fficials, missionaries, and consuls-were determined to foist Tanumafili on the unwilling natives of the group, and ba

moan coast, burning, bombarding, and destroying with indiscriminate fury. In this savage conflict, so unjust in its inception, so frightful in its effects on an unoffending people, the Samoans showed an extr

ng. This little war, so remote, so ill understood at home, so brief, violent, and unjust, swept over the islands like a hurricane. Abruptly begun by headstrong naval officers and officials on the spot, it was as abruptly e

suspense, and the uncertainty of those dreadful days, told on him with an augmented force, so that he grew thin and started at a sound. Through an unseen channel the news of fighting persistently trickled into Oa; more battles; more villages bombarded; such an one wounded, such an one killed, with stories of t

or burn, pillage, and destroy as mercilessly as he had been told? Bah! a pack of Kanaka lies, the gradual distortion of the truth as it passed along the line, until one burned house became a hundred and one village the whole coast of Atua! He went back to his neglected plantation, now overgrown with

the beach, never stopping until they took shelter beneath the eaves of their own house. Yes, there was the man-of-war, a Britisher with yellow funnels, well outside the reef, towing behind her a flotilla of boats chock-a-block with natives. The red head-dresses of their crews showe

idn't try to make a fight of it; and he could have laughed to see the terrified women scooting for the church, the children bawling at their heels. The fools, what had they

ponsons, a puff of smoke, and then the roar of a six-inch gun. The shell struck a palm not a hundred yards from wh

he venomous rush of another shell. Jack could not believe his senses. What! no warning, no n

ement and rocks, and the frenzied flight of its occupants for safety. If

a

unks! Let them shoot, the stinking cowards! This was his house, and he would remain beside it until the crack of doom, shells or no shells. He would stand off them fire-bugs and looters when they landed, and tell them officers what a plain American citizen thought of the

hort or bursting prematurely in midair. Except for the church, which was twice struck, and the chief's house that was set on fire, the damage

ould do better no

t contrition and remorse. He took her in his arms and kissed her; and then, like a pair of love

ats, preceded by the American launch, passed in procession

Fetuao, and she besought Jack, wit

said, grindi

t the top of their voices, Jack quailed in spite of himself. But outwardly, at least, he showed no s

deviltry they might inflict on the rest of the unfortunate village, for blood's thicker than water every time, and Americans stand together all the world over. He wasn't no politician nor side-taker, and it was a

thoroughness the inland plantations that sustained the village. The Americans, fearful of ambuscades, stuck to the shore and systematically destroyed the boats, which for a mile or two were drawn up on the edge of the beach. These boats, in a country without roads, are as much a necessity to a man as the house which shelters him. They often represent the hoardings of years, and are not seldom the result of a stern frugality and self-denial; they constitute, indeed, the only wealth of Samoa, and in them is invested the united savings of the whole population. In Oa these boats

egan to bore it with auger holes in which to place the dynamite, he walked down to the pet

m up and down. "You get

n back to face this new danger, which, of the two, was so infinitely the worse. His first instinct was to snatch a hatchet and kill one of the half-naked plunderers, but Fetuao, catching his hands, held him back, and the impulse passed as he realized his utter helplessness. With smarting eyes and a heart that seemed to burst within his breast, he saw his house gutted of everything-his chests torn open, his tools taken, his wife's poor finery divided, and her twenty-dollar sewing machine the subject of a wrangle that ended in its being smashed under the butt of a gun. It was horrible to look on, impotent and raging, and see the fru

man with a cigar, was stan

all the fight had oozed out of him, "Mi

said the

merican,"

said the

ly. "Can't you do nothing

-comber," said the offi

to him that their house was burning, and he never even turned his head to look. She took his hand, but he snatched it impatiently away, refusing to be comforted. Thus he remained for hours, sullen and half-stupefied, until the returning Tanus embarked again, and the

ir own little plantation, to find it devastated like the others, the breadfruit trees ringed, the coffee bushes torn up by the roots, the taro, bananas, and vanilla cut to pieces. In the paddock the cow and

home to them. As Fetuao moved forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or thrown away by the invaders-a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a book or two with the covers scorched off-she lifted up a grimy rag and tossed it

y tore it