to Cathay was
discovered. Full of joy, they pulled back in their boat to the ship, "not
knowing how to get there quick enough to tell William Barendz." Alas!
they were not aware of the action of that mighty ocean river, the
Gulf-stream, which was sweeping around those regions with its warm
dissolving current.

Three days later they returned baffled in their sanguine efforts to sail
through the open sea. The ice had returned upon them, setting southwardly
in obedience to the same impulse which for a moment had driven it away,
and they found themselves imprisoned again near the "Hook of Desire."

On the 25th August they had given up all the high hopes by which they had
been so lately inspired, and, as the stream was again driving the ice
from the land, they trusted to sail southward and westward back towards
the Waigats. Having passed by Nova Zembla, and found no opening into the
seas beyond, they were disposed in the rapidly waning summer to effect
their retreat by the south side of the island, and so through the Straits
of Nassau home. In vain. The catastrophe was upon them. As they struggled
slowly past the "Ice-haven," the floating mountains and glaciers,
impelled by the mighty current, once more gathered around and forced them
back to that horrible harbour. During the remaining days of August the
ship struggled, almost like a living creature, with the perils that,
beset her; now rearing in the air, her bows propped upon mighty blocks,
till she absolutely sat erect upon her stern, now lying prostrate on her
side, and anon righting again as the ice-masses would for a moment float
away and leave her breathing space and room to move in. A blinding
snow-storm was raging the while, the ice was cracking and groaning in all
directions, and the ship was shrieking, so that the medley of awful
sights and sounds was beyond the power of language. "'Twas enough to make
the hair stand on end," said Gerrit de Veer, "to witness the hideous
spectacle."

But the agony was soon over. By the 1st September the ship was hard and
fast. The ice was as immoveable as the dry land, and she would not move
again that year even if she ever floated. Those pilgrims from the little
republic were to spend the winter in their arctic harbour. Resigning
themselves without a murmur to their inevitable fate, they set about
their arrangements with perfect good humour and discipline. Most
fortunately a great quantity of drift wood, masses of timber, and g