the younger folk wrecked the houses in the neighbourhood, carried the
roofs to the front, and lay under them, men and women together, through a
long night of furious squalls and furious and useless volleys. Meanwhile
the older folk trailed back into Apia in the rain; they talked as they
went of who had fallen and what heads had been taken upon either
side--they seemed to know by name the losses upon both; and drenched with
wet and broken with excitement and fatigue, they crawled into the
verandahs of the town to eat and sleep. The morrow broke grey and
drizzly, but as so often happens in the islands, cleared up into a
glorious day. During the night, the majority of the defenders had taken
advantage of the rain and darkness and stolen from their forts
unobserved. The rallying sign of the Tamaseses had been a white
handkerchief. With the dawn, the de Coetlogons from the English
consulate beheld the ground strewn with these badges discarded; and close
by the house, a belated turncoat was still changing white for red.
Matautu was lost; Tamasese was confined to Mulinuu; and by nine o'clock
two Mataafa villages paraded the streets of Apia, taking possession. The
cost of this respectable success in ammunition must have been enormous;
in life it was but small. Some compute forty killed on either side,
others forty on both, three or four being women and one a white man,
master of a schooner from Fiji. Nor was the number even of the wounded
at all proportionate to the surprising din and fury of the affair while
it lasted.




CHAPTER VI--LAST EXPLOITS OF BECKER