CHAPTER IV
1610
HUDSON’S FOURTH VOYAGE
Threeyears almost to a day from the time he set out to pursue his Phantom Dream along an endless Trail, Hudson again set sail for the mystic North. This time the Muscovy Gentlemen did not send him as a company, but three members of that company—Smith, Wolstenholme and Digges—supplied him with the bark,The Discovery. In his crew of twenty were several of his former seamen, among whom was the old mate, Juet. Provisions were carried for a year’s cruise. One Coleburne went as adviser; but what with the timidity of the old crew and the officious ignorance of the adviser stirring up discontent by fault-finding before the boat was well out of Thames waters—Hudson was obliged to pack Coleburne back on the first craft met home-bound. The rest of the crew comprised the usual proportion of rogues impressed against their will for a voyage, which regular seamen feared.
Having found one great river north of the Chesapeake, Hudson’s next thought was of that arm of the sea south of Greenland, which Cabot and Frobisher and Davis had all reported to be a passage as large as the Mediterranean, and to Greenland Hudson steeredThe Discoveryin April, 1610. June saw the ship moored off Iceland under the shadow of Hekla’s volcanic fires. Smoke above Hekla was always deemed sign of foul weather. TwiceThe Discoverywas driven back by storm, and the storm blew the smoldering fears of the unwilling seamen to raging discontent. Bathing in the hot springs, Juet, the old mate, grumbled at Hudson for sailing North instead of to that pleasant land they had found the previous year. The impressed sailors were only too ready to listen, and the wrong-headed foolish old mate waxed bolder. He advised the men “to keep muskets loaded in their cabins, for they would need firearms, and there would be bloodshed if the master persisted going by Greenland.” And all unconscious of the secret fires beginning to burn against him, was Hudson on the quarter-deck gazing westward, imagining that the ice bank seen through the mirage of the rosy North light was Greenland hiding the goal of his hopes. All you had to do was round Cape Farewell, south of Greenland, and you would be in the passage that led to the South Sea.
It was July when the boat reached the southern end of Greenland, and if the crew had been terrified by Juet’s tales of ice north of Asia, they were panic-stricken now, for the icebergs of America were as mountains are to mole-hills compared to the ice floes of Asia. Before, Hudson had cruised the east coast of Greenland. There, the ice continents of a polar world can disport themselves in an ocean’s spacious area, but west of Greenland, ice fields the area of Europe are crunched for four hundred miles into a passage narrower than the Mediterranean. To make matters worse, up these passages jammed with icebergs washed hard as adamant, the full force of the Atlantic tide flings against the southward flow of the Arctic waters. The result is the famous “furious overfall,” the nightmare of northern seamen—a cataract of waters thirty feet high flinging themselves against the natural flow of the ice. It is a battle of blind fury, ceaseless and tireless.
Hudson Straits may be described as a great arm of the ocean curving to an inland sea the size of the Mediterranean. At each end, the Straits are less than fifty miles wide, lined and interspread with rocky islands and dangerous reefs. Inside, the Straits widen to a breadth of from one hundred to two hundred miles. Ungava Bay on the east is a cup-like basin, which the wash of the iron ice hasliterally ground out of Labrador’s rocky shore. Half way up at Savage Point about two hundred miles from the ocean, Hudson Straits suddenly contract. This is known as the Second Narrows. The mountainous, snow-clad shores converge to a sharp funnel. Into this funnel pours the jammed, churning maelstrom of ice floes the size of a continent, and against this chaos flings the Atlantic tide.
Old fur-trade captains of a later era entered the Straits armed and accoutered as for war. It was a standing regulation among the fur-trade captains always to have one-fourth extra allowance of provisions for the delay in the straits. Six iron-shod ice hooks were carried for mooring to the ice floes. Special cables called “ice ropes” were used. Twelve great ice poles, twelve handspikes all steel-shod, and twelve chisels to drill holes in the ice for powder—were the regulation requirements of the fur traders bound through Hudson Straits. Special rules were issued for captains entering the Straits. A checker-board sky—deep blue reflecting the clear water of ocean, apple-green lights the sign of ice—was the invariable indication of distant ice. “Never go on either at night or in a fog when you have sighted such a sky”—was the rule. “Get your ice tackle ready at the straits.” “Stand away from the indraught between a big iceberg and the tide, for ifonce the indraught nails you, you are lost.” “To avoid a crush that will sink you in ten minutes, run twenty miles inside the soft ice; that will break the force of the tide.” “Be careful of your lead night and day.”
But these rules were learned only after centuries of navigating. All was new to the seamen in Hudson’s day. All that was known to the northern navigator was the trick of throwing out the hook, gripping to a floe, hauling up to itand worming a way through the ice with a small sail.
Carried with the current southward from Greenland, sometimes slipping into the long “tickles” of water open between the floes, again watching their chance to follow the calm sea to the rear of some giant iceberg, or else mooring to some ice raft honeycombed by the summer’s heat and therefore less likely to ram the hull—The Discoverycame to Ungava Bay, Labrador, in July. This is the worst place on the Atlantic seaboard for ice. Old whalers and Moravian missionaries told me when I was in Labrador that the icebergs at Ungava are often by actual measurement nine miles long, and washed by the tide, they have been ground hard and sharp as steel. It is here they begin to break up on their long journey southward.
An island of ice turned turtle close to Hudson’s ship. There was an avalanche of falling seas. “Into the ice we put for safety,”says the record. “Some of our men fell sick. I will not say it was for fear, though I saw small sign of other grief.” Just westward lay a great open passage—now known as Hudson Strait, so the island in Ungava Bay was calledDesire Provoked. Plainly, they could not remain anchored here, for between bergs they were in danger of a crush, and the drift might carry them on any of the rock reefs that rib the bay.
Juet, the old mate, raged against the madness of venturing such a sea. Henry Greene, a penniless blackguard, whom Hudson had picked off the streets of London to act as secretary—now played the tale-bearer, fomenting trouble between master and crew. “Our master,” says Prickett, one of Digges’ servants who was on board, “was in despair.” Taking out his chart, Hudson called the crew to the cabin and showed them how they had come farther than any explorer had yet dared. He put it plainly to them—would they go on, or turn back? Let them decide once and for all; no repinings! There, on the west, was the passage they had been seeking. It might lead to the South Sea. There, to the east, the way home. On both sides was equal danger—ice. To the west, was land. They could see that from the masthead. To the east, between them and home, the width of the ocean.
The crew were divided, but the ice would not wait for arguments and see-sawings. It was crushing in on each side ofThe Discoverywith an ominous jar of the timbers. All hands were mustered out. By the usual devices in such emergencies—by blowing up the ice at the prow, towing away obstructions, rowing with the ship in tow, all fenders down to protect the sides, the steel-shod poles prodding off the icebergs—The Discoverywas hauled to open water. Then, as if it were the very sign that the crew needed—water opened to the west! There came a spurt of wind.The Discoveryspread her sails to the breeze and carried the vacillating crew forward. For a week they had lain imprisoned. By the 11th of July they were in Hudson Straits on the north side and had anchored at Baffin’s Land, which Hudson namedGod’s Mercy.
That night the men were allowed ashore. It was a desolate, silent, mountainous region that seemed to lie in an eternal sleep. Birds were in myriads—their flacker but making the profound silence more cavernous. When a sailor uttered a shout, there was no answer but the echo of his own voice, thin and weird and lonely, as if he, too, would be swallowed up by those deathly silences. Men ran over the ice chasing a polar bear. Others went gunning for partridge. The hills were presently rocketing with the crash and echo of musketry. Prickett climbeda high rock to spy ahead. Open water lay to the southwest. It was like a sea—perhaps the South Sea; and to the southwest Hudson steered past Charles and Salisbury Islands, through “a whurling sea”—the Second Narrows—between two high headlands, Digges island on one side, Cape Wolstenholme on the other, eventually putting into Port Laperriere on Digges Island. Except for two or three government stations where whaling captains forgather in log cabins, the whole region from Ungava Bay to Digges Island, four hundred miles, practically the whole length of the Straits on the south—is as unexplored to-day as when Hudson first sailed those waters.
The crew went ashore hunting partridge over the steep rocks of the island and examining stone caches of the absent Eskimo. Hudson took a careful observation of the sea. Before him lay open water—beyond was sea, a sea to the south! Was it the South Sea? The old record says he was proudly confident it was the South Sea, for it was plainly a sea as large as the Baltic or Mediterranean. Fog falling, cannon were set booming and rocketing among the hills to call the hunters home. It was now August 4. A month had passed since he entered the Straits. If it took another month to go back through them, the boat would be winter-boundand could not reach England. There was no time to lose. Keeping between the east coast of the bay with its high rocks and that line of reefed islands known as The Sleepers,The Discoverypushed on south, where the lookout still reported “a large sea to the fore.” This is a region, which at this late day of the world’s history, still remains almost unknown. The men who have explored it could be counted on one hand. Towering rocks absolutely bare but for moss, with valley between where the spring thaw creates continual muskeg—moss on water dangerous as quicksands—are broken by swampy tracks; and near Richmond, where the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company maintained a post for a few years, the scenery attains a degree of grandeur similar to Norway, groves covering the rocky shores, cataracts shattering over the precipices and lonely vistas opening to beautiful meadows, where the foot of man has never trod. But for some unknown reason, game has always been scarce on the east side of Hudson Bay. Legends of mines have been told by the Indians, but no one has yet found the mines.
The fury of Juet the rebellious old mate, now knew no bounds. The ship had victuals for only six months more. Here was September. Navigation would hardly open in the Straits before June. If the boat did not emerge on the South Sea, they wouldall be winter-bound. The waters began to shoal to those dangerous reefs on the south where the Hudson’s Bay traders have lost so many ships. In hoisting anchor up, a furious over-sea knocked the sailors from the capstan. With a rebound the heavy iron went splashing overboard. This was too much for Juet. The mate threw down his pole and refused to serve longer. On September 10, Hudson was compelled to try him for mutiny. Juet was deposed with loss of wages for bad conduct and Robert Bylot appointed in his place. The trial showed Hudson he was slumbering over a powder mine. Half the crew was disaffected, plotting to possess themselves of arms; but what did plots matter? Hudson was following a vision which his men could not see.
By this time, Hudson was several hundred miles south of the Straits, and the inland sea which he had discovered did not seem to be leading to the Pacific. Following the south shore tothe westernmost bay of all—James Bay on the west—Hudson recognized the fact that it was not the South Sea. The siren of his dreams had sung her fateful song till she had lured his hopes on the rocks. He was land-bound and winter-bound in a desolate region with a mutinous crew.
Le Moyne D’Iberville The famous bushranger who raided the English forts from New England to Hudson Bay and rose to be the first naval commander of France.
Le Moyne D’Iberville The famous bushranger who raided the English forts from New England to Hudson Bay and rose to be the first naval commander of France.
The water was too shallow for the boat to moor.The men waded ashore to seek a wintering place. Wood was found in plenty and the footprint of a savage seen in the snow. That night, November 2, it snowed heavily, and the boat crashed on the rocks. For twelve hours, bedlam reigned, Juet heading a party of mutineers, but next day the storm floated the keel free. By the 10th of November, the ship was frozen in. To keep up stock of provisions, Hudson offered a reward for all game, of which there seemed an abundance, but when he ordered the carpenters ashore to build winter quarters, he could secure obedience to his commands only by threatening to hang every mutineer to the yardarm. In the midst of this turmoil, the gunner died. Henry Greene, the vagabond secretary, who received no wages, asked for the dead man’s heavy great coat. Hudson granted the request. The mutineers resented the favoritism, for it was the custom to auction off a dead man’s belongings at the mainmast, and in the cold climate all needed extra clothing. Greene took advantage of the apparent favor to shirk house building and go off to the woods with a rebellious carpenter hunting. Furious, Hudson turned the coveted coat over to Bylot, the new mate.
So the miserable winter dragged on. Snow fell continuously day after day. The frost giants set the ice whooping and crackling every night likeartillery fire. A pall of gloom was settling over the ship that seemed to benumb hope and benumb effort. Great numbers of birds were shot by loyal members of the crew, but the ship was short of bread and the cook began to use moss and the juice of tamarac as antidotes to scurvy. As winter closed in, the cold grew more intense. Stone fireplaces were built on the decks of the ship. Pans of shot heated red-hot were taken to the berths as a warming pan. On the whole, Hudson was fortunate in his wintering quarters. It was the most sheltered part of the bay and had the greatest abundance of game to be found on that great inland sea. Also, there was no lack of firewood. Farther north on the west shore, Hudson’s ship would have been exposed to the east winds and the ice-drive. Here, he was secure from both, though the cold of James Bay was quite severe enough to cover decks and beds and bedding and port windows with hoar frost an inch thick.
Toward spring came a timid savage to the ship drawing furs on a toboggan for trade. He promised to return after so many sleeps from the tribes of the South, but time to an Indian may mean this year or next, and he was never again seen. As the ice began to break up in May, Hudson sent men fishing in a shallop that the carpenters had built, but the fishermen plotted to escape in the small boat. The nexttime, Hudson, himself, led the fishermen, threatening to leave any man proved guilty of plots marooned on the bay. It was an unfortunate threat. The men remembered it. Juet, the deposed mate, had but caged his wrath and was now joined by Henry Greene, the secretary, who had fallen from favor. If these men and their allies had hunted half as industriously as they plotted, there would have been food in plenty, but with half the crew living idly on the labors of the others for a winter, somebody was bound to suffer shortage of food on the homeward voyage. The traitor thought was suggested by Henry Greene that if Hudson and the loyal men were, themselves, marooned, the rest could go home with plenty of food and no fear of punishment. The report could be spread that Hudson had died. Hudson had searched the land in vain for Indians. All unconscious of the conspiracy in progress, he returned to prepare the ship for the home voyage.
The rest ofThe Discovery’srecord reads like some tale of piracy on the South Sea. Hudson distributed to the crew all the bread that was left—a pound to each man without favoritism. There were tears in his eyes and his voice broke as he handed out the last of the food. The same was done with the cheese. Seamen’s chests were then searched and some pilfered biscuits distributed. In Hudson’s cabin werestored provisions for fourteen days. These were to be used only in the last extremity. As might have been expected, the idle mutineers used their food without stint. The men who would not work were the men who would not deny themselves. When Hudson weighed anchor on June 18, 1611, for the homeward trip, nine of the best men in the crew lay ill in their berths from overwork and privations.
One night Greene came to the cabin of Prickett, who had acted as a sort of agent for the ship’s owners. Vowing to cut the throat of any man who betrayed him, Greene burst out in imprecations with a sort of pot-valour that “he was going to end it or mend it; go through with it or die”; the sick men were useless: there were provisions for half the crew but not all——
Prickett bade him stop. This was mutiny. Mutiny was punished in England by death. But Greene swore he would rather be hanged at home than starve at sea.
In the dark, the whole troop of mutineers came whining and plotting to Prickett. The boat was only a few days out of winter quarters and embayed in the ice half way to the Straits. If such delays continued, what were fourteen days’ provisions for a voyage? Of all the ill men, Prickett, alone, was to be spared to intercede for the mutineers withSir Dudley Digges, his master. In vain, Prickett pleaded for Hudson’s life. Let them wait two days; one day; twelve hours! They called him a fool! It was Hudson’s death, or the death of all! The matter must be put through while their courage was up! Then to add the last touch to their villainy, they swore on a Bible to Prickett that what they contemplated was for the object of saving the lives of the majority. Prickett’s defense for countenancing the mutiny is at best the excuse of a weakling, a scared fool—he couldn’t save Hudson, so he kept quiet to save his own neck. It was a black, windy night. The seas were moaning against the ice fields. As far as human mind could forestall devilish designs, the mutineers were safe, for all would be alike guilty and so alike pledged to secrecy. It must be remembered, too, the crew were impressed seamen, unwilling sailors, the blackguard riffraff of London streets. If the plotters had gone to bed, Prickett might have crawled above to Hudson’s cabin, but the mutineers kept sleepless vigil for the night. At daybreak two had stationed themselves at the hatch, three hovered round the door of the captain’s cabin. When Hudson emerged from the room, two men leaped on him to the fore, a third, Wilson the bo’swain, caught and bound his arms behind. When Hudson demanded what they meant,they answered with sinister intent that he would know whenhewas put in the shallop. Then, all pretense that what they did was for the good of the crew was cast aside. They threw off all disguise and gathered round him with shouts, and jeers, and railings, and mockery of his high ambitions! It was the old story of the Ideal hooted by the mob, crucified by little-minded malice, misunderstood by evil and designing fools! The sick were tumbled out of berths and herded above decks till the shallop was lowered. One man from Ipswich was given a chance to remain but begged to be set adrift. He would rather perish as a man than live as a thief. The name of the hero was Phillip Staffe. With a running commentary of curses from Henry Greene, Juet, the mate, now venting his pent-up vials of spleen, eight sick men were lowered into the small boat with Hudson and his son. Some one suggested giving the castaways ammunition and meal. Juet roared for the men to make haste. Wilson, the guilty bo’swain, got anchors up and sails rigged. Ammunition, arms and cooking utensils were thrown into the small boat.The Discoverythen spread her sails to the wind—a pirate ship. The tow rope of the small boat tightened. She followed like a despairing swimmer, climbing over the wave-wash for a pace or two; then some one cut the cable. The castawayswere adrift. The distance between the two ships widened. Prickett looking out from his porthole below, caught sight of Hudson with arms bound and panic-stricken, angry face. As the boats drifted apart the old commander shouted a malediction against his traitor crew.
“Juet will ruin you all——”
“Nay, but it is that villain, Henry Greene,” Prickett yelled back through the porthole, and the shallop fell away. Some miles out of sight from their victims, the mutineers slackened pace to ransack the contents of the ship. The shallop was sighted oars going, sails spread, coming over a wave in mad pursuit. With guilty terror as if their pursuers had been ghosts, the mutineers out with crowded sails and fled as from an avenging demon! So passed Henry Hudson down the Long Trail on June 21, 1611! Did he suffer that blackest of all despair—loss of vision, of faith in his dream? Did life suddenly seem to him a cruel joke in which he had played the part of the fool? Who can tell?
What became of him? A silence as of a grave in the sea rests over his fate. Barely the shadow of a legend illumines his last hours; though Indians of Hudson Bay to this day tell folk-lore yarns of the first Englishman who came to the bay and was wrecked. When Radisson came overland to the bayfifty years later, he found an old house “all marked by bullets.” Did Hudson take his last stand inside that house? Did the loyal Ipswich man fight his last fight against the powers of darkness there where the Goddess of Death lines her shores with the bodies of the dead? Also, the Indians told Radisson childish fables of a “ship with sails” having come to the bay; but many ships came in those fifty years: Button’s to hunt in vain for Hudson; Munck, the Dane’s, to meet a fate worse than Hudson’s.
Hudson’s shallop went down to as utter silence as the watery graves of those old sea Vikings, who rode out to meet death on the billow. A famous painting represents Hudson huddled panic-stricken with his child and the ragged castaways in a boat driving to ruin among the ice fields. I like better to think as we know last of him—standing with bound arms and face to fate, shouting defiance at the fleeing enemy. They could kill him, but they could not crush him! It was more as a Viking would have liked to die. He had left the world benefited more than he could have dreamed—this pathfinder of two empires’ commerce. He had fought his fight. He had done his work. He had chased his Idea down the Long Trail. What more could the most favored child of the gods ask? With one’s task done, better to die in harness than rot in some garret of obscurity,or grow garrulous in an imbecile old age—the fate of so many great benefactors of humanity!
It needed no prophet to predict the end of the pirate ship with such a crew. They quarreled over who should be captain. They quarreled over who should be mate. They quarreled over who should keep the ship’s log. They lost themselves in the fog, and ran amuck of icebergs and disputed whether they should sail east or west, whether they had passed Cape Digges leading out of the Straits, whether they should turn back south to seek the South Sea. They were like children lost in the dark. They ran on rocks, and lay ice-bound with no food but dried sea moss and soup made of candle grease boiled with the offal left from partridge. Ice hid the Straits. They steered past the outlet and now steered back only to run on a rock near the pepper-colored sands of Cape Digges. Flood tide set them free. They wanted to land and hunt but were afraid to approach the coast and sent in the small boats. It was the 28th of July. As they neared the breeding ground of the birds, Eskimo kyacks came swarming over the waves toward them. That day, the whites rested in the Indian tents. The next day Henry Greene hurried ashore with six men to secure provisions. Five men had landed to gather scurvy (sorrel) grass and trade with the fifty Indians along the shore.Prickett being lame remained alone in the small boat. Noticing an Eskimo boarding the boat, Prickett stood up and peremptorily ordered the savage ashore. When he sat down, what was his horror to find himself seized from behind, with a knife stroke grazing his breast. Eskimo carry their knives by strings. Prickett seized the string in his left hand and so warded off the blow. With his right hand he got his own dagger out of belt and stabbed the assailant dead. On shore, Wilson the bo’swain, and another man had been cut to pieces. Striking off the Indians with a club, Greene, the ringleader, tumbled to the boat with a death wound. The other two men leaped down the rocks into the boat. A shower of arrows followed, killing Greene outright and wounding the other three. One of the rowers fainted. The others signaled the ship for aid, and were rescued. Greene’s body was thrown into the sea without shroud or shrift. Of the other three, two died in agonies. This encounter left only four well men to man the ship home. They landed twice among the numberless lonely islands that line the Straits and hunted partridge and sea moss for food. Before they had left the Straits, they were down to rations of half a bird a day. In mid-ocean they were grateful for the garbage of the cook’s barrel. Juet, the old mate, died of starvation insight of Ireland. The other men became so weak they could not stand at the helm. Sails flapped to the wind in tatters. Masts snapped off short. Splintered yardarms hung in the ragged rigging. It was like an ocean derelict, or a haunted craft with a maimed crew. In September, land was sighted off Ireland and the joyful cry of “a sail” raised; but a ship manned by only four men with a tale of disaster, which could not be explained, aroused suspicion.The Discoverywas shunned by the fisher folk. Only by pawning the ship’s furniture could the crew obtain food, sailors and pilot to take them to Plymouth. Needless to say, the survivors were at once clapped in prison and Sir Thomas Button sent to hunt for Hudson; but Hudson had passed to his unknown grave leaving as a monument the two great pathways of traffic, which he found—Hudson River and the northern inland sea, which may yet prove the Baltic of America.