But the Pole had had enough of Russia.
He contented himself with presenting his brother pirate with one
hundred pounds of ammunition; and the two exiles sat round a campfire
of driftwood far into the night, spinning yarns of blasted hopes back
in Europe, and desperate venture here on the Pacific. The Saxon's
headquarters were on Kadiak, where he had formed alliance with the
Indians. Hither he advised the Pole to sail for a cargo of furs.
Ismyloff, the mutineer, was marooned on Bering Island. Ice-drift had
seemed to bar the way {125} northward through Bering Straits. June saw
Benyowsky far eastward at Kadiak on the south shore of Alaska,
gathering in a cargo of furs; and from the sea-otter fields of Kadiak
and Oonalaska, Benyowsky sailed southwest, past the smoking volcanoes
of the Aleutians, vaguely heading for some of those South Sea islands
of which he used to read in the exile village of Kamchatka.
Not a man of the crew knew as much about navigation as a schoolboy.
They had no idea where they were going, or where the ship was. As day
after day slipped past with no sight but the heaving sea, the Russian
landsmen became restive.
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