and the wind being at east we set sayle, and stood south and by east, and south southeast as we could.  This morning one of our companie looking over boord saw a mermaid, and calling up some of the companie to see her, one more came up and by that time shee was come close to the ships side, looking earnestly on the men.  A little after a sea came and overturned her.  From the navill upward her backe and breasts were like a womans, as they say that saw her, but her body as big as one of us.  Her skin very white, and long haire hanging downe behinde of colour blacke.  In her going downe they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a porposse, and speckled like a macrell.  Their names that saw her were Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner.”

[Illustration:  From de Brey.  Edition 1619]

I am sorry to say that the too-conscientious Doctor Asher, in editing this log, felt called upon to add, in a foot-note:  “Probably a seal”; and to quote, in support of his prosaic suggestion, various unnecessary facts about seals observed a few centuries later in the same waters by Doctor Kane.  For my own part, I much prefer to believe in the mermaid—­and, by so believing, to create in my own heart somewhat of the feeling which was in the hearts of those old seafarers in a time when sea-prodigies and sea-mysteries were to be counted with as among the perils of every ocean voyage.

This belief of mine is not a mere whimsical fancy.  Unless we take as real what the shipmen of Hudson’s time took as real, we not only miss the strong romance which was so large a part of their life, but we go wide of understanding the brave spirit in which their exploring work was done.  Adventuring into tempests in their cockle-shell ships they took as a matter of course—­and were brave in that way without any thought of their bravery.  As a part of the day’s work, also, they took their wretched quarters aboard ship and their wretched, and usually insufficient, food.  Their highest courage was reserved for facing the fearsome dangers which existed only in their imaginations—­but which were as real to them as were the dangers of wreck and of starvation and of battlings with wild beasts, brute or human, in strange new-found lands.  It followed of necessity that men leading lives so full of physical hardship, and so beset by wondering dread, were moody and discontented—­and so easily went on from sullen anger into open mutiny.  And equally did it follow that the shipmasters who held those surly brutes to the collar—­driving them to their work with blows, and now and then killing one of them by way of encouraging the others to obedience—­were as absolutely fearless and as absolutely strong of will as men could be.  All of these conditions we must recognize, and must try to realize, if we would understand the work that was cut out for Hudson, and for every master navigator, in that cruel and harsh and yet ardently romantic time.