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 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