SEPTEMBER - NOVEMBER 1888

BRANDEIS had held all day by Mulinuu, expecting the reported real
attack. He woke on the 13th to find himself cut off on that

unwatered promontory, and the Mataafa villagers parading Apia. The
same day Fritze received a letter from Mataafa summoning him to

withdraw his party from the isthmus; and Fritze, as if in answer,
drew in his ship into the small harbour close to Mulinuu, and

trained his port battery to assist in the defence. From a step so
decisive, it might be thought the German plans were unaffected by

the disastrous issue of the battle. I conceive nothing would be
further from the truth. Here was Tamasese penned on Mulinuu with

his troops; Apia, from which alone these could be subsisted, in the
hands of the enemy; a battle imminent, in which the German vessel

must apparently take part with men and battery, and the buildings
of the German firm were apparently destined to be the first target

of fire. Unless Becker re-established that which he had so lately
and so artfully thrown down - the neutral territory - the firm

would have to suffer. If he re-established it, Tamasese must
retire from Mulinuu. If Becker saved his goose, he lost his

cabbage. Nothing so well depicts the man's effrontery as that he
should have conceived the design of saving both, - of re-

establishing only so much of the neutral territory as should hamper
Mataafa, and leaving in abeyance all that could incommode Tamasese.

By drawing the boundary where he now proposed, across the isthmus,
he protected the firm, drove back the Mataafas out of almost all

that they had conquered, and, so far from disturbing Tamasese,
actually fortified him in his old position.

The real story of the negotiations that followed we shall perhaps
never learn. But so much is plain: that while Becker was thus

outwardly straining decency in the interest of Tamasese, he was
privately intriguing, or pretending to intrigue, with Mataafa. In

his despatch of the 11th, he had given an extendedcriticism of
that chieftain, whom he depicts as very dark and artful; and while

admitting that his assumption of the name of Malietoa might raise
him up followers, predicted that he could not make an orderly

government or support himself long in sole power "without very
energetic foreign help." Of what help was the consul thinking?

There was no helper in the field but Germany. On the 15th he had
an interview with the victor; told him that Tamasese's was the only

government recognised by Germany, and that he must continue to
recognise it till he received "other instructions from his

government, whom he was now advising of the late events"; refused,
accordingly, to withdraw the guard from the isthmus; and desired

Mataafa, "until the arrival of these fresh instructions," to
refrain from an attack on Mulinuu. One thing of two: either this

language is extremely perfidious, or Becker was preparing to change
sides. The same detachment appears in his despatch of October 7th.

He computes the losses of the German firm with an easy
cheerfulness. If Tamasese get up again (GELINGT DIE

WIEDERHERSTELLUNG DER REGIERUNG TAMASESE'S), Tamasese will have to
pay. If not, then Mataafa. This is not the language of a

partisan. The tone of indifference, the easy implication that the
case of Tamasese was already desperate, the hopes held secretly

forth to Mataafa and secretly reported to his government at home,
trenchantly contrast with his external conduct. At this very time

he was feeding Tamasese; he had German sailors mounting guard on
Tamasese's battlements; the German war-ship lay close in, whether

to help or to destroy. If he meant to drop the cause of Tamasese,
he had him in a corner, helpless, and could stifle him without a

sob. If he meant to rat, it was to be with every condition of
safety and every circumstance of infamy.

Was it conceivable, then, that he meant it? Speaking with a
gentleman who was in the confidence of Dr. Knappe: "Was it not a

pity," I asked, "that Knappe did not stick to Becker's policy of
supporting Mataafa?" "You are quite wrong there; that was not

Knappe's doing," was the reply. "Becker had changed his mind
before Knappe came." Why, then, had he changed it? This

excellent, if ignominious, idea once entertained, why was it let
drop? It is to be remembered there was another German in the

field, Brandeis, who had a respect, or rather, perhaps, an
affection, for Tamasese, and who thought his own honour and that of

his country engaged in the support of that government which they
had provoked and founded. Becker described the captain to Laupepa

as "a quiet, sensible gentleman." If any word came to his ears of
the intended manoeuvre, Brandeis would certainly show himself very

sensible of the affront; but Becker might have been tempted to
withdraw his former epithet of quiet. Some such passage, some such

threatened change of front at the consulate, opposed with outcry,
would explain what seems otherwiseinexplicable, the bitter,

indignant, almost hostile tone of a subsequent letter from Brandeis
to Knappe - "Brandeis's inflammatory letter," Bismarck calls it -

the proximate cause of the German landing and reverse at Fangalii.
But whether the advances of Becker were sincere or not - whether he

meditated treachery against the old king or was practising
treachery upon the new, and the choice is between one or other - no

doubt but he contrived to gain his points with Mataafa, prevailing
on him to change his camp for the better protection of the German

plantations, and persuading him (long before he could persuade his
brother consuls) to accept that miraculous new neutral territory of

his, with a piece cut out for the immediate needs of Tamasese.
During the rest of September, Tamasese continued to decline. On

the 19th one village and half of another deserted him; on the 22nd
two more. On the 21st the Mataafas burned his town of Leulumoenga,

his own splendid house flaming with the rest; and there are few
things of which a native thinks more, or has more reason to think

well, than of a fine Samoan house. Tamasese women and children
were marched up the same day from Atua, and handed over with their

sleeping-mats to Mulinuu: a most unwelcomeaddition to a party
already suffering from want. By the 20th, they were being watered

from the ADLER. On the 24th the Manono fleet of sixteen large
boats, fortified and rendered unmanageable with tons of firewood,

passed to windward to intercept supplies from Atua. By the 27th
the hungry garrison flocked in great numbers to draw rations at the

German firm. On the 28th the same business was repeated with a
different issue. Mataafas crowded to look on; words were

exchanged, blows followed; sticks, stones, and bottles were caught
up; the detested Brandeis, at great risk, threw himself between the

lines and expostulated with the Mataafas - his only personal
appearance in the wars, if this could be called war. The same

afternoon, the Tamasese boats got in with provisions, having passed
to seaward of the lumbering Manono fleet; and from that day on,

whether from a high degree of enterprise on the one side or a great
lack of capacity on the other, supplies were maintained from the

sea with regularity. Thus the spectacle of battle, or at least of
riot, at the doors of the German firm was not repeated. But the

memory must have hung heavy on the hearts, not of the Germans only,
but of all Apia. The Samoans are a gentle race, gentler than any

in Europe; we are often enough reminded of the circumstance, not
always by their friends. But a mob is a mob, and a drunken mob is

a drunken mob, and a drunken mob with weapons in its hands is a
drunken mob with weapons in its hands, all the world over:

elementary propositions, which some of us upon these islands might
do worse than get by rote, but which must have been evident enough

to Becker. And I am amazed by the man's constancy, that, even
while blows were going at the door of that German firm which he was

in Samoa to protect, he should have stuck to his demands. Ten days
before, Blacklock had offered to recognise the old territory,

including Mulinuu, and Becker had refused, and still in the midst
of these "alarums and excursions," he continued to refuse it.

On October 2nd, anchored in Apia bay H.B.M.S. CALLIOPE, Captain
Kane, carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Fairfax, and the gunboat

LIZARD, Lieutenant-Commander Pelly. It was rumoured the admiral
had come to recognise the government of Tamasese, I believe in