第47章 AFFAIRS OF LAULII AND FANGALII(6)

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 over-looked 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.