Page:The Conquest.djvu/278



"Shall we expel these American traders from the North Pacific?" demanded Von Rezanof.

"For the love of God, no!" cried Baranof. "That little ship is our saviour!"

Into the starving garrison the Yankee Captain De Wolf brought bread and beef, and raised the famine siege of Sitka Castle. Baranof bought the little ship, the Juno, with all her cargo, for eight thousand dollars in furs and drafts on St. Petersburg. In addition Rezanof gave De Wolf a sloop, the Ermak, to carry his men and furs to the Hawaiian Islands.

"God grant that they may not have paid dear for their rashness in trusting their lives to such a craft!" exclaimed Von Rezanof, as the gallant Yankee Captain spread sail and disappeared from Sitka harbour.

The Juno, a staunch, copper-bottomed fast vessel of two hundred six tons, built at Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1799, was now fitted out for the Russian trade and dispatched to Kadiak.

The storms that Lewis and Clark heard booming on the Oregon coast that winter, devastated Alaskan shores as well. When the breakers came thundering up the rocks and the winds shook Sitka Castle, Count Baranof in his stronghold could not sleep for thinking, "Oh, the ships!—the ships out on this stormy deep, laden with what I need so much!"

The little Juno returned from Kadiak with dried fish and oil, and news of disaster: "The Elizaveta has been wrecked in a heavy gale. Six large bidarkas laden with furs on the way to you went down. Two hundred hunters have perished at sea. Our settlement at Yakutat has been destroyed by an Indian massacre."

"My God! My God!" Baranof cried, "how can we repair all these disasters!"

But ever and ever the gray sea boomed upon the shore where the wretched inmates of Sitka Castle were dying. The relief from the Juno was only temporary. By February not a pound of bread a day dared they distribute to the men.

Long since Rezanof had declared they must have an