d yet he hesitated. To leave Japan unpunished for the senseless
humiliations to which it had subjected Russia in his person was not to
be thought of, and yet did he leave without seeing the Avos finished,
the two boats supplied with armaments at Okhotsk, and under way before
he started across Siberia, he knew it was doubtful if the expedition
took place before his return; in that case might never take place, for
these two young men might have drifted elsewhere, and he knew no one
else to whom he could entrust such a commission. In spite of their
idiosyncrasies he could rely upon them implicitly--up to a certain
point. That point involved keeping them in sight until exactly the
right moment and leaving nothing to their executive which could be
certainly accomplished by himself alone. Did he sail five days hence
on the Juno one of the officers would be exposed for an indeterminate
time to the temptations of Okhotsk, the ship, perhaps, at the mercy of
some sudden requirement of the Company. His authority was absolute
when enforced in person, but it was a proverb west of the Ural: "God
reigns and the Tsar is far away." If the Juno were wanted the manager
of Okhotsk would argue that two years was a period in which an ardent
servant of the Company would find many an excuse to justify its seizure.

And here in Sitka it was doubtful if the work on the Avos proceeded at
all. Baranhov was not in sympathy with the enterprise against the
Japanese, fearing the consequences to himself in the event of the
Tsar's disapproval, and resenting the impressment of the promuschleniki
into a service that deprived him of their legitimate work. Moreover,
although he loved Rezanov personally, he had enjoyed supreme power in
the wilderness too long not to chafe under even the temporary
assumption of authority by his high-handed superior. With the best of
intentions Davidov could make little headway against the passive
resistance of the Chief-Manager, and those intentions would be weakened
by the consolidations the Company so generously afforded.

The result was hardly open to doubt. If he left Sitka before the
completion of the Avos, Russia would go unavenged for the present. Or
himself? Rezanov, sanguine and imaginative as he was, even to the point
of creating premises to rhyme with ends, was very honest fundamentally.
He turned abruptly on his heel, and calling to the officers that he
would announce his decision on the morrow, ordered