“Now out of season and time the Master calleth the Carpenter to goe in hand with an house on shoare, which at the beginning our Master would not heare, when it might have been done.  The Carpenter told him, that the snow and froste were such, as hee neither could nor would goe in hand with such worke.  Which when our Master heard, hee ferreted him out of his cabbin to strike him, calling him by many foule names, and threatening to hang him.  The Carpenter told him that hee knew what belonged to his place better than himselfe, and that he was no house carpenter.  So this passed, and the house was (after) made with much labour, but to no end.  The next day after the Master and the Carpenter fell out, the Carpenter took his peece and Henrie Greene with him, for it was an order that none should goe out alone, but one with a peece and another with a pike.  This did move the Master soe much the more against Henrie Greene, that Robert Billot his Mate [who had been promoted to Juet’s place] must have the gowne, and had it delivered unto him; which when Henrie Greene saw he challenged the Masters promise [to him].  But the Master did so raile on Greene, with so many words of disgrace, telling him that all his friends would not trust him with twenty shillings, and therefore why should hee.  As for wages hee had none, nor none should have if hee did not please him well.  Yet the Master had promised him to make his wages as good as any mans in the ship; and to have him one of the Princes guard when we came home.  But you shall see how the devil out of this soe wrought with Greene that he did the Master what mischiefe hee could in seeking to discredit him, and to thrust him and many other honest men out of the ship in the end.  To speake of all our trouble in this time of Winter (which was so colde, as it lamed the most of our Companie and my selfe doe yet feele it) would bee too tedious.”

That is all that Prickett tells about their wintering; but what he leaves untold, as “too tedious,” easily may be filled in.  Beginning with that brabble over the “gray cloth gowne,” there must have gone on in Hudson’s party the same bickerings and wranglings that went on in Greely’s party, and the same development of small animosities into burning hatreds.  And it all, with Hudson’s people, must have been rougher and fiercer and deadlier than it was with Greely’s people:  because Hudson’s crew was of a time when sea-men, for cause, were called sea-wolves; while Greely’s crew was the better (yet exhibited scant evidence of it) by an additional two centuries and a half of civilization, and was made up (though with little to show for it) of picked men.

XII

The end came in the spring-time.  Through the winter the party had “such store of fowle,” and later had for a while so good a supply of fish, that starvation was staved off.  When the ice broke up, about the middle of June, Hudson sailed from his winter quarters and went out a little way into Hudson’s Bay.  There they were caught and held in the floating ice—­with their stores almost exhausted, and with no more fowl nor fish to be had.  Then the nip of hunger came; and with it came openly the mutiny that secretly had been fermenting through those months of cold and gloom.