ip trembling. Waxel knew they must not risk delay by going to
explore, but by applying to Bering, who lay in his berth unconscious of
the dangers on this coast, Khitroff gained permission to go from the
vessel on a yawl with five sailors; but by the time he had rowed
against head winds to the scene of the fire, the Indians had {31} fled,
and such beach combers were crashing ashore, Khitroff dare not risk
going back to the ship. In vain Waxel ground his teeth with rage,
signalled, and waited. "The wind seemed to issue from a flue," says
Steller, "with such a whistling and roaring and rumbling that we
expected to lose mast and rudder, or be crushed among the breakers.
The dashings of the sea sounded like a cannon."

The fact was, Khitroff's yawl had been smashed to kindling wood against
the rocks; and the six half-drowned Russians were huddling together
waiting for help when Waxel took the other small boat and went to the
rescue. Barely had this been effected at the cost of four days' delay,
in which the ship might have made five hundred miles toward home, when
natives were seen paddling out in canoes, gesticulating for the white
men to come ashore. Waxel lowered away in the small boat with nine
armed men to pay the savages a visit. Close ashore, he beckoned the
Indians to wade out; but they signalled him in turn to land, and he
ordered three men out to moor the boat to a rock. All went well
between Russians and Indians, presents being exchanged, till a chief
screwed up his courage to paddle out to Waxel in the boat. With
characteristic hospitality, Waxel at once proffered some Russian
brandy, which, by courtesy among all Western sailors, is always known
as "chain lightning." The chief took but one gulp of the liquid fire,
when with a wild yell he spat it out, shouted that he had been
poisoned, and dashed ashore.

{32} The three Russians succeeded in gaining Waxel's boat, but the
Indians grabbed the mooring ropes and seized the Chukchee interpreter,
whom Waxel had brought from Siberia. Waxel ordered the rope cut, but
the Chukchee interpreter called out pitifully to be saved. Quick as
flash, the Russians fired two muskets in midair. At the crash that
echoed among the cliffs, the Indians fell prostrate with fear, and the
interpreter escaped; but six days had been wasted in this futile visit
to the natives.

Scarcely had they escaped this island, when such a hurricane broke over
the _St. Peter_ for seventeen d