their voyage; one copy being fastened to the chimney of their deserted
house, and one being placed in each of the boats. Their voyage was full
of danger as they slowly retraced their way along the track by which they
reached the memorable Ice Haven, once more doubling the Cape of Desire
and heading for the Point of Consolation--landmarks on their desolate
progress, whose nomenclature suggests the immortal apologue so familiar
to Anglo-Saxon ears.

Off the Ice-hook, both boats came alongside each other, and Skipper
Heemskerk called out to William Barendz to ask how it was with him.

"All right, mate," replied Barendz, cheerfully; "I hope to be on my legs
again before we reach the Ward-huis." Then' he begged De Veer to lift
him up, that he might look upon the Ice-hook once more. The icebergs
crowded around them, drifting this way and that, impelled by mighty
currents and tossing on an agitated sea. There was "a hideous groaning
and bursting and driving of the ice, and it seemed every moment as if the
boats were to be dashed into a hundred pieces." It was plain that their
voyage would now be finished for ever, were it not possible for some one
of their number to get upon the solid ice beyond and make fast a line.
"But who is to bell the cat?" said Gerrit de Veer, who soon, however,
volunteered himself, being the lightest of all. Leaping from one
floating block to another at the imminent risk of being swept off into
space, he at last reached a stationary island, and fastened his rope.
Thus they warped themselves once more into the open sea.

On the 20th June William Barendz lay in the boat studying carefully the
charts which they had made of the land and ocean discovered in their
voyage. Tossing about in an open skiff upon a polar sea, too weak to sit
upright, reduced by the unexampled sufferings of that horrible winter