ould have scrunched into
nothingness the vampire blunderers who misled the ship; but it must be
remembered that stronger types of heroes usually save their own skins and
let the underlings suffer. While Bering _might_ have averted the
disaster that attended the expedition, it must not be forgotten that when
he perished, there perished the very soul of the great enterprise, which
at once crumbled to pieces.

On a purely material plane, what did Bering accomplish?

{56} He dispelled forever the myth of the Northeast Passage if the world
would have but accepted his conclusions. The coast of Japan was charted
under his direction. The Arctic coast of Asia was charted under his
direction. A country as large as from Maine to Florida, or Baltimore to
Texas, with a river comparable only to the Mississippi, was discovered by
him. The furs of this country for a single year more than paid all that
Russia spent to discover it; all that the United States later paid to
Russia for it.

A dead whale thrown up on the shore proved a godsend to the weak and
famishing castaways. As their bodies grew stronger, the spirit of
merriment that gilds life's darkest clouds began to come back, and the
whale was jocularly known among the Russians as "our magazine of
provisions."

Then parties of hunters began going out for the sea-otter, which hid its
head during storm under the kelp of the sea fields. Steller knew the
Chinese would pay what in modern money is from one hundred to one hundred
and fifty dollars for each of these sea-otter skins; and between nine
hundred and one thousand were taken by the wrecked crew. The same skin
of prime quality sells in a London auction room to-day for one thousand
dollars. And in spring, when the sea-otter disappeared, there came
herds--herds in millions upon millions--of another visitant to the shores
of the Commander Islands--the fur seal, {57} which afforded new hunting
to the crew, and new wealth to the world.

[Illustration: Seals in a Rookery on Bering Island.]

The terrible danger now was not from starvation, but mutiny, murder, or
massacre among the branded criminals of the discontented crew. Waxel, as
he recovered, was afraid of tempting revolt with orders, and convened the
crew by vote to determine all that should be done. Officers and
men--there was no distinction. By March of 1742 the ground had cleared
of snow. Waxel called a meeting to suggest breaking up the packet vessel
to bu