a _fono_ (or council) of both sides. And it seemed at
least possible that the Royal army might proceed no further, and the
unstable alliance be dissolved.

On Sunday, the 16th, Her British Majesty's ship _Katoomba_, Captain
Bickford, C.M.G., arrived in Apia with fresh orders. Had she but come
ten days earlier the whole of this miserable business would have been
prevented, for the three Powers were determined to maintain Malietoa
Laupepa by arms, and had declared finally against Mataafa. Right or
wrong, it was at least a decision, and therefore welcome. It may not be
best--it was something. No honest friend to Samoa can pretend anything
but relief that the three Powers should at last break their vacillating
silence. It is of a piece with their whole policy in the islands that
they should have hung in stays for upwards of two years--of a piece with
their almost uniform ill-fortune that, eight days before their purpose
was declared, war should have marked the country with burned houses and
severed heads.

II

There is another side to the medal of Samoan warfare. So soon as an
advantage is obtained, a new and (to us) horrible animal appears upon
the scene--the Head Hunter. Again and again we have reasoned with our
boys against this bestial practice; but reason and (upon this one point)
even ridicule are vain. They admit it to be indefensible; they allege
its imperative necessity. One young man, who had seen his father take a
head in the late war, spoke of the scene with shuddering revolt, and yet
said he must go and do likewise himself in the war which was to come.
How else could a man prove he was brave? and had not every country its
own customs?

Accordingly, as occasion offered, these same pleasing children, who had
just been drinking kava with their opponents, fell incontinently on the
dead and dying, and secured their grisly trophies. It should be said,
in fairness, that the Mataafas had no opportunity to take heads, but
that their chief, taught by the lesson of Fangalii, had forbidden the
practice. It is doubtful if he would have been obeyed, and yet his power
over his people was so great that the German plantation, where they lay
some time, and were at last defeated, had not to complain of the theft
of a single cocoa-nut. Hateful as it must always be to mutilate and
murder the disabled, there were in this day's affray in Vaitele
circumstances yet more detestable. Fifteen heads were brought in all to
Mulinuu.