It is openly alleged that Bayard had shown himself impracticable; it is whispered that the Hawaiian embassy was an expression of American intrigue, and that the Germans only did as they were done by.

The sufficiency of these excuses may be left to the discretion of the reader.

But, however excused, the breach of faith was public and express; it must have been deliberately predetermined and it was resented in the States as a deliberate insult.
By the middle of August 1887 there were five sail of German war-ships in Apia bay: the _Bismarck_, of 3000 tons displacement; the _Carola_, the _Sophie_, and the _Olga_, all considerable ships; and the beautiful _Adler_, which lies there to this day, kanted on her beam, dismantled, scarlet with rust, the day showing through her ribs.

They waited inactive, as a burglar waits till the patrol goes by.

And on the 23rd, when the mail had left for Sydney, when the eyes of the world were withdrawn, and Samoa plunged again for a period of weeks into her original island-obscurity, Becker opened his guns.