Here, then, were Spengler and the ninety men of the praam, landed on the beach in no very enviable posture, the woods in front filled with unnumbered enemies, but for the time successful.  Meanwhile, Jaeckel and the boats had gone outside the reef, and were to land on the other side of the Vailele promontory, at Sunga, by the buildings of the plantation.  It was Hufnagel’s part to go and meet them.  His way led straight into the woods and through the midst of the Samoans, who had but now ceased firing.  He went in the saddle and at a foot’s pace, feeling speed and concealment to be equally helpless, and that if he were to fall at all, he had best fall with dignity.  Not a shot was fired at him; no effort made to arrest him on his errand.  As he went, he spoke and even jested with the Samoans, and they answered in good part.  One fellow was leaping, yelling, and tossing his axe in the air, after the way of an excited islander. “Faimalosi! go it!” said Hufnagel, and the fellow laughed and redoubled his exertions.  As soon as the boats entered the lagoon, fire was again opened from the woods.  The fifty blue-jackets jumped overboard, hove down the boats to be a shield, and dragged them towards the landing-place.  In this way, their rations, and (what was more unfortunate) some of their miserable provision of forty rounds got wetted; but the men came to shore and garrisoned the plantation house without a casualty.  Meanwhile the sound of the firing from Sunga immediately renewed the hostilities at Fangalii.  The civilians on shore decided that Spengler must be at once guided to the house, and Haideln, the surveyor, accepted the dangerous errand.  Like Hufnagel, he was suffered to pass without question through the midst of these platonic enemies.  He found Spengler some way inland on a knoll, disastrously engaged, the woods around him filled with Samoans, who were continuously reinforced.  In three successive charges, cheering as they ran, the blue-jackets burst through their scattered opponents, and made good their junction with Jaeckel.  Four men only remained upon the field, the other wounded being helped by their comrades or dragging themselves painfully along.

The force was now concentrated in the house and its immediate patch of garden.  Their rear, to the seaward, was unmolested; but on three sides they were beleaguered.  On the left, the Samoans occupied and fired from some of the plantation offices.  In front, a long rising crest of land in the horse-pasture commanded the house, and was lined with the assailants.  And on the right, the hedge of the same paddock afforded them a dangerous cover.  It was in this place that a Samoan sharpshooter was knocked over by Jaeckel with his own hand.  The fire was maintained by the Samoans in the usual wasteful style.  The roof was made a sieve; the balls passed clean through the house; Lieutenant Sieger, as he lay, already dying, on Hufnagel’s bed, was despatched with a fresh