The trenches were deep in mud; but the younger folk wrecked the houses in the neighbourhood, carried the roofs to the front, and lay under them, men and women together, through a long night of furious squalls and furious and useless volleys.

Meanwhile the older folk trailed back into Apia in the rain; they talked as they went of who had fallen and what heads had been taken upon either side--they seemed to know by name the losses upon both; and drenched with wet and broken with excitement and fatigue, they crawled into the verandahs of the town to eat and sleep.

The morrow broke grey and drizzly, but as so often happens in the islands, cleared up into a glorious day.

During the night, the majority of the defenders had taken advantage of the rain and darkness and stolen from their forts unobserved.

The rallying sign of the Tamaseses had been a white handkerchief.