And no men hitherto discovered, on being suddenly challenged from the sea, would have turned their backs upon the challenger and poured volleys on the friendly shore.
The first is not extremely credible, but merits examination.

The story of the recovered gun seems straightforward; it is supported by much testimony, the diving operations on the reef seem to have been watched from shore with curiosity; it is hard to suppose that it does not roughly represent the fact.

And yet if any part of it be true, the whole of Becker's explanation falls to the ground.

A boat which had skirted the whole eastern coast of Mulinuu, and was already opposite a wharf in Matafele, and still going west, might have been guilty on a thousand points--there was one on which she was necessarily innocent; she was necessarily innocent of proceeding on Mulinuu.

Or suppose the diving operations, and the native testimony, and Pelly's chart of the boat's course, and the boat itself, to be all stages of some epidemic hallucination or steps in a conspiracy--suppose even a second _taumualua_ to have entered Apia bay after nightfall, and to have been fired upon from Grevsmuhl's wharf in the full career of hostilities against Mulinuu--suppose all this, and Becker is not helped.