But the chanciness of human fortune did not cease because of this stroke of good luck. The great merchants of the Netherlands heard his plans. His former failures were against him. Money bags do not care to back an uncertainty. Having paid his expenses to come to Holland, the merchant princes were disposed to let him cool his heels in the outer halls waiting their pleasure. The chances are they would have rejected his overtures altogether if France and Belgium had not at that time begun to consider the employment of Hudson on voyages of discovery. The Amsterdam merchants of the Dutch East India Company suddenly awakened to the fact that they wanted Hudson, and wanted him at once. Again Destiny, or a will-o’-the-wisp as impish as Puck—had befriended him.
At Amsterdam, he was furnished with two vessels, the Good Hope as an escort part way; the Half Moon for the voyage itself—a flat-bottomed, tub-like yacht such as plied the shallows of Holland. In his crew, he was unfortunate. The East India Company, of course, supplied him with the sailors of their own boats—lawless lascars; turbaned Asiatics with stealthy tread and velvet voices and a dirk hidden in their girdles; gypsy nondescripts with the hot blood of the hot tropics and the lawless instincts of birds of plunder. Your crew trained to cut the Spaniard’s throat may acquire the habit and cut the master’s throat, too. Along with these sailors, Hudson insisted on having a few Englishmen from his former crews, among whom were Colman and Juet and his own son. Juet acted as astronomer and keeper of the ship’s log. From Juet and Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in England in whose hands Hudson’s manuscripts finally fell—are drawn all the facts of the voyage.
On March 25 (April 6, new style), 1609, the cumbersome crafts swung out on the hazy yellow of the Zuider Zee. Motlier ships were about Hudson, here, than on the Thames, for the Dutch had an enormous commerce with the East and the West Indies. Feluccas with lateen sails and galleys for oarsmen had come up from the Mediterranean. Dutch pirates of the Barbary Coast—narrow in the prow, narrow in the keel, built for swift sailing and light cargoes—had forgathered, sporting sails of a different design for every harbor. Then, there were the East Indiamen, ponderous, slow-moving, deep and broad, with cannon bristling through the ports like men-of-war, and tawny Asiatic faces leering over the taffrail. Yawls from the low-lying coast, three-masted luggers from Denmark, Norwegian ships with hideous scaled griffins carved on the sharp-curved prows, brigs and brigantines and caravels and tall galleons from Spain—all crowded the ports of the Netherlands, whose commerce was at its zenith. Threading his way through the motley craft, Hudson slowly worked out to sea.
All went well till the consort, Good Hope, turned back north of Norway and the Half Moon ploughed on alone into the ice fields of Nova Zembla with her lawless lascar crew. This was the region where other Dutch crews had perished miserably. Here, too, Hudson’s English sailors had lost courage the year before. And here Dutch and English always fought for fishing rights. The cold north wind roared down in gusts and flaws and sudden bursts of fury. Against such freezing cold, the flimsy finery of damasks and calico worn by the East Indians was no protection. The lascars were chilled to the bone. They lay huddled in their berths bound up in blankets and refused to stir above decks in such cold. Promptly, the English sailors rebelled against double work. The old feud between English and Dutch flamed up. Knives were out, and before Hudson realized, a mutiny was raging about his ears.
If he turned back, he was ruined. The door of opportunity to new success is a door that shuts against retreat. His friend, Smith of Virginia, had written to him of the great inlet of the Chesapeake in America. South of the Chesapeake was no passage to the South Sea. Smith knew that; but north of the Chesapeake old charts marked an unexplored arm of the sea. When Verrazano, the Italian, coasted America for France in 1524, he had been driven by a squall from the entrance to a vast river between Thirty-nine and Forty-one (the Hudson River); and the Spanish charts of Estevan Gomez, in 1525, marked an unknown Rio de Gamos on the same coast. Hudson now recalled Smith’s advice—to seek passage between the James River and the St. Lawrence.
To clinch matters came a gust driving westward over open sea. Robert Juet, seeking guidance from the heavenly bodies, notices for the first time in history, on May 19, that there is a spot on the sun. If Hudson had accomplished nothing more, he had made two important discoveries for science—the Polar Current and the spot on the sun. Geographers and astronomers have been knighted and pensioned for less important discoveries.
West, southwest, drove the storm flaw, the Half Moon scudding bare of sails for three hundred miles. Was it destiny again, or his dæmon, or his Puck, or his will-o’-the-wisp, or the Providence of God—that drove Hudson contrary to his plans straight for the scene of his immortal discoveries? Pause was made at the Faroes for wood and water. There, too, Hudson consulted with his officers and decided to steer for America.
Once more afloat, June saw the Half Moon with its lazy lascars lounging over rails down among the brown fogs of Newfoundland. Here a roaring nor’-easter came with the suddenness of a thunderclap. The scream of wind through the rigging, the growlers swishing against the keel, then the thunder of the great billows banging broadsides—were like the burst of cannon fire over a battlefield. The foremast snapped and swept into the seas as the little Half Moon careened over on one side, and the next gust that caught her tore the other sails to tatters, but she still kept her prow headed southwest.
Fogs lay as they nearly always lie on the Grand Banks, but a sudden lift of the mist on June 25 revealed a sail standing east. To the pirate East Indian sailors, the sight of the strange ship was like the smell of powder to a battle horse. Loot! Spanish loot! With a whoop, they headed the Half Moon about in utter disregard of Hudson, and gave chase. From midday to dark the Half Moon played pirate, cutting the waves in pursuit, careening to the wind in a way that threatened to capsize boat and crew, the fugitive bearing away like a bird on wing. This little by-play lasted till darkness hid the strange ship, but the madcap prank seemed to rouse the lazy lascars from their torpor. Henceforth, they were alert for any lawless raid that promised plunder.