he built himself a town in the forest, where he received a continual
stream of visitors and messengers. Day after day the German blue-jackets
were employed in the hopeless enterprise of beating the forests for the
fugitive; day after day they were suffered to pass unhurt under the guns
of ambushed Samoans; day after day they returned, exhausted and
disappointed, to Apia. Seumanu Tafa, high chief of Apia, was known to be
in the forest with the king; his wife, Fatuila, was seized, imprisoned in
the German hospital, and when it was thought her spirit was sufficiently
reduced, brought up for cross-examination. The wise lady confined
herself in answer to a single word. "Is your husband near Apia?" "Yes."
"Is he far from Apia?" "Yes." "Is he with the king?" "Yes." "Are he
and the king in different places?" "Yes." Whereupon the witness was
discharged. About the 10th of September, Laupepa was secretly in Apia at
the American consulate with two companions. The German pickets were
close set and visited by a strong patrol; and on his return, his party
was observed and hailed and fired on by a sentry. They ran away on all
fours in the dark, and so doing plumped upon another sentry, whom Laupepa
grappled and flung in a ditch; for the Sheet of Paper, although infirm of
character, is, like most Samoans, of an able body. The second sentry
(like the first) fired after his assailants at random in the dark; and
the two shots awoke the curiosity of Apia. On the afternoon of the 16th,
the day of the hand-shakings, Suatele, a high chief, despatched two boys
across the island with a letter. They were most of the night upon the
road; it was near three in the morning before the sentries in the camp of
Malietoa beheld their lantern drawing near out of the wood; but the king
was at once awakened. The news was decisive and the letter peremptory;
if Malietoa did not give himself up before ten on the morrow, he was told
that great sorrows must befall his country. I have not been able to draw
Laupepa as a hero; but he is a man of certain virtues, which the Germans
had now given him an occasion to display. Without hesitation he