main fault of the mutiny is thrown upon some men who had ceased to live when the ship reached home.  Those who were then still alive are presented as guiltless, some as highly deserving.  Prickett’s account of the mutiny and of its cause has often been suspected.  Even Purchas himself and Fox speak of it with distrust.  But Prickett is the only eye-witness that has left us an account of these events; and we can therefore not correct his statements, whether they 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.