Thus on that bright morning in early May, these two commanders with their loyal crew sailed down the Thames amid the firing of guns and cheers of the crowds assembled upon the river banks to wish them God-speed. It was understood between the commanders that should their vessels become separated, they should try to meet at Wardhuys, “a good port in Finmark.” They proceeded northward and passed the northernmost cape of Europe in July. At night during a dense fog and storm, the two ships separated, the third and smallest kept with Willoughby, and the two brave commanders and their crews never met again. Proceeding northward some two hundred miles, reaching Nova Zembla, Willoughby was forced by the ice to return to a lower latitude. In September, 1553, he harboured in the mouth of the river Arzina, in Lapland. He wrote in his journal at this time: “Thus remaining in this haven the space of a weeke, seing the year farre spent, and also very evill wether,—as frost, snowe, and haile, as though it had been the deepe of winter, wee thought it best to winter there.” In January, according to the record of Willoughby’s journal, all were living. In the spring Russian sailors, venturing in these high latitudes, were surprised to see two ships frozen in the ice. The relentless grip of the Arctic winter still held them fast; the hand of death in its most gruesome shape had reaped its harvest. Not a man survived. How brief the details, yet the imagination shudders at the agonies of their last days,—the cold, intense, congealing; the impenetrable, melancholy dark, and death, laying its icy fingers upon the despairing heart of each in turn and the “last Man,” surrounded by the stark forms of his companions, wrestling alone with inexorable fate. Chancellor’s vessel, the _Bona Ventura_, reached the Bay of St. Nicholas, and landed near Archangel, which was then but an isolated castle. He undertook a journey to Moscow, which resulted in successful arrangements for commercial enterprise, Russia at that time being almost as little known as the far east. Returning safely to England, he was warmly welcomed as having proved the practical utility of Arctic voyages. One of the companions of Chancellor on this voyage, Stephen Burrough, materially aided by Sebastian Cabot, then in his eighty-fourth year, set sail in 1556 from Gravesend, in a small pinnace named the _Search-thrift_. Before the departure, the ship and crew were visited by Cabot, and it is recorded of this farewell visit that “Master Cabot gave the poor most liberal almes, wishing them to pray for the good fortune and prosperous success of the _Search-thrift_; and for very joy that he had to see towardness of our intended discovery, he entered into the dance among the rest of the young and lusty company; which being ended he and his friends departed most gently, commending us to the governance of Almighty God.” [Illustration: SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY]