catching by each
other to keep together, up to a high precipitous rock they know is
somewhere here, with the sea behind, sheer drop on each side, and but
one narrow approach! Here they make their stand, muskets and sword in
hand, beating the assailants back, wherever a stealthy form comes
climbing up the rock to hurl spear or lance! Presently, a
well-directed fusillade drives the savages off! While night still hid
{95} them, the four fugitives scrambled down the side of the rock
farthest from the savages, and ran for the roadstead where the ship had
anchored.

As dawn comes up over the harbor something catches the attention of the
runners. It is the main hatch, the planking, the mast poles of the
ship, drawn up and scattered on the beach. Drusenin's ship has been
destroyed. The crew is massacred; they, alone, have escaped; and the
nearest help is one of those three other Russian ships anchored
somewhere seventy miles west. Without waiting to look more, the three
men ran for the mountains of the interior, found hiding in one of the
deep-grassed ravines, scooped out a hole in the sand, covered this with
a sail white as snow, and crawled under in hiding for the day.

The next night they came down to the shore, in the hope, perhaps, of
finding refugees like themselves. They discovered only the mangled
bodies of their comrades, literally hacked to pieces. A saint's image
and a book of prayers lay along the sand. Scattered everywhere were
flour sacks, provisions, ships' planking. These they carried back as
well as they could three miles in the mountains. A pretty legend is
told of a native hunter following their tracks to this retreat, and not
only refusing to betray them but secretly carrying provisions; and some
such explanation is needed to know how the four men lived hidden in the
mountains from December 9 to February 2, 1764.

If they had known where those other Russian ships {96} were anchored,
they might have struck across country to them, or followed the coast by
night; but rival hunters did not tell each other where they anchored,
and tracks across country could have been followed. The trackless sea
was safer.

There is another story of how the men hid in mountain caves all those
weeks, kept alive by the warmth of hot springs, feeding on clams and
shell-fish gathered at night. This, too, may be true; for the
mountains inland of Oonalaska Harbor are honeycombed with caves, and
there are well-known h