bout the same time or but a little earlier than this
conversation, the same spirit was being displayed. Hufnagel, with a
party of labour, had gone out to bring in the German dead, when he was
surprised to be suddenly fired on from the wood. The boys he had with
him were not negritos, but Polynesians from the Gilbert Islands; and he
suddenly remembered that these might be easily mistaken for a detachment
of Tamaseses. Bidding his boys conceal themselves in a thicket, this
brave man walked into the open. So soon as he was recognised, the firing
ceased, and the labourers followed him in safety. This is chivalrous
war; but there was a side to it less chivalrous. As Moors drew nearer to
Vailele, he began to meet Samoans with hats, guns, and even shirts,
taken from the German sailors. With one of these who had a hat and a gun
he stopped and spoke. The hat was handed up for him to look at; it had
the late owner's name on the inside. "Where is he?" asked Moors. "He is
dead; I cut his head off." "You shot him?" "No, somebody else shot him
in the hip. When I came, he put up his hands, and cried: 'Don't kill me;
I am a Malietoa man.' I did not believe him, and I cut his head off."
"Have you any ammunition to fit that gun?" "I do not know." "What has
become 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 dese