Henry Hudson | Page 9

close
stormie weather, with much wind and snow, and very cold. The wind
variable between the north north-west and north-east. We made our
way west and by north till noone."
[Illustration: DUTCH SHIPS OF HUDSON'S TIME. FROM DE
VEER. DRIE SEYLAGIEN, AMSTERDAM, 1605]
His abrupt transition from the fifth to the nineteenth of May covers the
time in which the mutiny occurred. Practically, his log begins almost
on the day that the ship's course was changed. In the smooth
concluding paragraph of this same log, to be cited later, he passes over
unmentioned the mutiny that occurred on the homeward voyage.
Judging him by the facts recorded in the accounts of the voyage into
Hudson's Bay, it is a fair assumption that in both of these earlier
mutinies Juet had a hand.
I wish that we could find the bond that held Hudson and Juet together.

That Juet could write, and that he understood the science of
navigation--although those were rare accomplishments among seamen
in his time--fail sufficiently to account for Hudson's persistent
employment of him. For my own part, I revert to my theory of fatalism.
It is my fancy that this "ancient man"--as he is styled by one of his
companions--was Hudson's evil genius; and I class him with the most
finely conceived character in Marryat's most finely conceived romance:
the pilot Schriften, in "The Phantom Ship." Just as Schriften clung to
the younger Van der Decken to thwart him, so Juet seems to have clung
to Hudson to thwart him; and to take--in the last round between them--a
leading part in compassing Hudson's death.
One authority, and a very good authority, for the facts which Juet
suppressed concerning the third voyage is the historian Van Meteren:
who obtained them, there is good reason for believing, directly from
Hudson himself. In his "Historie der Niederlanden" (1614) 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. This
circumstance, and the cold which some of his men who had been in the
East Indies could not bear, caused quarrels among the crew, they being
partly English, partly Dutch; upon which the captain, Henry Hudson,
laid before them two propositions. The first of these was, to go to the
coast of America to the latitude of forty degrees. This idea had been
suggested to him by some letters and maps which his friend Captain
Smith had sent him from Virginia, and by which he informed him that
there was a sea leading into the western ocean to the north of the
southern English colony [Virginia]. Had this information been true
(experience goes as yet to the contrary), it would have been of great
advantage, as indicating a short way to India. The other proposition
was to direct their search to Davis's Straits. This meeting with general
approval, they sailed on the 14th of May, and arrived, with a good wind,
at the Faroe Islands, where they stopped but twenty-four hours to
supply themselves with fresh water. After leaving these islands they
sailed on till, on the 18th of July, they reached the coast of Nova

Francia under 44 degrees.... They left that place on the 26th of July, and
kept out at sea till the 3d of August, when they were again near the
coast in 42 degrees of latitude. Thence they sailed on till, on the 12th of
August, they reached the shore under 37° 45'. Thence they sailed along
the shore until we [sic] reached 40° 45', where they found a good
entrance, between two headlands, and thus entered on the 12th of
September into as fine a river as can be found, with good anchoring
ground on both sides."
That river, "as fine as can be found," was our own Hudson.
Van Meteren's account of the voyage, although not published until the
year 1614, was written very soon after Hudson's return--the slip that he
makes in using "we" points to the probability that he copied directly
from Hudson's log--and in it we have all that we ever are likely to know
about the causes which led to the change in the "Half Moon's" course.
For my own part, I believe that Hudson did precisely what he had
wanted to do from the start. The prohibitory clause in his instructions,
forbidding him to go upon other than the course laid down for him,
pointedly suggests that he had expressed the desire--natural enough,
since he twice had searched vainly for a passage by Nova Zembla--to