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 almost to a shadow, he still preserved his cheerfulness, and maintained that he would yet, with God’s help, perform his destined task.  In his next attempt he would steer north-east from the North Cape, he said, and so discover the passage.

While he was “thus prattling,” the boatswain of the other boat came on board, and said that Claas Anderson would hold out but little longer.

“Then,” said William Barendz, “methinks I too shall last but a little while.  Gerrit, give me to drink.”  When he had drunk, he turned his eyes on De Veer and suddenly breathed his last.

Great was the dismay of his companions, for they had been deceived by the dauntless energy of the man, thus holding tenaciously to his great purpose, unbaffled by danger and disappointment, even to the last instant of life.  He was their chief pilot and guide, “in whom next to God they trusted.”

And thus the hero, who for vivid intelligence, courage, and perseverance amid every obstacle, is fit to be classed among the noblest of maritime adventurers, had ended his career.  Nor was it unmeet that the man who had led those three great although unsuccessful enterprises towards the North Pole, should be laid at last to rest—­like the soldier dying in a lost battle—­upon the field of his glorious labours.

Nearly six weeks longer they struggled amid tempestuous seas.  Hugging the shore, ever in danger of being dashed to atoms by the ice, pursued by their never-failing enemies the bears, and often sailing through enormous herds of walrusses, which at times gave chase to the boats, they at last reached the Schanshoek on the 28th July.