As Benyowsky
entered the main rooms, the enraged commander seized a pistol, which
missed fire, and sprang at the Pole's throat, roaring out he would see
the exiles dead before he would surrender. The Pole, being lame, had
swayed back under the onslaught, when the circular slash of a cutlass
in the hand of an exile officer severed the governor's head from his
body.
Twenty-eight Cossacks were put to the sword inside the fort; but the
exiles were not yet out of their troubles. Though they had seized the
armed vessel at once and {121} transferred to the hold the entire loot
of the fort,--furs, silks, supplies, gold,--it would be two weeks
before the ice would leave the port. Meanwhile the two hundred
defeated Cossacks had retreated to a hill, and sent coureurs scurrying
for help to the other forts of Kamchatka. Within two weeks seven
hundred Cossacks would be on the hills; and the exiles, whose supplies
were on board the vessel, would be cut off in the fort and starved into
surrender.
No time to waste, Benyowsky! Not a woman or child was harmed, but
every family in the fort was quickly rounded up in the chapel.
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