Early on the 21st, Mr. Mansfield Gallien, a passing traveller, was seized
in his berth on board the _Richmond_, and carried, half-dressed, on board
a German war-ship.  His offence was, in the circumstances and after the
proclamation, substantial.  He had gone the day before, in the spirit of
a tourist to Mataafa's camp, had spoken with the king, and had even
recommended him an appeal to Sir George Grey.  Fritze, I gather, had been
long uneasy; this arrest on board a British ship fitted the measure.
Doubtless, as he had written long before, the consul alone was
responsible "on the legal side"; but the captain began to ask himself,
"What next?"--telegraphed direct home for instructions, "Is arrest of
foreigners on foreign vessels legal?"--and was ready, at a word from
Captain Hand, to discharge his dangerous prisoner.  The word in question
(so the story goes) was not without a kind of wit.  "I wish you would set
that man ashore," Hand is reported to have said, indicating Gallien; "I
wish you would set that man ashore, to save me the trouble."  The same
day de Coetlogon published a proclamation requesting captains to submit
to search for contraband of war.

On the 22nd the _Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser_ was suppressed by
order of Fritze.  I have hitherto refrained from mentioning the single
paper of our islands, that I might deal with it once for all.  It is of
course a tiny sheet; but I have often had occasion to wonder at the
ability of its articles, and almost always at the decency of its tone.
Officials may at times be a little roughly, and at times a little
captiously, criticised; private persons are habitually respected; and
there are many papers in England, and still more in the States, even of
leading organs in chief cities, that might envy, and would do well to
imitate, the courtesy and discretion of the _Samoa Times_.  Yet the
editor, Cusack, is only an amateur in journalism, and a carpenter by
trade.  His chief fault is one perhaps inevitable in so small a
place--that he seems a little in the leading of a clique; but his
interest in the public weal is genuine and generous.  One man's meat is
another man's poison: Anglo-Saxons and Germans have been differently
brought up. To our galled experience the paper appears moderate; to their
untried sensations it seems violent.  We think a public man fair game; we
think it a part of his duty, and I am told he finds it a part of his
reward, to be continually canvassed by the press.  For the Germans, on
the other hand, an official wears a certain sacredness; when he is called
over the coals, they are shocked, and (if the official be a German) feel
that Germany itself has been insulted.  The _Samoa Times_ had been long a
mountain of offence.  Brandeis had imported from the colonies another
printer of the name of Jones, to deprive Cusack of the government
printing.  German sailors had come ashore one day, wild with offended
patriotism, to punish the editor with stripes, and the result was
delightfully amusing.  The champions asked for the English printer.  They
were shown the wrong man, and the blows intended for Cusack had hailed on
the shoulders of his rival Jones.  On the 12th, Cusack had reprinted an
article from a San Francisco paper; the Germans had complained; and de
Coetlogon, in a moment of weakness, had fined the editor twenty pounds.
The judgment was afterwards reversed in Fiji; but even at the time it had
not satisfied the Germans.  And so now, on the third day of martial law,
the paper was suppressed.  Here we have another of these international
obscurities.  To Fritze the step seemed natural and obvious; for Anglo-
Saxons it was a hand laid upon the altar; and the month was scarce out
before the voice of Senator Frye announced to his colleagues that free
speech had been suppressed in Samoa.

Perhaps we must seek some similar explanation for Fritze's short-lived
code, published and withdrawn the next day, the 23rd.  Fritze himself was
in no humour for extremities.  He was much in the position of a
lieutenant who should perceive his captain urging the ship upon the
rocks.  It is plain he had lost all confidence in his commanding officer
"upon the legal side"; and we find him writing home with anxious candour.
He had understood that martial law implied military possession; he was in
military possession of nothing but his ship, and shrewdly suspected that
his martial jurisdiction should be confined within the same limits.  "As
a matter of fact," he writes, "we do not occupy the territory, and cannot
give foreigners the necessary protection, because Mataafa and his people
can at any moment forcibly interrupt me in my jurisdiction."  Yet in the
eyes of Anglo-Saxons the severity of his code appeared burlesque.  I give
but three of its provisions.  The crime of inciting German troops "by any
means, as, for instance, informing them of proclamations by the enemy,"
was punishable with death; that of "publishing or secretly distributing
anything, whether printed or written, bearing on the war," with prison or
deportation; and that of calling or attending a public meeting, unless
permitted, with the same.  Such were the tender mercies of Knappe,
lurking in the western end of the German quarter, where Mataafa could "at
any moment" interrupt his jurisdiction.

On the 22nd (day of the suppression of the _Times_) de Coetlogon wrote to
inquire if hostilities were intended against Great Britain, which Knappe
on the same day denied.  On the 23rd de Coetlogon sent a complaint of
hostile acts, such as the armed and forcible entry of the _Richmond_
before the declaration and arrest of Gallien.  In his reply, dated the
24th, Knappe took occasion to repeat, although now with more
self-command, his former threat against de Coetlogon.  "I am still of the
opinion," he writes, "that even foreign consuls are liable to the
application of martial law, if they are guilty of offences against the
belligerent state."  The same day (24th) de Coetlogon complained that
Fletcher, manager for Messrs. MacArthur, had been summoned by Fritze.  In
answer, Knappe had "the honour to inform your Excellency that since the
declaration of the state of war, British subjects are liable to martial
law, and Mr. Fletcher will be arrested if he does not appear."  Here,
then, was the gauntlet thrown down, and de Coetlogon was burning to
accept it.  Fletcher's offence was this.  Upon the 22nd a steamer had
come in from Wellington, specially chartered to bring German despatches
to Apia.  The rumour came along with her from New Zealand that in these
despatches Knappe would find himself rebuked, and Fletcher was accused of
having "interested himself in the spreading of this rumour."  His arrest
was actually ordered, when Hand succeeded in persuading him to surrender.
At the German court, the case was dismissed "_wegen Nichtigkeit_"; and
the acute stage of these distempers may be said to have ended.  Blessed
are the peacemakers.  Hand had perhaps averted a collision.  What is more
certain, he had offered to the world a perfectly original reading of the
part of British seaman.

Hand may have averted a collision, I say; but I am tempted to believe
otherwise.  I am tempted to believe the threat to arrest Fletcher was the
last mutter of the declining tempest and a mere sop to Knappe's
self-respect.  I am tempted to believe the rumour in question was
substantially correct, and the steamer from Wellington had really brought
the German consul grounds for hesitation, if not orders to retreat.  I
believe the unhappy man to have awakened from a dream, and to have read
ominous writing on the wall.  An enthusiastic popularity surrounded him
among the Germans.  It was natural.  Consul and colony had passed through
an hour of serious peril, and the consul had set the example of undaunted
courage.  He was entertained at dinner.  Fritze, who was known to have
secretly opposed him, was scorned and avoided.  But the clerks of the
German firm were one thing, Prince Bismarck was another; and on a cold
review of these events, it is not improbable that Knappe may have envied
the position of his naval colleague.  It is certain, at least, that he
set himself to shuffle and capitulate; and when the blow fell, he was
able to reply that the martial law business had in the meanwhile come
right; that the English and American consular courts stood open for
ordinary cases and that in different conversations with Captain Hand,
"who has always maintained friendly intercourse with the German
authorities," it had been repeatedly explained that only the supply of
weapons and ammunition, or similar aid and support, was to come under
German martial law.  Was it weapons or ammunition that Fletcher had
supplied?  But it is unfair to criticise these wrigglings of an
unfortunate in a false position.

In a despatch of the 23rd, which has not been printed, Knappe had told
his story: how he had declared war, subjected foreigners to martial law,
and been received with a counter-proclamation by the English consul; and
how (in an interview with Mataafa chiefs at the plantation house of
Motuotua, of which I cannot find the date) he had demanded the cession of
arms and of ringleaders for punishment, and proposed to assume the
government of the islands.  On February 12th he received Bismarck's
answer: "You had no right to take foreigners from the jurisdiction of
their consuls.  The protest of your English colleague is grounded.  In
disputes which may arise from this cause you will find yourself in the
wrong.  The demand formulated by you, as to the assumption of the
government of Samoa by Germany, lay outside of your instructions and of
our design.  Take it immediately back.  If your telegram is here rightly
understood, I cannot call your conduct good."  It must be a hard heart
that does not sympathise with Knappe in the hour when he received this
document.  Yet it may be said that his troubles were still in the
beginning.  Men had contended against him, and he had not prevailed; he
was now to be at war with the elements, and find his name identified with
an immense disaster.

One more date, however, must be given first.  It was on February 27th
that Fritze formally announced martial law to be suspended, and himself
to have relinquished the control of the police.




CHAPTER X--THE HURRICANE


_March_ 1889

The so-called harbour of Apia is formed in part by a recess of the coast-
line at Matautu, in part by the slim peninsula of Mulinuu, and in part by
the fresh waters of the Mulivai and Vaisingano.  The barrier reef--that
singular breakwater that makes so much of the circuit of Pacific
islands--is carried far to sea at Matautu and Mulinuu; inside of these
two horns it runs sharply landward, and between them it is burst or
dissolved by the fresh water.  The shape of the enclosed anchorage may be
compared to a high-shouldered jar or bottle with a funnel mouth.  Its
sides are almost everywhere of coral; for the reef not only bounds it to
seaward and forms the neck and mouth, but skirting about the beach, it
forms the bottom also.  As in the bottle of commerce, the bottom is re-
entrant, and the shore-reef runs prominently forth into the basin and
makes a dangerous cape opposite the fairway of the entrance.  Danger is,
therefore, on all hands.  The entrance gapes three cables wide at the
narrowest, and the formidable surf of the Pacific thunders both outside
and in.  There are days when speech is difficult in the chambers of shore-
side houses; days when no boat can land, and when men are broken by
stroke of sea against the wharves.  As I write these words, three miles
in the mountains, and with the land-breeze still blowing from the island
summit, the sound of that vexed harbour hums in my ears.  Such a creek in
my native coast of Scotland would scarce be dignified with the mark of an
anchor in the chart; but in the favoured climate of Samoa, and with the
mechanical regularity of the winds in the Pacific, it forms, for ten or
eleven months out of the twelve, a safe if hardly a commodious port.  The
ill-found island traders ride there with their insufficient moorings the
year through, and discharge, and are loaded, without apprehension.  Of
danger, when it comes, the glass gives timely warning; and that any
modern war-ship, furnished with the power of steam, should have been lost
in Apia, belongs not so much to nautical as to political history.

The weather throughout all that winter (the turbulent summer of the
islands) was unusually fine, and the circumstance had been commented on
as providential, when so many Samoans were lying on their weapons in the
bush.  By February it began to break in occasional gales.  On February
10th a German brigantine was driven ashore.  On the 14th the same
misfortune befell an American brigantine and a schooner.  On both these
days, and again on the 7th March, the men-of-war must steam to their
anchors.  And it was in this last month, the most dangerous of the
twelve, that man's animosities crowded that indentation of the reef with
costly, populous, and vulnerable ships.

I have shown, perhaps already at too great a length, how violently
passion ran upon the spot; how high this series of blunders and mishaps
had heated the resentment of the Germans against all other nationalities
and of all other nationalities against the Germans.  But there was one
country beyond the borders of Samoa where the question had aroused a
scarce less angry sentiment.  The breach of the Washington Congress, the
evidence of Sewall before a sub-committee on foreign relations, the
proposal to try Klein before a military court, and the rags of Captain
Hamilton's flag, had combined to stir the people of the States to an
unwonted fervour.  Germany was for the time the abhorred of nations.
Germans in America publicly disowned the country of their birth.  In
Honolulu, so near the scene of action, German and American young men fell
to blows in the street.  In the same city, from no traceable source, and
upon no possible authority, there arose a rumour of tragic news to arrive
by the next occasion, that the _Nipsic_ had opened fire on the _Adler_,
and the _Adler_ had sunk her on the first reply.  Punctually on the day
appointed, the news came; and the two nations, instead of being plunged
into war, could only mingle tears over the loss of heroes.

By the second week in March three American ships were in Apia bay,--the
_Nipsic_, the _Vandalia_, and the _Trenton_, carrying the flag of Rear-
Admiral Kimberley; three German,--the _Adler_, the _Eber_, and the
_Olga_; and one British,--the _Calliope_, Captain Kane.  Six merchant-
men, ranging from twenty-five up to five hundred tons, and a number of
small craft, further encumbered the anchorage.  Its capacity is estimated
by Captain Kane at four large ships; and the latest arrivals, the
_Vandalia_ and _Trenton_, were in consequence excluded, and lay without
in the passage.  Of the seven war-ships, the seaworthiness of two was
questionable: the _Trenton's_, from an original defect in her
construction, often reported, never remedied--her hawse-pipes leading in
on the berth-deck; the _Eber's_, from an injury to her screw in the blow
of February 14th.  In this overcrowding of ships in an open entry of the
reef, even the eye of the landsman could spy danger; and
Captain-Lieutenant Wallis of the _Eber_ openly blamed and lamented, not
many hours before the catastrophe, their helpless posture.  Temper once
more triumphed.  The army of Mataafa still hung imminent behind the town;
the German quarter was still daily garrisoned with fifty sailors from the
squadron; what was yet more influential, Germany and the States, at least
in Apia bay, were on the brink of war, viewed each other with looks of
hatred, and scarce observed the letter of civility.  On the day of the
admiral's arrival, Knappe failed to call on him, and on the morrow called
on him while he was on shore.  The slight was remarked and resented, and
the two squadrons clung more obstinately to their dangerous station.

On the 15th the barometer fell to 29.11 in. by 2 P.M.  This was the
moment when every sail in port should have escaped.  Kimberley, who flew
the only broad pennant, should certainly have led the way: he clung,
instead, to his moorings, and the Germans doggedly followed his example:
semi-belligerents, daring each other and the violence of heaven.  Kane,
less immediately involved, was led in error by the report of residents
and a fallacious rise in the glass; he stayed with the others, a
misjudgment that was like to cost him dear.  All were moored, as is the
custom in Apia, with two anchors practically east and west, clear hawse
to the north, and a kedge astern.  Topmasts were struck, and the ships
made snug.  The night closed black, with sheets of rain.  By midnight it
blew a gale; and by the morning watch, a tempest.  Through what remained
of darkness, the captains impatiently expected day, doubtful if they were
dragging, steaming gingerly to their moorings, and afraid to steam too
much.

Day came about six, and presented to those on shore a seizing and
terrific spectacle.  In the pressure of the squalls the bay was obscured
as if by midnight, but between them a great part of it was clearly if
darkly visible amid driving mist and rain.  The wind blew into the
harbour mouth.  Naval authorities describe it as of hurricane force.  It
had, however, few or none of the effects on shore suggested by that
ominous word, and was successfully withstood by trees and buildings.  The
agitation of the sea, on the other hand, surpassed experience and
description.  Seas that might have awakened surprise and terror in the
midst of the Atlantic ranged bodily and (it seemed to observers) almost
without diminution into the belly of that flask-shaped harbour; and the
war-ships were alternately buried from view in the trough, or seen
standing on end against the breast of billows.

The _Trenton_ at daylight still maintained her position in the neck of
the bottle.  But five of the remaining ships tossed, already close to the
bottom, in a perilous and helpless crowd; threatening ruin to each other
as they tossed; threatened with a common and imminent destruction on the
reefs.  Three had been already in collision: the _Olga_ was injured in
the quarter, the _Adler_ had lost her bowsprit; the _Nipsic_ had lost her
smoke-stack, and was making steam with difficulty, maintaining her fire
with barrels of pork, and the smoke and sparks pouring along the level of
the deck.  For the seventh war-ship the day had come too late; the _Eber_
had finished her last cruise; she was to be seen no more save by the eyes
of divers.  A coral reef is not only an instrument of destruction, but a
place of sepulchre; the submarine cliff is profoundly undercut, and
presents the mouth of a huge antre in which the bodies of men and the
hulls of ships are alike hurled down and buried.  The _Eber_ had dragged
anchors with the rest; her injured screw disabled her from steaming
vigorously up; and a little before day she had struck the front of the
coral, come off, struck again, and gone down stern foremost, oversetting
as she went, into the gaping hollow of the reef.  Of her whole complement
of nearly eighty, four souls were cast alive on the beach; and the bodies
of the remainder were, by the voluminous outpouring of the flooded
streams, scoured at last from the harbour, and strewed naked on the
seaboard of the island.

Five ships were immediately menaced with the same destruction.  The
_Eber_ vanished--the four poor survivors on shore--read a dreadful
commentary on their danger; which was swelled out of all proportion by
the violence of their own movements as they leaped and fell among the
billows.  By seven the _Nipsic_ was so fortunate as to avoid the reef and
beach upon a space of sand; where she was immediately deserted by her
crew, with the assistance of Samoans, not without loss of life.  By about
eight it was the turn of the _Adler_.  She was close down upon the reef;
doomed herself, it might yet be possible to save a portion of her crew;
and for this end Captain Fritze placed his reliance on the very hugeness
of the seas that threatened him.  The moment was watched for with the
anxiety of despair, but the coolness of disciplined courage.  As she rose
on the fatal wave, her moorings were simultaneously slipped; she broached
to in rising; and the sea heaved her bodily upward and cast her down with
a concussion on the summit of the reef, where she lay on her beam-ends,
her back broken, buried in breaching seas, but safe.  Conceive a table:
the _Eber_ in the darkness had been smashed against the rim and flung
below; the _Adler_, cast free in the nick of opportunity, had been thrown
upon the top.  Many were injured in the concussion; many tossed into the
water; twenty perished.  The survivors crept again on board their ship,
as it now lay, and as it still remains, keel to the waves, a monument of
the sea's potency.  In still weather, under a cloudless sky, in those
seasons when that ill-named ocean, the Pacific, suffers its vexed shores
to rest, she lies high and dry, the spray scarce touching her--the hugest
structure of man's hands within a circuit of a thousand miles--tossed up
there like a schoolboy's cap upon a shelf; broken like an egg; a thing to
dream of.

The unfriendly consuls of Germany and Britain were both that morning in
Matautu, and both displayed their nobler qualities.  De Coetlogon, the
grim old soldier, collected his family and kneeled with them in an agony
of prayer for those exposed.  Knappe, more fortunate in that he was
called to a more active service, must, upon the striking of the _Adler_,
pass to his own consulate.  From this he was divided by the Vaisingano,
now a raging torrent, impetuously charioting the trunks of trees.  A
kelpie might have dreaded to attempt the passage; we may conceive this
brave but unfortunate and now ruined man to have found a natural joy in
the exposure of his life; and twice that day, coming and going, he braved
the fury of the river.  It was possible, in spite of the darkness of the
hurricane and the continual breaching of the seas, to remark human
movements on the _Adler_; and by the help of Samoans, always nobly
forward in the work, whether for friend or enemy, Knappe sought long to
get a line conveyed from shore, and was for long defeated.  The shore
guard of fifty men stood to their arms the while upon the beach, useless
themselves, and a great deterrent of Samoan usefulness.  It was perhaps
impossible that this mistake should be avoided.  What more natural, to
the mind of a European, than that the Mataafas should fall upon the
Germans in this hour of their disadvantage?  But they had no other
thought than to assist; and those who now rallied beside Knappe braved
(as they supposed) in doing so a double danger, from the fury of the sea
and the weapons of their enemies.  About nine, a quarter-master swam
ashore, and reported all the officers and some sixty men alive but in
pitiable case; some with broken limbs, others insensible from the
drenching of the breakers.  Later in the forenoon, certain valorous
Samoans succeeded in reaching the wreck and returning with a line; but it
was speedily broken; and all subsequent attempts proved unavailing, the
strongest adventurers being cast back again by the bursting seas.
Thenceforth, all through that day and night, the deafened survivors must
continue to endure their martyrdom; and one officer died, it was supposed
from agony of mind, in his inverted cabin.

Three ships still hung on the next margin of destruction, steaming
desperately to their moorings, dashed helplessly together.  The
_Calliope_ was the nearest in; she had the _Vandalia_ close on her port
side and a little ahead, the _Olga_ close a-starboard, the reef under her
heel; and steaming and veering on her cables, the unhappy ship fenced
with her three dangers.  About a quarter to nine she carried away the
_Vandalia's_ quarter gallery with her jib-boom; a moment later, the
_Olga_ had near rammed her from the other side.  By nine the _Vandalia_
dropped down on her too fast to be avoided, and clapped her stern under
the bowsprit of the English ship, the fastenings of which were burst
asunder as she rose.  To avoid cutting her down, it was necessary for the
_Calliope_ to stop and even to reverse her engines; and her rudder was at
the moment--or it seemed so to the eyes of those on board--within ten
feet of the reef.  "Between the _Vandalia_ and the reef" (writes Kane, in
his excellent report) "it was destruction."  To repeat Fritze's manoeuvre
with the _Adler_ was impossible; the _Calliope_ was too heavy.  The one
possibility of escape was to go out.  If the engines should stand, if
they should have power to drive the ship against wind and sea, if she
should answer the helm, if the wheel, rudder, and gear should hold out,
and if they were favoured with a clear blink of weather in which to see
and avoid the outer reef--there, and there only, were safety.  Upon this
catalogue of "ifs" Kane staked his all.  He signalled to the engineer for
every pound of steam--and at that moment (I am told) much of the
machinery was already red-hot.  The ship was sheered well to starboard of
the _Vandalia_, the last remaining cable slipped.  For a time--and there
was no onlooker so cold-blooded as to offer a guess at its duration--the
_Calliope_ lay stationary; then gradually drew ahead.  The highest speed
claimed for her that day is of one sea-mile an hour.  The question of
times and seasons, throughout all this roaring business, is obscured by a
dozen contradictions; I have but chosen what appeared to be the most
consistent; but if I am to pay any attention to the time named by Admiral
Kimberley, the _Calliope_, in this first stage of her escape, must have
taken more than two hours to cover less than four cables.  As she thus
crept seaward, she buried bow and stem alternately under the billows.

In the fairway of the entrance the flagship _Trenton_ still held on.  Her
rudder was broken, her wheel carried away; within she was flooded with
water from the peccant hawse-pipes; she had just made the signal "fires
extinguished," and lay helpless, awaiting the inevitable end.  Between
this melancholy hulk and the external reef Kane must find a path.
Steering within fifty yards of the reef (for which she was actually
headed) and her foreyard passing on the other hand over the _Trenton's_
quarter as she rolled, the _Calliope_ sheered between the rival dangers,
came to the wind triumphantly, and was once more pointed for the sea and
safety.  Not often in naval history was there a moment of more sickening
peril, and it was dignified by one of those incidents that reconcile the
chronicler with his otherwise abhorrent task.  From the doomed flagship
the Americans hailed the success of the English with a cheer.  It was led
by the old admiral in person, rang out over the storm with holiday
vigour, and was answered by the Calliopes with an emotion easily
conceived.  This ship of their kinsfolk was almost the last external
object seen from the _Calliope_ for hours; immediately after, the mists
closed about her till the morrow.  She was safe at sea again--_una de
multis_--with a damaged foreyard, and a loss of all the ornamental work
about her bow and stern, three anchors, one kedge-anchor, fourteen
lengths of chain, four boats, the jib-boom, bobstay, and bands and
fastenings of the bowsprit.

Shortly after Kane had slipped his cable, Captain Schoonmaker, despairing
of the _Vandalia_, succeeded in passing astern of the _Olga_, in the hope
to beach his ship beside the _Nipsic_.  At a quarter to eleven her stern
took the reef, her hand swung to starboard, and she began to fill and
settle.  Many lives of brave men were sacrificed in the attempt to get a
line ashore; the captain, exhausted by his exertions, was swept from deck
by a sea; and the rail being soon awash, the survivors took refuge in the
tops.

Out of thirteen that had lain there the day before, there were now but
two ships afloat in Apia harbour, and one of these was doomed to be the
bane of the other.  About 3 P.M. the _Trenton_ parted one cable, and
shortly after a second.  It was sought to keep her head to wind with
storm-sails and by the ingenious expedient of filling the rigging with
seamen; but in the fury of the gale, and in that sea, perturbed alike by
the gigantic billows and the volleying discharges of the rivers, the
rudderless ship drove down stern foremost into the inner basin; ranging,
plunging, and striking like a frightened horse; drifting on destruction
for herself and bringing it to others.  Twice the _Olga_ (still well
under command) avoided her impact by the skilful use of helm and engines.
But about four the vigilance of the Germans was deceived, and the ships
collided; the _Olga_ cutting into the _Trenton's_ quarters, first from
one side, then from the other, and losing at the same time two of her own
cables.  Captain von Ehrhardt instantly slipped the remainder of his
moorings, and setting fore and aft canvas, and going full steam ahead,
succeeded in beaching his ship in Matautu; whither Knappe, recalled by
this new disaster, had returned.  The berth was perhaps the best in the
harbour, and von Ehrhardt signalled that ship and crew were in security.

The _Trenton_, guided apparently by an under-tow or eddy from the
discharge of the Vaisingano, followed in the course of the _Nipsic_ and
_Vandalia_, and skirted south-eastward along the front of the shore reef,
which her keel was at times almost touching.  Hitherto she had brought
disaster to her foes; now she was bringing it to friends.  She had
already proved the ruin of the _Olga_, the one ship that had rid out the
hurricane in safety; now she beheld across her course the submerged
_Vandalia_, the tops filled with exhausted seamen.  Happily the approach
of the _Trenton_ was gradual, and the time employed to advantage.  Rockets
and lines were thrown into the tops of the friendly wreck; the approach
of danger was transformed into a means of safety; and before the ships
struck, the men from the _Vandalia's_ main and mizzen masts, which went
immediately by the board in the collision, were already mustered on the
_Trenton's_ decks.  Those from the foremast were next rescued; and the
flagship settled gradually into a position alongside her neighbour,
against which she beat all night with violence.  Out of the crew of the
_Vandalia_ forty-three had perished; of the four hundred and fifty on
board the _Trenton_, only one.

The night of the 16th was still notable for a howling tempest and
extraordinary floods of rain.  It was feared the wreck could scarce
continue to endure the breaching of the seas; among the Germans, the fate
of those on board the _Adler_ awoke keen anxiety; and Knappe, on the
beach of Matautu, and the other officers of his consulate on that of
Matafele, watched all night.  The morning of the 17th displayed a scene
of devastation rarely equalled: the _Adler_ high and dry, the _Olga_ and
_Nipsic_ beached, the _Trenton_ partly piled on the _Vandalia_ and
herself sunk to the gun-deck; no sail afloat; and the beach heaped high
with the _debris_ of ships and the wreck of mountain forests.  Already,
before the day, Seumanu, the chief of Apia, had gallantly ventured forth
by boat through the subsiding fury of the seas, and had succeeded in
communicating with the admiral; already, or as soon after as the dawn
permitted, rescue lines were rigged, and the survivors were with
difficulty and danger begun to be brought to shore.  And soon the
cheerful spirit of the admiral added a new feature to the scene.
Surrounded as he was by the crews of two wrecked ships, he paraded the
band of the _Trenton_, and the bay was suddenly enlivened with the
strains of "Hail Columbia."

During a great part of the day the work of rescue was continued, with
many instances of courage and devotion; and for a long time succeeding,
the almost inexhaustible harvest of the beach was to be reaped.  In the
first employment, the Samoans earned the gratitude of friend and foe; in
the second, they surprised all by an unexpected virtue, that of honesty.
The greatness of the disaster, and the magnitude of the treasure now
rolling at their feet, may perhaps have roused in their bosoms an emotion
too serious for the rule of greed, or perhaps that greed was for the
moment satiated.  Sails that twelve strong Samoans could scarce drag from
the water, great guns (one of which was rolled by the sea on the body of
a man, the only native slain in all the hurricane), an infinite wealth of
rope and wood, of tools and weapons, tossed upon the beach.  Yet I have
never heard that much was stolen; and beyond question, much was very
honestly returned.  On both accounts, for the saving of life and the
restoration of property, the government of the United States showed
themselves generous in reward.  A fine boat was fitly presented to
Seumanu; and rings, watches, and money were lavished on all who had
assisted.  The Germans also gave money at the rate (as I receive the
tale) of three dollars a head for every German saved.  The obligation was
in this instance incommensurably deep, those with whom they were at war
had saved the German blue-jackets at the venture of their lives; Knappe
was, besides, far from ungenerous; and I can only explain the niggard
figure by supposing it was paid from his own pocket.  In one case, at
least, it was refused.  "I have saved three Germans," said the rescuer;
"I will make you a present of the three."

The crews of the American and German squadrons were now cast, still in a
bellicose temper, together on the beach.  The discipline of the Americans
was notoriously loose; the crew of the _Nipsic_ had earned a character
for lawlessness in other ports; and recourse was had to stringent and
indeed extraordinary measures.  The town was divided in two camps, to
which the different nationalities were confined.  Kimberley had his
quarter sentinelled and patrolled.  Any seaman disregarding a challenge
was to be shot dead; any tavern-keeper who sold spirits to an American
sailor was to have his tavern broken and his stock destroyed.  Many of
the publicans were German; and Knappe, having narrated these rigorous but
necessary dispositions, wonders (grinning to himself over his despatch)
how far these Americans will go in their assumption of jurisdiction over
Germans.  Such as they were, the measures were successful.  The
incongruous mass of castaways was kept in peace, and at last shipped in
peace out of the islands.

Kane returned to Apia on the 19th, to find the _Calliope_ the sole
survivor of thirteen sail.  He thanked his men, and in particular the
engineers, in a speech of unusual feeling and beauty, of which one who
was present remarked to another, as they left the ship, "This has been a
means of grace."  Nor did he forget to thank and compliment the admiral;
and I cannot deny myself the pleasure of transcribing from Kimberley's
reply some generous and engaging words.  "My dear captain," he wrote,
"your kind note received.  You went out splendidly, and we all felt from
our hearts for you, and our cheers came with sincerity and admiration for
the able manner in which you handled your ship.  We could not have been
gladder if it had been one of our ships, for in a time like that I can
truly say with old Admiral Josiah Latnall, 'that blood is thicker than
water.'"  One more trait will serve to build up the image of this typical
sea-officer.  A tiny schooner, the _Equator_, Captain Edwin Reid, dear to
myself from the memories of a six months' cruise, lived out upon the high
seas the fury of that tempest which had piled with wrecks the harbour of
Apia, found a refuge in Pango-Pango, and arrived at last in the desolated
port with a welcome and lucrative cargo of pigs.  The admiral was glad to
have the pigs; but what most delighted the man's noble and childish soul,
was to see once more afloat the colours of his country.

Thus, in what seemed the very article of war, and within the duration of
a single day, the sword-arm of each of the two angry Powers was broken;
their formidable ships reduced to junk; their disciplined hundreds to a
horde of castaways, fed with difficulty, and the fear of whose misconduct
marred the sleep of their commanders.  Both paused aghast; both had time
to recognise that not the whole Samoan Archipelago was worth the loss in
men and costly ships already suffered.  The so-called hurricane of March
16th made thus a marking epoch in world-history; directly, and at once,
it brought about the congress and treaty of Berlin; indirectly, and by a
process still continuing, it founded the modern navy of the States.
Coming years and other historians will declare the influence of that.




CHAPTER XI--LAUPEPA AND MATAAFA


1889-1892

With the hurricane, the broken war-ships, and the stranded sailors, I am
at an end of violence, and my tale flows henceforth among carpet
incidents.  The blue-jackets on Apia beach were still jealously held
apart by sentries, when the powers at home were already seeking a
peaceable solution.  It was agreed, so far as might be, to obliterate two
years of blundering; and to resume in 1889, and at Berlin, those
negotiations which had been so unhappily broken off at Washington in
1887.  The example thus offered by Germany is rare in history; in the
career of Prince Bismarck, so far as I am instructed, it should stand
unique.  On a review of these two years of blundering, bullying, and
failure in a little isle of the Pacific, he seems magnanimously to have
owned his policy was in the wrong.  He left Fangalii unexpiated; suffered
that house of cards, the Tamasese government, to fall by its own frailty
and without remark or lamentation; left the Samoan question openly and
fairly to the conference: and in the meanwhile, to allay the local heats
engendered by Becker and Knappe, he sent to Apia that invaluable public
servant, Dr. Stuebel.  I should be a dishonest man if I did not bear
testimony to the loyalty since shown by Germans in Samoa.  Their position
was painful; they had talked big in the old days, now they had to sing
small.  Even Stuebel returned to the islands under the prejudice of an
unfortunate record.  To the minds of the Samoans his name represented the
beginning of their sorrows; and in his first term of office he had
unquestionably driven hard.  The greater his merit in the surprising
success of the second.  So long as he stayed, the current of affairs
moved smoothly; he left behind him on his departure all men at peace; and
whether by fortune, or for the want of that wise hand of guidance, he was
scarce gone before the clouds began to gather once more on our horizon.

Before the first convention, Germany and the States hauled down their
flags.  It was so done again before the second; and Germany, by a still
more emphatic step of retrogression, returned the exile Laupepa to his
native shores.  For two years the unfortunate man had trembled and
suffered in the Cameroons, in Germany, in the rainy Marshalls.  When he
left (September 1887) Tamasese was king, served by five iron war-ships;
his right to rule (like a dogma of the Church) was placed outside
dispute; the Germans were still, as they were called at that last tearful
interview in the house by the river, "the invincible strangers"; the
thought of resistance, far less the hope of success, had not yet dawned
on the Samoan mind.  He returned (November 1889) to a changed world.  The
Tupua party was reduced to sue for peace, Brandeis was withdrawn,
Tamasese was dying obscurely of a broken heart; the German flag no longer
waved over the capital; and over all the islands one figure stood
supreme.  During Laupepa's absence this man had succeeded him in all his
honours and titles, in tenfold more than all his power and popularity.  He
was the idol of the whole nation but the rump of the Tamaseses, and of
these he was already the secret admiration.  In his position there was
but one weak point,--that he had even been tacitly excluded by the
Germans.  Becker, indeed, once coquetted with the thought of patronising
him; but the project had no sequel, and it stands alone.  In every other
juncture of history the German attitude has been the same.  Choose whom
you will to be king; when he has failed, choose whom you please to
succeed him; when the second fails also, replace the first: upon the one
condition, that Mataafa be excluded.  "_Pourvu qu'il sache signer_!"--an
official is said to have thus summed up the qualifications necessary in a
Samoan king.  And it was perhaps feared that Mataafa could do no more and
might not always do so much.  But this original diffidence was heightened
by late events to something verging upon animosity.  Fangalii was
unavenged: the arms of Mataafa were

   _Nondum inexpiatis uncta cruoribus_,
   Still soiled with the unexpiated blood

of German sailors; and though the chief was not present in the field, nor
could have heard of the affair till it was over, he had reaped from it
credit with his countrymen and dislike from the Germans.

I may not say that trouble was hoped.  I must say--if it were not feared,
the practice of diplomacy must teach a very hopeful view of human nature.
Mataafa and Laupepa, by the sudden repatriation of the last, found
themselves face to face in conditions of exasperating rivalry.  The one
returned from the dead of exile to find himself replaced and excelled.
The other, at the end of a long, anxious, and successful struggle, beheld
his only possible competitor resuscitated from the grave.  The qualities
of both, in this difficult moment, shone out nobly.  I feel I seem always
less than partial to the lovable Laupepa; his virtues are perhaps not
those which chiefly please me, and are certainly not royal; but he found
on his return an opportunity to display the admirable sweetness of his
nature.  The two entered into a competition of generosity, for which I
can recall no parallel in history, each waiving the throne for himself,
each pressing it upon his rival; and they embraced at last a compromise
the terms of which seem to have been always obscure and are now disputed.
Laupepa at least resumed his style of King of Samoa; Mataafa retained
much of the conduct of affairs, and continued to receive much of the
attendance and respect befitting royalty; and the two Malietoas, with so
many causes of disunion, dwelt and met together in the same town like
kinsmen.  It was so, that I first saw them; so, in a house set about with
sentries--for there was still a haunting fear of Germany,--that I heard
them relate their various experience in the past; heard Laupepa tell with
touching candour of the sorrows of his exile, and Mataafa with mirthful
simplicity of his resources and anxieties in the war.  The relation was
perhaps too beautiful to last; it was perhaps impossible but the titular
king should grow at last uneasily conscious of the _maire de palais_ at
his side, or the king-maker be at last offended by some shadow of
distrust or assumption in his creature.  I repeat the words king-maker
and creature; it is so that Mataafa himself conceives of their relation:
surely not without justice; for, had he not contended and prevailed, and
been helped by the folly of consuls and the fury of the storm, Laupepa
must have died in exile.

Foreigners in these islands know little of the course of native intrigue.
Partly the Samoans cannot explain, partly they will not tell.  Ask how
much a master can follow of the puerile politics in any school; so much
and no more we may understand of the events which surround and menace us
with their results.  The missions may perhaps have been to blame.
Missionaries are perhaps apt to meddle overmuch outside their discipline;
it is a fault which should be judged with mercy; the problem is sometimes
so insidiously presented that even a moderate and able man is betrayed
beyond his own intention; and the missionary in such a land as Samoa is
something else besides a minister of mere religion; he represents
civilisation, he is condemned to be an organ of reform, he could scarce
evade (even if he desired) a certain influence in political affairs.  And
it is believed, besides, by those who fancy they know, that the effective
force of division between Mataafa and Laupepa came from the natives
rather than from whites.  Before the end of 1890, at least, it began to
be rumoured that there was dispeace between the two Malietoas; and
doubtless this had an unsettling influence throughout the islands.  But
there was another ingredient of anxiety.  The Berlin convention had long
closed its sittings; the text of the Act had been long in our hands;
commissioners were announced to right the wrongs of the land question,
and two high officials, a chief justice and a president, to guide policy
and administer law in Samoa.  Their coming was expected with an
impatience, with a childishness of trust, that can hardly be exaggerated.
Months passed, these angel-deliverers still delayed to arrive, and the
impatience of the natives became changed to an ominous irritation.  They
have had much experience of being deceived, and they began to think they
were deceived again.  A sudden crop of superstitious stories buzzed about
the islands.  Rivers had come down red; unknown fishes had been taken on
the reef and found to be marked with menacing runes; a headless lizard
crawled among chiefs in council; the gods of Upolu and Savaii made war by
night, they swam the straits to battle, and, defaced by dreadful wounds,
they had besieged the house of a medical missionary.  Readers will
remember the portents in mediaeval chronicles, or those in _Julius Caesar_
when

   "Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds
   In ranks and squadrons."

And doubtless such fabrications are, in simple societies, a natural
expression of discontent; and those who forge, and even those who spread
them, work towards a conscious purpose.

Early in January 1891 this period of expectancy was brought to an end by
the arrival of Conrad Cedarcrantz, chief justice of Samoa.  The event was
hailed with acclamation, and there was much about the new official to
increase the hopes already entertained.  He was seen to be a man of
culture and ability; in public, of an excellent presence--in private, of
a most engaging cordiality.  But there was one point, I scarce know
whether to say of his character or policy, which immediately and
disastrously affected public feeling in the islands.  He had an aversion,
part judicial, part perhaps constitutional, to haste; and he announced
that, until he should have well satisfied his own mind, he should do
nothing; that he would rather delay all than do aught amiss.  It was
impossible to hear this without academical approval; impossible to hear
it without practical alarm.  The natives desired to see activity; they
desired to see many fair speeches taken on a body of deeds and works of
benefit.  Fired by the event of the war, filled with impossible hopes,
they might have welcomed in that hour a ruler of the stamp of Brandeis,
breathing hurry, perhaps dealing blows.  And the chief justice,
unconscious of the fleeting opportunity, ripened his opinions
deliberately in Mulinuu; and had been already the better part of half a
year in the islands before he went through the form of opening his court.
The curtain had risen; there was no play.  A reaction, a chill sense of
disappointment, passed about the island; and intrigue, one moment
suspended, was resumed.

In the Berlin Act, the three Powers recognise, on the threshold, "the
independence of the Samoan government, and the free right of the natives
to elect their chief or king and choose their form of government."  True,
the text continues that, "in view of the difficulties that surround an
election in the present disordered condition of the government," Malietoa
Laupepa shall be recognised as king, "unless the three Powers shall by
common accord otherwise declare."  But perhaps few natives have followed
it so far, and even those who have, were possibly all cast abroad again
by the next clause: "and his successor shall be duly elected according to
the laws and customs of Samoa."  The right to elect, freely given in one
sentence, was suspended in the next, and a line or so further on appeared
to be reconveyed by a side-wind.  The reason offered for suspension was
ludicrously false; in May 1889, when Sir Edward Malet moved the matter in
the conference, the election of Mataafa was not only certain to have been
peaceful, it could not have been opposed; and behind the English puppet
it was easy to suspect the hand of Germany.  No one is more swift to
smell trickery than a Samoan; and the thought, that, under the long,
bland, benevolent sentences of the Berlin Act, some trickery lay lurking,
filled him with the breath of opposition.  Laupepa seems never to have
been a popular king.  Mataafa, on the other hand, holds an unrivalled
position in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen; he was the hero of the
war, he had lain with them in the bush, he had borne the heat and burthen
of the day; they began to claim that he should enjoy more largely the
fruits of victory; his exclusion was believed to be a stroke of German
vengeance, his elevation to the kingship was looked for as the fitting
crown and copestone of the Samoan triumph; and but a little after the
coming of the chief justice, an ominous cry for Mataafa began to arise in
the islands.  It is difficult to see what that official could have done
but what he did.  He was loyal, as in duty bound, to the treaty and to
Laupepa; and when the orators of the important and unruly islet of Manono
demanded to his face a change of kings, he had no choice but to refuse
them, and (his reproof being unheeded) to suspend the meeting.  Whether
by any neglect of his own or the mere force of circumstance, he failed,
however, to secure the sympathy, failed even to gain the confidence, of
Mataafa.  The latter is not without a sense of his own abilities or of
the great service he has rendered to his native land.  He felt himself
neglected; at the very moment when the cry for his elevation rang
throughout the group he thought himself made little of on Mulinuu; and he
began to weary of his part.  In this humour, he was exposed to a
temptation which I must try to explain, as best I may be able, to
Europeans.