the cupidity of the Eskimos, who had grown wary and
hostile to the newcomers. Pease, corn, and grain were sown in the
scant soil as a provision for the following summer. On the last day of
August, the fleet departed on its homeward voyage. The passage was
long and stormy. The ships were scattered and found their way home as
best they might, some to one harbour and some to another. But by the
beginning of October, the entire fleet was safely back in its own
waters.

The expectations of a speedy return to Meta Incognita were doomed to
disappointment. The ore that the ships carried proved to be but
worthless rock, and from the commercial point of view the whole
expedition was a failure. Frobisher was never able to repeat his
attempt to find the North-West Passage. In its existence his faith
remained as firm as ever. But, although his three voyages resulted in
no discoveries of {22} profit to England, his name should stand high on
the roll of honour of great English sea-captains. He brought to bear
on his task not only the splendid courage of his age, but also the
earnest devotion and intense religious spirit which marked the best men
of the period of the Reformation. The first article of Frobisher's
standing orders to his fleet enjoined his men to banish swearing, dice,
and card-playing and to worship God twice a day in the service of the
Church of England. The watchword of the fleet, to be called out in fog
or darkness as a means of recognition was 'Before the World was God,'
and the answer shouted back across the darkness, 'After God came Christ
His Son.' At all convenient times and places, sermons were preached to
the company of the fleet by Frobisher's chaplain, Master Wolfall, a
godly man who had left behind in England a 'large living and a good
honest woman to wife and very towardly children,' in order to spread
the Gospel in the new land. Frobisher's personal bravery was of the
highest order. We read how in the rage of a storm he would venture
tasks from which even his boldest sailors shrank in fear. Once, when
his ship was thrown on her beam ends and the water poured into the
waist, the commander worked his way along {23} the lee side of the
vessel, engulfed in the roaring surges, to free the sheets. With these
qualities Martin Frobisher combined a singular humanity towards both
those whom he commanded and natives with whom he dealt. It is to be
regretted that a man of such high character and abil