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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. These courtesies, perhaps excessive in themselves, had the unpardonable fault of being offered when too late.
Malie was said to view the proposal with resignation, if not relief. Peace was thought secure. The night before the king was to receive Lauati, I met one of his company, the family chief, Iina, and we shook hands over the unexpected issue of our troubles. What no one dreamed was that Laupepa would refuse. And he did.
Let Mataafa leave Malie for any other district in Samoa; it should be construed as an act of submission and the confiscation and proscription instantly recalled. This was certainly well devised; the government escaped from their own false position, and by the same stroke lowered the prestige of their adversaries. But unhappily the chief justice did not put all his eggs in one basket.
"Malië, the chief of Samatau, will help us," he said to Frewen; "he has two hundred of the best fighting men in Samoa, and I shall ask him to pick out fifty. But we want a nautical leader some one to take charge of the ship after we get possession of her." "Now here is the story of the mutiny, told to me by poor Mrs. Marston."
Concurrently with these negotiations he began again to move the captain of one of the war-ships to shell the rebel village; the captain, conceiving the extremity wholly unjustified, not only refused these instances, but more or less publicly complained of their being made; the matter came to the knowledge of the white resident who was at that time playing the part of intermediary with Malie; and he, in natural anger and disgust, withdrew from the negotiation.
The reader will now understand the peculiar significance of a deputation which should embrace Lauati and the orators of both Malie and Manono, how it would represent all that is most effective on the Malietoa side, and all that is most considerable in Samoan politics, except the opposite feudal party of the Tupua. And in the temptation brought to bear on Mataafa, even the Tupua was conjoined.
About the time of the secession to Malie, many ugly things were said; I will not repeat that which I hope and believe the speakers did not wholly mean; let it suffice that, if rumour carried to Mataafa the language I have heard used in my own house and before my own native servants, he would be highly justified in keeping clear of Apia and the whites.
Stevenson describes a visit made by them to that monarch for the purpose of attempting to reconcile the two parties. "On the second of May," she writes, "Louis, Teuila and I, taking Talolo with us, went in a boat to Malie to visit King Mataafa. I took a dark red silk holaku, trimmed with Persian embroidery, and Teuila took a green silk one, in which to appear before royalty.
Down in the cabin Raymond and Malië had been equally as quick, and when Frewen and Cheyne came below they found "Captain" Ryan, together with the Chileno who was acting as steward, tied hand and foot and lying outside Captain Maraton's stateroom door. "Everything all right, Mr. Frewen?" inquired Raymond. "Everything. All the gentry up for'ard are bussed up comfortably like fowls for cooking.
Nothing can more thoroughly depict the worst side of the Samoan character than these useless barriers which deface their only road. It was one of the first orders issued by the government of Mulinuu after the coming of the chief justice, to have the passage cleared. It is the disgrace of Mataafa that the thing is not yet done. The village of Malie is the scene of prosperity and peace.
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