A dead whale thrown up on the shore proved a godsend to the weak and
famishing castaways. As their bodies grew stronger, the spirit of
merriment that gilds life's darkest clouds began to come back, and the
whale was jocularly known among the Russians as "our magazine of
provisions."
Then parties of hunters began going out for the sea-otter, which hid its
head during storm under the kelp of the sea fields. Steller knew the
Chinese would pay what in modern money is from one hundred to one hundred
and fifty dollars for each of these sea-otter skins; and between nine
hundred and one thousand were taken by the wrecked crew. The same skin
of prime quality sells in a London auction room to-day for one thousand
dollars. And in spring, when the sea-otter disappeared, there came
herds--herds in millions upon millions--of another visitant to the shores
of the Commander Islands--the fur seal, {57} which afforded new hunting
to the crew, and new wealth to the world.
[Illustration: Seals in a Rookery on Bering Island.]
The terrible danger now was not from starvation, but mutiny, murder, or
massacre among the branded criminals of the discontented crew.
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