On the 17th Leary and Pelly landed carpenters and repaired it in his teeth.

Leary, besides, had marines under arms, ready to land them if it should be necessary to protect the work.

But Becker looked on without interference, perhaps glad enough to have the bridge repaired; for even Becker may not always have offended intentionally.

Such was now the distracted posture of the little town: all government extinct, the German consul patrolling it with armed men and issuing proclamations like a ruler, the two other Powers defying his commands, and at least one of them prepared to use force in the defiance.

Close on its skirts sat the warriors of Mataafa, perhaps four thousand strong, highly incensed against the Germans, having all to gain in the seizure of the town and firm, and, like an army in a fairy tale, restrained by the air-drawn boundary of the neutral ground.
I have had occasion to refer to the strange appearance in these islands of an American adventurer with a battery of cannon.