ruffians of the elder play-wrights. The United States have the cleanest
hands, and even theirs are not immaculate. It was an ambiguous business
when a private American adventurer was landed with his pieces of
artillery from an American war-ship, and became prime minister to the
king. It is true (even if he were ever really supported) that he was
soon dropped and had soon sold himself for money to the German firm. I
will leave it to the reader whether this trait dignifies or not the
wretched story. And the end of it spattered the credit alike of England
and the States, when this man (the premier of a friendly sovereign) was
kidnapped and deported, on the requisition of an American consul, by the
captain of an English war-ship. I shall have to tell, as I proceed, of
villages shelled on very trifling grounds by Germans; the like has been
done of late years, though in a better quarrel, by ourselves of England.
I shall have to tell how the Germans landed and shed blood at Fangalii;
it was only in 1876 that we British had our own misconceived little
massacre at Mulinuu. I shall have to tell how the Germans bludgeoned
Malietoa with a sudden call for money; it was something of the suddenest
that Sir Arthur Gordon himself, smarting under a sensible public affront,
made and enforced a somewhat similar demand.




CHAPTER III--THE SORROWS OF LAUPEPA, 1883 TO 1887


You ride in a German plantation and see no bush, no soul stirring; only
acres of empty sward, miles of cocoa-nut alley: a desert of food. In the
eyes of the Samoan the place has the attraction of a park for the holiday
schoolboy, of a granary for mice. We must add the yet more lively