After a harrowing night awaiting retribution, a Russian American Company party found only dense forest to the surf line and, under Captain Bulygin, headed south hoping for pickup at Grays Harbor. Carrying food, ammunition, and guns, the party crossed the Quillayute River in a small boat and began a six-day walk to the mouth of the Hoh River, where a skirmish with warriors from the Hoh Tribe, possibly reinforced by Quinault warriors, split the group and left four members, including Anna, in captivity. The rest went about 13 miles upriver and survived the winter in a rough blockhouse through trade and theft. In late winter they returned toward the coast in a red cedar canoe and a homemade boat, and after Bulygin became distraught over his wife's capture, Tarakanov led the party in surrender, urged on by Anna, who said she preferred the tribe's treatment. The group they faced was then joined by Makah men from the Cape Flattery area and led by a charismatic son of an English sailor and a tribal woman from Nootka Sound; after an exchange of Russians and Alutiiq, most of the party moved north as people considered slaves of the Makah. At times Anna was with her husband and at other times held by native tribes, while the Makah told the Russians she was being treated well and might be released for goods from a passing trading ship. Relations improved as the Russians learned Makah ways, and Tarakanov impressed the Makah by flying a small kite and by his western military knowledge, bravery, and practical skill. In August 1809 Anna died, and months later Captain Bulygin also died of what was described as lingering consumption. Rescue came in May 1810 when Captain Thomas Brown, commanding the Russian American Company ship Lydia, paid a ransom in trade goods for the captives. Back in Sitka, Baranov heard the survivors' tale and decided against colonizing New Albion for Czar Alexander in St. Petersburg, a choice driven by the wreck of the Sv. Nikolai that later shifted the course of discovery and colonization in the Northwest toward the United States, though significant settlement of Washington State by easterners would not come for seven or eight more decades as New Albion increasingly became known as the Oregon Country through the journals of Lewis and Clark.