The rank and file
of the crews were off on the hunting-grounds with the Indians; and the
hunting-grounds of the sea-otter were the storm-beaten kelp beds of the
rockiest coast in the world. Going out in parties of five or six, the
_promyshleniki_, as the hunters were called, promised implicit
obedience to their foreman. Store of venison would be taken in a
preliminary hunt. Indian women and children would be left at the
Russian fort as hostages of good conduct, and at the head of as many as
four, five hundred, a thousand Aleut Indian hunters who had been
bludgeoned, impressed, bribed by the promise of firearms to hunt for
the Cossacks, six Russians would set out to coast a tempestuous sea for
a thousand miles in frail boats made of parchment stretched on
whalebone. Sometimes a counter-tide would sweep a whole flotilla out
to sea, when never a man of the hunting crew would be heard of more.
Sometimes, when the hunters were daring a gale, riding in on the back
of a storm to catch the sea-otter driven ashore to the kelp beds for a
rest, the back-wash of a billow, or a sudden {302} hurricane of wind
raising mountain seas, would crash down on the brigade.
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