It was two years before
punishment was meted out by the Russian government for this crime.
What did the Aleut Indian care for the law's slow jargon? His only law
was self-preservation. His furs had been plundered from him; his
hunting-fields overrun by brigands from he knew not where; his home
outraged; his warriors poisoned, bludgeoned, done to death; his women
and children {88} kidnapped to lifelong slavery; the very basic, brute
instincts of his nature tantalized, baited, tortured to dare!
It was from January to September of 1762, that Pushkareff had run his
mad course of outrage on Oonalaska Island. It was in September of the
same year, that four other Russian ships, all unconscious of the
reception Pushkareff's evil doings had prepared for them, left
Kamchatka for the Aleutian Islands. Each of the ships was under a
commander who had been to the islands before and dealt fairly by the
Indians.
Betshevin's ship with Pushkareff, the Cossack, reached Kamchatka
September 25. On the 6th there had come to winter at the harbor a ship
under the same Alexei Drusenin, who had met Pushkareff the year before
on the way to Oonalaska.
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