第48章 "FUROR CONSULARIS"(1)

DECEMBER 1888TO 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.

At this moment an incident befell him which must have been trying to his self-command.The new American ship NIPSIC entered Laulii Bay;her commander,Mullan,boarded the ADLER to protest,succeeded in wresting from Knappe a period of delay in order that the women might be spared,and sent a lieutenant to Mataafa with a warning.

The camp was already excited by the news and the trophies of Fangalii.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.