while the sentinels hidden in
the ravine had captured Ismyloff, the nephew of the chancellor, and two
other Russians, who were added to the captives in the cellar; and the
governor changed his tactics. A letter was received from the
governor's daughter pleading with her lover to come and be reconciled
with her father, who had now no prejudice against the exiles; but in
the letter were two or three tiny red threads such as might have {120}
been pulled out of a dress sleeve. The letter had been written under
force.

Benyowsky's answer was to marshal his fifty-seven men in three
divisions round the village; one round the house, the largest hidden in
the dark on the fort side of the ravine, a decoy group stationed in the
ditch to draw an attack.

By midnight, the sentinels sent word that the main guard of Cossacks
had reached the ravine. The decoy had made a feint of resistance. The
Cossacks sent back to the fort for reinforcements. The Pole waited
only till nearly all the Cossacks were on the ditch bank, then
instructing the little band of decoys to keep up a sham fight, poured
his main forces through the dark, across the plain at a run, for the
fort. Palisades were scaled, gates broken down, guards stabbed where
they stood! Benyowsky's men had the fort and the gates barricaded
again before the governor could collect his senses. As Benyowsky
entered the main rooms, the enraged commander seized a pistol, which
missed fire, and sprang at the Pole's throat, roaring out he would see
the exiles dead before he would surrender. The Pole, being lame, had
swayed back under the onslaught, when the circular slash of a cutlass
in the hand of an exile officer severed the governor's head from his
body.

Twenty-eight Cossacks were put to the sword inside the fort; but the
exiles were not yet out of their troubles. Though they had seized the
armed vessel at once and {121} transferred to the hold the entire loot
of the fort,--furs, silks, supplies, gold,--it would be two weeks
before the ice would leave the port. Meanwhile the two hundred
defeated Cossacks had retreated to a hill, and sent coureurs scurrying
for help to the other forts of Kamchatka. Within two weeks seven
hundred Cossacks would be on the hills; and the exiles, whose supplies
were on board the vessel, would be cut off in the fort and starved into
surrender.

No time to waste, Benyowsky! Not a woman or child was harmed, but
every family in the fort was qui