This last Egede knew, but little more.  He believed that there were still settlements on the inaccessible east coast of Greenland where descendants of the old Northmen lived, cut off from all the world, sunk into ignorance and godlessness,—­men and women who had once known the true light,—­and his heart yearned to go to their rescue.  Waking and dreaming, he thought of nothing else.  The lamp in his quiet study shone out over the sea at night when his people were long asleep.  Their pastor was poring over old manuscripts and the logs of whalers that had touched upon Greenland.  From Bergen he gathered the testimony of many sailors.  None of them had ever seen traces of, or heard of, the old Northmen.

To his bishop went Egede with his burden.  Ever it rang in his ears:  “God has chosen you to bring them back to the light.”  The bishop listened and was interested.  Yes, that was the land from which seafarers in a former king’s time had brought home golden sand.  There might be more.  It couldn’t be far from Cuba and Hispaniola, those golden coasts.  If one were to go equipped for trading, no doubt a fine stroke of business might be done.  Thus the Right Reverend Bishop Krog of Trondhjem, and Egede went home, disheartened.

At home his friends scouted him, said he was going mad to think of giving up his living on such a fool’s chase.  His wife implored him to stay, and with a heavy heart Egede was about to abandon his purpose when his jealous neighbor, whose parishioners had been going to hear Egede preach, stirred up such trouble that his wife was glad to go.  She even urged him to, and he took her at her word.  They moved to Bergen, and from that port they sailed on May 3, 1721, on the ship Haabet (the Hope), with another and smaller vessel as convoy, forty-six souls all told, bound for the unknown North.  The Danish King had made Egede missionary to the Greenlanders on a salary of three hundred daler a year, the same amount which Egede himself contributed of his scant store toward the equipment.  The bishop’s plan had prevailed; the mission was to be carried by the expected commerce, and upon that was to be built a permanent colonization.

Early in June they sighted land, but the way to it was barred by impassable ice.  A whole month they sailed to and fro, trying vainly for a passage.  At last they found an opening and slipped through, only to find themselves shut in, with towering icebergs closing around them.  As they looked fearfully out over the rail, their convoy signalled that she had struck, and the captain of Haabet cried out that all was lost.  In the tumult of terror that succeeded, Egede alone remained calm.  Praying for succor where there seemed to be none, he remembered the One Hundred and Seventh Psalm:  “He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder.”  And the morning dawned clear, the ice was moving and their prison widening.  On July 3, Haabet cleared the last ice-reef, and the shore lay open before them.