XIII
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."
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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.