I do not know when the proposal was first made. Doubtless the
disaffection grew slowly, every trifle adding to its force; doubtless
there lingered for long a willingness to give the new government a trial.
The chief justice at least had been nearly five months in the country,
and the president, Baron Senfft von Pilsach, rather more than a month
before the mine was sprung. On May 31, 1891, the house of Mataafa was
found empty, he and his chiefs had vanished from Apia, and, what was
worse, three prisoners, liberated from the gaol, had accompanied them in
their secession; two being political offenders, and the third (accused of
murder) having been perhaps set free by accident. Although the step had
been discussed in certain quarters, it took all men by surprise. The
inhabitants at large expected instant war. The officials awakened from a
dream to recognise the value of that which they had lost. Mataafa at
Vaiala, where he was the pledge of peace, had perhaps not always been
deemed worthy of particular attention; Mataafa at Malie was seen, twelve
hours too late, to be an altogether different quantity. With excess of
zeal on the other side, the officials trooped to their boats and
proceeded almost in a body to Malie, where they seem to have employed
every artifice of flattery and every resource of eloquence upon the
fugitive high chief.
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