Some one has said that Oonalaska and Oomnak are the smelting furnaces
of America. Certainly, the volcanic caves supplied sulphur that the
natives knew how to use as match lighters. The savages were without
firearms, but might have burned out the Russians had it not been for
the constant fusillade of musketry from door and roof and parchment
windows of the hut. Two of the Russians were wounded and weak {93}
from loss of blood. The other two never remitted their guard day or
night for four days, neither sleeping nor eating, till the wounded
pair, having recovered somewhat, seized pistols and cutlasses, waited
till a quelling of the musketry tempted the Indians near, then sallied
out with a flare of their pistols, that dropped three Aleuts on the
spot, wounded others, and drove the rest to a distance. But in the
sortie, there had been flaunted in their very faces, the coats and caps
and daggers of the five hunters Drusenin had sent fox trapping.
Plainly, the fox hunters had been massacred. The four men were alone
surrounded by hundreds of hostiles, ten miles from the shores of
Oonalaska, twenty from the other hunting detachments and the ship.
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