The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 17Stevenson, Robert Louis
History
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 17
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Islands of the Pacific -- Fiction; Samoan Islands -- History; Short stories
But there was worse to come. I gather that Tamasese was at the time in
the sulks. He had doubtless been promised prompt aid and a prompt
success; he had seen himself surreptitiously helped, privately ordered
about, and publicly disowned; and he was still the king of nothing more
than his own province, and already the second in command of Captain
Brandeis. With the adhesion of some part of his native cabinet, and
behind the back of his white minister, he found means to communicate
with the Hawaiians. A passage on the _Kaimiloa_, a pension, and a home
in Honolulu were the bribes proposed; and he seems to have been tempted.
A day was set for a secret interview. Poor, the Hawaiian secretary, and
J. D. Strong, an American painter attached to the embassy in the
surprising quality of "Government Artist," landed with a Samoan
boat's-crew in Aana; and while the secretary hid himself, according to
agreement, in the outlying home of an English settler, the artist
(ostensibly bent on photography) entered the headquarters of the rebel
king. It was a great day in Leulumoenga; three hundred recruits had come
in, a feast was cooking; and the photographer, in view of the native
love of being photographed, was made entirely welcome. But beneath the
friendly surface all were on the alert. The secret had leaked out: Weber
beheld his plans threatened in the root; Brandeis trembled for the
possession of his slave and sovereign; and the German vice-consul, Mr.
Sonnenschein, had been sent or summoned to the scene of danger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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