Here indeed did the country differ from the lovely coral islands amongst which they had sailed so lately, islands to which officers and men longed to return. Here, instead of waving palm trees, were gloomy forests of pine; instead of beautiful hills covered to their tops with green trees and shrubs, were high mountains covered with snow. In place of the soft-skinned, smiling Tahitians, paddling in their canoes or swimming in the warm water round the ships, were natives who seemed both dirty and stupid. They had little to sell except skins and furs of bears and beavers, of and other animals, articles not wanted by men whose wishes were all fixed on things they had left in sunny Otaheite.

At Nootka Sound the ships stayed four weeks, repairing the masts and rigging of the Resolution. Stormy weather followed them as they went north, and the Resolution  sprang a bad leak, which gave the crew hard work at the pumps for some days. So stormy was the weather that it was not till the 2nd of May that the ships dared to run in towards the land. On every side were seen snow-clad mountains, Mount St. Elias, not far short of twenty thousand feet in height, towering over everything, a splendid sight in his glittering white coat. To the north of Mount St. Elias, in a corner of the great inlet which Cook named Prince William's Sound, the ship's carpenters managed to stop the leak of the Resolution.

On this part of the coast the natives were very different from those of Nootka Sound. They were short and stout, and were clothed in the skins of seals and of other animals; only in their dirt were they something like the Nootka men. Their canoes too were different; they were made of the skins of seals stretched over a light wooden frame. In the centre of these canoes is a hole just big enough for a man to sit in with his legs pushed forward under the deck. Though so light that a man can easily lift one of the single canoes with one hand, they can safely go out in a very heavy sea, and the natives sit them with such skill that they can use their spears freely to kill seals, without any risk of upsetting.

The men that Cook saw here had a curious custom of slitting the upper lip till the gash looked like a second mouth, and in this they stuck shells, or bones, by way of ornament. Through the end of the nose also they stuck shells. They were very friendly, but, like most savages, terrible thieves.

The great bay called Cook's Inlet was next visited. Skirting along the coast from here, the ships were more than once in danger, for often the fog was so thick that they were only saved by letting go their anchors as soon as the sound of breakers was heard. Once, in thick fog, they ran between rocks so close to each other Cook says in his journal he would "not have ventured in a clear day," and they came, in the fog, "to such an anchoring place that I could not have chosen a better." He named a point of land near this spot Cape Providence.

Rounding the end of the Peninsula of Alaska, the ships felt their way, in cold, foggy weather, through shoals and reefs, up, to Bristol Bay and Cape Newenham, round by the most westerly point of America, Cape Prince of Wales, and so through Behring Strait. In about latitude 65° the coast of Asia was sighted, and three boats' crews landed in St. Lawrence Bay, where friendly natives were met. These men used sledges drawn by dogs.

On 17th August what is called the "blink" of ice was seen to the north, and the same afternoon, in latitude 70° 44', the ships were stopped by large ice-fields. The land, near at hand on the American coast Cook named Icy Cape. Till 29th August he tried to find an opening through the ice. This way and that he pushed, but all to no purpose; it was not possible to get through; and Cook. gave up the search for the passage round the north of America.

Whilst the ships were amongst the ice, as well as at many places along the coast, vast numbers of seals and walruses—sea-lions and sea-horses they were called—were seen on the rocks and on the floating ice; and many were killed and eaten by the crews. It is not very choice food, but the sailors thought it was better than salt junk.

Coming back along the American coast from Norton Sound to Cape Newenham, the ships found water so shallow that they were forced to keep farther out to sea. It was thought that the shoal water and the muddy look of the sea must be caused by some big river. And so it was. Had they but known it, that is where the mighty Yukon, one of the largest rivers in the world, flows into the sea—the great river on whose banks of late years so much gold has been found.

Cook now sailed again towards the south, meaning to revisit the Society Islands. Great was the delight of the sailors at the thought of getting back to the joys of their beloved coral islands. On 26th November the ships came in sight of Mowee, one of the Sandwich group, and soon afterwards they sighted Owhyhee—or, as it is now called, Hawaii. Neither of these islands had been seen on the first visit of the Resolution  and Discovery. The sailors gazed with longing eyes at the beautiful shores, and at a vast mountain whose snow-clad top towered into the sky to a height of near fourteen thousand feet.

But though canoes brought out food and fruit, the ships did not anchor till they had worked their way round the south end of the island into Karakakooa Bay. Here hundreds of canoes, crowded with natives, came off; the beach was covered with people, and hundreds more, like shoals of fish, swam around the ships. Nowhere in his travels had Cook seen such crowds.

And now a strange thing was noticed! Wherever Captain Cook went, he was treated by the people as if he were something more than man. Priests put over his shoulders a red cloth, which to them was sacred, used only to drape their idols. They fell on their faces before him; they came to him with offerings of pigs and of fowls, priests solemnly chanting the while. In everything they treated him as if they believed him to be a God.

Very long ago there had lived in this island a great chief named Orono. After Orono's wife died, he left the island, and sailed away to foreign lands. But before sailing, he told his people that long years afterwards he would come back "on an island bearing cocoa-nut trees, swine, and dogs."

Long the people had looked for Orono, and now, at last, he had come! Who could the strangers be who came to their shores in ships as big as islands, in ships that had treelike things growing out of them? Who could they be but Orono and his friends? And so the people worshipped Cook, and thought that he and all his sailors were more than mortal.

But after a few weeks things began to change. One of the Resolution's  men died, and was buried on shore. It may have been that the natives thought it strange that one of Orono's friends should die. Perhaps, too, they grew tired of supplying the ships with so many pigs and so many cocoa-nuts. Then some of the sailors gave offence by taking the images from a native temple; and soon the people began to wish that Orono would go away.

On 4th February 1779, to the relief of the natives, the ships sailed. Unluckily, it chanced that in a violent gale a few days later the Resolution  badly damaged her fore-mast, and in less than a week the two vessels were back in Karakakooa Bay.

Now all was changed. The chiefs were no longer friendly; there was quarrel after quarrel, and the natives stole, everything they could lay hands on. Once or twice men on shore were attacked with stones, and at last one of the Discovery's  boats was stolen from her moorings.

Cook was very angry, and on 14th February he went himself on shore with an armed boat's crew and nine marines to try to get it back. Failing that, he meant to bring the king on board, and to keep him there till the stolen boat was given up.

There was a good deal of excitement on shore, and the natives crowded round. Cook had not been able to persuade the king to come with him, and he did not want to use force. He was walking down the beach back to his boat, when suddenly a native from another part of the bay ran hurriedly into the crowd shouting, "It is war, They have killed a chief." At once all was confusion. The natives rushed to seize the muskets of the marines, and a stone was thrown at Cook, who fired with small shot at the man who threw it, but without doing much damage. The native was then about to throw his spear, when Cook knocked him down with the butt of his double-barreled gun. Then he was forced to fire at a man who was in the act of throwing a spear. Showers of stones were hurled at the marines, and they, Without waiting for orders, began to fire. Captain Cook waved his hand and shouted to them to stop firing, but in the noise and confusion his orders were not heard.

The natives now made a rush, and four of the marines were killed; the others managed to get into one of the boats which had come in close to the shore.

Cook was left alone on the beach. He turned to walk towards the boat, when a chief ran up and struck him with a heavy club on the back of the head. The captain staggered forward and fell on his hands and knees, dropping his gun. As he struggled to his feet, another native, rushing in, stabbed him in the back of the neck, and he fell in the water. Then the natives poured over him, trying to keep him under. Again and again he got his head above water, fighting for his life. Again and again the weight of numbers forced him back. And now, at length, strength left him; there was none to help; he could struggle no longer. He was stabbed by every native who could get near enough to him; his head was battered against a rock till he ceased to move.

So sank and died Captain James Cook, the greatest navigator of all time, a man whom all the world honours, whose name will live as long as the English language is spoken.

His bones were recovered some days later, but only his bones, and not all of them. It is likely that the rest of him was burned, for the natives of Owhyhee were not cannibals.

They were sad ships that left Karakakooa Bay a week later; sad were his sailors that their officers allowed them to take no fitting revenge. And a sad day it was for England when the news came home of the death of her great sailor in the far Pacific.