ning yarns of blasted hopes back
in Europe, and desperate venture here on the Pacific. The Saxon's
headquarters were on Kadiak, where he had formed alliance with the
Indians. Hither he advised the Pole to sail for a cargo of furs.

Ismyloff, the mutineer, was marooned on Bering Island. Ice-drift had
seemed to bar the way {125} northward through Bering Straits. June saw
Benyowsky far eastward at Kadiak on the south shore of Alaska,
gathering in a cargo of furs; and from the sea-otter fields of Kadiak
and Oonalaska, Benyowsky sailed southwest, past the smoking volcanoes
of the Aleutians, vaguely heading for some of those South Sea islands
of which he used to read in the exile village of Kamchatka.

Not a man of the crew knew as much about navigation as a schoolboy.
They had no idea where they were going, or where the ship was. As day
after day slipped past with no sight but the heaving sea, the Russian
landsmen became restive. Provisions had dwindled to one fish a day;
and scarcely a pint of water for each man was left in the hold. In
flying from Siberian exile, were they courting a worse fate?
Stephanow, the criminal convict, who had crossed Siberia with the Pole,
dashed on deck demanding a better allowance of water as the ship
entered warmer and warmer zones. The next thing the Pole knew,
Stephanow had burst open the barrel hoops of the water kegs to quench
his thirst. By the time the guard had gone down the main hatch to
intercept him, Stephanow and a band of Russian mutineers had trundled
the brandy casks to the deck and were in a wild debauch. The main
hatch was clapped down, leaving the mutineers in possession of the
deck, till all fell in drunken torpor, when Benyowsky rushed his
soldiers up the fore scuttle, snapped handcuffs on {126} the rebels,
and tied them to the masts. In the midst of this disorder, such a
hurricane broke over the ocean that the tossing yard-arms alternately
touched water.

To be sure, Benyowsky had escaped exile; but his ship was a hornets'
nest. After the storm all hands were busy sewing new sails. The old
sails were distributed as trousers for the ragamuffin crew. For ten
days no food was tasted but soup made from sea-otter skins. Then birds
were seen, and seaweed drifted past the vessel; and a wild hope mounted
every heart of reaching some part of Japan.

On sunset of July 15, the Pole's watch-dog was noticed standing at the
bow, sniffing and barking. Two or three of t