Working their way down the west coast of the long island, putting in every now and then in search of birds and eggs, constantly in peril from the floating ice and the bears, they slowly came south. When passing Admiralty Peninsula they had to deal with a danger of their own causing. They sighted about two hundred walruses upon one of the floes. Sailing close to them they drove them off, "which," says De Veer, "had almost cost us dear, for they, being mighty strong sea monsters, swam towards us round about our boats with a great noise as if they would have devoured us; but we escaped from them by reason that we had a good gale of wind, yet it was not wisely done of us to waken sleeping wolves." Day by day De Veer tells the story of that adventurous voyage, with its long succession of dangers and disappointments, until they reached the mainland and sent the Lapland messenger to Kola, who returned with a letter from Jan Corneliszoon Rijp, who at first they could not believe was the old friend from whom they had parted at Bear Island; and more briefly he continues the story until Amsterdam was reached on the 1st of November, when the survivors, in the same clothes they wore in their winter quarters, fur caps and white fox-skins, walked up to the house of Pieter Hasselaer to report themselves on arrival and received the hearty welcome they deserved. Though Van Heemskerck had failed to make the passage to the east by way of the north, he was perhaps destined for greater fame on the far less rigorous route. Like Nelson he went on an Arctic expedition that failed, and then secured a place in history by a sea-fight in Spanish waters, for which his countrymen will never forget him. He it was who as Vice-Admiral of Holland fought the Spanish fleet at Gibraltar in the decisive battle of the 25th of April, 1607, in which with his twenty-six vessels he attacked Juan Alvarez Davila's twenty ships and ten galleons. Early in the struggle he had his leg swept off by a cannon shot, but he remained on deck till he died, gaining the complete victory which rendered his countrymen free from hindrance on the road to the Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, of which for so many years they made such profitable use. It is customary to give all the credit of the Arctic voyage to Barents on the ground that his captain was no sailor, but Holland knows no better sailor than Jacob Van Heemskerck of Gibraltar Bay. On the 9th of September, 1871, Captain Elling Carlsen, sailing in the Barents Sea, which he had entered round Icy Cape, landed in Ice Haven and found the house just as De Veer had described it. There it had stood in cold storage for 274 years, never having been entered by human foot since Van Heemskerck had shut the door. The bunks, the table, the bath, the clock, in short everything, all in order, as the orderly Dutchmen had left it. Never did a voyage book receive such ample verification; never did the description of an island home stand the test better.