Nine hundred or
more sea-otter--whose pelts afterward brought a fortune to the crew--were
killed for food by Steller and his companions; but two sea-cows provided
the castaways with food for six weeks. On November 22d died the old
mate, who had weathered northern seas for fifty {54} years. In all, out
of a crew of seventy-seven, there had perished by January 6, 1742, when
the last death occurred, thirty-one men.
Steller's hut was next to Bering's. From that November day when he was
carried from the ship through the snow to the sand pit, the commander
sank without rallying. Foxskins had been spread on the ground as a bed;
but the sand loosened from the sides of the pit and kept rolling down on
the dying man. Toward the last he begged Steller to let the sand rest,
as it kept in the warmth; so that he was soon covered with sand to his
waist. White billows and a gray sky followed the hurricane gale that had
hurled the ship in on the beach. All night between the evening of the
7th and the morning of the 8th of December, the moaning of the south wind
could be heard through the tattered rigging of the wrecked ship; and all
night the dying Dane was communing with his God.
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