No
return fire came from the Sitkans. Two small boats were then landed to
destroy the enemy's {313} stores. Still not a sign from the barricade.
Raging with impatience, Baranof went ashore supported by one hundred
and fifty men, and with a wild halloo led the way to rush the fort.
The hostile Sitkans husbanded their strength with a coolness equal to
the famous thin red line of British fame. Not a signal, not a sound,
not the faintest betrayal of their strength or weakness till in the
dusk Baranof was within gunshot of the logs, when his men were met with
a solid wall of fire. The Aleuts stopped, turned, stampeded. Out
sallied the Sitkans pursuing Russians and Aleuts to the water's edge,
where the body of one dead Russian was brandished on spear ends. In
the sortie fourteen of the Russian forces were killed, twenty-six
wounded, among whom was Baranof, shot through the shoulder. The guns
of the war ship were all that saved the retreat from a panic.
Lisiansky then undertook the campaign, letting drive such a brisk fire
the next day that the Sitkans came suing for peace by the afternoon.
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