Shellikov sent out a scouting party and captured a Kaniag, brought him into camp, and loaded the bewildered native with presents and kindness, then sent him back to his people; but the native, though won wholly over himself,[49] could not prevail upon his hostile countrymen, who soon gave the Russians ample evidence of their enmity. A party of the latter in two of the ships’ boats were exploring and hunting, when they were disturbed by the appearance of a “perfect cloud” of natives that were encamped on rough and precipitous uplands of Oogak Island, a short distance from the main island itself. Shellikov resolved to proceed himself to the spot and endeavor to win them over to amity and trade. He exhausted every art of pacification that his ready wit could suggest without making the slightest favorable impression upon these men, who treasured up in the liveliest recollection those outrages and indignities which they had hitherto suffered from the arms and vices of Shellikov’s Muscovitic predecessors. The only answer that they made to the trader now was that he at once embark and leave the island, and a few arrows and bird-spears were discharged and thrown at him by way of clinching the argument. The Russians retired to their camp, and wisely erected over day a rude stockade—none too quick, for these Kaniags approached the harbor in the middle of the night, unobserved, and threw themselves with frenzied fury upon the slightly fortified Russians. The battle lasted until daylight. The necessity and instinct of self-preservation caused the whites to fight with desperate coolness and intrepidity. The slaughter was great among the natives, and, considering the vastly inferior numbers of the Russians, their loss, too, was heavy. In spite of the bravery of the whites in this terrible midnight struggle, they would have been overpowered and exterminated ere the dawning, had it not been for the consternation which the reports of their small iron two-pounders created in the assailing ranks of those dusky hosts.