It is the official Samoan pretension that the Germans fired first at Fangalii.  In view of all German and some native testimony, the text of Fritze’s orders, and the probabilities of the case, no honest mind will believe it for a moment.  Certainly the Samoans fired first.  As certainly they were betrayed into the engagement in the agitation of the moment, and it was not till afterwards that they understood what they had done.  Then, indeed, all Samoa drew a breath of wonder and delight.  The invincible had fallen; the men of the vaunted war-ships had been met in the field by the braves of Mataafa:  a superstition was no more.  Conceive this people steadily as schoolboys; and conceive the elation in any school if the head boy should suddenly arise and drive the rector from the schoolhouse.  I have received one instance of the feeling instantly aroused.  There lay at the time in the consular hospital an old chief who was a pet of the colonel’s.  News reached him of the glorious event; he was sick, he thought himself sinking, sent for the colonel, and gave him his gun.  “Don’t let the Germans get it,” said the old gentleman, and having received a promise, was at peace.

CHAPTER IX—­“FUROR CONSULARIS”

December 1888 to March 1889

Knappe, in the Adler, with a flag of truce at the fore, was entering Laulii Bay when the Eber brought him the news of the night’s reverse.  His heart was doubtless wrung for his young countrymen who had been butchered and mutilated in the dark woods, or now lay suffering, and some of them dying, on the ship.  And he must have been startled as he recognised his own position.  He had gone too far; he had stumbled into war, and, what was worse, into defeat; he had thrown away German lives for less than nothing, and now saw himself condemned either to accept defeat, or to kick and pummel his failure into something like success; either to accept defeat, or take frenzy for a counsellor.  Yesterday, in cold blood, he had judged it necessary to have the woods to the westward guarded lest the evacuation of Laulii should prove only the peril of Apia.  To-day, in the irritation and alarm of failure, he forgot or despised his previous reasoning, and, though his detachment was beat back to the ships, proceeded with the remainder of his maimed design.  The only change he made was to haul down the flag of truce.  He had now no wish to meet with Mataafa.  Words were out of season, shells must speak.

At this moment an incident befell him which must have been trying to his self-command.  The new American ship Nipsic entered Laulii Bay; her commander, Mullan, boarded the Adler to protest, succeeded in wresting from Knappe a period of delay in order that the women might be spared, and sent a lieutenant to Mataafa with a warning.  The camp was already excited by the news and the trophies of Fangalii.