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Approaching cautiously for fear of ambuscade, they clambered over the palisades and looked. The fort was deserted. Naught of the Sitkans remained but thirty dead warriors and all their children, murdered during the night to prevent their cries betraying the retreat. New Archangel, as it was called, was built on the site of the present Sitka.
Raging with impatience, Baranof went ashore supported by one hundred and fifty men, and with a wild halloo led the way to rush the fort. The hostile Sitkans husbanded their strength with a coolness equal to the famous thin red line of British fame.
In the evening she had sometimes danced alone for a few moments, but more often with her Russian guests, and readily learning the English country dances they were anxious to teach. Rezanov would have found the gay informality of these evenings delightful had his mind been at ease about his Sitkans, and Concha a trifle more personal.
On the morning of September 28th the Russian ships moved to a point opposite the village, the "Neva" being towed by a hundred bidarkas. The Sitkans abandoned their village and the fort on the hill and withdrew to the stronger fortification near the river.
On October the first a white flag was run up on the ship of war. No signal answered from the barricade. The Russian ships let blaze all the cannon simultaneously, only to find that the double logs of the barricade could not be penetrated. No return fire came from the Sitkans. Two small boats were then landed to destroy the enemy's stores. Still not a sign from the barricade.
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.
As he stepped on shore he was surrounded, almost hustled by the shouting crowd of Russians, many of them convicts Aleuts and Sitkans, who knelt at his feet, endeavored to kiss his hand, his garments, in their hysterical gratitude for the food he had brought them.
But before he could start on his journey, his starving Alaskan colony must be provided for, and after considerable discussion, arrangements were made for an interchange of commodities, and the hold of the Russian ship, 'Juno' was packed with foodstuffs for the Sitkans, while the ladies at the Presidio were resplendent in soft Russian fabrics and the padres were rejoicing in new cooking utensils for their large Indian family.
It would mean the very acme of misery for his Sitkans, and an indefensible blow to the Company. It might even prove the fatal mistake in his career, for which his enemies were ever on the alert. He was not communicative about himself except when he had an object in view, but he had told her something of his life, and his officers and Langsdorff had told more.
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.
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