their boats while “foure glasses were run out (_i.e._, for two hours), for their weapons seemed powerless to do her hurt. One of the men struck her with an axe, which stuck fast in her back, and with which she swam away. They followed, and at length a well-directed blow split her skull.” They appear to have been much hampered in proceeding further north from the constantly accumulating ice. By their latitude at this time they were near Amsterdam Island, on which is that cape or foreland since so well known to whalers as Hakluyt’s Headland. On July 1st the commanders mutually agreed to part company: Cornelison Rijp, who now disappears from the scene, being of opinion that by sailing back to Spitzbergen, which they had just left, he would find a passage near its east side; while Barents favoured an eastward course in a lower parallel, and steered for Waigatz Strait and Nova Zembla, which latter he reached on July 17th. As far as the ice would permit they stood to the northwards, and at the end of the first week of August doubled Point Nassau, where, the wind being contrary, they made the ship fast to an iceberg, thirty-six fathoms (216 feet) under water, and sixteen fathoms (96 feet) above it. This berg suddenly, without warning, broke up: “with one great cracke it burst into foure hundred pieces at the least.” Ships have often been overwhelmed in this manner. Ice in all forms now surrounded them; the ship’s rudder was smashed to pieces, and their boat crushed like a nutshell, while a similar fate was expected constantly for the vessel herself, which had become much strained. They had equally to give up all hopes of proceeding or returning that season, and with great difficulty they got to the west side of a harbour on Nova Zembla, named by them Ice Haven. Here, as we shall see, they had to pass a long winter, under circumstances of great hardship and danger. On August 27th the ice drove with great force on the ship’s bows, and lifted her up several feet. They feared that she must be capsized. Shortly afterwards the ship burst out of the ice, “with such a noyse and so great a crack” that all on board feared their last hour was come. On the 30th, during a heavy snow and boisterous weather, the ice masses commenced driving and grinding together with greater force than before; the ship was lifted up bodily, almost upright, and then dashed into the water again. We cannot wonder to learn that the hairs of their heads also stood “vpright with feare” amid such scenes.