ad his own hand should avenge it. That was
talking; I should like to see all in the same story--king, consuls, and
missionaries--included.

III

The three Powers have at last taken hold here in Apia. But they came the
day after the fair; and the immediate business on hand is very delicate.
This morning, 18th, Captain Bickford, followed by two Germans, sailed
for Manono. If he shall succeed in persuading Mataafa to surrender, all
may be well. If he cannot, this long train of blunders may end in--what
is so often the result of blundering in the field of politics--a horrid
massacre. Those of us who remember the services of Mataafa, his
unfailing generosity and moderation in the past, and his bereavement in
the present--as well as those who are only interested in a mass of men
and women, many of them our familiar friends, now pent up on an island,
and beleaguered by three warships and a Samoan army--await the issue
with dreadful expectation.

VIII

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TIMES"

_Vailima, Apia, April_ 23, 1894.

Sir,--I last addressed you on the misconduct of certain officials here,
and I was so far happy as to have had my facts confirmed in every
particular with but one exception. That exception, the affair of the
dynamite, has been secretly smuggled away; you shall look in vain in
either Blue-book or White-book for any mention even of the charge; it is
gone like the conjurer's orange. I might have been tempted to inquire
into the reason of this conspiracy of silence, whether the idea was
conceived in the bosoms of the three Powers themselves, or whether in
the breasts of the three Consuls, because one of their number was
directly implicated. And I might have gone on to consider the moral
effect of such suppressions, and to show how very idle they were, and
how very undignified, in the face of a small and compact population,
where everybody sees and hears, where everybody knows, and talks, and
laughs. But only a personal question remained, which I judged of no
interest to the public. The essential was accomplished. Baron Senfft was
gone already. Mr. Cedercrantz still lingered among us in the character
(I may say) of a private citizen, his Court at last closed, only his
pocket open for the receipt of his salary, representing the dignity of
the Berlin Act by sitting in the wind on Mulinuu Point for several
consecutive months--a curious phantom or survival of a past age. The new
officials were not as yet