Already Tamasese and Lotoanuu seemed secondary objectives to the Germans and Apia.  Mullan’s message put an end to hesitation.  Laulii was evacuated.  The troops streamed westward by the mountain side, and took up the same day a strong position about Tanungamanono and Mangiangi, some two miles behind Apia, which they threatened with the one hand, while with the other they continued to draw their supplies from the devoted plantations of the German firm.  Laulii, when it was shelled, was empty.  The British flags were, of course, fired upon; and I hear that one of them was struck down, but I think every one must be privately of the mind that it was fired upon and fell, in a place where it had little business to be shown.

Such was the military epilogue to the ill-judged adventure of Fangalii; it was difficult for failure to be more complete.  But the other consequences were of a darker colour and brought the whites immediately face to face in a spirit of ill-favoured animosity.  Knappe was mourning the defeat and death of his country-folk, he was standing aghast over the ruin of his own career, when Mullan boarded him.  The successor of Leary served himself, in that bitter moment, heir to Leary’s part.  And in Mullan, Knappe saw more even than the successor of Leary,—­he saw in him the representative of Klein.  Klein had hailed the praam from the rifle-pits; he had there uttered ill-chosen words, unhappily prophetic; it is even likely that he was present at the time of the first fire.  To accuse him of the design and conduct of the whole attack was but a step forward; his own vapouring served to corroborate the accusation; and it was not long before the German consulate was in possession of sworn native testimony in support.  The worth of native testimony is small, the worth of white testimony not overwhelming; and I am in the painful position of not being able to subscribe either to Klein’s own account of the affair or to that of his accusers.  Klein was extremely flurried; his interest as a reporter must have tempted him at first to make the most of his share in the exploit, the immediate peril in which he soon found himself to stand must have at least suggested to him the idea of minimising it; one way and another, he is not a good witness.  As for the natives, they were no doubt cross-examined in that hall of terror, the German consulate, where they might be trusted to lie like schoolboys, or (if the reader prefer it) like Samoans.  By outside white testimony, it remains established for me that Klein returned to Apia either before or immediately after the first shots.  That he ever sought or was ever allowed a share in the command may be denied peremptorily; but it is more than likely that he expressed himself in an excited manner and with a highly inflammatory effect upon his hearers.  He was, at least, severely punished.  The Germans, enraged by his provocative behaviour and what they thought to be his German birth,