Russian hastened back to Kadiak and set the machinery in motion to that end. But his absence in the meantime from Sitka was improved upon by the Koloshians, who, acting in preconcerted plan, utterly destroyed the post. These savages on a certain day, when most of the garrison was far outside of the stockade, hunting and fishing, rushed in, several thousand of them, upon a few armed men, surrounded the block-house, assailed it from all sides at once, and soon forced an entrance. They massacred the defenders to a man, including the commander, Medvaidniekov, and carried off more than three thousand sea-otter pelts from the warehouses. During this wild and bloody fight an English ship was lying at anchor far down the harbor, some ten miles from the scene; three Russians and five Aleutes only, out of the hunting parties absent at the time of the attack, managed to secrete themselves in the woods, and hide until they could gain the decks and protection of this vessel, and thus acquaint her captain, Barber, of the outrage; he contrived to entice two of the leading Sitkan chiefs on board of his ship, plied them with drink, and soon had them securely ironed, and then, having quite a battery of guns, he was able to make his own terms for their release; this was done after the surrender of eighteen women (captured outside of the stockade) and 2,000 sea-otter skins was made to Barber, who at once sailed for Kadiak. Here the British seaman demanded from Baranov the salvage of 50,000 rubles for rescuing his men and women and property; with this demand the Russian could not or would not comply; but, after many days in amicable argument, Captain Barber received and accepted 10,000 rubles in full settlement. While the lurid light of the burning wreck of this first Sitkan post was flashing over the sound, and the Koloshes were howling and dancing around it in their fiendish exultation, nearly two hundred Aleutian hunters were surprised and slaughtered at various points in the vicinity, and a party of over one hundred of these simple natives perished almost to a man, on the same day, from eating poisonous mussels which they detached from the rocks in the strait that separates Baranov Island from Chichagov; that canal still bears the name commemorative of this dreadful accident—it is called “Pogeebshie”[14] or “Destruction” Strait.