Here is the style of opposition which has the merit of being frank, not that of being agreeable.  Becker was annoying, Leary infuriating; there is no doubt that the tempers in the German consulate were highly ulcerated; and if war between the two countries did not follow, we must set down the praise to the forbearance of the German navy.  This is not the last time that I shall have to salute the merits of that service.

The defeat and death of Saifaleupolu and the burning of Manono had thus passed off without the least advantage to Tamasese.  But he still held the significant position of Mulinuu, and Brandeis was strenuous to make it good.  The whole peninsula was surrounded with a breastwork; across the isthmus it was six feet high and strengthened with a ditch; and the beach was staked against landing.  Weber’s land claim—­the same that now broods over the village in the form of a signboard—­then appeared in a more military guise; the German flag was hoisted, and German sailors manned the breastwork at the isthmus—­“to protect German property” and its trifling parenthesis, the king of Samoa.  Much vigilance reigned and, in the island fashion, much wild firing.  And in spite of all, desertion was for a long time daily.  The detained high chiefs would go to the beach on the pretext of a natural occasion, plunge in the sea, and swimming across a broad, shallow bay of the lagoon, join the rebels on the Faleula side.  Whole bodies of warriors, sometimes hundreds strong, departed with their arms and ammunition.  On the 7th of September, for instance, the day after Leary’s letter, Too and Mataia left with their contingents, and the whole Aana people returned home in a body to hold a parliament.  Ten days later, it is true, a part of them returned to their duty; but another part branched off by the way and carried their services, and Tamasese’s dear-bought guns, to Faleula.

On the 8th, there was a defection of a different kind, but yet sensible.  The High Chief Seumanu had been still detained in Mulinuu under anxious observation.  His people murmured at his absence, threatened to “take away his name,” and had already attempted a rescue.  The adventure was now taken in hand by his wife Faatulia, a woman of much sense and spirit and a strong partisan; and by her contrivance, Seumanu gave his guardians the slip and rejoined his clan at Faleula.  This process of winnowing was of course counterbalanced by another of recruitment.  But the harshness of European and military rule had made Brandeis detested and Tamasese unpopular with many; and the force on Mulinuu is thought to have done little more than hold its own.  Mataafa sympathisers set it down at about two or three thousand.  I have no estimate from the other side; but Becker admits they were not strong enough to keep the field in the open.