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Anyway, after Drusenin had sent five hunters out in the fields to lay fox-traps, early in the morning of December 4, he set out with a couple of Cossack friends to visit a native house. Korelin, the rescued castaway, and two other men kept guard at the huts.
Some of the old records spell the name of this wrecked Russian "Korelin," as if it were "Gorelin," the sailor, of Pushkareff's crew, who brained the Indian girl; I am unable to determine whether "Korelin" and "Gorelin" are the same man or not. If so, then the punishment came home indeed.
Then, he was at the huts almost stumbling over the man who had probably been doing sentinel duty but was now under the spears of the crowd when the hut door opened; and Korelin, the Russian, dashed out flourishing a yard-long bear knife under protection of the other guard's musket fire from the window, slashed to death two of the nearest Indians, cut a swath that sent the others scattering, seized the two wounded men, dragged them inside the hut, and slammed the door to the enraged yells of the baffled warriors.
It was from Korelin, one of the four refugees, that the Russian archivists took the first account of the massacre; and Coxe's narrative is based on Korelin's story, though the tradition of the massacre has been handed down from father to child among Oonalaskans to this day, so that certain caves near Captain Harbor, and Makushin Volcano are still pointed out as the refuge of the four pursued Russians.
Not a sound! Not a light! Perhaps they had missed their way! Perhaps the Indians on the main island are still friendly! Shevyrin or Korelin utters a shout, followed by the signal of a musket shot for that second party of hunters to come out and help. Scarcely had the crash died over the snows, when out of the dark leaped a hundred lances, a hundred faces, a hundred shrieking, bloodthirsty savages.
To the island ten miles off shore, Drusenin went himself, with Korelin, a wrecked Russian whom he had picked up on the voyage. On the way they must have passed all three mountains, that guard the harbor of Oonalaska, the waterfalls that pour over the cliffs near Kalekhta, and the little village itself where eleven men remained to build huts for the winter.
Hostages and scurvy-stricken Russians were packed in the hold with the meat stores and furs like dying rats in a garbage barrel. It was as much as a Russian's life was worth, to show his head above the hatchway; and the siege lasted from the middle of December to the 30th of March, when Drusenin's four refugees, led by Korelin, made a final dash from Makushin Volcano, and gained Korovin's ship.
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