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Schemes were in the air with Baranof for the impressment of Siberian exiles as peasant farmers among the icebergs of Prince William Sound, for the remission of one-tenth tribute in furs from the Aleuts on condition of free service as hunters with the company, and for the employment of Astor's ships as purveyors of provisions to Sitka, when there fell a bolt from the blue that well-nigh wiped Russian possession from the face of America.

Drunk or sober, he was master of whatever came, mutineers or foreign traders planning to oust Russians from the coast of America. Baranof stood for all that was best and all that was worst in that heroic period of Pacific coast history when adventurers from all corners of the earth roamed the otter-hunting grounds in quest of fortune. Each man was a law unto himself.

Besides, the mainland Indians had now learned unscrupulous brutality from foreign traders. Baranof knew his danger and never relaxed vigilance. Of the sixteen men, five always stood sentry at night. The night of June 20 was pitch dark. Terrific seas were running, and a tempest raged through the woods of the mainland. For safety, Ismyloff's ship had scudded to the offing.

Fourth, the opening of the following twenty-seven virgin territories and islands: Anticosti Island, Baranof Island, Cape Breton Island, Franklin, Grand Manan Island, Keewatin, Labrador, Magdalen Islands, Miquelon Island and St.

It was a sleepy summer afternoon toward the end of June in 1802. Baranof had left a guard of twenty or thirty Russians at Sitka and, confident that all was well, had gone north to Kadiak. Aleut Indians, impressed as hunters, were about the fort, for the fiery Kolosh or Sitkans of this region would not bow the neck to Russian tyranny.

But these arrangements concerned only the Cossack officers of the early era, or the governors like Baranof, of a later day. The rank and file of the crews were off on the hunting-grounds with the Indians; and the hunting-grounds of the sea-otter were the storm-beaten kelp beds of the rockiest coast in the world.

Baranof was manager 28 years; Zarembo was rewarded in 1844 for 25 years' service; Krukof, the manager at Unalaska, was rewarded in 1821 for 40 years' service; Banner remained at Kodiak for at least ten years, and he and his wife both died there; while Kuskof came with Baranof in 1790 and returned to Russia in 1821.

Baranof wrote to Siberia for instructions, urging the amalgamation of all the companies in one; but instructions were so long in coming that the fur trade was being utterly bedevilled and the passions of the savages inflamed to a point of danger for every white man on the North Pacific.

On such good terms was the despot, Baranof, with his men, that the plot was betrayed to him from half a dozen sources. It did not trouble Baranof. He sent the betrayers a keg of brandy, bade one of them give a signal by breaking out in drunken song, and at the sound himself burst into the roomful of conspirators, sword in hand, followed by half a hundred armed soldiers.

In the sortie fourteen of the Russian forces were killed, twenty-six wounded, among whom was Baranof, shot through the shoulder. The guns of the war ship were all that saved the retreat from a panic. Lisiansky then undertook the campaign, letting drive such a brisk fire the next day that the Sitkans came suing for peace by the afternoon.