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Wind was followed by dead calm, when the sails literally fell to pieces with rain-rot in the fog; and on the evening of September 8 the becalmed crew were suddenly aroused by the tide-rip of roaring breakers. Heaving out all anchors at once, Chirikoff with difficulty made fast to rocky bottom.
At the edge lay always one on the watch; and no matter how dense the fog, these walrus herds on the ice, braying and roaring till the surf shook, acted as a fog-horn to Cook's ships, and kept them from being jammed in the ice-drift. Soon two-thirds of the furs got at Nootka had spoiled of rain-rot. The vessels were iced like ghost ships.
When Captain Cook was at Nootka Sound thirty years after Bering's death, his crews traded trinkets over the taffrail netting for any kind of furs the natives of the west coast chose to exchange. In the long voyaging to Arctic waters afterward, these furs went to waste with rain-rot. More than two-thirds were thrown or given away.
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