The sick crawled
mutely back to their berths. Bering was past caring what came and only
semiconscious. Waxel, who had compelled the crew to vote for landing
here under the impression born of his own despair,--that this was the
coast of Avacha Bay, Kamchatka,--saw with dismay in the shores gliding
past the keel momentary proofs that he was wrong. Poor Waxel had fought
desperately against the depression that precedes scurvy; but now, with a
dumb hopelessness settling over the ship, the invisible hand of the
scourge {38} was laid on him, too. He went below decks completely
fordone.
The underling officers still upon their feet, whose false theories had
led Bering into all this disaster, were now quarrelling furiously among
themselves, blaming one another. Only Ofzyn, the lieutenant, who had
opposed the landing, and Steller, the scientist, remained on the lookout
with eyes alert for the impending destruction threatened from the white
fret of the endless reefs. Rocks rose in wild, jagged masses out of the
sea. Deep V-shaped ravines, shadowy in the rising moonlight, seemed to
recede into the rock wall of the coast, and only where a river poured out
from one of these ravines did there appear to be any gap through the long
lines of reefs where the surf boomed like thunder.
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