the sea gave up no secret of its dead. Prickett and Bylot,
of Hudson's former crew, were there also with the old ship _Discovery_
and a large frigate called _Resolution_, an appropriate name. Button's
crew became infected with scurvy, and Port Nelson a camp for the dead.
Then came Captain Gibbon in 1614; but the ice caught him at Labrador and
turned him back. The merchant adventurers then fitted out Bylot,
Hudson's second mate, and in 1615-16 he searched the desolate, lonely
northern waters. He found no trace of Hudson, nor a passage to the South
Sea; but he gave his mate's name--Baffin--to the lonely land that lines
the northern side of the straits. Novelists are frequently accused of
sensationalism and exaggeration, but if, as tradition seems to suggest,
Hudson were still alive seven hundred miles south at the lower end of
the Bay, straining vain eyes for a sail at sea, like Alexander Selkirk
of a later day--with a Button and a Gibbon and a Bylot and a Baffin
searching for him with echoing cannon roll and useless call in the
north--then the life and death of the old pathfinder are more like a
tale from Defoe than a story of real life.

The English merchant adventurers then gave up--possibly for the very
good reason that they had emptied their purses. This brings us to the
year 1617 with no North-West Passage discovered, and very little other
reward for the toll of life and heroism during seven years.

Superficially, when we contemplate such failure, it looks like the
broken arc of a circle; but when we find the whole circle we see that it
is made up very largely of broken endeavour, and that Destiny has shaped
the wheel to roll to undreamed ends. There was no practicable North-West
Passage, as we know; but the search for such a passage gave to the world
a new empire.

CHAPTER III

OTHER EXPLORERS ON THE BAY

Little Denmark, whose conquering Vikings on their 'sea horses' had
scoured the coasts of Europe, now comes on the scene. Hudson, an
Englishman, had discovered the Bay, but the port of Churchill, later to
become an important post of the fur trade, was discovered by Jens Munck,
the Dane. In the autumn of 1619 Munck came across the Bay with two
vessels--the UNICORN, a warship with sea horses on its carved prow, and
the LAMPREY, a companion sloop--scudding before an equinoctial squall.
Through a hurricane of sleet he saw what appeared to be an inlet between
breakers lashing against the rocky west shore. S