gain in the seizure of the town and firm, and, like an army in a fairy
tale, restrained by the air-drawn boundary of the neutral ground.

I have had occasion to refer to the strange appearance in these islands
of an American adventurer with a battery of cannon. The adventurer was
long since gone, but his guns remained, and one of them was now to make
fresh history. It had been cast overboard by Brandeis on the outer reef
in the course of this retreat; and word of it coming to the ears of the
Mataafas, they thought it natural that they should serve themselves the
heirs of Tamasese. On the 23rd a Manono boat of the kind called
_taumualua_ dropped down the coast from Mataafa's camp, called in broad
day at the German quarter of the town for guides, and proceeded to the
reef. Here, diving with a rope, they got the gun aboard; and the night
being then come, returned by the same route in the shallow water along
shore, singing a boat-song. It will be seen with what childlike reliance
they had accepted the neutrality of Apia bay; they came for the gun
without concealment, laboriously dived for it in broad day under the eyes
of the town and shipping, and returned with it, singing as they went. On
Grevsmuhl's wharf, a light showed them a crowd of German blue-jackets
clustered, and a hail was heard. "Stop the singing so that we may hear
what is said," said one of the chiefs in the _taumualua_. The song
ceased; the hail was heard again, "_Au mai le fana_--bring the gun"; and
the natives report themselves to have replied in the affirmative, and
declare that they had begun to back the boat. It is perhaps not needful
to believe them. A volley at least was fired from the wharf, at about
fifty yards' range and with a very ill direction, one bullet whistling
over Pelly's head on board the _Lizard_. The natives jumped overboard;
and swimming under the lee of the _taumualua_ (where they escaped a
second volley) dragged her towards the east. As soon as they were out of
range and past the Mulivai, the German border, they got on board and