in the minds of the Anglo-Saxon colony.  On the 24th, a public meeting appealed to the British and American consuls.  At half-past seven in the evening guards were landed at the consulates.  On the morrow they were each fortified with sand-bags; and the subjects informed by proclamation that these asylums stood open to them on any alarm, and at any hour of the day or night.  The social bond in Apia was dissolved.  The consuls, like barons of old, dwelt each in his armed citadel.  The rank and file of the white nationalities dared each other, and sometimes fell to on the street like rival clansmen.  And the little town, not by any fault of the inhabitants, rather by the act of Becker, had fallen back in civilisation about a thousand years.

There falls one more incident to be narrated, and then I can close with this ungracious chapter.  I have mentioned the name of the new English consul.  It is already familiar to English readers; for the gentleman who was fated to undergo some strange experiences in Apia was the same de Coetlogon who covered Hicks’s flank at the time of the disaster in the desert, and bade farewell to Gordon in Khartoum before the investment.  The colonel was abrupt and testy; Mrs. de Coetlogon was too exclusive for society like that of Apia; but whatever their superficial disabilities, it is strange they should have left, in such an odour of unpopularity, a place where they set so shining an example of the sterling virtues.  The colonel was perhaps no diplomatist; he was certainly no lawyer; but he discharged the duties of his office with the constancy and courage of an old soldier, and these were found sufficient.  He and his wife had no ambition to be the leaders of society; the consulate was in their time no house of feasting; but they made of it that house of mourning to which the preacher tells us it is better we should go.  At an early date after the battle of Matautu, it was opened as a hospital for the wounded.  The English and Americans subscribed what was required for its support.  Pelly of the Lizard strained every nerve to help, and set up tents on the lawn to be a shelter for the patients.  The doctors of the English and American ships, and in particular Dr. Oakley of the Lizard, showed themselves indefatigable.  But it was on the de Coetlogons that the distress fell.  For nearly half a year, their lawn, their verandah, sometimes their rooms, were cumbered with the sick and dying, their ears were filled with the complaints of suffering humanity, their time was too short for the multiplicity of pitiful duties.  In Mrs. de Coetlogon, and her helper, Miss Taylor, the merit of this endurance was perhaps to be looked for; in a man of the colonel’s temper, himself painfully suffering, it was viewed with more surprise, if with no more admiration.  Doubtless all had their reward in a sense of duty done; doubtless, also, as the days passed, in the spectacle of many traits of gratitude and patience, and in the