out a second anchor that raked bottom.
Then, another mountain roller thundering over the ship with a crash--and
the first cable snapped like a pistol shot. The ship rebounded; then
drove before the back-wash of the angry sea. With no fate possible but
the wall of rocks ahead, the terrorized crew began heaving the dead
overboard in the moonlight; but another roaring billow smashed the _St.
Peter_ squarely broadside. The second hawser ripped back with the
whistling rebound of a whip-lash, and Ofzyn was in the very act of
dropping the third and last anchor, when straight as a bullet to the
mark, as if hag-ridden by the northern demons of sailor fear, hurled the
_St. Peter_ for the reef! A third time the beach combers crashed down
like a falling mountain. When the booming sheets of blinding spray had
cleared and the panic-stricken sailors could again see, the _St. Peter_
was staggering stern foremost, shore ahead, like a drunken ship. Quick
as shot, Ofzyn and Steller between them heaved over the last anchor. The
flukes gripped--raked--then caught--and held.

The ship lay rocking inside a reef in the very centre of a sheltered cove
not six hundred yards from land. The beach comber had either swept her
through a gap in the reef, or hurled her clear above the reefs into
shelter.

{41} For seven hours the ship had battled against tide and
counter-current. Now, at midnight, with the air clear as day, Steller
had the small boat lowered and with another--some say Waxel, others
Pleneser, the artist, or Ofzyn, of the Arctic expedition--rowed ashore to
reconnoitre. Sometime between the evening of November 5 and the morning
of November 6, their eyes met such a view as might have been witnessed by
an Alexander Selkirk, or Robinson Crusoe. The exact landing was four or
five miles north of what is now known as Cape Khitroff, below the centre
of the east coast of Bering Island.[1] Poor Waxel would have it, they
were on the coast of Kamchatka, and spoke of sending messengers for help
to Petropaulovsk on Avacha Bay; but, as they were to learn soon enough,
the nearest point in Kamchatka was one hundred miles across the sea.
Avacha Bay was two hundred miles away. And the Spanish possessions of
America, three thousand. They found the landing place literally swarming
with animal life unknown to the world before. An enormous mammal, more
than three tons in weight, with hind quarters like a whale, snout and
fore fins resembling a