A month later, July 28, a halt was made in the mouth of Hudson's
Strait to search for "fowle" for food on the homeward voyage. There
"savages" were encountered, seemingly of so friendly a nature that
on the day following the first meeting with them a boat's crew--of
which Prickett was one--went ashore unarmed. Then came a sudden
attack. Prickett himself was set upon in the boat--of which, "being
lame," he had been left keeper--by a savage whom he managed to
kill. What happened to the others he thus tells:
"Whiles I was thus assaulted in the boat, our men were set upon on
the shoare. John Thomas and William Wilson had their bowels cut,
and Michael Perse and Henry Greene, being mortally wounded, came
tumbling into the boat together. When Andrew Moter saw this medley,
hee came running downe the rockes and leaped into the sea, and so
swamme to the boat, hanging on the sterne thereof, till Michael
Perse took him in, who manfully made good the head of the boat
against the savages, that pressed sore upon us. Now Michael Perse
had got an hatchet, wherewith I saw him strike one of them, that he
lay sprawling in the sea. Henry Greene crieth _Coragio_, and layeth
about him with his truncheon. I cryed to them to cleere the boat,
and Andrew Moter cryed to bee taken in. The savages betooke them to
their bowes and arrowes, which they sent amongst us, wherewith
Henry Greene was slaine out-right, and Michael Perse received many
wounds, and so did the rest. Michael Perse cleereth [unfastened]
the boate, and puts it from the shoare, and helpeth Andrew Moter
in; but in turning of the boat I received a cruell wound in my
backe with an arrow. Michael Perse and Andrew Moter rowed the boate
away, which, when the savages saw, they ranne to their boats, and I
feared they would have launched them to have followed us, but they
did not, and our ship was in the middle of the channel and could
not see us.
"Now, when they had rowed a good way from the shoare, Michael Perse
fainted, and could row no more. Then was Andrew Moter driven to
stand in the boat head, and waft to the ship, which at first saw us
not, and when they did they could not tell what to make of us, but
in the end they stood for us, and so tooke us up. Henry Greene was
throwne out of the boat into the sea, and the rest were had
aboard, the savage [with whom Prickett had fought] being yet alive,
yet without sense. But they died all there that day, William Wilson
swearing and cursing in most fearefull manner. Michael Perse lived
two dayes after, and then died. Thus you have heard the tragicall
end of Henry Greene and his mates, whom they called captaine, these
four being the only lustie men in all the ship."
[Illustration: AN ASTROLABIE, 1596.
FROM "THE ARTE OF NAVIGATION." LONDON. EDITION 1596]
I am glad that Prickett got "a cruell wound in the backe." Were it
not that by the killing of him we should have lost his narrative, I
should wish that that weak villain had been killed along with the
stronger ones. They were strong. It was a brave fight that they
made; and Henry Greene's last recorded word, "Coragio!" was worthy
of the lips of a better man. But he and the others eminently
deserved the death that the savages gave them, and it is good to
know that Hudson's murder so soon was avenged. Juet's equally
exemplary punishment, equally deserved, came a little later. On the
homeward voyage the whole company got to the very edge, and Juet
passed beyond the edge, of starvation. When the ship was only sixty
or seventy leagues from Ireland, where she made her landfall,
Prickett tells that he "dyed for meere want."
What befell the survivors of the "Discovery's" crew, on the ship's
return to England, has remained until now unknown; and even now the
account of them is inconclusive. In the Latin edition of the year
1613 of his "Detectio Freti" Hessel Gerritz wrote: "They exposed
Hudson and the other officers in a boat on the open sea, and
returned into their country. There they have been thrown into
prison for their crime, and will be kept in prison until their
captain shall be safely brought home. For that purpose some ships
have been sent out last year by the late Prince of Wales and by the
Directors of the Moscovia Company, about the return of which
nothing as yet has been heard."
For three hundred years that statement of fact has ended Hudson's
story. The fragmentary documents which I have been so fortunate as
to obtain from the Record Office carry it a little, only a little,
farther. Unhappily they stop short--giving no assurance that the
mutineers got to the gallows that they deserved. All that they
prove is that the few survivors were brought to trial: charged with
having put the master of their ship, and others, "into a shallop,
without food, drink, fire, clothing, or any necessaries, and then
maliciously abandoning them: so that they came thereby to their
death, and miserably perished."
There, unfinished, the record ends. What penalty, or that any
penalty, was exacted of those who survived to be tried for Hudson's
murder remains unknown. Their ignoble fate is hidden in a sordid
darkness: fitly in contrast with his noble fate--that lies retired
within a glorious mystery.