A Footnote to History

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The discussion of the morning, the silent menace and defiance of the
voyage to Laulii, might have set the best-natured by the ears. But
Knappe and de Coetlogon took their difference in excellent part. On the
morrow, November 16th, they sat down together with Blacklock in
conference. The English consul introduced his colleagues, who shook
hands. If Knappe were dead-weighted with the inheritance of Becker,
Blacklock was handicapped by reminiscences of Leary; it is the more to
the credit of this inexperienced man that he should have maintained in
the future so excellent an attitude of firmness and moderation, and that
when the crash came, Knappe and de Coetlogon, not Knappe and Blacklock,
were found to be the protagonists of the drama. The conference was
futile. The English and American consuls admitted but one cure of the
evils of the time: that the farce of the Tamasese monarchy should cease.
It was one which the German refused to consider. And the agents
separated without reaching any result, save that diplomatic relations had
been restored between the States and Germany, and that all three were
convinced of their fundamental differences.

Knappe and de Coetlogon were still friends; they had disputed and
differed and come within a finger's breadth of war, and they were still
friends. But an event was at hand which was to separate them for ever.
On December 4th came the _Royalist_, Captain Hand, to relieve the
_Lizard_. Pelly of course had to take his canvas from the consulate
hospital; but he had in charge certain awnings belonging to the
_Royalist_, and with these they made shift to cover the wounded, at that
time (after the fight at Laulii) more than usually numerous. A
lieutenant came to the consulate, and delivered (as I have received it)
the following message: "Captain Hand's compliments, and he says you must
get rid of these niggers at once, and he will help you to do it."
Doubtless the reply was no more civil than the message. The promised
"help," at least, followed promptly. A boat's crew landed and the
awnings were stripped from the wounded, Hand himself standing on the
colonel's verandah to direct operations. It were fruitless to discuss
this passage from the humanitarian point of view, or from that of formal
courtesy. The mind of the new captain was plainly not directed to these
objects. But it is understood that he considered the existence of a
hospital a source of irritation to Germans and a fault in policy. His
own rude act proved in the result far more impolitic. The hospital had
now been open some two months, and de Coetlogon was still on friendly
terms with Knappe, and he and his wife were engaged to dine with him that
day. By the morrow that was practically ended. For the rape of the
awnings had two results: one, which was the fault of de Coetlogon, not at
all of Hand, who could not have foreseen it; the other which it was his
duty to have seen and prevented. The first was this: the de Coetlogons
found themselves left with their wounded exposed to the inclemencies of
the season; they must all be transported into the house and verandah; in
the distress and pressure of this task, the dinner engagement was too
long forgotten; and a note of excuse did not reach the German consulate
before the table was set, and Knappe dressed to receive his visitors. The
second consequence was inevitable. Captain Hand was scarce landed ere it
became public (was "_sofort bekannt_," writes Knappe) that he and the
consul were in opposition. All that had been gained by the demonstration
at Laulii was thus immediately cast away; de Coetlogon's prestige was
lessened; and it must be said plainly that Hand did less than nothing to
restore it. Twice indeed he interfered, both times with success; and
once, when his own person had been endangered, with vehemence; but during
all the strange doings I have to narrate, he remained in close intimacy
with the German consulate, and on one occasion may be said to have acted
as its marshal. After the worst is over, after Bismarck has told Knappe
that "the protests of his English colleague were grounded," that his own
conduct "has not been good," and that in any dispute which may arise he
"will find himself in the wrong," Knappe can still plead in his defence
that Captain Hand "has always maintained friendly intercourse with the
German authorities." Singular epitaph for an English sailor. In this
complicity on the part of Hand we may find the reason--and I had almost
said, the excuse--of much that was excessive in the bearing of the
unfortunate Knappe.

On the 11th December, Mataafa received twenty-eight thousand cartridges,
brought into the country in salt-beef kegs by the British ship
_Richmond_. This not only sharpened the animosity between whites;
following so closely on the German fizzle at Laulii, it raised a
convulsion in the camp of Tamasese. On the 13th Brandeis addressed to
Knappe his famous and fatal letter. I may not describe it as a letter of
burning words, but it is plainly dictated by a burning heart. Tamasese
and his chiefs, he announces, are now sick of the business, and ready to
make peace with Mataafa. They began the war relying upon German help;
they now see and say that "_e faaalo Siamani i Peritania ma America_,
that Germany is subservient to England and the States." It is grimly
given to be understood that the despatch is an ultimatum, and a last
chance is being offered for the recreant ally to fulfil her pledge. To
make it more plain, the document goes on with a kind of bilious irony:
"The two German war-ships now in Samoa are here for the protection of
German property alone; and when the _Olga_ shall have arrived" [she
arrived on the morrow] "the German war-ships will continue to do against
the insurgents precisely as little as they have done heretofore." Plant
flags, in fact.

Here was Knappe's opportunity, could he have stooped to seize it. I find
it difficult to blame him that he could not. Far from being so
inglorious as the treachery once contemplated by Becker, the acceptance
of this ultimatum would have been still in the nature of a disgrace.
Brandeis's letter, written by a German, was hard to swallow. It would
have been hard to accept that solution which Knappe had so recently and
so peremptorily refused to his brother consuls. And he was tempted, on
the other hand, by recent changes. There was no Pelly to support de
Coetlogon, who might now be disregarded. Mullan, Leary's successor, even
if he were not precisely a Hand, was at least no Leary; and even if
Mullan should show fight, Knappe had now three ships and could defy or
sink him without danger. Many small circumstances moved him in the same
direction. The looting of German plantations continued; the whole force
of Mataafa was to a large extent subsisted from the crops of Vailele; and
armed men were to be seen openly plundering bananas, breadfruit, and
cocoa-nuts under the walls of the plantation building. On the night of
the 13th the consulate stable had been broken into and a horse removed.
On the 16th there was a riot in Apia between half-castes and sailors from
the new ship _Olga_, each side claiming that the other was the worse of
drink, both (for a wager) justly. The multiplication of flags and little
neutral territories had, besides, begun to irritate the Samoans. The
protests of German settlers had been received uncivilly. On the 16th the
Mataafas had again sought to land in Saluafata bay, with the manifest
intention to attack the Tamaseses, or (in other words) "to trespass on
German lands, covered, as your Excellency knows, with flags." I quote
from his requisition to Fritze, December 17th. Upon all these
considerations, he goes on, it is necessary to bring the fighting to an
end. Both parties are to be disarmed and returned to their
villages--Mataafa first. And in case of any attempt upon Apia, the roads
thither are to be held by a strong landing-party. Mataafa was to be
disarmed first, perhaps rightly enough in his character of the last
insurgent. Then was to have come the turn of Tamasese; but it does not
appear the disarming would have had the same import or have been gone
about in the same way. Germany was bound to Tamasese. No honest man
would dream of blaming Knappe because he sought to redeem his country's
word. The path he chose was doubtless that of honour, so far as honour
was still left. But it proved to be the road to ruin.

Fritze, ranking German officer, is understood to have opposed the
measure. His attitude earned him at the time unpopularity among his
country-people on the spot, and should now redound to his credit. It is
to be hoped he extended his opposition to some of the details. If it
were possible to disarm Mataafa at all, it must be done rather by
prestige than force. A party of blue-jackets landed in Samoan bush, and
expected to hold against Samoans a multiplicity of forest paths, had
their work cut out for them. And it was plain they should be landed in
the light of day, with a discouraging openness, and even with parade. To
sneak ashore by night was to increase the danger of resistance and to
minimise the authority of the attack. The thing was a bluff, and it is
impossible to bluff with stealth. Yet this was what was tried. A
landing-party was to leave the _Olga_ in Apia bay at two in the morning;
the landing was to be at four on two parts of the foreshore of Vailele.
At eight they were to be joined by a second landing-party from the
_Eber_. By nine the Olgas were to be on the crest of Letongo Mountain,
and the Ebers to be moving round the promontory by the seaward paths,
"with measures of precaution," disarming all whom they encountered. There
was to be no firing unless fired upon. At the appointed hour (or perhaps
later) on the morning of the 19th, this unpromising business was put in
hand, and there moved off from the _Olga_ two boats with some fifty blue-
jackets between them, and a _praam_ or punt containing ninety,--the boats
and the whole expedition under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Jaeckel,
the praam under Lieutenant Spengler. The men had each forty rounds, one
day's provisions, and their flasks filled.

In the meanwhile, Mataafa sympathisers about Apia were on the alert.
Knappe had informed the consuls that the ships were to put to sea next
day for the protection of German property; but the Tamaseses had been
less discreet. "To-morrow at the hour of seven," they had cried to their
adversaries, "you will know of a difficulty, and our guns shall be made
good in broken bones." An accident had pointed expectation towards Apia.
The wife of Le Mamea washed for the German ships--a perquisite, I
suppose, for her husband's unwilling fidelity. She sent a man with linen
on board the _Adler_, where he was surprised to see Le Mamea in person,
and to be himself ordered instantly on shore. The news spread. If Mamea
were brought down from Lotoanuu, others might have come at the same time.
Tamasese himself and half his army might perhaps lie concealed on board
the German ships. And a watch was accordingly set and warriors collected
along the line of the shore. One detachment lay in some rifle-pits by
the mouth of the Fuisa. They were commanded by Seumanu; and with his
party, probably as the most contiguous to Apia, was the
war-correspondent, John Klein. Of English birth, but naturalised
American, this gentleman had been for some time representing the _New
York World_ in a very effective manner, always in the front, living in
the field with the Samoans, and in all vicissitudes of weather, toiling
to and fro with his despatches. His wisdom was perhaps not equal to his
energy. He made himself conspicuous, going about armed to the teeth in a
boat under the stars and stripes; and on one occasion, when he supposed
himself fired upon by the Tamaseses, had the petulance to empty his
revolver in the direction of their camp. By the light of the moon, which
was then nearly down, this party observed the _Olga's_ two boats and the
praam, which they described as "almost sinking with men," the boats
keeping well out towards the reef, the praam at the moment apparently
heading for the shore. An extreme agitation seems to have reigned in the
rifle-pits. What were the newcomers? What was their errand? Were they
Germans or Tamaseses? Had they a mind to attack? The praam was hailed
in Samoan and did not answer. It was proposed to fire upon her ere she
drew near. And at last, whether on his own suggestion or that of
Seumanu, Klein hailed her in English, and in terms of unnecessary
melodrama. "Do not try to land here," he cried. "If you do, your blood
will be upon your head." Spengler, who had never the least intention to
touch at the Fuisa, put up the head of the praam to her true course and
continued to move up the lagoon with an offing of some seventy or eighty
yards. Along all the irregularities and obstructions of the beach,
across the mouth of the Vaivasa, and through the startled village of
Matafangatele, Seumanu, Klein, and seven or eight others raced to keep
up, spreading the alarm and rousing reinforcements as they went.
Presently a man on horse-back made his appearance on the opposite beach
of Fangalii. Klein and the natives distinctly saw him signal with a
lantern; which is the more strange, as the horseman (Captain Hufnagel,
plantation manager of Vailele) had never a lantern to signal with. The
praam kept in. Many men in white were seen to stand up, step overboard,
and wade to shore. At the same time the eye of panic descried a
breastwork of "foreign stone" (brick) upon the beach. Samoans are
prepared to-day to swear to its existence, I believe conscientiously,
although no such thing was ever made or ever intended in that place. The
hour is doubtful. "It was the hour when the streak of dawn is seen, the
hour known in the warfare of heathen times as the hour of the night
attack," says the Mataafa official account. A native whom I met on the
field declared it was at cock-crow. Captain Hufnagel, on the other hand,
is sure it was long before the day. It was dark at least, and the moon
down. Darkness made the Samoans bold; uncertainty as to the composition
and purpose of the landing-party made them desperate. Fire was opened on
the Germans, one of whom was here killed. The Germans returned it, and
effected a lodgment on the beach; and the skirmish died again to silence.
It was at this time, if not earlier, that Klein returned to Apia.

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 wound. The Samoans showed
themselves extremely enterprising: pushed their lines forward, ventured
beyond cover, and continually threatened to envelop the garden. Thrice,
at least, it was necessary to repel them by a sally. The men were
brought into the house from the rear, the front doors were thrown
suddenly open, and the gallant blue-jackets issued cheering: necessary,
successful, but extremely costly sorties. Neither could these be pushed
far. The foes were undaunted; so soon as the sailors advanced at all
deep in the horse-pasture, the Samoans began to close in upon both
flanks; and the sally had to be recalled. To add to the dangers of the
German situation, ammunition began to run low; and the cartridge-boxes of
the wounded and the dead had been already brought into use before, at
about eight o'clock, the _Eber_ steamed into the bay. Her commander,
Wallis, threw some shells into Letongo, one of which killed five men
about their cooking-pot. The Samoans began immediately to withdraw;
their movements were hastened by a sortie, and the remains of the landing-
party brought on board. This was an unfortunate movement; it gave an
irremediable air of defeat to what might have been else claimed for a
moderate success. The blue-jackets numbered a hundred and forty all
told; they were engaged separately and fought under the worst conditions,
in the dark and among woods; their position in the house was scarce
tenable; they lost in killed and wounded fifty-six,--forty per cent.; and
their spirit to the end was above question. Whether we think of the poor
sailor lads, always so pleasantly behaved in times of peace, or whether
we call to mind the behaviour of the two civilians, Haideln and Hufnagel,
we can only regret that brave men should stand to be exposed upon so poor
a quarrel, or lives cast away upon an enterprise so hopeless.

News of the affair reached Apia early, and Moors, always curious of these
spectacles of war, was immediately in the saddle. Near Matafangatele he
met a Manono chief, whom he asked if there were any German dead. "I
think there are about thirty of them knocked over," said he. "Have you
taken their heads?" asked Moors. "Yes," said the chief. "Some foolish
people did it, but I have stopped them. We ought not to cut off their
heads when they do not cut off ours." He was asked what had been done
with the heads. "Two have gone to Mataafa," he replied, "and one is
buried right under where your horse is standing, in a basket wrapped in
tapa." This was afterwards dug up, and I am told on native authority
that, besides the three heads, two ears were taken. Moors next asked the
Manono man how he came to be going away. "The man-of-war is throwing
shells," said he. "When they stopped firing out of the house, we stopped
firing also; so it was as well to scatter when the shells began. We
could have killed all the white men. I wish they had been Tamaseses."
This is an _ex parte_ statement, and I give it for such; but the course
of the affair, and in particular the adventures of Haideln and Hufnagel,
testify to a surprising lack of animosity against the Germans. About the
same time or but a little earlier than this conversation, the same spirit
was being displayed. Hufnagel, with a party of labour, had gone out to
bring in the German dead, when he was surprised to be suddenly fired on
from the wood. The boys he had with him were not negritos, but
Polynesians from the Gilbert Islands; and he suddenly remembered that
these might be easily mistaken for a detachment of Tamaseses. Bidding
his boys conceal themselves in a thicket, this brave man walked into the
open. So soon as he was recognised, the firing ceased, and the labourers
followed him in safety. This is chivalrous war; but there was a side to
it less chivalrous. As Moors drew nearer to Vailele, he began to meet
Samoans with hats, guns, and even shirts, taken from the German sailors.
With one of these who had a hat and a gun he stopped and spoke. The hat
was handed up for him to look at; it had the late owner's name on the
inside. "Where is he?" asked Moors. "He is dead; I cut his head off."
"You shot him?" "No, somebody else shot him in the hip. When I came, he
put up his hands, and cried: 'Don't kill me; I am a Malietoa man.' I did
not believe him, and I cut his head off...... Have you any ammunition to
fit that gun?" "I do not know." "What has become of the
cartridge-belt?" "Another fellow grabbed that and the cartridges, and he
won't give them to me." A dreadful and silly picture of barbaric war.
The words of the German sailor must be regarded as imaginary: how was the
poor lad to speak native, or the Samoan to understand German? When Moors
came as far as Sunga, the _Eber_ was yet in the bay, the smoke of battle
still lingered among the trees, which were themselves marked with a
thousand bullet-wounds. But the affair was over, the combatants, German
and Samoan, were all gone, and only a couple of negrito labour boys
lurked on the scene. The village of Letongo beyond was equally silent;
part of it was wrecked by the shells of the _Eber_, and still smoked; the
inhabitants had fled. On the beach were the native boats, perhaps five
thousand dollars' worth, deserted by the Mataafas and overlooked by the
Germans, in their common hurry to escape. Still Moors held eastward by
the sea-paths. It was his hope to get a view from the other side of the
promontory, towards Laulii. In the way he found a house hidden in the
wood and among rocks, where an aged and sick woman was being tended by
her elderly daughter. Last lingerers in that deserted piece of coast,
they seemed indifferent to the events which had thus left them solitary,
and, as the daughter said, did not know where Mataafa was, nor where
Tamasese.

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.