第66章 LAUPEPA AND MATAAFA(8)

The six ring-leaders,acting in Mataafa's interest,had been guilty of a delict;with Mataafa's approval,they delivered themselves over to be tried.On Friday,September 4,1891,they were convicted before a native magistrate and sentenced to six months'imprisonment;or,I should rather say,detention;for it was expressly directed that they were to be used as gentlemen and not as prisoners,that the door was to stand open,and that all their wishes should be gratified.This extraordinary sentence fell upon the accused like a thunderbolt.There is no need to suppose perfidy,where a careless interpreter suffices to explain all;but the six chiefs claim to have understood their coming to Apia as an act of submission merely formal,that they came in fact under an implied indemnity,and that the president stood pledged to see them scatheless.Already,on their way from the court-house,they were tumultuously surrounded by friends and clansmen,who pressed and cried upon them to escape;Lieutenant Ulfsparre must order his men to load;and with that the momentary effervescence died away.Next day,Saturday,5th,the chief justice took his departure from the islands -a step never yet explained and (in view of the doings of the day before and the remonstrances of other officials)hard to justify.The president,an amiable and brave young man of singular inexperience,was thus left to face the growing difficulty by himself.The clansmen of the prisoners,to the number of near upon a hundred,lay in Vaiusu,a village half way between Apia and Malie;there they talked big,thence sent menacing messages;the gaol should be broken in the night,they said,and the six martyrs rescued.Allowance is to be made for the character of the people of Manono,turbulent fellows,boastful of tongue,but of late days not thought to be answerably bold in person.Yet the moment was anxious.The government of Mulinuu had gained an important moral victory by the surrender and condemnation of the chiefs;and it was needful the victory should be maintained.The guard upon the gaol was accordingly strengthened;a war-party was sent to watch the Vaiusu road under Asi;and the chiefs of the Vaimaunga were notified to arm and assemble their men.It must be supposed the president was doubtful of the loyalty of these assistants.He turned at least to the war-ships,where it seems he was rebuffed;thence he fled into the arms of the wrecker gang,where he was unhappily more successful.The government of Washington had presented to the Samoan king the wrecks of the TRENTON and the VANDALIA;an American syndicate had been formed to break them up;an experienced gang was in consequence settled in Apia and the report of submarine explosions had long grown familiar in the ears of residents.From these artificers the president obtained a supply of dynamite,the needful mechanism,and the loan of a mechanic;the gaol was mined,and the Manono people in Vaiusu were advertised of the fact in a letter signed by Laupepa.Partly by the indiscretion of the mechanic,who had sought to embolden himself (like Lady Macbeth)with liquor for his somewhat dreadful task,the story leaked immediately out and raised a very general,or I might say almost universal,reprobation.Some blamed the proposed deed because it was barbarous and a foul example to set before a race half barbarous itself;others because it was illegal;others again because,in the face of so weak an enemy,it appeared pitifully pusillanimous;almost all because it tended to precipitate and embitter war.In the midst of the turmoil he had raised,and under the immediate pressure of certain indignant white residents,the baron fell back upon a new expedient,certainly less barbarous,perhaps no more legal;and on Monday afternoon,September 7th,packed his six prisoners on board the cutter LANCASHIRE LASS,and deported them to the neighbouring low-island group of the Tokelaus.We watched her put to sea with mingled feelings.Anything were better than dynamite,but this was not good.The men had been summoned in the name of law;they had surrendered;the law had uttered its voice;they were under one sentence duly delivered;and now the president,by no right with which we were acquainted,had exchanged it for another.It was perhaps no less fortunate,though it was more pardonable in a stranger,that he had increased the punishment to that which,in the eyes of Samoans,ranks next to death,-exile from their native land and friends.And the LANCASHIRE LASS appeared to carry away with her into the uttermost parts of the sea the honour of the administration and the prestige of the supreme court.

The policy of the government towards Mataafa has thus been of a piece throughout;always would-be violent,it has been almost always defaced with some appearance of perfidy or unfairness.The policy of Mataafa (though extremely bewildering to any white)appears everywhere consistent with itself,and the man's bearing has always been calm.But to represent the fulness of the contrast,it is necessary that I should give some description of the two capitals,or the two camps,and the ways and means of the regular and irregular government.

MULINUU.Mulinuu,the reader may remember,is a narrow finger of land planted in cocoa-palms,which runs forth into the lagoon perhaps three quarters of a mile.To the east is the bay of Apia.

To the west,there is,first of all,a mangrove swamp,the mangroves excellently green,the mud ink-black,and its face crawled upon by countless insects and black and scarlet crabs.