A black
band (they saw) might protect them from the Mataafas, not from
undiscriminating shots. Panic ensued. The war-ships were open to
receive the fugitives, and the gentlemen who had made merry over Fangalii
were seen to thrust each other from the wharves in their eagerness to
flee Apia. I willingly drop the curtain on the shameful picture.
Meanwhile, on the German side of the bay, a more manly spirit was
exhibited in circumstances of alarming weakness. The plantation managers
and overseers had all retreated to Matafele, only one (I understand)
remaining at his post. The whole German colony was thus collected in one
spot, and could count and wonder at its scanty numbers. Knappe declares
(to my surprise) that the war-ships could not spare him more than fifty
men a day. The great extension of the German quarter, he goes on, did
not "allow a full occupation of the outer line"; hence they had shrunk
into the western end by the firm buildings, and the inhabitants were
warned to fall back on this position, in the case of an alert. So that
he who had set forth, a day or so before, to disarm the Mataafas in the
open field, now found his resources scarce adequate to garrison the
buildings of the firm.
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