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On one occasion their dead enemy proved more dangerous to them than in life, for three of their number, who had fed on bear's liver, were nearly poisoned to death. Had they perished, none of the whole party would have ever left Nova Zembla. "It seemed," said the diarist, "that the beasts had smelt out that we meant to go away, and had just begin to have a taste for us." And thus the days wore on.
In his "Historie der Niederlanden" Van Meteren wrote: "This Henry Hudson left the Texel the 6th of April, 1609, and having doubled the Cape of Norway the 5th of May, directed his course along the northern coasts toward Nova Zembla. But he there found the sea as full of ice as he had found it in the preceding year, so that he lost the hope of effecting anything during the season.
It was believed that, after passing those straits, the shores of the great continent would be found to trend in a south-easterly direction, and that along that coast it would accordingly be easy to make the desired voyage to the eastern ports of China. Plancius, on the contrary, indicated as the most promising passage the outside course, between the northern coast of Nova Zembla and the pole.
She resolved to let the matter die away, and think no more about it. When Mr. Mohun and William came home, they brought the news that Lady Rotherwood had invited the whole party to dinner. 'I am very glad we are allowed to see them, said Emily, 'I am quite tired of being shut up. 'If it was not for the Westons we might as well live in Nova Zembla, said Jane.
On one such occasion, when Heemskerk and two companions were the whole garrison, the rest being at a distance sledding wood, the future hero of Gibraltar was near furnishing a meal to his Nova Zembla enemies.
One of them announced that Oscar had heard from his brother. Nugent's letter was not a long one. It was dated at Liverpool, and it announced his embarkation for America in two hours' time. He had heard of a new expedition to the Arctic regions then fitting out in the United States with the object of discovering the open Polar sea, supposed to be situated between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla.
The launch was repaired, the sails were mended, and both boats were dragged to the sea, and provisions put on board. Then, seeing that the water was free, and that a strong wind was blowing, Heemskerke went to seek Barentz, who had been long ill, and declared to him "that it seemed good to him to set out from thence, and in God's name to commence the voyage and abandon Nova Zembla."
If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do, then the Dutchmen in Hell's Mouth and the Porcupine fighting Universal Monarchy inch by inch and pike to pike, or trying conclusions with the ice-bears of Nova Zembla, or capturing whole Portuguese fleets in the Moluccas, were effecting as great changes in the world, and doing perhaps as much for the advancement of civilization, as James of the two Britains and Henry of France and Navarre in those his less heroic days, were likely to accomplish.
Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracks of the globe, which lie more directly under the arctick and antartick circles, where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together within the narrow compass of his cave where the spirits are compressed almost to nothing and where the passions of a man, with every thing which belongs to them, are as frigid as the zone itself there the least quantity of judgment imaginable does the business and of wit there is a total and an absolute saving for as not one spark is wanted so not one spark is given.
Forced by the Polar pack to go southwards again to Bear Island, they separated there from Rijp, who was once more to endeavour to find a way by the north. On the 11th of July, Heemskerke and Barentz were in the parts of Cape Kanin, and five days later they had reached the western coast of Nova Zembla, which was called Willoughby's Land.
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