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...and here one lies like some other idiot
They surely had a different look on their faces when they stood around me in my cabin
it was the day we went ashore on this island a month ago now
it’s probably the closest I have come to experiencing a real mutiny, except for the time in Okhotsk.
we had camped and built houses in Okhotsk to stay the winter
We were waiting for Spangberg, a hell of a sailor.
he could take on three Cossacks at a time
But he was stuck in the mountains… he couldn’t drive his crew any further
So they had dug themselves in and were living off horse carcasses I’d left on the route…
I conscripted a group of men to go up with a dog team to find Spangberg
They flatly refused
(They said it was)…certain death
So I had a gallows put up in the snow
and told them that the widows and children of the men who would now be hanged
would be left in the hands of the local Cossacks.
I might have been a bit irritable then
But after all they did set out
Oh, yes, the cabin...there I lay
footsteps on the ladder, door kicked open...