and clan, men whom he had fought in the field, whom he had driven from Matautu, who had smitten him back time and again from before the rustic bulwarks of Lotoanuu, they approached him hand in hand with their ancestral enemies and concurred in the same prayer.  The treaty (they argued) was not carried out.  The right to elect their king had been granted them; or if that were denied or suspended, then the right to elect “his successor.”  They were dissatisfied with Laupepa, and claimed, “according to the laws and customs of Samoa,” duly to appoint another.  The orators of Malie declared with irritation that their second appointment was alone valid and Mataafa the sole Malietoa; the whole body of malcontents named him as their choice for king; and they requested him in consequence to leave Apia and take up his dwelling in Malie, the name-place of Malietoa; a step which may be described, to European ears, as placing before the country his candidacy for the crown.

I do not know when the proposal was first made.  Doubtless the disaffection grew slowly, every trifle adding to its force; doubtless there lingered for long a willingness to give the new government a trial.  The chief justice at least had been nearly five months in the country, and the president, Baron Senfft von Pilsach, rather more than a month before the mine was sprung.  On May 31, 1891, the house of Mataafa was found empty, he and his chiefs had vanished from Apia, and, what was worse, three prisoners, liberated from the gaol, had accompanied them in their secession; two being political offenders, and the third (accused of murder) having been perhaps set free by accident.  Although the step had been discussed in certain quarters, it took all men by surprise.  The inhabitants at large expected instant war.  The officials awakened from a dream to recognise the value of that which they had lost.  Mataafa at Vaiala, where he was the pledge of peace, had perhaps not always been deemed worthy of particular attention; Mataafa at Malie was seen, twelve hours too late, to be an altogether different quantity.  With excess of zeal on the other side, the officials trooped to their boats and proceeded almost in a body to Malie, where they seem to have employed every artifice of flattery and every resource of eloquence upon the fugitive high chief.  These courtesies, perhaps excessive in themselves, had the unpardonable fault of being offered when too late.  Mataafa showed himself facile on small issues, inflexible on the main; he restored the prisoners, he returned with the consuls to Apia on a flying visit; he gave his word that peace should be preserved—­a pledge in which perhaps no one believed at the moment, but which he has since nobly redeemed.  On the rest he was immovable; he had cast the die, he had declared his candidacy, he had gone to Malie.  Thither, after his visit to Apia, he returned again; there he has practically since resided.