the nearest village was over fifty miles away, and induced us to land and have a look.
"As we approached the hayrick, some Japanese ran from behind it, took a good look at us and began to shoot. We were fifteen in all and, as soon as everybody was on shore, the battle began. Seeing our larger force, the Japanese soon retreated into the forests, and we began to investigate the hayrick. We found that they had a schooner drawn up on the beach and had disguised it with this covering. It turned out to be a veritable treasure-house, containing a cargo of the finest sealskins from the Commander Islands and of the black fox and sables, which the Japanese had collected from the natives in return for alcohol, tobacco and powder.
"This was the beginning of our real fortune and it enabled us to buy two big schooners, with which to start hunting on the seas in quite a different manner from that we had been following before. We cruised both the Behring and the Okhotsk Sea but not to hunt for whales and seals nor to fish for herring and salmon. Our two well-armed schooners went far out under Japanese colours. When the Japanese pirates, smugglers and illicit traders took us for associates and approached us, we threw off our masks and attacked them, taking from them all the articles they illegally exported from Russia as well as all the alcohol they smuggled in to inebriate and poison the peaceable, stupid natives of Kamchatka.
"It was an excellent business, comrades, with plenty of interest and good profit and without very great risks, as the ocean swallowed up all traces of battle and of our activities. Of course, at times a Japanese bullet or two found its way home or one of us went overboard in the scrimmage and disappeared, but such must always be reckoned with as the cost of the trade and, when one is
