The greater his merit in the surprising success of the second.

So long as he stayed, the current of affairs moved smoothly; he left behind him on his departure all men at peace; and whether by fortune, or for the want of that wise hand of guidance, he was scarce gone before the clouds began to gather once more on our horizon.
Before the first convention, Germany and the States hauled down their flags.

It was so done again before the second; and Germany, by a still more emphatic step of retrogression, returned the exile Laupepa to his native shores.

For two years the unfortunate man had trembled and suffered in the Cameroons, in Germany, in the rainy Marshalls.

When he left (September 1887) Tamasese was king, served by five iron war-ships; his right to rule (like a dogma of the Church) was placed outside dispute; the Germans were still, as they were called at that last tearful interview in the house by the river, "the invincible strangers"; the thought of resistance, far less the hope of success, had not yet dawned on the Samoan mind.