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 t