If any word came to his ears of the intended manoeuvre, Brandeis would certainly show himself very sensible of the affront; but Becker might have been tempted to withdraw his former epithet of quiet.  Some such passage, some such threatened change of front at the consulate, opposed with outcry, would explain what seems otherwise inexplicable, the bitter, indignant, almost hostile tone of a subsequent letter from Brandeis to Knappe—­“Brandeis’s inflammatory letter,” Bismarck calls it—­the proximate cause of the German landing and reverse at Fangalii.

But whether the advances of Becker were sincere or not—­whether he meditated treachery against the old king or was practising treachery upon the new, and the choice is between one or other—­no doubt but he contrived to gain his points with Mataafa, prevailing on him to change his camp for the better protection of the German plantations, and persuading him (long before he could persuade his brother consuls) to accept that miraculous new neutral territory of his, with a piece cut out for the immediate needs of Tamasese.

During the rest of September, Tamasese continued to decline.  On the 19th one village and half of another deserted him; on the 22nd two more.  On the 21st the Mataafas burned his town of Leulumoenga, his own splendid house flaming with the rest; and there are few things of which a native thinks more, or has more reason to think well, than of a fine Samoan house.  Tamasese women and children were marched up the same day from Atua, and handed over with their sleeping-mats to Mulinuu:  a most unwelcome addition to a party already suffering from want.  By the 20th, they were being watered from the Adler.  On the 24th the Manono fleet of sixteen large boats, fortified and rendered unmanageable with tons of firewood, passed to windward to intercept supplies from Atua.  By the 27th the hungry garrison flocked in great numbers to draw rations at the German firm.  On the 28th the same business was repeated with a different issue.  Mataafas crowded to look on; words were exchanged, blows followed; sticks, stones, and bottles were caught up; the detested Brandeis, at great risk, threw himself between the lines and expostulated with the Mataafas—­his only personal appearance in the wars, if this could be called war.  The same afternoon, the Tamasese boats got in with provisions, having passed to seaward of the lumbering Manono fleet; and from that day on, whether from a high degree of enterprise on the one side or a great lack of capacity on the other, supplies were maintained from the sea with regularity.  Thus the spectacle of battle, or at least of riot, at the doors of the German firm was not repeated.  But the memory must have hung heavy on the hearts, not of the Germans only, but of all Apia.  The Samoans are a gentle race, gentler than any in Europe; we are often enough reminded of the circumstance, not always by their friends.  But a mob is a mob, and a drunken mob is a drunken