Becker was more explicit, although scarce less curt.  And his defence may be divided into two statements:  first, that the taumualua was proceeding to land with a hostile purpose on Mulinuu; second, that the shots complained of were fired by the Samoans.  The second may be dismissed with a laugh.  Human nature has laws.  And no men hitherto discovered, on being suddenly challenged from the sea, would have turned their backs upon the challenger and poured volleys on the friendly shore.  The first is not extremely credible, but merits examination.  The story of the recovered gun seems straightforward; it is supported by much testimony, the diving operations on the reef seem to have been watched from shore with curiosity; it is hard to suppose that it does not roughly represent the fact.  And yet if any part of it be true, the whole of Becker’s explanation falls to the ground.  A boat which had skirted the whole eastern coast of Mulinuu, and was already opposite a wharf in Matafele, and still going west, might have been guilty on a thousand points—­there was one on which she was necessarily innocent; she was necessarily innocent of proceeding on Mulinuu.  Or suppose the diving operations, and the native testimony, and Pelly’s chart of the boat’s course, and the boat itself, to be all stages of some epidemic hallucination or steps in a conspiracy—­suppose even a second taumualua to have entered Apia bay after nightfall, and to have been fired upon from Grevsmuhl’s wharf in the full career of hostilities against Mulinuu—­suppose all this, and Becker is not helped.  At the time of the first fire, the boat was off Grevsmuhl’s wharf.  At the time of the second (and that is the one complained of) she was off Carruthers’s wharf in Matautu.  Was she still proceeding on Mulinuu?  I trow not.  The danger to German property was no longer imminent, the shots had been fired upon a very trifling provocation, the spirit implied was that of designed disregard to the neutrality.  Such was the impression here on the spot; such in plain terms the statement of Count Hatzfeldt to Lord Salisbury at home:  that the neutrality of Apia was only “to prevent the natives from fighting,” not the Germans; and that whatever Becker might have promised at the conference, he could not “restrict German war-vessels in their freedom of action.”

There was nothing to surprise in this discovery; and had events been guided at the same time with a steady and discreet hand, it might have passed with less observation.  But the policy of Becker was felt to be not only reckless, it was felt to be absurd also.  Sudden nocturnal onfalls upon native boats could lead, it was felt, to no good end whether of peace or war; they could but exasperate; they might prove, in a moment, and when least expected, ruinous.  To those who knew how nearly it had come to fighting, and who considered the probable result, the future looked ominous.  And fear was mingled with annoyance