When this report was brought to the captain he called the company together and addressed them earnestly upon the awfulness of such conduct. “If,” he piously argued, “it had not pleased God to have helpen [helped] them in that distresse that it had been better to have perished in body and to have lived everlastingly, than to have relieved for a poore time their mortal bodyes and to bee condemned everlastingly both body and soule to the unquenchable fire of hell.” He besought them all to pray “that it might please God to look upon their miserable present state and for his own mercy to relieve the same.” Still the famine continued unrelieved. At last, in sheer desperation, “they agreed amongst themselves rather than all should perish to cast lots who should be killed.” But the very night of this agreement, “such was the mercie of God” that a French ship well furnished with victuals hove into the harbour where they lay. Their action was prompt. “Such was the policy of the English,” as our chronicler ingenuously puts it, “that they became masters” of the Frenchmen’s craft, “and changing ships and victualling them they set sail to come into England.” In blunter words, they despoiled the Frenchmen of their property and made off with it, leaving them behind; not altogether desolate, however, for they were left with a ship partly provisioned from their own store. The expedition arrived back in England about the end of October, when the gentlemen of the party enjoyed a succession of entertainments, first at a “certain castle belonging to Sir John Luttrell,” afterward at Bath, Bristol, and London. The voyagers told in their reports how they had journeyed so far northward that they had seen “mighty islands of ice in the summer season on which were hawkes and other fowles to rest themselves being weary of flying over far from the main.” And how they had also seen “certain great white fowles with red bills and red legs somewhat bigger than herons which they supposed to be storkes.” Some months later the despoiled Frenchmen had got back to their home port, and they appeared in England with complaint to the king and demand for redress. After an examination of the matter, however, the king was “so moved to pity” by the tale of the distress of the Englishmen, which was shown to be the occasion of their high-handed act, that “he punished not his subjects, but of his own purse made full and royal recompense unto the French.” Which was certainly generous as should become a king.