Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/284

264 had been made the subject of an international conference in Washington, which adjourned on July 26, 1885. It was understood that this adjournment was for the consuls to get further instructions from home and in the meantime that no action should be taken by any government.

Nevertheless pretty soon the port of Apia began to resemble a royal review at Wilhelmshaven. The King was in the interior, the petty thieves were in jail, and the island was as quiet and dreamy as a picture of Heaven. By the end of August, 1887, there were five German ships of war in the obscure little bay. Robert Louis Stevenson thus describes the subsequent amazing proceedings:

"They waited inactive, as a burglar waits till the patrol goes by, and on the 23d, when the mail had left for Sydney, when the eyes of the world were withdrawn, and Samoa plunged again for a period of weeks into her original island obscurity, Becker opened his guns. [Becker was the German Consul.] The