etto 'to end it or to mend it; better hang at home for
mutiny than starve at sea.' Prickett, the agent for the merchant
adventurers, pleaded for Hudson's life; the mutineers, led by Juet and
Greene, roughly bade him look to his own. Prickett was ill in bed with
scurvy, and the tremor of self-fear came into his plea. Then the
mutineers swore on the Bible that what they planned was to sacrifice the
lives of the few to save the many. When the destroyer profanes the Cross
with unclean perjury, 'tis well to use the Cross for firewood and
unsheath a sword. Peevish with sickness, Prickett punily acquiesced.

When Hudson stepped from the wheel-house or cabin next morning, they
leaped upon him like a pack of wolves. No oaths on Scripture and Holy
Cross this break of day! Oaths of another sort--oaths and blows and
railings--all pretence of clean motives thrown off--malice with its
teeth out snapping! Somewhere north of Rupert, probably off Charlton
Island, Hudson, his son, and eight loyal members of the crew were thrown
into one of the boats on the davits. The boat was lowered on its pulleys
and touched sea. The _Discovery_ then spread sail and sped through open
water to the wind. The little boat with the marooned crew came climbing
after. Somebody threw into it some implements and ammunition, and some
one cut the painter. The abandoned boat slacked and fell back in the
wave wash; and that is all we know of the end of Henry Hudson, who had
discovered a northern sea, the size of a Mediterranean, that was to be a
future arena of nations warring for an empire, and who had before
discovered a river that was to be a path of world commerce.

[Illustration: THE LAST HOURS OF HUDSON From the painting by Collier]

What became of Hudson? A famous painting represents him, with his little
son and the castaway crew, huddling among the engulfing icebergs. That
may have been; but it is improbable that the dauntless old pathfinder
would have succumbed so supinely. Three traditions, more or less
reasonable, exist about his end. When Captain James came out twenty
years later seeking the North-West Passage he found on a little
island (Danby), south-east from Charlton Island, a number of sticks
standing in the ground, with the chip marks of a steel blade. Did the
old timbers mark some winter house of Hudson and his castaways? When
Radisson came cruising among these islands fifty years later, he
discovered an old house 'all marked and battered with