CHAPTER IX--"FUROR CONSULARIS".
_December_ 1888 _to March_ 1889 Knappe, in the _Adler_, with a flag of truce at the fore, was entering Laulii Bay when the _Eber_ brought him the news of the night's reverse.
His heart was doubtless wrung for his young countrymen who had been butchered and mutilated in the dark woods, or now lay suffering, and some of them dying, on the ship.

And he must have been startled as he recognised his own position.

He had gone too far; he had stumbled into war, and, what was worse, into defeat; he had thrown away German lives for less than nothing, and now saw himself condemned either to accept defeat, or to kick and pummel his failure into something like success; either to accept defeat, or take frenzy for a counsellor.

Yesterday, in cold blood, he had judged it necessary to have the woods to the westward guarded lest the evacuation of Laulii should prove only the peril of Apia.

To-day, in the irritation and alarm of failure, he forgot or despised his previous reasoning, and, though his detachment was beat back to the ships, proceeded with the remainder of his maimed design.