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There were no white men in the crew of the Southern Belle. They were all Rotumah boys, with the exception of Ah Foy, the Chinese cook. This amiable individual was singing over his pots and pans when he was suddenly startled by the apparition of Skiddy at the galley door. The little consul was deathly pale, and there was something fierce and authoritative in his look.

“Come out of here,” he said abruptly, “I want to talk to you!”

The Chinaman followed him aft. He had a pretty good idea of what was coming. That was why he was sewn up with two hundred dollars in hard cash, together with a twenty-dollar bill under his left heel. He began to cry, and in five minutes had blurted out the whole thing. Self-preservation is the first law, and he had, besides, some dim conception of State’s evidence. Skiddy made the conception clearer, and promised him immunity if he would make a clean breast of it. This the Chinaman forthwith did in his laborious pidgin. A good part of it was incomprehensible, but he established certain main facts, and confirmed the stout, blue, important-looking letter. As Satterlee came off on a shore boat, pulling like mad, and then darted up the ladder in a sweat of apprehension, he was met at the top by Skiddy–not Skiddy the friend, but Skiddy the arm of the law, Skiddy the retributive, Skiddy the world’s avenger, with Seniko, his towering cox, standing square behind him.

“John Forster,” he said, ” alias Satterlee, I arrest you in the name of the United States, on the charge of having committed the crime of barratry, and warn you that anything you say now may be hereafter used against you.”

It was a horrible thing to say–to be forced to say–and no sense of public duty could make it less than detestable. Skiddy almost whispered out the words. The brutality of them appalled him. Remember, this was his friend, his hero, the man whose intimacy an hour before had been everything to him. Satterlee gave him a quick, blank, panicky look, and then, with a pitiful bravado, took a step forward with an attempted return to his usual confident air. He professed to be dumfounded at the accusation; he was the victim of a dreadful mistake; he tried, with a ghastly smile, to reassert his old dominion, calling Skiddy “old man” and “old chap” in a shaky, fawning voice, and wanting to take him below “to talk it over.” But the little consul was adamantine. The law must take its course. He was sorry, terribly sorry, but as an officer of the United States he had to do his duty.

Satterlee preceded him into the boat. The consul followed and took the yoke lines. They were both dejected, and neither dared to meet the other’s eyes. It was a mournful pull ashore, and tragic in the retrospect. A silence lay between them as heavy as lead. The crew, conscious of the captain’s humiliation, though they knew not the cause, felt also constrained to a deep solemnity. Yes, a funereal pull, and it was a relief to everyone when at last they grounded in the shingle off the consulate.

Skiddy had a busy day of it. Leaving the captain at the consulate under guard, and sending off Asi, the chief of Vaiala, together with ten warriors armed with rifles and axes to take charge of the Southern Belle and her crew, he walked into Apia to make arrangements to meet the painful situation. Single-handed he had to rear the structure of a whole judicial system, including United States marshals, a clerk of court, four assessor judges, and a jail. His first steps were directed toward a little cottage on the Motootua Road, the residence of Mr. Scoville Purdy, a goaty, elderly, unwashed individual, who formed the more respectable half of the Samoan bar. Mr. Purdy was forthwith retained by the United States Government, and the papers of the case left in his hands. Skiddy next sought out Mr. Thacher, the other half of the bar, and directed him to defend the prisoner. Then he bent his mind to the consideration of jails, of which Samoa boasted two.