Pioneers of the Pacific Coast Part 1

Pioneers of the Pacific Coast.

by Agnes C. Laut.

CHAPTER I

THE VOYAGE OF THE _GOLDEN HIND_

All through the sixteenth century the South Seas were regarded as a mysterious wonderworld, whence Spain drew unlimited wealth of gold and silver bullion, of pearls and precious stones. Spain had declared the Pacific 'a closed sea' to the rest of the world. But in 1567 it happened that Sir John Hawkins, an English mariner, was cruising in the Gulf of Mexico, when a terrific squall, as he said, drove his s.h.i.+ps landward to Vera Cruz, and he sent a messenger to the Spanish viceroy there asking permission to dock and repair his battered vessels. Now on one of the English s.h.i.+ps was a young officer, not yet twenty-five years of age, named Francis Drake. Twelve Spanish merchantmen rigged as frigates lay in the harbour, and Drake observed that cargo of small bulk but ponderous weight, and evidently precious, was being stowed in their capacious holds. Was this the gold and silver {2} bullion that was enriching Spain beyond men's dreams? Whence did it come? Could English privateers intercept it on the high seas?

Perhaps the English adventurers evinced too great interest in that precious cargo; for though the Spanish governor had granted them permission to repair their s.h.i.+ps, the English had barely dismantled when Spanish fire-s.h.i.+ps came drifting down on their moorings. A cannon-shot knocked a mug of beer from Hawkins's hand, and head over heels he fell into the sea, while a thousand Spaniards began sabring the English crew ash.o.r.e. Some friendly hand threw out a rope to Hawkins, who was clad in complete armour. In the dark, unseen by the enemy, he pulled himself up the side of a smaller s.h.i.+p, and, cutting hawsers, scudded for the open sea. There escaped, also, of Hawkins's fleet another small s.h.i.+p, which was commanded by Francis Drake; and after much suffering both vessels reached England.

One can imagine the effect on young Drake of the treacherous act and of the glimpse of that cargo of gold and silver treasure. The English captains had but asked a night's lodging from a power supposed to be friendly. {3} They had been met by a pirate raid. Good! Young Francis Drake eagerly took up Spain's challenge; he would meet the raid with counter-raid. Three years later he was cruising the Spanish Main, capturing and plundering s.h.i.+ps and forts and towns. In 1572 he led his men across the Isthmus of Panama, and intercepted and captured a Spanish convoy of treasure coming overland. Near the south side of the isthmus he climbed a tree and had his first glimpse of the Pacific. It set his blood on the leap. On bended knee he prayed aloud to the Almighty to be permitted to sail the first English s.h.i.+p on that 'faire sea.' And, having recrossed the isthmus and loaded his s.h.i.+ps with plunder, he bore away for England and reached Plymouth in August 1573.

The raid on Panama had brought Drake enormous wealth. At his own cost he built three frigates and two sloops to explore the South Seas, his purpose being to enter the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan, which no Englishman had yet ventured to pa.s.s. These s.h.i.+ps he equipped as if for royal tournament. Players of the violin and the harp discoursed music at each meal. Rarest wines filled the lockers.

Drake, clad in rich velvet, {4} dined on plates of pure gold served by ten young n.o.blemen, who never sat or donned hat in his presence; and on his own s.h.i.+p, the _Pelican_--afterwards called the _Golden Hind_--he had a hundred picked marines, men eager for battle and skilful in wielding the cutla.s.s. His men loved him as a dauntless leader; they feared him, too, with a fear that commanded obedience on the instant.

Queen Elizabeth was in a quandary how to treat her gallant buccaneer and rover of the high seas. England and Spain were at peace, and she could not give Drake an open royal commission to raid the commerce of a friendly power; but she did present him with a magnificent sword, to signify that she would have no objection if he should cut his way through the portals leading to the 'closed sea.' The fleet set sail in December 1577, and steered by the west coast of Morocco and the Cape Verde Islands. The coast of Brazil was reached in April. Two of the s.h.i.+ps were abandoned near the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, after having been stripped of provisions. In August the remaining three s.h.i.+ps entered the tempestuous seas around Cape Horn. Drake drove before the gales with sails close-reefed and hatches battened, and came {5} out with only one of his three s.h.i.+ps left, the first English keel to cleave the waters of the Pacific. In honour of the feat Drake renamed his s.h.i.+p the _Golden Hind_. Perhaps there was jocose irony in the suggestion of gold and speed. Certain it is, the crew of the _Golden Hind_ were well content with the possession of both gold and speed before advancing far up the west coast of South America.

Quite by chance, which seems always to favour the daring, somewhere off the coast of Chile Drake picked up an Indian fisherman. The natives of South America, for the best of reasons, hated their Spanish masters, who enslaved them, treated them brutally, and forced them to work in the pearl fisheries and the mines. Drake persuaded the Indian to pilot his s.h.i.+p into the harbour of Valparaiso. Never dreaming that any foreign vessel had entered the Pacific, Spanish treasure-s.h.i.+ps lay rocking to the tide in fancied security, and actually dipped colours to Drake. Drake laughed, waved his plumed hat back in salute, dealt out wine to give courage to 'his merrie boys,' and sailed straight amid the anch.o.r.ed treasure-s.h.i.+ps. Barely had the _Golden Hind_ taken a position in the midst of the enemy's fleet, when, selecting one of the staunchest {6} vessels of the enemy, Drake had grappling-irons thrown out, clamping his s.h.i.+p to her victim. In a trice the English sailors were on the Spanish deck with swords out and the rallying-cry of 'G.o.d and St George! Down with Spanish dogs!' Dumbfounded and unarmed, down the hatches, over the bulwarks into the sea, reeled the surprised Spaniards. Drake clapped hatches down upon those trapped inside, and turned his cannon on the rest of the unguarded Spanish fleet.

Literally, not a drop of blood was shed. The treasure-s.h.i.+ps were looted of their cargoes and sent drifting out to sea.

All the other harbours of the Pacific were raided and looted in similar summary fas.h.i.+on; and, somewhere seaward from Lima, Drake learned of a treasure-s.h.i.+p bearing untold riches--the _Glory of the South Seas_--the huge caravel in which the Spaniards sent home to Spain the yearly tribute of bullion. The _Golden Hind_, with her sails spread to the wind, sought for the _Glory_ like a harrier for its quarry. One crew of Spaniards on a small s.h.i.+p that was scuttled saved their throats by telling Drake that the great s.h.i.+p was only two days ahead, and loaded to the water-line with wealth untold. Drake crowded sail, had muskets {7} and swords furbished and thirty cannon loaded, and called on his crew to quit themselves like men. And when the wind went down he ordered small boats out to tow the _Golden Hind_. For five days the hunt lasted, never slackening by day or by night; and when, at three in the afternoon of a day in March, Drake's brother shouted from the cross-trees, 'Sail ho!' every man aboard went mad with impatience to crowd on the last inch of canvas and overtake the rich prize. The Englishmen saw that the Spanish s.h.i.+p was so heavily laden that she was making but slow progress; and so unconscious was the Spanish captain of danger, that when he discerned a s.h.i.+p approaching he actually lowered canvas and awaited what he thought might be fresh orders from the viceroy. The _Golden Hind_ sped on till she was almost alongside the Spaniard; then Drake let go full blast all thirty cannon, as fast as he could s.h.i.+ft and veer for the cannoneers to take aim. Yards, sails, masts fell shattered and torn from the splendid Spanish s.h.i.+p. The English clapped their grappling-hooks to her sides, and naked swords did the rest. To save their lives, the Spanish crew, after a feeble resistance, surrendered, and bullion to the value in {8} modern money of almost a million dollars fell into the hands of the men of the _Golden Hind_.

Drake's vessel was now loaded deep with treasure, and preparations were made to sail homeward, but her commander realized that it would be dangerous to attempt to return to England by way of the Spanish Main with a s.h.i.+p so heavily laden that she must sail slowly. It was then that legends of a North-East Pa.s.sage came into his mind. He would sail northward in search of the strait that was supposed to lead through the continent to the Atlantic--the mythical strait of Anian. As the world knows, there was no such pa.s.sage; but how far north did Drake sail seeking it? Some accounts say as far as Oregon; others, as far as the northern coast of California; but, at all events, as he advanced farther north he found that the coast sheered farther and farther west.

So he gave over his attempt to find the strait of the legends, and turned back and anch.o.r.ed in 'a faire and good bay,' which is now known as Drake's Bay, a short distance north of San Francisco; and, naming the region New Albion, he claimed it for Queen Elizabeth. In July 1579 he weighed anchor and steered south-west. {9} He reached the Molucca Islands in November, and arrived at Java in March. In June he rounded the Cape of Good Hope and then beat his way up the Atlantic to England.

In September 1580 the _Golden Hind_ entered the harbour of Plymouth.

How Drake became the lion of the hour when he reached England, after having circ.u.mnavigated the globe, need not be told. Ballads were recited in his honour. Queen Elizabeth dined in state on the _Golden Hind_, and, after the dinner, with the sword which she had given him when he set out, she conferred on Drake the honour of knighthood, as the seal of his country's acclaim.

Drake's conclusions regarding the supposed pa.s.sage from the Pacific to the Atlantic were correct, though for two hundred years they were rejected by geographers. His words are worth setting down: '_The Asian and American continents, if they be not fully joined, yet seem they to come very neere, from whose high and snow-covered mountains, the north and north-west winds send abroad their frozen nimphes to the infecting of the whole air--hence comes it that in the middest of their summer, the snow hardly departeth from these hills at all; hence come those thicke mists and {10} most stinking fogges, ... for these reasons we coniecture that either there is no pa.s.sage at all through these Northerne coasts, which is most likely, or if there be, that it is unnavigable_.'

{11}

CHAPTER II

VITUS BERING ON THE PACIFIC

Since Drake's day more than a century had rolled on. Russia was awakening from ages of sleep, as j.a.pan has awakened in our time, and Peter the Great was endeavouring to pilot the s.h.i.+p of state out to the wide seas of a world destiny. Peter, like the German Kaiser of to-day, was ambitious to make his country a world-power. He had seen enough of Europe to learn that neighbouring nations were increasing their strength in three ways--by conquest, by discovery, and by foreign commerce--and that foreign commerce meant, not only buying and selling, but carrying the traffic of other nations. The East India Company, in whose dockyards he had worked as a carpenter, was a striking instance of the strength that could be built up by foreign commerce. Its s.h.i.+ps cruised from Nova Zembia to Persia and East India, carrying forth the products of English workshops and {12} farms, and bringing back the treasures of all lands.

By conquest, Peter had extended the bounds of his empire from the Ural Mountains to the seas of China. By discovery, what remained to be done? France and England had acquired most of the North American continent. Spain and Portugal claimed South America; and Spain had actually warned the rest of the world that the Pacific was 'a closed sea.' But there were legends of a vast domain yet undiscovered. Juan de Fuca, a Greek pilot, employed, as alleged, by Spanish explorers between 1587 and 1592, was reported to have told of a pa.s.sage from the Pacific to the Arctic through a mountainous forested land up in the region of what is now British Columbia. Whether Juan lied, or mistook his own fancies for facts, or whether the whole story was invented by his chronicler Michael Lok, does not much matter. The fact was that Spanish charts showed extensive unexplored land north of Drake's New Albion or California. At this time geographers had placed on their maps a vast continent called Gamaland between America and Asia; and, as if in corroboration of this fiction, when Peter's Cossacks struggled doggedly across {13} Asia, through Siberia, to the Pacific, people on these far sh.o.r.es told tales of drift-wood coming from America, of islands leading like steps through the sea to America, of a nation like themselves, whose walrus-hide boats sometimes drifted to Siberia and Kamchatka. If any new and wealthy region of the world remained to be discovered, Peter felt that it must be in the North Pacific. When it is recalled that Spain was supposed to have found in Peru temples lined with gold, floors paved with silver, and pearls readily exchanged in bucketfuls for gla.s.s beads, it can be realized that the motive for discovery was not merely scientific. It was one that actuated princes and merchants alike. And Peter the Great had an additional motive--the development of his country's merchant s.h.i.+pping. It was this that had induced him to establish the capital of his kingdom on the Baltic. So, in 1725, five weeks before his death--one of the most terrible deaths in history, when remorse and ghosts of terrible memories came to plague his dying hours till his screams could be heard through the palace halls--he issued a commission for one of the greatest expeditions of discovery that ever set out for America--a commission to Vitus {14} Bering, the Dane, to explore the Pacific for Russia.

Like Peter the Great, Vitus Bering had served an apprentices.h.i.+p with the East India Company. It is more than probable that he first met his royal patron while he was in this service. While other expeditions to explore America had but to cross the sea before beginning their quest, Bering's expedition had to cross the width of Europe, and then the width of Asia, before it could reach even the sea. Between St Petersburg and the Pacific lay six thousand miles of mountain and tundra. Caravans, flat-boats, and dog-trains must be provided to transport supplies; and the vessels to be used at the end of the land journey must be built on the Pacific. The explorers were commissioned to levy tribute for food and fur on Tartar tribes as their caravans worked slowly eastward. Bering's first voyage does not concern America. He set out from Kamchatka on July 9, 1728, with forty-four men, and sailed far enough north to prove that Asia and America were not united by any Gamaland, and that the strait now bearing his name separated the two continents; but, like the tribes of Siberia, he saw signs of a great land area on {15} the other side of the rain-hidden sea. Out of the blanketing fog drifted trees, seaweed, bits of broken boats. And though Bering, like the English navigator Drake, was convinced that no Gamaland existed, he was confronted by the learned geographers, who had a Gamaland on their maps and demanded truculently, whence came the signs of land?

In March 1730, within one month of the time he returned to St Petersburg, Bering was again ordered to prepare to carry out the dead emperor's command--'to find and set down reliably what was in the Pacific.' The explorer had now to take his orders from the authorities of the Academy of Sciences, whose bookish inexperience and visionary theories were to hamper him at every turn. Botanists, artists, seven monks, twelve physicians, Cossack soldiers--in all, nearly six hundred men--were to accompany him; and to transport this small army of explorers, four thousand pack-horses were sent winding across the desert wastes of Siberia, with one thousand exiles as guides and boatmen to work the boats and rafts on the rivers and streams. Great blaring of trumpets marked the arrival and departure of the caravans at the Russian forts on the way; and if the savants, whose {16} presence pestered the soul of poor Bering, had been half as keen in overcoming the difficulties of the daily trail as they were in drinking pottle-deep to future successes, there would have been less bickering and delay in reaching the Pacific. Dead horses marked the trail across two continents. The Cossack soldiers deserted and joined the banditti that scoured the Tartar plains; and for three winters the travellers were storm-bound in the mountains of Siberia. But at length they reached Avacha Bay on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Kamchatka, and the waters of the Pacific gladdened the eyes of the weary travellers. At Petropavlovsk on the bay they built a fort, houses, barracks, a chapel, and two vessels, named the _St Peter_ and the _St Paul_.

Early on the morning of June 4, 1741, the chapel bells were set ringing. At dawn prayers were chanted to invoke the blessing of Heaven on the success of the voyage. Monks in solemn procession paraded to the water's edge, singing. The big, bearded men, who had doggedly, drunkenly, profanely, religiously, marched across deserts and mountains to reach the sea, gave comrades a last fond embrace, ran down the sand, jumped into the jolly-boats, rowed out, and clambered up {17} the s.h.i.+ps' ladders. And when the reverberating roll of the fort cannon signalled the hour of departure, anchors were weighed, and sails, loosened from the creaking yard-arms, fluttered and filled to the wind.

While the landsmen were still cheering and waving a farewell, Bering and his followers watched the sh.o.r.es slip away, the waters widen, the mountains swim past and back. Then the _St Peter_ and the _St Paul_ headed out proudly to the lazy roll of the ocean.

Now the savants, of whom Bering carried too many with him for his own peace of mind, had averred that he had found no Gamaland on his first voyage because he had sailed too far north. This time he was to voyage southward for that pa.s.sage named after Juan de Fuca. This would lead him north of Drake's New Albion in California, and north of the Spanish cruisings about modern Vancouver Island. This was to bring him to the mythical Gamaland. Bering knew there was no Gamaland; but in the captain's cabin, where the savants bent all day over charts, was the map of Delisle, the geographer of French Canada, showing vast unnamed lands north of the Spanish possessions; and in the expedition was a member of the Delisle family. So {18} Bering must have known or guessed that an empire half the size of Russia lay undiscovered north of Juan de Fuca's pa.s.sage.

So confident were the members of the expedition of reaching land to the east at an early date that provisions and water for only a few weeks were carried along. Bering had a crew of seventy-seven on the _St Peter_, and among the other men of science with him was the famous naturalist, George W. Steller. Lieutenant Chirikoff sailed the _St Paul_ with seventy-six men, and Delisle de la Croyere was his most distinguished pa.s.senger. As is usual during early June in that lat.i.tude, driving rains and dense fogs came rolling down from the north over a choppy sea. The fog turned to snow, and the _St Paul_, far in the lead, came about to signal if they should not keep together to avoid losing each other in the thick weather; but the _St Peter_ was careening dangerously, and s.h.i.+pping thunderous seas astern. Bering's laconic signal in answer was to keep on south 'to Gamaland'; but when the fog lifted the _St Peter_ was in lat.i.tude 46, far below the supposed location of the strait of Juan de Fuca, and there was in sight neither Gamaland nor the sister s.h.i.+p. The scientists with Bering were in such a peevish mood {19} over the utter disproof of their mythical continent that they insisted on the commander wasting a whole month pottering back and forth looking for Chirikoff's s.h.i.+p. By this time the weather had become very warm, the drinking water very rank, and the provisions stale. Finally, the learned men gave decision that as the other s.h.i.+p could not be found the _St Peter_ might as well turn north.

Bering had become very depressed, and so irritable that he could not tolerate approach. If the men of learning had been but wise in the dangers of ocean travel, they would have recognized in their commander the symptoms of the common sea-scourge of the age--scurvy. Presently, he was too ill to leave his bed, and Waxel, who hated all interference and threatened to put the scientists in irons or throw them overboard, took command. By the middle of July pa.s.sengers and crew were reduced to half allowance of bad water. Still, there were signs that afforded hope. As the s.h.i.+p worked through the fog-blanket northward, drift-wood and land birds, evidently from a land other than Asia, were seen.

At last came a land wind from the south-east, lifting the fog and driving it back to the north. And early one morning there were {20} confused cries from the deck hands--then silence--then shouts of exultant joy! Everybody rushed above-decks, even the sick in their night-robes, among them Bering, wan and weak, answering scarce a word to the happy clamour about him. Before the sailors' astonished gaze, in the very early light of that northern lat.i.tude, lay a turquoise sea--a s.h.i.+ning sheet of water, milky and metallic like a mountain tarn, with the bright greens and blues of glacial silt; and looming through the primrose clouds of the horizon hung a huge opal dome in mid-heaven.

At first they hardly realized what it meant. Then shouts went up--'Land!' 'Mountains!' 'Snow-peaks!' The _St Peter_ glided forward noiseless as a bird on the wing. Inlets and harbours, turquoise-green and silent, opened along a jagged, green and alabaster sh.o.r.e. As the vessel approached the land the explorers saw that the white wall of the inner harbour was a rampart of solid ice; but where the sh.o.r.e line extended out between ice and sea was a meadow of ferns and flowers abloom knee-deep, and gra.s.ses waist-high. The spectators shouted and laughed and cried and embraced one another. Russia, too, had found a new empire. St Elias they named the {21} great peak that hung like a temple dome of marble above the lesser ridges; but Bering only sighed.

'We think we have done great things, eh? Well, who knows where this is? We're almost out of provisions, and not a man of us knows which way to sail home.'

Steller was down the s.h.i.+p's ladder with the glee of a schoolboy, and off for the sh.o.r.e with fifteen men in one of the row-boats to explore.

They found the dead ashes of a camp-fire on the sands, and some remnants of smoked fish; but any hope that the lost s.h.i.+p's crew had camped here was at once dispelled by the print of moccasined feet in the fine sand. Steller found some rude huts covered with sea-moss, but no human presence. Water-casks were filled; and that relieved a pressing need. On July 21, when the wind began to blow freshly seaward, Bering appeared unexpectedly on deck, ashen of hue and staggering from weakness, and peremptorily ordered anchors up. Bells were rung and gongs beaten to call those ash.o.r.e back to the s.h.i.+p.

Steller stormed and swore. Was it for this hurried race ash.o.r.e that he had spent years toiling across two continents? He wanted to botanize, to explore, to gather data for science; but the commander had had {22} enough of science. He was sick unto death, in body and in soul, sick with the knowledge that they were two thousand miles from any known port, in a tempestuous sea, on a rickety s.h.i.+p manned for the most part by land-lubbers.

As they scudded before the wind, Bering found that the sh.o.r.e was trending south towards the home harbour. They were following that long line of reefed islands, the Aleutians, which project out from Alaska towards Asia. A roar of reefs through the fog warned them off the land; but one midnight of August the lead recorded less than three feet of water under the keel. Before there was time for panic, a current that rushed between rocks threw the vessel into a deep pool of backwash; and there she lay till morning. By this time many of the sailors were down with scurvy. It became necessary to land for fresh water. One man died as he was lifted from the decks to the sh.o.r.e.

Bering could not stand unaided. Twenty emaciated sailors were taken out of their berths and propped up on the sand. And the water they took from this rocky island was brackish, and only increased the ravages of the malady.

From the date of this ill-fated landing, a {23} pall--a state of paralysis, of inaction and fear--seemed to hang over the s.h.i.+p. The tide-rip was mistaken for earthquake; and when the lurid glare of volcanic smoke came through the fog, the sailors huddled panic-stricken below-decks and refused to obey orders. Every man became his own master; and if that ever works well on land, it means disaster at sea.

Thus it has almost always been with the inefficient and the misfits who have gone out in s.h.i.+ps--land-lubbers trying to be navigators. Just when Bering's crew should have braced themselves to resist the greatest stress, they collapsed and huddled together with bowed heads, inviting the worst that fate could do to them. When the tide-rip came through the reefs from the north along the line of the Aleutian Islands with the swiftness of a mill-race, the men had literally to be held to the rudder at pistol point and beaten up the masts with the flat of the officers' swords. But while they skulked, a hurricane rolled up the fog; and the s.h.i.+p could but scud under bare poles before the wind.

Rations were now down to mouldy sea-biscuits, and only fifteen casks of water remained for three-score men.

Out of the turmoil of waters and wind along {24} the wave-lashed rocks came the hoa.r.s.e, shrill, strident cry of the sea-lion, the boom and snort of the great walrus, the roar of the seal rookeries, where millions of cubs wallowed, and where bulls lashed themselves in their rage and fought for mastery of the herd. By November, Waxel alone was holding the vessel up to the wind. No more solemn conferences of self-important, self-willed scientists filled the commander's cabin!

No more solemn conclaves and arguments and counter-arguments to induce the commander to sail this way and that! Bedlam reigned above and below decks. No man had any thought but how to reach home alive.

Prayers and vows and offerings went up from the decks of the _St Peter_ like smoke. The Russians vowed themselves to holy lives and stopped swearing.

To the inexpressible delight of all hands the prayers seemed to be heard. On November 4 the storm abated, and land loomed up on the horizon, dim at first, but taking shape as the vessel approached it and showing a well-defined, rock-bound harbour. Was this the home harbour?

The sick crawled on hands and knees above the hatchway to mumble out their thanks to G.o.d for escape from doom. A cask of brandy was opened, {25} and tears gave place to gruff, hilarious laughter. Every man was ready to swear that he recognized this headland, that he had known they were following the right course after all, and that he had never felt any fear at all.

Barely had the grief become joy, when a chill silence fell over the s.h.i.+p. The only sounds were the rattling of the rigging against the masts, the groaning of the timbers of the vessel, and the swish of the waves cut by the prow. These were not Kamchatka sh.o.r.es. This was only another of the endless island reefs they had been chasing since July.

The tattered sails flapped and beat dismally against the cordage.

Night fell. There was a retributive glee in the whistle of the mocking wind through the rotten rigging, and the s.h.i.+p's timbers groaned to the boom of the heavy tide.

Bering was past caring whether he lived or died. Morning revealed a sh.o.r.e of black basalt, reef upon reef, like sentinels of death saying, 'Come in! come in! We are here to see that you never go out'; and there was a nasty clutch to the backwash of the billows smas.h.i.+ng down from those rocks.

Waxel called a last council of all hands in {26} the captain's cabin.

'We should go on home,' said Bering, rising on his elbow in his berth.

'It matters not to me. I am past mending; but even if we have only the foremast left and one keg of water, let us try for the home harbour. A few days must make it. Having risked so much, let us risk all to win!'

As they afterwards found, they were only one week from Kamchatka; but they were terrified at the prospect of any more deep-sea wanderings, and when one of the officers dared to support Bering's view, they fell on him like wild beasts and threw him from the cabin. To a man they voted to land. That vote was fate's seal to the penalty men must pay for their mistakes.

Above the white fret of reefs precipices towered in pinnacles two thousand feet high. Through the reefs the doomed s.h.i.+p stole like a hunted thing. Only one man kept his head clear and his hand to the helm--the lieutenant whom all the rest had thrown out of the cabin.

The island seemed absolutely treeless, covered only with sedge and s.h.i.+ngle and gra.s.s. The tide began to toss the s.h.i.+p about so that the sick were rolled from their berths. Night came with a ghostly moonlight silvering the fret of a seething sea that seemed to be {27} reaching up white arms for its puny victims. The lieutenant threw out an anchor. It raked bottom and the cable snapped. The crazed crew began throwing the dead overboard as an offering to appease the anger of the sea. The _St Peter_ swept stern foremost full on a reef.

Quickly the lieutenant and Steller threw out the last anchor. It gripped between rocks and--held. The tide at midnight had thrown the vessel into a sheltered cove. Steller and the lieutenant at once rowed ash.o.r.e to examine their surroundings and to take steps to make provision for the morrow. They were on what is now known as Bering Island. Fortunately, it was literally swarming with animal life--the great manatee or sea-cow in herds on the kelp-beds, blue foxes in thousands, the seal rookeries that were to make the islands famous; but there was no timber to build houses for wintering in. It was a barren island. They could make floors of sand, walls of peat, roofs of sea-moss; but what shelter was this against northern gales?

By November 8 a rude pit-shelter had been constructed to house the invalided crew; but the sudden transition from the putrid hold to the open, frosty air caused the death of many as they were lowered on stretchers. Amid a {28} heavy snow Bering was wrapped in furs and carried ash.o.r.e. The dauntless Steller faced the situation with judgment and courage. He acted as doctor, nurse, and hunter, and daily brought in meat for the hungry and furs to cover the dying. Five pits sheltered the castaways. When examined in 1885 the walls of the pits were still intact--three feet of solid peat. Clothing of sea-otter skins of priceless value, which afterwards proved a fortune to those who survived, and food of the flesh of the great sea-cow, saved a remnant of the wretched crew. During most of the month of November the _St Peter_ rode safely at anchor while storms thundered around her retreat; but on the 28th her cable snapped beneath a hurricane, and she was driven high and dry on the sh.o.r.e, a broken wreck. In all thirty-one men had perished of scurvy by January 1742. Among these was the poor old commander. On the morning of December 8, as the wind went moaning round their shelter, Steller heard the Dane praying in a low voice. And just at daybreak he pa.s.sed into that great, quiet Unknown World whence no traveller has returned.

How the consort s.h.i.+p, the _St Paul_, found {29} her way back to Kamchatka, and how Bering's castaways in the spring built themselves a raft and mustered their courage to essay the voyage home which they ought to have attempted in the autumn, are matters for more detailed history. But just as Cartier's discovery of the St Lawrence led to the pursuit of the little beaver across a continent, so the Russians'