careful and honest bearing among so many other complications, may be
attributed to some misunderstanding. His small knowledge of English
perhaps failed him. But I cannot pass it by without remarking how far
too much it is the custom of German officials to fall into this style. It
may be witty, I am sure it is not wise. It may be sometimes necessary to
offend for a definite object, it can never be diplomatic to offend
gratuitously.

Becker was more explicit, although scarce less curt. And his defence may
be divided into two statements: first, that the _taumualua_ was
proceeding to land with a hostile purpose on Mulinuu; second, that the
shots complained of were fired by the Samoans. The second may be
dismissed with a laugh. Human nature has laws. And no men hitherto
discovered, on being suddenly challenged from the sea, would have turned
their backs upon the challenger and poured volleys on the friendly shore.
The first is not extremely credible, but merits examination. The story
of the recovered gun seems straightforward; it is supported by much
testimony, the diving operations on the reef seem to have been watched
from shore with curiosity; it is hard to suppose that it does not roughly
represent the fact. And yet if any part of it be true, the whole of
Becker's explanation falls to the ground. A boat which had skirted the
whole eastern coast of Mulinuu, and was already opposite a wharf in
Matafele, and still going west, might have been guilty on a thousand
points--there was one on which she was necessarily innocent; she was
necessarily innocent of proceeding on Mulinuu. Or suppose the diving
operations, and the native testimony, and Pelly's chart of the boat's
course, and the boat itself, to be all stages of some epidemic
hallucination or steps in a conspiracy--suppose even a second _taumualua_
to have entered Apia bay after nightfall, and to have been fired upon
from Grevsmuhl's wharf in the full career of hostilities against