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.

These courtesies, perhaps excessive in themselves, had the unpardonable fault of being offered when too late.