to the ground. Promptly the Cossack wreaks vengeance
by slaughtering seven of the hostages on the spot; but he deems it wise
to take refuge on his ship, weigh anchor and slip out to sea carrying
with him by way of a lesson to the natives, two interpreters, three
boys, and twenty-five women, two of whom die of cruelty before the ship
is well out of Oonalaskan waters.

He may have intended dropping the captives at some near island on his
way westward; for only blind rage could have rendered him so
indifferent to their fate as to carry such a cargo of human beings back
to the home harbor of Kamchatka. Meanwhile a hurricane caught
Pushkareff's ship, chopping the wave tops off and driving her ahead
under bare poles. When the gale abated, the ship was off Kamchatka's
shore and the Cossack in a quandary about entering the home port with
proofs of his cruelty in the cowering group of Indian women huddled
above the deck. {87} On pretence of gathering berries, six sailors
were landed with fourteen women. Two watched their chance and dashed
for liberty in the hills. On the way back to the ship, one woman was
brained to death by a sailor, Gorelin; seeing which, the others on
board the jolly-boat took advantage of the confusion, sprang overboard,
and suicided. But there were still a dozen hostages on the ship.
These might relate the crime of their companions' murder. It was an
old trick out of an ugly predicament--destroy the victim in order to
dodge retribution, or torture it so it would destroy itself. Fourteen
had been tortured into suicide. The rest Pushkareff seized, bound, and
threw into the sea.

To be sure, on official investigation, Betshevin, the Siberian
merchant, was subjected to penal tortures for this crime on his ship;
and an imperial decree put an end to free trade among the fur hunters
to America. Henceforth a government permit must be obtained; but that
did not undo the wrong to the Aleutian Islanders. Primal instincts,
unhampered by law, have a swift, sure, short-cut to justice; to the
fine equipoise between weak and strong. It was two years before
punishment was meted out by the Russian government for this crime.
What did the Aleut Indian care for the law's slow jargon? His only law
was self-preservation. His furs had been plundered from him; his
hunting-fields overrun by brigands from he knew not where; his home
outraged; his warriors poisoned, bludgeoned, done to death; his women
and children