latitude 80 deg. in search of the coveted passage.  Barendz, retaining his opinion that the true inlet to the circumpolar sea, if it existed, would be found N.E. of Nova Zembla, steered in that direction.  On the 13th July they found themselves by observation in latitude 73 deg., and considered themselves in the neighbourhood of Sir Hugh Willoughby’s land.  Four days later they were in Lomms’ Bay, a harbour of Nova Zembla, so called by them from the multitude of lomms frequenting it, a bird to which they gave the whimsical name of arctic parrots.  On the 20th July the ice obstructed their voyage; covering the sea in all directions with floating mountains and valleys, so that they came to an anchor off an islet where on a former voyage the Hollanders had erected the precious emblem of Christian faith, and baptised the dreary solitude Cross Island.  But these pilgrims, as they now approached the spot, found no worshippers 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.