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Updated: June 27, 2025
The middle of May saw the vessel anchoring on the west coast of Bering Island, where a sharp lookout was kept for Russian fur traders, and armed men must go ashore to reconnoitre before Benyowsky dared venture from the ship. The Pole's position was chancy enough to satisfy even his melodramatic soul. Apart from four or five Swedes, the entire crew of ninety-six was Russian.
This part of the story does not concern America; and the Pole's whole life has been told by Jokai, the Hungarian novelist, and Kotzebue, the Russian dramatist. Benyowsky got passage to Europe from China on one of the East India Company ships, whose captain was uneasy enough at having so many pirates on board.
Had the plans of the Count Benyowsky been carried out when he offered his services to France, they might possibly have obtained a powerful influence in the affairs of the country, if not entire possession of it.
It appears that the hereditary successor to the title was missing, when some of the natives took it into their heads that the Count Benyowsky was the lost heir. The idea gained ground at the very time that the affairs of the Count were in a very precarious condition.
The main hatch was clapped down, leaving the mutineers in possession of the deck, till all fell in drunken torpor, when Benyowsky rushed his soldiers up the fore scuttle, snapped handcuffs on the rebels, and tied them to the masts. In the midst of this disorder, such a hurricane broke over the ocean that the tossing yard-arms alternately touched water.
The Count Benyowsky was a Polish nobleman, who for some political reason was banished by the Russian Government to one of its settlements in the extreme eastern part of Siberia, whence it seemed impossible for him ever to find his way back to Europe.
The Russian evaded answer, and a few hours later showed the Pole books of travel, among which were maps of the Philippines, where twenty or thirty exiles might go if they had a leader. Leader? Benyowsky leaped to his feet with hands on pistol and cutlass with which he had been armed that morning when Governor Nilow liberated them to hunt on parole. Leader? Were they men?
Had they heard of schemes in the air among Russians for ships to plunder furs in America "with powder and hatchets and the help of God," as the Russians say? Benyowsky, the Pole, jumped to the bait like a trout to the fly. If "powder and hatchets and the help of God" and an exile crew could capture wealth in the fur trade of western America, why not a break for freedom?
Barely had the vessel rounded the southern cape of the peninsula into the Pacific, when Ismyloff, the young Russian trader, who had been carried on board in irons, rallied round Benyowsky such a clamor of mutineers, duels were fought on the quarter-deck, the malcontents clapped in handcuffs again, and the ringleaders tied to the masts, where knouting enough was laid on to make them sue for peace.
The men sent to reconnoitre Bering Island came back with word that while they were gathering driftwood on the south shore, they had heard shots and met five Russians belonging to a Saxon exile, who had turned fur hunter, deposed the master of his ships, gathered one hundred exiles around him, and become a trader on his own account. The Saxon requested an interview with Benyowsky.
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