ecome 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