The Man Who Knew Everything came to Samoa in November, when dark days were on the land, and the nearing Christmas time seemed likely to be as that of the preceding one, when burning villages and the crackle of musketry, and the battle cries of opposing factions, engaged in slaughtering one another, turned the once restful and beautiful Samoa into a hell of evil passions, misery and suffering. For the poor King Malietoa was making a game fight with his scanty and ill-armed troops against the better-armed rebel forces, who were supplied, sub rosa, with all the arms and ammunition they desired by the German commercial agents of Bismarck, who had impressed upon that statesman the necessity of making Samoa the base of German trading enterprise in the South Seas by stirring up rebellion throughout the group to such an extent that Germany, under the plea of humanity, would intervene—buy out the British and American interests, and force the natives to accept a German protectorate.
At this time the white population of Apia numbered about two hundred, of whom one half were Germans—the rest were principally English and Americans. For two years past a very bitter feeling had existed between the staff of the great German trading firm, and the British and American community. The latter had their places of business in Apia, and the suburb of Matautu, the Germans occupied the suburb of Matafele, and although there was a business intercourse between the people of the three nationalities, there was absolutely none of a social character. The British and American traders and residents were supporters of King Malietoa, the Germans backed up the rebel party, and the natives themselves were equally divided into pro-British, and pro-Germans.
At this time—when the Man Who Knew Everything arrived in Samoa from New Zealand—I was living on shore. The vessel in which I was employed as “recruiter” in the Kanaka labour trade was laid up in Apia harbour. Two months previously we had brought a cargo of native labourers from the Gilbert Islands to be indentured to the cotton planters in Samoa, and finding the country in such a disturbed state, with business paralysed, and no further demand for a fresh cargo of Kanaka “recruits,” we decided to pay off most of the ship's company, and let the brigantine lie up till the end of the rainy and bad weather season—from the end of November till March, The skipper and a few of the native crew remained on board, but I took up my quarters on shore, at a little Samoan village named Lelepa—two miles from Apia. Here I was the “paying guest” of our boatswain—a stalwart native of the island of Rarotonga. He had sailed with me on several vessels during a period of some years; and on one of our visits to Apia had married a Samoan girl of a good family.
Having much spare time on my hands I occupied it in deep-sea fishing and shooting, and in making boat voyages along the coast, visiting a number of native villages, where I was well-known to the people, who always made me and my boat's crew very welcome—for the Samoans are naturally a most hospitable race, and love visiting and social intercourse. On these excursions Marama (the native boatswain) and some other of the ship's crew sometimes came with me; on other occasions my party would be made up of the two half-caste sons of the American Consul, two or three Samoans and myself.
Towards the end of November there arrived from Auckland (N.Z.) the trading schooner Dauntless. She brought one passenger whose acquaintance I soon made, and whom I will call Marchmont. He was a fine, well-set-up young fellow of about five and twenty years of age, and I was delighted to find that he was a good all-round sportsman—I could never induce any of the white traders or merchants of Apia to join me in any of my many delightful trips. Marchmont was making a tour through the Pacific Islands, partly on business, and partly on pleasure. He was visiting the various groups on behalf of a Liverpool firm, who were buying up land suitable for cotton-growing, and was to spend two months in Samoa.
He and I soon made arrangements for a series of fishing and shooting trips along the south coast of Upolu, where the country was quiet, and as yet undisturbed by the war. But, although Marchmont was a most estimable and companionable man in many respects, he had some serious defects in his character, which, from a sportsman's point of view, were most objectionable, and were soon to bring him into trouble. One was that he was most intensely self-opinionated, and angrily resented being contradicted—even when he knew he was in the wrong; another was his bad temper—whenever he did anything particularly foolish he would not stand a little good-natured “chaff”—he either flew into a violent rage and “said things” or sulked like a boy of ten years of age. Then, too, another regrettable feature about him was the fact that he, being a young man of wealth, had the idea that he should always be deferred to, never argued with upon any subject, and his advice sought upon everything pertaining to sport. These unpromising traits in his character soon got him into hot water, and before he had been a week in Samoa he was nicknamed by both whites and natives “Misi Ulu Poto—mâsani mea uma,”—“Mr. Wise Head—the Man Who Knows Everything”. The term stuck—and Marchmont took it quite seriously, as a well-deserved compliment to his abilities.
My new acquaintance, I must mention, had a most extensive and costly sporting outfit—all of it was certainly good, but much of it quite useless for such places as Samoa and other Polynesian Islands. Of rifles and guns he had about a dozen, with an enormous quantity of ammunition and fittings, bags, water-proofing, tents, fishing-boots, spirit stoves, hatchets in leather covers, hunting knives, etc., etc.; and his fishing gear alone must have run into a tidy sum of money. This latter especially interested me, but there was nothing in it that I would have exchanged for any of my own—that is, few-deep-sea fishing, a sport in which I was always very keen during a past residence of fifteen years in the South Seas. When I showed my gear to Marchmont he criticised it with great cheerfulness and freedom, and somewhat irritated me by frequently ejaculating “Bosh!” when I explained why in fishing at a depth of 100 to 150 fathoms for a certain species of Ruvettus (a nocturnal-feeding fish that attains a weight of over 100 lb.) a heavy wooden hook was always used by the natives in preference to a steel hook of European manufacture. I saw that it was impossible to convince him, so dropped the subject; and showed him other gear of mine—flying-fish tackle, barb-less pearl-shell hooks for bonito, etc., etc He “bosh-ed” nearly everything, and wound up by saying that he wondered why people of sense accepted the dicta of natives in sporting matters generally.
“But I imagine that they do know a little about such things,” I observed.
“Bosh!—they pretend to, that's all. Now, I've never yet met a Kanaka who could show me anything, and I've been to Tonga, Fiji and Tahiti.”
Early one morning, I sent off my whaleboat with Marama in charge to proceed round the south end of Upolu, and meet Marchmont and me at a village on the lee side of the island named Siumu, which is about eighteen miles distant from, and almost opposite to Apia, across the range that traverses the island. An hour or so later Marchmont and I set out, accompanied by two boys to carry our game bags, provisions, etc. Each of them wore suspended from his neck a large white cowrie shell—the Samoan badge of neutrality—for we had to pass first through King Malietoa's lines, and then through those of the besieging rebel forces.