be true or false."

My fortunate finding of contemporary documents, unknown to Hudson's
most authoritative historian, has produced other "eye-witnesses"
who have "left us an account of these events"; but, obviously,
their accounts--so harmoniously in agreement--do not affect the
soundness of Dr. Asher's conclusions. The net result of it all
being, as I have written, that our whole knowledge of Hudson's
murder is only so much of the truth as his murderers were agreed
upon to tell.

X

In the ruling of that, his last, adventure all of Hudson's malign
stars seem to have been in the ascendant. His evil genius, Juet,
again sailed with him as mate; and out of sheer good-will,
apparently, he took along with him in the "Discovery" another
villainous personage, one Henry Greene--who showed his gratitude
for benefits conferred by joining eagerly with Juet in the mutiny
that resulted in the murder of their common benefactor.

Hudson, therefore, started on that dismal voyage with two
firebrands in his ship's company--and ship's companies of those
days, without help from firebrands, were like enough to explode
into mutiny of their own accord. I must repeat that the sailor-men
of Hudson's time--and until long after Hudson's time--were little
better than dangerous brutes; and the savage ferocity that was in
them was kept in check only by meeting it with a more savage
ferocity on the part of their superiors.

At the very outset of the voyage trouble began. Hudson wrote on
April 22, when he was in the mouth of the Thames, off the Isle of
Sheppey: "I caused Master Coleburne to bee put into a pinke bound
for London, with my letter to the Adventurars imparting the reason
why I put him out of the ship." He does not add what that reason
was;[1] nor is there any reference in what remains of his log to
farther difficulties with his crew. The newly discovered testimony
of the mutineers, cited later, refers only to the final mutiny.
Prickett, therefore--in part borne out by the "Note" of poor
Widowes--is our authority for the several mutinous outbreaks
which occurred during the voyage; and Prickett wrote with a
vagueness--using such phrases as "this day" and "this time,"
without adding a date--that helped him to muddle his narrative in
the parts which we want to have, but which he did not want to have,
most clear.

[Footnote 1: Captain Lake Fox has the following: "In the road
of Lee, in the river Thames, he [Hudson] caused