They timbered their crazy craft from green wood in Kamchatka, or on the
Okhotsk Sea, or among the forests of Siberian rivers. They lashed the
rude planks together, hoisted a sail of deer hide above a deck of,
perhaps, sixty feet, and steering by instinct across seas as chartless
as the forests where French coureurs ran, struck out from Asia for
America with wilder {81} dreams of plunder than ever Spanish galleon or
English freebooter hoped coasting the high seas.
The crews were criminals with the brands of their crimes worn
uncovered, banded together by some Siberian merchant who had provided
goods for trade, and set adrift under charge of half a dozen Cossacks
supposed to keep order and collect tribute of one-tenth as homage from
American Indians for the Czar. English buccaneers didn't scruple as to
blood when they sacked Spanish cities for Spanish gold. These Russian
outlaws scrupled less, when their only hope of bettering a desperate
exile was the booty of precious furs plundered, or bludgeoned, or
exacted as tribute from the Indians of Northwest America.
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