volunteered it. Colonel
de Coetlogon had his faults, but they did not touch his honour; his bare
word would always outweigh a waggon-load of such denunciations; and he
declares his behaviour on that night to have been blameless. The
question was besides inquired into on the spot by Sir John Thurston, and
the colonel honourably acquitted. But during the weeks that were now to
follow, Knappe believed the contrary; he believed not only that Moors
and others had supplied ammunition and Klein commanded in the field, but
that de Coetlogon had made the signal of attack; that though his
blue-jackets had bled and fallen against the arms of Samoans, these were
supplied, inspired, and marshalled by Americans and English.

The legend was the more easily believed because it embraced and was
founded upon so much truth. Germans lay dead, the German wounded groaned
in their cots; and the cartridges by which they fell had been sold by an
American and brought into the country in a British bottom. Had the
transaction been entirely mercenary, it would already have been hard to
swallow; but it was notoriously not so. British and Americans were
notoriously the partisans of Mataafa. They rejoiced in the result of
Fangalii, and so far from seeking to conceal their rejoicing, paraded
and displayed it. Calumny ran high. Before the dead were buried, while
the wounded yet lay in pain and fever, cowardly accusations of cowardice
were levelled at the German blue-jackets. It was said they had broken
and run before their enemies, and that they had huddled helpless like
sheep in the plantation house. Small wonder if they had; small wonder
had they been utterly destroyed. But the fact was heroically otherwise;
and these dastard calumnies cut to the blood. They are not forgotten;
perhaps they will never be forgiven.

In the meanwhile, events were pressing towards a still more trenchant
opposition. On the 20th, the three consuls met and parted without
agreement, Knappe announcing that he had lost men and must take the
matter in his own hands to avenge their death. On the 21st the _Olga_
came before Matafangatele, ordered the delivery of all arms within the
hour, and at the end of that period, none being brought, shelled and
burned the village. The shells fell for the most part innocuous; an
eyewitness saw children at play beside the flaming houses; not a soul
was injured; and the one noteworthy event was the mutilation of Captain
Hamilton's American fla