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A Footnote to History-Part15_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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seized with alarming symptoms of belly-ache whenever Mrs. de



Coetlogon went her rounds at night: he was after brandy. Others

were insatiable for morphine or opium. A chief woman had her foot



amputated under chloroform. "Let me see my foot! Why does it not

hurt?" she cried. "It hurt so badly before I went to sleep."



Siteoni, whose name has been already mentioned, had his shoulder-

blade excised, lay the longest of any, perhaps behaved the worst,



and was on all these grounds the favourite. At times he was

furiously irritable, and would rail upon his family and rise in bed



until he swooned with pain. Once on the balcony he was thought to

be dying, his family keeping round his mat, his father exhorting



him to be prepared, when Mrs. de Coetlogon brought him round again

with brandy and smelling-salts. After discharge, he returned upon



a visit of gratitude; and it was observed, that instead of coming

straight to the door, he went and stood long under his umbrella on



that spot of ground where his mat had been stretched and he had

endured pain so many months. Similar visits were the rule, I



believe without exception; and the grateful patients loaded Mrs. de

Coetlogon with gifts which (had that been possible in Polynesia)



she would willingly have declined, for they were often of value to

the givers.



The tissue of my story is one of rapacity, intrigue, and the

triumphs of temper; the hospital at the consulate stands out almost



alone as an episode of human beauty, and I dwell on it with

satisfaction. But it was not regarded at the time with universal



favour; and even to-day its institution is thought by many to have

been impolitic. It was opened, it stood open, for the wounded of



either party. As a matter of fact it was never used but by the

Mataafas, and the Tamaseses were cared for exclusively by German



doctors. In the progressive decivilisation of the town, these

duties of humanity became thus a ground of quarrel. When the



Mataafa hurt were first brought together after the battle of

Matautu, and some more or less amateur surgeons were dressing



wounds on a green by the wayside, one from the German consulate

went by in the road. "Why don't you let the dogs die?" he asked.



"Go to hell," was the rejoinder. Such were the amenities of Apia.

But Becker reserved for himself the extreme expression of this



spirit. On November 7th hostilities began again between the Samoan

armies, and an inconclusive skirmish sent a fresh crop of wounded



to the de Coetlogons. Next door to the consulate, some native

houses and a chapel (now ruinous) stood on a green. Chapel and



houses were certainly Samoan, but the ground was under a land-claim

of the German firm; and de Coetlogon wrote to Becker requesting



permission (in case it should prove necessary) to use these

structures for his wounded. Before an answer came, the hospital



was startled by the appearance of a case of gangrene, and the

patient was hastily removed into the chapel. A rebel laid on



German ground - here was an atrocity! The day before his own

relief, November 11th, Becker ordered the man's instant removal.



By his aggressivecarriage and singularmixture of violence and

cunning, he had already largely brought about the fall of Brandeis,



and forced into an attitude of hostility the whole non-German

population of the islands. Now, in his last hour of office, by



this wantonbuffet to his English colleague, he prepared a

continuance of evil days for his successor. If the object of



diplomacy be the organisation of failure in the midst of hate, he

was a great diplomatist. And amongst a certain party on the beach



he is still named as the ideal consul.

CHAPTER VII - THE SAMOAN CAMPS



NOVEMBER 1888

WHEN Brandeis and Tamasese fled by night from Mulinuu, they carried






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