Across the mouth of the bay lay the Lena. At a glance, LaBarge knew the situation was hopeless. There was no other way out of the inlet, and inside, the water was not deep enough to take the schooner. She would be shot to wreckage before they could get moving.
“Cut loose the anchor!” he yelled. “Get a jib on her!” A shell screamed overhead and lost itself somewhere in the woods. The schooner was moving slowly now. If they could get around Turn Point.. .. He had no hopes of saving the ship, what he wanted now was a chance for the crew to take to the hills. Once there, with the friendly Indians, they could hide out for weeks until they might reach the mainland.
Pope fired their own gun again, and LaBarge had the satisfaction of seeing the shell burst amidships, smashing the whaleboat to splinters and ripping sails and rigging. Now the Lena moved closer, getting into position to rip the Susquehanna with another broadside.
Enough of the wheel remained to swing the schooner and LaBarge started to put it over when a shell struck forward and he felt the ship stagger under a wicked blow in the hull. Then the shelling stopped. Their own gun had ceased to fire and turning he saw Duncan Pope sprawled on the deck, his skull blown half away. Noble caught his arm.
“We’d better run for it, sir!” he shouted. “They’ll be alongside in a few minutes!”
Two boats were in the water, pulling strongly toward the wreck of the Susquehanna.
Dazed, he glanced around. Pope was dead, and another man lay sprawled amidships. The schooner was drifting helplessly, but the current, slight as it was, was taking them deeper into the inlet. The tidal currents there, he recalled, were fearfully strong.
The way was blocked. The Lena lay fairly across the only entrance and her boats were drawing near. There was nothing else for it. “Abandon ship,” he said. “Get for shore, all of you.”
“What about you?” Noble protested.
“I’ll come,” he said. “Get going!”
He turned to the companionway and went swiftly down the ladder. For the first time he realized how badly hulled they were: water stood on the deck of the saloon. He slipped a pistol behind his belt, caught up a coat. Alongside he heard splashes and yells as the crew jumped over the side. The shore here was nowhere over fifty yards away.
He went swiftly up the ladder and reaching the rail, turned back for a last long look. The forem’st was gone, trailing over the side in a mass of wreckage. The stern was a wreck and the deck was literally a shambles. Pope and Sykes were definitely gone, both killed in those few minutes of shelling. Luckily, most of the crew had been ashore. Yet … the Susquehanna … it was like deserting an old friend. He sprang to the rail.
Below him and not twenty yards away was the Russian longboat, and in it were a dozen men, six of whom covered him with rifles. In the stern sat Baron Paul Zinnovy, smiling.
To jump was to die, and he was not ready to die. The boat came alongside and the Russians swarmed aboard. Two men seized him and bound his hands behind him, stripping him of his pistol. Zinnovy scarcely glanced at him, walking about the ship, looking her over curiously. Other men had gone below to inspect the cargo. As he was seated in the boat one of the men spoke to the other and indicating LaBarge, said, “Katorzhniki.”
It was a word that stood for a living death, it was the term applied to hard-labor convicts in Siberia.
May had come and gone before the news reached Robert Walker, and he acted with speed. The purchase of Alaska hung in the balance and the Baron Edouard Stoeckl was worried. He wanted to be back in Russia, or to have an assignment in Paris or Vienna, and everything depended on this mission. Now this LaBarge affair had to come up, and the man involved had to be a personal friend, a very close friend of Walker himself, known moreover to Seward, Sumner, all of them. Ratification of the treaty was not enough. The appropriation must be made. He had watched Congress in action long enough to know that the whole sale of Alaska might fail right there. And if any man could get out the necessary vote, it was Walker. Why couldn’t that confounded Zinnovy have kept his ships in Sitka? He sat now, in Walker’s home, and the little man with the wheezy voice glanced over at him. “Is there any news of LaBarge?” ‘ The Baron’s face shadowed a little. He had hoped the subject would not arise.
“We have done our best, but—“
“Could it be possible,” Walker suggested, “to arrange for the transfer of such a prisoner? Supposing he is in Siberia?”
“There is no record of such a prisoner,” Stoeckl protested, “nor of any such capture. I am sure the whole affair is the figment of someone’s imagination.” “Sir,” Walker’s voice was stiff, “the man whose letter lies on my desk is a man of honor, LaBarge’s partner and my friend. Not only was an American vessel shelled but its cargo was taken. This, sir, savors of piracy.” Baron Stoeckl had friends in the Russian American Company, but Baron Zinnovy was not one of these. However, he had a very good idea as to Zinnovy’s duties in Sitka, and it would not do to have such news reach the ears of the Czar. Stoeckl knew that following the return of Princess Helena there had been a great fuss, which had been calmed down only after some time. At this moment orders for a complete shake-up at Sitka were carefully pigeonholed in the Ministry of the Interior. A revisor was to be appointed to investigate, but so far this had not been done.
“I cannot see what good it would do to have the prisoner transferred if he remained a prisoner.”
Walker brushed the question aside. “I have heard, correct me if I am wrong, that some convict labor is used in Sitka?”
Baron Stoeckl almost smiled. So that was what the fox was thinking! Maybe this man was married to Benjamin Franklin’s granddaughter with some reason … a prisoner transferred to Alaska on the evening of the sale would most certainly be freed when the Americans took over.
It was a very sensible idea … and this he, Baron Stoeckl, might arrange. There were people, the superiors of Zinnovy, in the Ministry of the Interior who wanted LaBarge to remain a prisoner. Yet a prisoner might be transferred without incurring the displeasure of these people. It was something that might be done without endangering his own future prospects.
There was one thing Walker did not know and which Stoeckl had no intention of telling him. There was every prospect that Zinnovy himself would be appointed revisor at Sitka.
“It is, as you suggest, a possibility that another shipment of convicts might be sent to Sitka. … How do the votes stand, Mr. Walker, for the appropriation?” They talked far into the night, weighing the pros and cons and Stoeckl nursed his injured leg and cursed under his breath.
It was bad luck that Zinnovy had gone to Siberia without putting in at Sitka, and the prisoners had been landed there and turned over to the police. Probably not even he knew what had become of LaBarge by now. It was several days before he saw Walker again. They met briefly, over a glass of sherry. “By the way”—Stoeckl was on his feet ready to go—“I understand a shipment of twenty prisoners will leave Okhotsk on the last of the month.” “I shall hope for further news. Are any prisoners I know involved?”
“At least one,” Stoeckl replied, “that I am sure of.” They parted and the Baron walked away. There was no reason why he should feel guilty. It was too bad for LaBarge, and the Baron felt real regret for Robert Walker. A good man, this Walker, a genius at managing things like this treaty. Seward might be the key figure, but it was Walker who lined up the vote, did the lobbying, the entertaining, and the leg work to arrange the purchase. Walker must be content with that. For the rest of it, there was no hope. Prisoner Jean LaBarge was going out of the Siberian frying pan into the Sitka fire.
35
From the window of her room in Baranof Castle, Helena looked out over the city and harbor where sunlight lay bright upon the water, and gleamed from the serene loveliness of Mount Edgecumbe. The Castle was no longer the gloomy place it had been. In the capable hands of Prince Maksoutof and his wife it had become warm, comfortable, even gay.
The same eighty cannon looked grimly over the city from the parapet below. But there was more shipping in the bay, and several of them were American ships. She had been a fool to come, yet if Rob Walker’s hint in his letter to her had been founded upon fact, Jean LaBarge might soon be arriving here. If she could not free him she could at least, through Prince Maksoutof, relieve his imprisonment a little.