Two officers had gone up
the channel in a small boat to see if any opening led to the Atlantic.
Boisterous weather and tremendous tide had lashed the sea to foam. The
long daylight was so delusive that the men did not realize it was
nearly midnight. At ten o'clock they had rowed ashore, to rest from
their fight with wave and wind, when armed Indians suddenly rushed down
to the water's edge in battle array, spears couched. The exhausted
rowers bent to the oars all night. At one place in their {289} retreat
to open sea, the fog lifted to reveal the passage between precipices
only a few feet wide with warriors' canoes on every side. A crash of
musketry drove the assailants off. Two or three men kept guard with
pointed muskets, while the oarsmen pulled through a rolling cross swell
back to the protection of the big ships outside.
On August 19, as the ships drove south to Norfolk or Sitka Sound, the
men suddenly recognized headlands where they had cruised the summer
before. For a second they scarcely realized. Then they knew that
their explorations from Alaska southward had come to the meeting place
of their voyage from New Spain northward.
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