That virtually ends the adventures of the men who had gone out with Barendsz and Heemskerk to discover the Northeast Passage, and who quite involuntarily acted as the first polar explorers. After a few days the boats found each other, and together they reached the first Russian settlement, where they found houses and warm rooms and a chance to get a decent bath and eat from a table. Their misery was at once forgotten. At heart they were healthy-minded, simple fellows, and when for the first time after many months they saw some women they were quite happy, although these women were Laplanders and proverbially lacking in those attributes which we usually connect with the idea of lovely womanhood. [Illustration] News traveled fast even in the dominion of the Lapp. In less than eighty hours a Laplander came running to the Russian settlement with a letter which had been written by De Ryp, who, half a year before, had been blown into the White Sea and was now waiting for a favorable wind to sail home. He was still in Kola, and was delighted at the safe return of his colleague from whom he had separated over a point of nautical difference. He invited the men to go home with him. The two small boats of Heemskerk's ship were left in the town of Kola as a small souvenir for the kind-hearted Russians, the Arctic costumes were carefully packed away, to be shown to the family at home, and on the sixth of October they all said farewell to the Russian coast. Twenty-three days later they entered the Maas. By way of Maassluis, Delft, The Hague, and Haarlem they made their triumphant entry into Amsterdam. Dressed in their fox-skins and their home-made wooden shoes, they paraded through the streets of the city. Their High and Mightinesses the mayors received them at the town hall, and the world was full of the fame of this first Arctic expedition. As for the practical results, there were none, unless we except the negative information about the impossibility of the Northeastern Passage. But nobody cared any longer about this route, for just two months before the first Dutch fleet which had tried to reach the Indies by way of the Cape had safely returned to the roads of Texel. The Portuguese, after all, had proved to be not so dangerous as had been expected. The Indian native was quite willing to welcome the Dutch trader. And the Northeastern route, after the wonderful failures of a number of conscientious expeditions, was given up for the well-worn and well-known route along the African coast. The Arctic was all right for the purpose of hunting of the profitable whale, but as a short cut to the Indies it had proved an absolute disappointment. [Illustration] CHAPTER III THE TRAGEDY OF SPITZBERGEN Before I tell you the story of the first voyage to India I want to give a short account of another Dutch expedition in the Arctic Sea which ended even more sadly than that of Heemskerk and Barendsz.