The home trip was the most successful part of the entire voyage. It is true that, without good instruments, the Dutch ships once more lost their bearings. They thought that they were two hundred miles away from the coast of Africa when they had already passed the cape. On the twenty-sixth of May Van Noort landed at St. Helena. Three weeks later he met a large fleet. The ships flew the Dutch flag. They were part of a squadron commanded by Jacob van Heemskerk, outward bound for their second voyage to India. From them the Hollanders got their first news from home; how Van Neck's expedition had been a great success, and how Bantam, which had been carefully avoided, was now a Dutch settlement. Van Noort told them of his fight with the Spanish fleet in different parts of the Pacific, and in turn he was informed of the great victory which Prince Maurice had just won over the Spaniards near Nieuwpoort which had assured the Dutch Republic its final liberty. Then both fleets continued their voyage. On the twenty-eighth of August Van Noort and forty-four out of the two hundred and forty-eight who had sailed away with him three years before came back to Rotterdam. [Illustration: La baye de Isle et Cite de Borneo. Bapt. a Deutechum fec.] The next year a few other men who had belonged to the expedition reached Holland. They had served on the _Henrick Frederick_ which had disappeared just after Van Noort had left the Strait of Magellan. They had waited for their commander near the island of Santa Maria, but the arrival of the Spanish man-of-war had spoiled all idea of meeting each other on that spot. The _Henrick Frederick_ had crossed the Pacific alone. Many of her men had died, and the others were so weak that when they reached the Moluccas they could no longer handle the ship. They had sold it to the Sultan of Ternate for some bags of nutmeg, and with a small sloop of their own construction they had reached Bantam in April of the year 1602. There they had found a part of the same fleet of Heemskerk which Van Noort had met on the coast of Africa. On one of the ships many sailors had just died. Their place had been offered to the men of the old _Henrick Frederick_. In the winter of 1602 they returned to their home city.