The log that has been preserved of this voyage was kept by Robert Juet; who was Hudson’s mate on his second voyage, and who was mate again on Hudson’s fourth voyage—­until his mutinous conduct caused him to be deposed.  What rating he had on board the “Half Moon” is not known; nor do we know whether he had, or had not, a share in the mutiny that changed the ship’s course from east to west.  With a suspicious frankness, he wrote in his log:  “Because it is a journey usually knowne I omit to put downe what passed till we came to the height of the North Cape of Finmarke, which we did performe by the fift of May (stilo novo), being Tuesday.”  To this he adds the observed position on May 5th, 71 deg. 46’ North, and the course, “east, and by south and east,” and continues:  “After much trouble, with fogges sometimes, and more dangerous ice.  The nineteenth, being Tuesday, was close stormie weather, with much wind and snow, and very cold.  The wind variable between the north north-west and north-east.  We made our way west and by north till noone.”

[Illustration:  Dutch ships of Hudson’s time.  From de Veer.  DRIE SEYLAGIEN, Amsterdam, 1605]

His abrupt transition from the fifth to the nineteenth of May covers the time in which the mutiny occurred.  Practically, his log begins almost on the day that the ship’s course was changed.  In the smooth concluding paragraph of this same log, to be cited later, he passes over unmentioned the mutiny that occurred on the homeward voyage.  Judging him by the facts recorded in the accounts of the voyage into Hudson’s Bay, it is a fair assumption that in both of these earlier mutinies Juet had a hand.

I wish that we could find the bond that held Hudson and Juet together.  That Juet could write, and that he understood the science of navigation—­although those were rare accomplishments among seamen in his time—­fail sufficiently to account for Hudson’s persistent employment of him.  For my own part, I revert to my theory of fatalism.  It is my fancy that this “ancient man”—­as he is styled by one of his companions—­was Hudson’s evil genius; and I class him with the most finely conceived character in Marryat’s most finely conceived romance:  the pilot Schriften, in “The Phantom Ship.”  Just as Schriften clung to the younger Van der Decken to thwart him, so Juet seems to have clung to Hudson to thwart him; and to take—­in the last round between them—­a leading part in compassing Hudson’s death.

One authority, and a very good authority, for the facts which Juet suppressed concerning the third voyage is the historian Van Meteren:  who obtained them, there is good reason for believing, directly from Hudson himself.  In his “Historie der Niederlanden” (1614) Van Meteren wrote:  “This Henry Hudson left the Texel the 6th of April, 1609, and having doubled the Cape of Norway the 5th of May, directed his course along the northern coasts toward Nova Zembla.