coffee with the fathers, and left again in safety. The smallness of
his following we may suppose to have been reported. He was scarce gone,
at least, before Becker had armed men at the mission gate and came in
person seeking him.

The failure of this attempt doubtless still further exasperated the
consul, and he began to deal as in an enemy's country. He had marines
from the _Adler_ to stand sentry over the consulate and parade the
streets by threes and fours. The bridge of the Vaisingano, which cuts in
half the English and American quarters, he closed by proclamation and
advertised for tenders to demolish it. On the 17th Leary and Pelly
landed carpenters and repaired it in his teeth. Leary, besides, had
marines under arms, ready to land them if it should be necessary to
protect the work. But Becker looked on without interference, perhaps
glad enough to have the bridge repaired; for even Becker may not always
have offended intentionally. Such was now the distracted posture of the
little town: all government extinct, the German consul patrolling it
with armed men and issuing proclamations like a ruler, the two other
Powers defying his commands, and at least one of them prepared to use
force in the defiance. Close on its skirts sat the warriors of Mataafa,
perhaps four thousand strong, highly incensed against the Germans,
having all to gain in the seizure of the town and firm, and, like an
army in a fairy tale, restrained by the air-drawn boundary of the
neutral ground.

I have had occasion to refer to the strange appearance in these islands
of an American adventurer with a battery of cannon. The adventurer was
long since gone, but his guns remained, and one of them was now to make
fresh history. It had been cast overboard by Brandeis on the outer reef
in the course of this retreat; and word of it coming to the ears of the
Mataafas, they thought it natural that they should serve themselves the
heirs of Tamasese. On the 23rd a Manono boat of the kind called
_taumualua_ dropped down the coast from Mataafa's camp, called in broad
day at the German quarter of the town for guides, and proceeded to the
reef. Here, diving with a rope, they got the gun aboard; and the night
being then come, returned by the same route in the shallow water along
shore, singing a boat-song. It will be seen with what childlike reliance
they had accepted the neutrality of Apia bay; they came for the gun
without concealment, laboriously dived for it