specimen of these incredibly beautiful and imposing meteors
of the tropic sky that make so much of my pleasure here;
though a ship's deck is the place to enjoy them. O what
AWFUL scenery, from a ship's deck, in the tropics! People
talk about the Alps, but the clouds of the trade wind are
alone for sublimity.

Now to try and tell you what has been happening. The state
of these islands, and of Mataafa and Laupepa (Malietoa's
AMBO) had been much on my mind. I went to the priests and
sent a message to Mataafa, at a time when it was supposed he
was about to act. He did not act, delaying in true native
style, and I determined I should go to visit him. I have
been very good not to go sooner; to live within a few miles
of a rebel camp, to be a novelist, to have all my family
forcing me to go, and to refrain all these months, counts for
virtue. But hearing that several people had gone and the
government done nothing to punish them, and having an errand
there which was enough to justify myself in my own eyes, I
half determined to go, and spoke of it with the half-caste
priest. And here (confound it) up came Laupepa and his
guards to call on me; we kept him to lunch, and the old
gentleman was very good and amiable. He asked me why I had
not been to see him? I reminded him a law had been made, and
told him I was not a small boy to go and ask leave of the
consuls, and perhaps be refused. He told me to pay no
attention to the law but come when I would, and begged me to
name a day to lunch. The next day (I think it was) early in
the morning, a man appeared; he had metal buttons like a
policeman - but he was none of our Apia force; he was a rebel