By June the ships had become charnel-houses. Two men only, besides Munck, had survived the winter. When the ice went out with a rush and a grinding, and the ebb tide left the flats bare, wolves came nightly, sniffing the air and prowling round the ships' exposed keels. 'As I have no more hope of life in this world,' wrote Jens Munck, 'herewith good-night to all the world and my soul to God.' His two companions had managed to crawl down the ship's ladder and across the flats, where they fell ravenously on the green sprouting sorrel grass and sea nettles. As all northerners know, they could have eaten nothing better for scurvy. Forthwith their malady was allayed. In a few days they came back for their commander. By June 26 all three had recovered. The putrid dead were thrown into the river. Ballast and cargo were then cast out. It thus happened that when the tide came in, the little sloop _Lamprey_ lifted and floated out to sea. Munck had drilled holes in the hull of the _Unicorn_ and sunk her with all her freight till he could come back with an adequate crew; but he never returned. War broke out in Europe, and Munck went to his place in the Danish Navy. Meanwhile Indians had come down to what they henceforth called the River of the Strangers. When the tide went out they mounted the _Unicorn_ and plundered her of all the water-soaked cargo. In the cargo were quantities of powder. A fire was kindled to dry the booty. At once a consuming flame shot into the air, followed by a terrific explosion; and when the smoke cleared neither plunder nor plunderers nor ship remained. Eighty years afterwards the fur traders dug from these river flats a sunken cannon stamped C 4--Christian IV--and thus established the identity of Munck's winter quarters as Churchill harbour. Munck was not the last soldier of fortune to essay passage to China through the ice-bound North Sea. Captain Fox of Hull and Captain James of Bristol came out in 1631 on separate expeditions, 'itching,' as Fox expressed it, to find the North-West Passage. Private individuals had fitted out both expeditions. Fox claimed the immediate patronage of the king; James came out under the auspices of the city of Bristol. Sailing the same week, they did not again meet till they were south of Port Nelson in the autumn, when Fox dined with James and chaffed him about his hopes to 'meet the Emperor of Japan.' But there was no need of rivalry; both went back disappointed men. James wintered on Charlton Island, and towards the end of 1632, after a summer's futile cruising, returned to England with a terrible tale of bootless suffering. * * * * * While England sought a short route to China by Hudson Bay, and the Spaniards were still hoping to find a way to the orient by the Gulf of Mexico and California, New France had been founded, and, as we may learn from other narratives in this series, her explorers had not been idle.