hippers there, while, as if
in horrible mockery of their piety, two enormous white bears had reared
themselves in an erect posture, in order the better to survey their
visitors, directly at the foot of the cross. The party which had just
landed were unarmed, and were for making off as fast as possible to their
boats. But Skipper Heemskerk, feeling that this would be death to all of
them, said simply, "The first man that runs shall have this boat-hook of
mine in his hide. Let us remain together and face them off." It was done.
The party moved slowly towards their boats, Heemskerlk bringing up the
rear, and fairly staring the polar monsters out of countenance, who
remained grimly regarding them, and ramping about the cross.

The sailors got into their boat with much deliberation, and escaped to
the ship, "glad enough," said De Veer, "that they were alive to tell the
story, and that they had got out of the cat-dance so fortunately."

Next day they took the sun, and found their latitude 76 deg. 15', and the
variation of the needle twenty-six degrees.

For seventeen days more they were tossing about in mist and raging
snow-storms, and amidst tremendous icebergs, some of them rising in
steeples and pinnacles to a hundred feet above the sea, some grounded and
stationary, others drifting fearfully around in all directions,
threatening to crush them at any moment or close in about them and
imprison them for ever. They made fast by their bower anchor on the
evening of 7th August to a vast iceberg which was aground, but just as
they had eaten their supper there was a horrible groaning, bursting, and
shrieking all around them, an indefinite succession of awful, sounds
which made their hair stand on end, and then the iceberg split beneath
the water into more than four hundred pieces with a crash "such as no
words could describe." They escaped any serious damage, and made their
way to a vast steepled and towered block like a floating cathedral, where
they again came to anchor.

On the 15th August they reached the isles of Orange, on the extreme
north-eastern verge of Nova Zembla. Here a party going ashore climbed to
the top of a rising ground, and to their infinite delight beheld an open
sea entirely free from ice, stretching to the S. E. and E.S.E. as far as
eye could reach. At last the game was won, the passage to Cathay was
discovered. Full of joy, they pulled back in their boat to the ship, "not
knowing how to get there quick