[A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson]@TWC D-Link bookA Footnote to History CHAPTER IX--"FUROR CONSULARIS" 8/31
Colonel de Coetlogon had his faults, but they did not touch his honour; his bare word would always outweigh a waggon-load of such denunciations; and he declares his behaviour on that night to have been blameless.
The question was besides inquired into on the spot by Sir John Thurston, and the colonel honourably acquitted.
But during the weeks that were now to follow, Knappe believed the contrary; he believed not only that Moors and others had supplied ammunition and Klein commanded in the field, but that de Coetlogon had made the signal of attack; that though his blue-jackets had bled and fallen against the arms of Samoans, these were supplied, inspired, and marshalled by Americans and English. The legend was the more easily believed because it embraced and was founded upon so much truth.
Germans lay dead, the German wounded groaned in their cots; and the cartridges by which they fell had been sold by an American and brought into the country in a British bottom.
Had the transaction been entirely mercenary, it would already have been hard to swallow; but it was notoriously not so.
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