When the treaty was signed, I invited the chiefs to ask me questions, suggesting at Mr. Lawes' instance that the king should be their spokesman. His Majesty, fixing his single eye upon me, began in a plaintive voice to recite the wise acts of his reign. He desired me to take note that he had enacted two laws which would never be abrogated: the one forbidding the sale of land to Europeans, and the other prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquor to his people. I hastened to assure him that these wise enactments (in which I suspected the guiding hand of Mr. Lawes) had my full approval, provided that no difficulties were thrown in the way of leasing land to Europeans for trading purposes. This, the king assured me, was never the case; they liked Europeans, and if their young men stole things from them, the community made restitution and punished the culprits. What they wanted was advice, and if the Queen sent an adviser to live among them, it would be well. He agreed with me that it was ill to denude the island of its young men, and I might count upon him to discourage the practice.[2] Finally he commended Niué-Fekai to the keeping of God, who had showed His favour to her this day in uniting her to England--the "greatest nation in the world." A messenger, who now arrived from the landing-place, explained the defection of the crowd outside. A party had landed from the _Porpoise_ to erect the flagstaff that we had brought from Sydney. As soon as the people understood their purpose, the crowbars and shovels were snatched from the hands of the blue-jackets, and the natives themselves, with shouts of laughter, fell to with a will upon the grave of their independence. The blue-jackets, nothing loath to exercise their unaccustomed rôle as foremen of works, were laughingly directing operations, when some officious elders, scandalised by what they considered to be a breach of manners, fell upon the volunteers with their paddle-clubs and drove them off, though not before the happiest relations had been established between the natives and their visitors. [2] Here I may remark that His Majesty lacked his usual frankness, for the first recruiting vessel that called after my visit found him as active an ally as ever. CHAPTER III THE KING OF ALL NIUÉ For a few hours His Majesty could lay aside the cares of state, and I was able to make his acquaintance. He faced the camera without a trace of embarrassment, though he had probably never seen one before, and he consented, at my entreaty, to be photographed without his helmet. He is a withered, grey-bearded, querulous old man, and he looks the age assigned to him--seventy-six; but, despite the ravages of age and the blemish of a missing eye, there is an air of decision and obstinacy about him which does not belie his character. For it is by sheer tenacity of purpose that Tongia has attained his present giddy eminence.