nine o'clock
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 . With the dawn , the de Coetlogons from the English consulate beheld the ground strewn with these badges discarded ; and close by the house , a belated turncoat was still changing white for red . Matautu was lost ; Tamasese was confined to Mulinuu ; and by nine o'clock two Mataafa villages paraded the streets of Apia , taking possession . The cost of this respectable success in ammunition must have been enormous ; in life it was but small . Some compute forty killed on either side , others forty on both , three or four being women and one a white man , master of a schooner from Fiji . Nor was the number even of the wounded at all proportionate to the surprising din and fury of the affair while it lasted .