Their
enfeebled bodies were totally exhausted. Stretching sails round as a
tent and stationing ten men at a time as sentinels, they slept the
first unbroken sleep they had known in five months. The tired-out
sentinels must have fallen asleep at their places; for just as day
dawned came a hundred savages, stealthy and silent, seeking the ship
that had slipped {103} out from Oonalaska. Landing without a sound,
they crept up within ten yards of the tents, stabbed the sleeping
sentinels to death, and let go such a whiz of arrows and lances at the
tent walls, that three of the Indian hostages inside were killed and
every Russian wounded.
Korovin had not even time to seize his firearms. Cutlass in hand,
followed by four men--all wounded and bleeding like himself--he dashed
out, slashed two savages to death, and scattered the rest at the sword
point. A shower of spears was the Indians' answer to this. Wounded
anew, the five Russians could scarcely drag themselves back to the tent
where by this time the others had seized the firearms.
All that day and night, a tempest lashed the shore.
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