ckly rounded up in the chapel. Round
this, outside, were piled chairs, furniture, pitch, tar, powder,
whale-oil. Promptly at nine in the morning, three women and twelve
young girls--wives and daughters of the Cossack officers--were
despatched to the Cossack besiegers on the hill with word that unless
the Cossacks surrendered their arms to the exiles and sent down fifty
soldiers as hostages of safety for the exiles till the ship could
sail--precisely at ten o'clock the church would be set on fire.

The women were seen to ascend the hill. No signal came from the
Cossacks. At a quarter past nine Benyowsky kindled fires at each of
the four angles of the church. As the flames began to mount a forest
of handkerchiefs and white sheets waved above the hill, and a host of
men came spurring to the fort with all the Cossacks' arms and fifty-two
hostages.

{122} The exiles now togged themselves out in all the gay regimentals
of the Russian officers. Salutes of triumph were fired from the
cannon. A _Te Deum_ was sung. Feast and mad wassail filled both day
and night till the harbor cleared. Even the Cossacks caught the madcap
spirit of the escapade, and helped to load ammunition on the _St. Peter
and Paul_. Nor were old wrongs forgiven. Ismyloff was bundled on the
vessel in irons. The chancellor's secretary was seized and compelled
to act as cook. Men, who had played the spy and tyrant, now felt the
merciless knout. Witnesses, who had tried to pry into the exiles'
plot, were hanged at the yard-arm. Nine women, relatives of exiles,
who had been compelled to become the wives of Cossacks, now threw off
the yoke of slavery, donned the costly Chinese silks, and joined the
pirates. Among these was the governor's daughter, who was to have
married a Cossack.

On May 11, 1771, the Polish flag was run up on the _St. Peter and
Paul_. The fort fired a God-speed--a heartily sincere one, no
doubt--of twenty-one guns. Again the _Te Deum_ was chanted; again, the
oath of obedience taken by kissing Benyowsky's sword; and at five
o'clock in the evening the ship dropped down the river for the sea,
with ninety-six exiles on board, of whom nine were women; one, an
archdeacon; half a dozen, officers of the imperial army; one, a
gentleman in waiting to the Empress; at least a dozen, convicts of the
blackest dye.

{123} The rest of Benyowsky's adventures read more like a page from
some pirate romance than sober record of events on the