His offence was, in the circumstances and after the proclamation, substantial.

He had gone the day before, in the spirit of a tourist to Mataafa's camp, had spoken with the king, and had even recommended him an appeal to Sir George Grey.

Fritze, I gather, had been long uneasy; this arrest on board a British ship fitted the measure.
Doubtless, as he had written long before, the consul alone was responsible "on the legal side"; but the captain began to ask himself, "What next ?"--telegraphed direct home for instructions, "Is arrest of foreigners on foreign vessels legal ?"--and was ready, at a word from Captain Hand, to discharge his dangerous prisoner.

The word in question (so the story goes) was not without a kind of wit.

"I wish you would set that man ashore," Hand is reported to have said, indicating Gallien; "I wish you would set that man ashore, to save me the trouble." The same day de Coetlogon published a proclamation requesting captains to submit to search for contraband of war.
On the 22nd the _Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser_ was suppressed by order of Fritze.