On the morning of the 20th the woods were seen to be alive
with ambushed men; and Haswell had the cannon loaded with canister
fired into the woods. At eleven that very morning, the chief, at the
head of the plot, came to sell otter skins, and ask if some of the crew
would not visit the village. Gray jerked the skins from his arms, and
the rascal was over decks in terror of his life. That was the end of
the plot. On the 23d the _Adventure_ was launched, the second vessel
built on the Pacific, the first American vessel built there at all; and
by April 2 Haswell was ready to go north on her. Gray on the
_Columbia_ was going south to have another try at that great River of
the West, which Spanish charts represented.
{235} Without a doubt, if the river existed at all, it was down behind
that Cape Disappointment where Meares had failed to go in, and Heceta
been driven back. Just what Gray did between April 2 and May 7 is a
matter of guessing. Anyway, Captain George Vancouver sent out from
England to settle the dispute about Nootka, at six o'clock on the
morning of April 29, just off the wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery,
and within sight of Olympus's snowy sky-line, noticed a ship on the
offing carrying American colors.
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