The crew were divided, but the ice would not wait for arguments and see-sawings. It was crushing in on each side of The Discovery with 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 Discovery was 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 Discovery spread 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 named God’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 climbed a 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-bound and 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 Discovery pushed 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 would all 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 to the 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.
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 like artillery 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.