hip, and rushed full force, nine feet deep with her prow into
the sands not a pistol shot away from the crew. The next beach comber
could not budge her. Wind and tide left her high and dry, fast in the
sand.

But what had become of Chirikoff, on board the _St. Paul_, from the 20th
of June, when the vessels were separated by storm? Would it have been
any easier for Bering if he had known that the consort ship had been
zigzagging all the while less than a week's cruise from the _St. Peter_?
When the storm, which had separated the vessels, subsided, Chirikoff let
the _St. Paul_ drift in the hope that Bering might sight the missing
vessel. Then he steered southeast to latitude 48 degrees in search of
the commander; but on June 23 a council of officers decided it was a
waste of time to search longer, and ordered the vessel to be headed
northeastward. The wind was light; the water, clear; and Chirikoff knew,
from the pilot-birds following the vessel, from the water-logged trees
churning past, from the herds of seal floundering in the sea, that land
must lie in this direction. A bright lookout was kept for the first two
weeks of July. Two hundred and forty miles were traversed; and on a
calm, {46} clear night between the 13th and 15th of July, there loomed
above the horizon the dusky heights of a wooded mountainous land in
latitude 55 degrees 21 minutes. Chirikoff was in the Alexander
Archipelago. Daybreak came with the _St. Paul_ only four miles off the
conspicuous heights of Cape Addington. Chirikoff had discovered land
some thirty-six hours before Bering. The new world of mountains and
forests roused the wildest enthusiasm among the Russians. A small boat
was lowered; but it failed to find a landing. A light wind sprang up,
and the vessel stood out under shortened sails for the night. By morning
the wind had increased, and fog had blurred out all outlines of the
new-found land. Here the ocean currents ran northward; and by morning of
the 17th, when the sun pierced the washed air and the mountains began to
appear again through jagged rifts of cloud-wraith, Chirikoff found
himself at the entrance of a great bay, girt by forested mountains to the
water's edge, beneath the high cone of what is now known as Mount
Edgecumbe, {47} in Sitka Sound. Sitka Sound is an indentation about
fifteen miles from north to south, with such depths of water that there
is no anchorage except south and southwestward of Mount Edgecu