By noon next day they had rounded the
southeast corner of the island. Two days afterward, rough weather set
the old jolly-boat bumping her nose so violently on the heels of the _St.
Peter_, that the cable had to be cut and the small boat set adrift. That
night the poor tallow-calked planks leaked so badly, pumps and buckets
were worked at fever heat, and all the ballast was thrown overboard.
Sometime during the 25th, there shone above the silver rim where sea and
sky met, the opal dome of far mountains, Kamchatka!
The bearded men could control themselves no longer. Shout on shout made
the welkin ring. Tears streamed down the rough, unwashed faces. The
Cossacks wept like children. Men vied with each other to seize the oars
and row like mad. The tide-rip bounding--lifting--falling--racing over
seas for the shores of Kamchatka never ran so mad and swift a course as
the crazy craft there bouncing forward over the waves. And when they saw
the home harbor {60} of Petropaulovsk, Avacha Bay, on August 27,
exultation knew no bounds. The men fired off guns, beat oars on the deck
rail, shouted--shouted--shouted till the mountains echoed and every
living soul of Avacha dashed to the waterside scarcely believing the
evidence of his eyes--that the castaways of Bering's ship had returned.
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