A CARD-PARTY IN PRISON.

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were in darkness, but a blaze of light streamed from the windows of the female ward. I thought I caught the muffled ring of kava-stones, and-oh, horror!—the sound of masculine laughter. Kubu, my companion, vowing vengeance against the unsuspecting warder, led me towards the window. There were two kerosene-lamps on the floor, a female prisoner was pounding kava, while the other prisoners of both sexes were squatting in a circle watching a game of euchre between the warder and a housebreaker, each with a good-looking partner from the female ward. I left Kubu to break in upon this pleasant little party, and I heard next day that the warder had retired into private life.

Not long after this two prisoners, who formed the crew of the Government ketch Kumeti, took the opportunity of seizing the Government despatch-boat Alice while her police crew and their own warder were making a night of it on shore. They guarded against pursuit by taking with them the gear belonging to the Kumeti. Reaching Samoa, they stranded the boat, and joined the settlement of Tongans on Upolu. We had no extradition treaty with Samoa. The bickerings between the three Powers were slaked for the moment by the Treaty of Berlin, under which brilliant effort of statecraft a Consular Board, a Municipal Council, a Lands Commission, and a Swedish Chief-Justice had been sent to fight the quarrel out upon the spot. But Malietoa was king, and to Malietoa I applied for the recovery of the boat and the prisoners. I chose the smart embossed paper headed "Ministry for Foreign Affairs," and wrote in the king's name to request his royal brother to arrest the runaways, and to send back the boat.

In due course I received an answer, written by the king's native secretary in excellent English, saying that the men had been arrested but had broken loose again. A month later, however, they were rearrested very cleverly, and landed with the stolen boat at Nukualofa, where they received in the Supreme Court a sentence likely to deter others from similar attempts. With them came a second letter from King Malietoa, enclosing his account for expenses-£3, 15s.-and a polite intimation that he was obliged to make this charge, owing to the unsettled state. of his Government; but that in a few months, when he had had time to organise his staff, he would be very glad to do such small services for his brother's Government for nothing. We heard afterwards that at that time he had no police at all, but that he had offered a reward for the capture, and a number of big Samoans had gone manhunting until the runaways were caught. The whole transaction was probably illegal, but it was morally justifiable, and not more irregular than most other movements of public affairs in Samoa at the time.

The police also had so fine a disregard for legal forms that they were becoming a source of embarrassment. They were cursed with an excess of zeal bred of ambition. They were classed in three ranks-the Inisipeketa (Inspector) with a salary of £30, the polisi (policeman) with £20, and the kateta (cadet) with £10 a-year. Kubu had hit upon the happy idea of letting promotion depend upon individual activity, as shown by the number of prosecutions instituted by each man. Just as even the best of Christians does not pass a single day without committing some sin, so must a Tongan be morbidly law-abiding who

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can lie down at night without having been entangled in the meshes of Mr Baker's code by sins of omission or commission. An ambitious kateta had only to note a hole in the road, or a few dead leaves in the town square, or to peer through the transparent reed walls of a private house at illicit card-playing after ten o'clock curfew, to have ground for laying an information. If he wanted excitement, he might chase one of the numerous stray horses and pigs, and lead it in triumph to the pound; or, if all these failed, he need only lie in wait at dusk on the road leading to the plantations for some heedless wretch returning home with his shirt

Promotion-hunting.

over his arm, to secure a conviction for indecent exposure of the person. If he had a taste for gossip--and what Tongan has not?-he might forestall his own Inisipeketa by hunting down a flirtation, and haling the delinquents

H

before the grim tribunal; but this, being the special sphere of his superior officer, was dangerous ground.

The eighteen policemen of Nukualofa were divided into three "classes" (kalasi). Each class was on duty in the police-station for seven days; during the following week they rode about the island picking up from the mayors and village constables materials on which to found charges. in the police court; but for the third week they were off duty, and were free to attend to their food-plantations. The Inspector and his assistant took it in turns to be on duty at the station to receive reports. Each policeman was expected to find his own horse, but the Government supplied him with a saddle. He had also to provide his own rations, except during the week he was on duty, when he had the run of a tin of biscuits. The station was a ruinous little building, containing two rooms and a row of ill-ventilated cells. One of Kubu's first acts was to dismantle a number of these cells to make bunks, in which one or two policemen might always be found asleep, while the rest sat on the floor pounding kava. They had no regular beats, and besides attending court and executing distress warrants, their principal occupation seemed to consist in carrying messages for the Cabinet Ministers, who summoned them for the purpose by an electric bell that connected the station with the Premier's office. Besides the native police there was one white constable, who for £50 a-year was content to obey the orders of his native superiors. He was an assiduous officer when sober, and even at other times he could not be described as inactive, if hoisting the American flag of a Sunday afternoon, and fighting any of his colleagues who tried

to haul it down, may be held to establish a claim to

energy.

As promotion depended upon the quantity rather than the quality of the prosecutions instituted by the police, they naturally chose those that entailed the least amount of labour. Thefts are troublesome to unravel, therefore thieves were wisely let alone in favour of luckless wights guilty of wearing turbans, or of not wearing girdles within the town, or of failing to dismount in the presence of a member of the House of Lords; for though the penalty for these offences was only one dollar, yet the convictions would all count for promotion. Less simple, but more interesting, were the prosecutions for flirting; and although the glory of conviction would redound to the sole credit of the Inisipeketa, yet the policeman who worked up the case had the reward of every good man who fearlessly does his duty.

The mistaken zeal of these assiduous officers was provoking loud murmurs against us. Their little fingers, it was said, were thicker than their predecessors' loins, and I was accused of having destroyed the last lingering respect for a white man in the mind of the Tongan policeman—a respect which even Mr Baker had been at pains to preserve. They pounced upon horses tethered in the road by their European owners and took them in triumph to the pound: under the late Administration the police left white men's horses unmolested. They even built a pound for pigs, and initiated it by the imprisonment of Mr L's sow, thus bringing upon me several consular remonstrances headed "Re L's sow." They trampled under foot the sanctity of private property by pursuing