-day to swear to its existence, I believe conscientiously,
although no such thing was ever made or ever intended in that place.  The
hour is doubtful.  "It was the hour when the streak of dawn is seen, the
hour known in the warfare of heathen times as the hour of the night
attack," says the Mataafa official account.  A native whom I met on the
field declared it was at cock-crow.  Captain Hufnagel, on the other hand,
is sure it was long before the day.  It was dark at least, and the moon
down.  Darkness made the Samoans bold; uncertainty as to the composition
and purpose of the landing-party made them desperate.  Fire was opened on
the Germans, one of whom was here killed.  The Germans returned it, and
effected a lodgment on the beach; and the skirmish died again to silence.
It was at this time, if not earlier, that Klein returned to Apia.

Here, then, were Spengler and the ninety men of the praam, landed on the
beach in no very enviable posture, the woods in front filled with
unnumbered enemies, but for the time successful.  Meanwhile, Jaeckel and
the boats had gone outside the reef, and were to land on the other side
of the Vailele promontory, at Sunga, by the buildings of the plantation.
It was Hufnagel's part to go and meet them.  His way led straight into
the woods and through the midst of the Samoans, who had but now ceased
firing.  He went in the saddle and at a foot's pace, feeling speed and
concealment to be equally helpless, and that if he were to fall at all,
he had best fall with dignity.  Not a shot was fired at him; no effort
made to arrest him on his errand.  As he went, he spoke and even jested
with the Samoans, and they answered in good part.  One fellow was
leaping, yelling, and tossing his axe in the air, after the way of an
excited islander.  "_Faimalosi_! go it!" said Hufnagel, and the fellow
laughed and redoubled his exertions.  As soon as the boats entered the
lagoon, fire was again opened from the woods.  The fifty blue-jackets
jumped overboard, hove down the boats to be a shield, and dragged them
towards the landing-place.  In this way, their rations, and (what was
more unfortunate) some of their miserable provision of forty rounds got
wetted; but the men came to shore and garrisoned the plantation house
without a casualty.  Meanwhile the sound of the firing from Sunga
immediately renewed the hostilities at Fangalii.  The civilians on shore
decided that Spengler must be at once guided to the house, and Haideln,
the surveyor, accepted the dangerous errand.  Like Hufnagel, he was
suffered to pass without question through the midst of these platonic
enemies.  He found Spengler some way inland on a knoll, disastrously
engaged, the woods around him filled with Samoans, who were continuously
reinforced.  In three successive charges, cheering as they ran, the blue-
jackets burst through their scattered opponents, and made good their
junction with Jaeckel.  Four men only remained upon the field, the other
wounded being helped by their comrades or dragging themselves painfully
along.

The force was now concentrated in the house and its immediate patch of
garden.  Their rear, to the seaward, was unmolested; but on three sides
they were beleaguered.  On the left, the Samoans occupied and fired from
some of the plantation offices.  In front, a long rising crest of land in
the horse-pasture commanded the house, and was lined with the assailants.
And on the right, the hedge of the same paddock afforded them a dangerous
cover.  It was in this place that a Samoan sharpshooter was knocked over
by Jaeckel with his own hand.  The fire was maintained by the Samoans in
the usual wasteful style.  The roof was made a sieve; the balls passed
clean through the house; Lieutenant Sieger, as he lay, already dying, on
Hufnagel's bed, was despatched with a fresh wound.  The Samoans showed
themselves extremely enterprising: pushed their lines forward, ventured
beyond cover, and continually threatened to envelop the garden.  Thrice,
at least, it was necessary to repel them by a sally.  The men were
brought into the house from the rear, the front doors were thrown
suddenly open, and the gallant blue-jackets issued cheering: necessary,
successful, but extremely costly sorties.  Neither could these be pushed
far.  The foes were undaunted; so soon as the sailors advanced at all
deep in the horse-pasture, the Samoans began to close in upon both
flanks; and the sally had to be recalled.  To add to the dangers of the
German situation, ammunition began to run low; and the cartridge-boxes of
the wounded and the dead had been already brought into use before, at
about eight o'clock, the _Eber_ steamed into the bay.  Her commander,
Wallis, threw some shells into Letongo, one of which killed five men
about their cooking-pot.  The Samoans began immediately to withdraw;
their movements were hastened by a sortie, and the remains of the landing-
party brought on board.  This was an unfortunate movement; it gave an
irremediable air of defeat to what might have been else claimed for a
moderate success.  The blue-jackets numbered a hundred and forty all
told; they were engaged separately and fought under the worst conditions,
in the dark and among woods; their position in the house was scarce
tenable; they lost in killed and wounded fifty-six,--forty per cent.; and
their spirit to the end was above question.  Whether we think of the poor
sailor lads, always so pleasantly behaved in times of peace, or whether
we call to mind the behaviour of the two civilians, Haideln and Hufnagel,
we can only regret that brave men should stand to be exposed upon so poor
a quarrel, or lives cast away upon an enterprise so hopeless.

News of the affair reached Apia early, and Moors, always curious of these
spectacles of war, was immediately in the saddle.  Near Matafangatele he
met a Manono chief, whom he asked if there were any German dead.  "I
think there are about thirty of them knocked over," said he.  "Have you
taken their heads?" asked Moors.  "Yes," said the chief.  "Some foolish
people did it, but I have stopped them.  We ought not to cut off their
heads when they do not cut off ours."  He was asked what had been done
with the heads.  "Two have gone to Mataafa," he replied, "and one is
buried right under where your horse is standing, in a basket wrapped in
tapa."  This was afterwards dug up, and I am told on native authority
that, besides the three heads, two ears were taken.  Moors next asked the
Manono man how he came to be going away.  "The man-of-war is throwing
shells," said he.  "When they stopped firing out of the house, we stopped
firing also; so it was as well to scatter when the shells began.  We
could have killed all the white men.  I wish they had been Tamaseses."
This is an _ex parte_ statement, and I give it for such; but the course
of the affair, and in particular the adventures of Haideln and Hufnagel,
testify to a surprising lack of animosity against the Germans.  About the
same time or but a little earlier than this conversation, the same spirit
was being displayed.  Hufnagel, with a party of labour, had gone out to
bring in the German dead, when he was surprised to be suddenly fired on
from the wood.  The boys he had with him were not negritos, but
Polynesians from the Gilbert Islands; and he suddenly remembered that
these might be easily mistaken for a detachment of Tamaseses.  Bidding
his boys conceal themselves in a thicket, this brave man walked into the
open.  So soon as he was recognised, the firing ceased, and the labourers
followed him in safety.  This is chivalrous war; but there was a side to
it less chivalrous.  As Moors drew nearer to Vailele, he began to meet
Samoans with hats, guns, and even shirts, taken from the German sailors.
With one of these who had a hat and a gun he stopped and spoke.  The hat
was handed up for him to look at; it had the late owner's name on the
inside.  "Where is he?" asked Moors.  "He is dead; I cut his head off."
"You shot him?"  "No, somebody else shot him in the hip.  When I came, he
put up his hands, and cried: 'Don't kill me; I am a Malietoa man.'  I did
not believe him, and I cut his head off...... Have you any ammunition to
fit that gun?"  "I do not know."  "What has become of the
cartridge-belt?"  "Another fellow grabbed that and the cartridges, and he
won't give them to me."  A dreadful and silly picture of barbaric war.
The words of the German sailor must be regarded as imaginary: how was the
poor lad to speak native, or the Samoan to understand German?  When Moors
came as far as Sunga, the _Eber_ was yet in the bay, the smoke of battle
still lingered among the trees, which were themselves marked with a
thousand bullet-wounds.  But the affair was over, the combatants, German
and Samoan, were all gone, and only a couple of negrito labour boys
lurked on the scene.  The village of Letongo beyond was equally silent;
part of it was wrecked by the shells of the _Eber_, and still smoked; the
inhabitants had fled.  On the beach were the native boats, perhaps five
thousand dollars' worth, deserted by the Mataafas and overlooked by the
Germans, in their common hurry to escape.  Still Moors held eastward by
the sea-paths.  It was his hope to get a view from the other side of the
promontory, towards Laulii.  In the way he found a house hidden in the
wood and among rocks, where an aged and sick woman was being tended by
her elderly daughter.  Last lingerers in that deserted 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 his 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 subscribe either to Klein's own account of the affair
or to that of his accusers.  Klein was extremely flurried; his interest
as a reporter must have tempted him at first to make the most of his
share in the exploit, the immediate peril in which he soon found himself
to stand must have at least suggested to him the idea of minimising it;
one way and another, he is not a good witness.  As for the natives, they
were no doubt cross-examined in that hall of terror, the German
consulate, where they might be trusted to lie like schoolboys, or (if the
reader prefer it) like Samoans.  By outside white testimony, it remains
established for me that Klein returned to Apia either before or
immediately after the first shots.  That he ever sought or was ever
allowed a share in the command may be denied peremptorily; but it is more
than likely that he expressed himself in an excited manner and with a
highly inflammatory effect upon his hearers.  He was, at least, severely
punished.  The Germans, enraged by his provocative behaviour and what
they thought to be his German birth, demanded him to be tried before
court-martial; he had to skulk inside the sentries of the American
consulate, to be smuggled on board a war-ship, and to be carried almost
by stealth out of the island; and what with the agitations of his mind,
and the results of a marsh fever contracted in the lines of Mataafa,
reached Honolulu a very proper object of commiseration.  Nor was Klein
the only accused: de Coetlogon was himself involved.  As the boats passed
Matautu, Knappe declares a signal was made from the British consulate.
Perhaps we should rather read "from its neighbourhood"; since, in the
general warding of the coast, the point of Matautu could scarce have been
neglected.  On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Samoans, in the
anxiety of that night of watching and fighting, crowded to the friendly
consul for advice.  Late in the night, the wounded Siteoni, lying on the
colonel's verandah, one corner of which had been blinded down that he
might sleep, heard the coming and going of bare feet and the voices of
eager consultation.  And long after, a man who had been discharged from
the colonel's employment took upon himself to swear an affidavit as to
the nature of the advice then given, and to carry the document to the
German consul.  It was an act of private revenge; it fell long out of
date in the good days of Dr. Stuebel, and had no result but to discredit
the gentleman who volunteered it.  Colonel de Coetlogon had his faults,
but they did not touch his honour; his bare word would always outweigh a
waggon-load of such denunciations; and he declares his behaviour on that
night to have been blameless.  The question was besides inquired into on
the spot by Sir John Thurston, and the colonel honourably acquitted.  But
during the weeks that were now to follow, Knappe believed the contrary;
he believed not only that Moors and others had supplied ammunition and
Klein commanded in the field, but that de Coetlogon had made the signal
of attack; that though his blue-jackets had bled and fallen against the
arms of Samoans, these were supplied, inspired, and marshalled by
Americans and English.

The legend was the more easily believed because it embraced and was
founded upon so much truth.  Germans lay dead, the German wounded groaned
in their cots; and the cartridges by which they fell had been sold by an
American and brought into the country in a British bottom.  Had the
transaction been entirely mercenary, it would already have been hard to
swallow; but it was notoriously not so.  British and Americans were
notoriously the partisans of Mataafa.  They rejoiced in the result of
Fangalii, and so far from seeking to conceal their rejoicing, paraded and
displayed it.  Calumny ran high.  Before the dead were buried, while the
wounded yet lay in pain and fever, cowardly accusations of cowardice were
levelled at the German blue-jackets.  It was said they had broken and run
before their enemies, and that they had huddled helpless like sheep in
the plantation house.  Small wonder if they had; small wonder had they
been utterly destroyed.  But the fact was heroically otherwise; and these
dastard calumnies cut to the blood.  They are not forgotten; perhaps they
will never be forgiven.

In the meanwhile, events were pressing towards a still more trenchant
opposition.  On the 20th, the three consuls met and parted without
agreement, Knappe announcing that he had lost men and must take the
matter in his own hands to avenge their death.  On the 21st the _Olga_
came before Matafangatele, ordered the delivery of all arms within the
hour, and at the end of that period, none being brought, shelled and
burned the village.  The shells fell for the most part innocuous; an
eyewitness saw children at play beside the flaming houses; not a soul was
injured; and the one noteworthy event was the mutilation of Captain
Hamilton's American flag.  In one sense an incident too small to be
chronicled, in another this was of historic interest and import.  These
rags of tattered bunting occasioned the display of a new sentiment in the
United States; and the republic of the West, hitherto so apathetic and
unwieldy, but already stung by German nonchalance, leaped to its feet for
the first time at the news of this fresh insult.  As though to make the
inefficiency of the war-ships more apparent, three shells were thrown
inland at Mangiangi; they flew high over the Mataafa camp, where the
natives could "hear them singing" as they flew, and fell behind in the
deep romantic valley of the Vaisingano.  Mataafa had been already
summoned on board the _Adler_; his life promised if he came, declared "in
danger" if he came not; and he had declined in silence the unattractive
invitation.  These fresh hostile acts showed him that the worst had come.
He was in strength, his force posted along the whole front of the
mountain behind Apia, Matautu occupied, the Siumu road lined up to the
houses of the town with warriors passionate for war.  The occasion was
unique, and there is no doubt that he designed to seize it.  The same day
of this bombardment, he sent word bidding all English and Americans wear
a black band upon their arm, so that his men should recognise and spare
them.  The hint was taken, and the band worn for a continuance of days.
To have refused would have been insane; but to consent was unhappily to
feed the resentment of the Germans by a fresh sign of intelligence with
their enemies, and to widen the breach between the races by a fresh and a
scarce pardonable mark of their division.  The same day again the Germans
repeated one of their earlier offences by firing on a boat within the
harbour.  Times were changed; they were now at war and in peril, the
rigour of military advantage might well be seized by them and pardoned by
others; but it so chanced that the bullets flew about the ears of Captain
Hand, and that commander is said to have been insatiable of apologies.
The affair, besides, had a deplorable effect on the inhabitants.  A black
band (they saw) might protect them from the Mataafas, not from
undiscriminating shots.  Panic ensued.  The war-ships were open to
receive the fugitives, and the gentlemen who had made merry over Fangalii
were seen to thrust each other from the wharves in their eagerness to
flee Apia.  I willingly drop the curtain on the shameful picture.

Meanwhile, on the German side of the bay, a more manly spirit was
exhibited in circumstances of alarming weakness.  The plantation managers
and overseers had all retreated to Matafele, only one (I understand)
remaining at his post.  The whole German colony was thus collected in one
spot, and could count and wonder at its scanty numbers.  Knappe declares
(to my surprise) that the war-ships could not spare him more than fifty
men a day.  The great extension of the German quarter, he goes on, did
not "allow a full occupation of the outer line"; hence they had shrunk
into the western end by the firm buildings, and the inhabitants were
warned to fall back on this position, in the case of an alert.  So that
he who had set forth, a day or so before, to disarm the Mataafas in the
open field, now found his resources scarce adequate to garrison the
buildings of the firm.  But Knappe seemed unteachable by fate.  It is
probable he thought he had

   "Already waded in so deep,
   Returning were as tedious as go o'er";

it is certain that he continued, on the scene of his defeat and in the
midst of his weakness, to bluster and menace like a conqueror.  Active
war, which he lacked the means of attempting, was continually threatened.
On the 22nd he sought the aid of his brother consuls to maintain the
neutral territory against Mataafa; and at the same time, as though
meditating instant deeds of prowess, refused to be bound by it himself.
This singular proposition was of course refused: Blacklock remarking that
he had no fear of the natives, if these were let alone; de Coetlogon
refusing in the circumstances to recognise any neutral territory at all.
In vain Knappe amended and baited his proposal with the offer of forty-
eight or ninety-six hours' notice, according as his objective should be
near or within the boundary of the _Eleele Sa_.  It was rejected; and he
learned that he must accept war with all its consequences--and not that
which he desired--war with the immunities of peace.

This monstrous exigence illustrates the man's frame of mind.  It has been
still further illuminated in the German white-book by printing alongside
of his despatches those of the unimpassioned Fritze.  On January 8th the
consulate was destroyed by fire.  Knappe says it was the work of
incendiaries, "without doubt"; Fritze admits that "everything seems to
show" it was an accident.  "Tamasese's people fit to bear arms," writes
Knappe, "are certainly for the moment equal to Mataafa's," though
restrained from battle by the lack of ammunition.  "As for Tamasese,"
says Fritze of the same date, "he is now but a phantom--_dient er nur als
Gespenst_.  His party, for practical purposes, is no longer large.  They
pretend ammunition to be lacking, but what they lack most is good-will.
Captain Brandeis, whose influence is now small, declares they can no
longer sustain a serious engagement, and is himself in the intention of
leaving Samoa by the _Lubeck_ of the 5th February."  And Knappe, in the
same despatch, confutes himself and confirms the testimony of his naval
colleague, by the admission that "the re-establishment of Tamasese's
government is, under present circumstances, not to be thought of."
Plainly, then, he was not so much seeking to deceive others, as he was
himself possessed; and we must regard the whole series of his acts and
despatches as the agitations of a fever.

The British steamer _Richmond_ returned to Apia, January 15th.  On the
last voyage she had brought the ammunition already so frequently referred
to; as a matter of fact, she was again bringing contraband of war.  It is
necessary to be explicit upon this, which served as spark to so great a
flame of scandal.  Knappe was justified in interfering; he would have
been worthy of all condemnation if he had neglected, in his posture of
semi-investment, a precaution so elementary; and the manner in which he
set about attempting it was conciliatory and almost timid.  He applied to
Captain Hand, and begged him to accept himself the duty of "controlling"
the discharge of the _Richmond's_ cargo.  Hand was unable to move without
his consul; and at night an armed boat from the Germans boarded,
searched, and kept possession of, the suspected ship.  The next day, as
by an after-thought, war and martial law were proclaimed for the Samoan
Islands, the introduction of contraband of war forbidden, and ships and
boats declared liable to search.  "All support of the rebels will be
punished by martial law," continued the proclamation, "no matter to what
nationality the person [_Thater_] may belong."

Hand, it has been seen, declined to act in the matter of the _Richmond_
without the concurrence of his consul; but I have found no evidence that
either Hand or Knappe communicated with de Coetlogon, with whom they were
both at daggers drawn.  First the seizure and next the proclamation seem
to have burst on the English consul from a clear sky; and he wrote on the
same day, throwing doubt on Knappe's authority to declare war.  Knappe
replied on the 20th that the Imperial German Government had been at war
as a matter of fact since December 19th, and that it was only for the
convenience of the subjects of other states that he had been empowered to
make a formal declaration.  "From that moment," he added, "martial law
prevails in Samoa."  De Coetlogon instantly retorted, declining martial
law for British subjects, and announcing a proclamation in that sense.
Instantly, again, came that astonishing document, Knappe's rejoinder,
without pause, without reflection--the pens screeching on the paper, the
messengers (you would think) running from consulate to consulate: "I have
had the honour to receive your Excellency's [_Hochwohlgeboren_] agreeable
communication of to-day.  Since, on the ground of received instructions,
martial law has been declared in Samoa, British subjects as well as
others fall under its application.  I warn you therefore to abstain from
such a proclamation as you announce in your letter.  It will be such a
piece of business as shall make yourself answerable under martial law.
Besides, your proclamation will be disregarded."  De Coetlogon of course
issued his proclamation at once, Knappe retorted with another, and night
closed on the first stage of this insane collision.  I hear the German
consul was on this day prostrated with fever; charity at least must
suppose him hardly answerable for his language.