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 great
trees torn away with their roots from distant shores, lay strewn along
the coast, swept thither by the wandering currents. At once they
resolved to build a house in which they might shelter themselves from the
wild beasts, and from their still more cruel enemy, the cold. So
thanking God for the providential and unexpected supply of building
material and fuel, they lost no time in making sheds, in hauling timber,
and in dragging supplies from the ship before the dayless winter should
descend upon them.

Six weeks of steady cheerful labour succeeded. Tremendous snow-storms,
accompanied by hurricanes of wind, often filled the atmosphere to
suffocation, so that no human being could move a ship's length without
perishing; while, did any of their number venture forth, as the tempest
subsided, it was often to find himself almost in the arms of a polar bear
before the dangerous snow-white form could be distinguished moving
sluggishly through the white chaos.

For those hungry companions never left them so long as the sun remained