. The savages were then set free, and hastening up to
Kadiak, Barber levelled his cannon at the Russian fort and demanded
thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars' salvage for the rescue of
the captives and loot. Baranof haggled the Englishman tired, and
compromised for one-fifth the demand.

Two years passed, and the fur company was powerless to strike an
avenging blow. Wherever the Russians led Aleuts into the Kolosh
hunting-grounds, there had been ambush and massacre; but Baranof {311}
bided his time. The Aleut Indian hunters, who had become
panic-stricken, gradually regained sufficient courage again to follow
the Russians eastward. By the spring of 1804 Baranof's men had
gathered up eight hundred Aleut Indians, one hundred and twenty Russian
hunters, four small schooners, and two sloops. The Indians in their
light boats of sea-lion skin on whalebone, the Russians in their
sail-boats, Baranof set out in April from St. Paul, Kadiak, with his
thousand followers to wreak vengeance on the tribes of Sitka.
Sea-otter were hunted on the way, so that it was well on in September
before the brigades entered Sitka waters. Meanwhile aid from an
unexpected quarter had come to the fur company. Lieutenant Krusenstern
had prevailed on the Russian government to send supplies to the Russian
American Company by two vessels around the world instead of caravans
across Siberia. With Krusenstern went Rezanoff, who had helped the fur
traders to obtain their charter, and was now commissioned to open an
embassy to Japan. The second vessel under Captain Lisiansky proceeded
at once to Baranof's aid at Sitka.

Baranof was hunting when Lisiansky's man-of-war entered the gloomy
wilds of Sitka Sound. The fur company's two sloops lay at anchor with
lanterns swinging bow and stern to guide the hunters home. The eight
hundred hostiles had fortified themselves behind the site of the modern
Sitka. Palisades the depth of two spruce logs ran across the front of
the {312} rough barricade, loopholed for musketry, and protected by a
sort of cheval-de-frise of brushwood and spines. At the rear of the
enemy's fort ran sally ports leading to the ambush of the woods, and
inside were huts enough to house a small town. By the 28th of
September Baranof's Aleut Indian hunters had come in and camped
alongshore under protection of cannon sent close inland on a small
boat. It was a weird scene that the Russian officers witnessed, the
enemy's fort, u