All Baranof's work
to {327} pacify the hostiles of the mainland was being undone; and what
complicated matters hopelessly for him was the fact that the
shareholders of his own company were also shareholders in the rival
ventures. Baranof wrote to Siberia for instructions, urging the
amalgamation of all the companies in one; but instructions were so long
in coming that the fur trade was being utterly bedevilled and the
passions of the savages inflamed to a point of danger for every white
man on the North Pacific. Affairs were at this pass when Konovalof,
the dashing leader of the plunderers, planned to capture Baranof
himself, and seize the shipyard at Sunday Harbor, on Prince William
Sound. Baranof had one hundred and fifty fighting Russians in his
brigades. Should he wait for the delayed instructions from Siberia?
While he hesitated, some of the shipbuilders were ambushed in the
woods, robbed, beaten, and left half dead. Baranof could not afford to
wait. He had no more legal justification for his act than the
plunderers had for theirs; but it was a case where a man must step
outside law, or be exterminated.
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