[Illustration: THE LAST HOURS OF HUDSON From the painting by Collier]
What became of Hudson? A famous painting represents him, with his little son and the castaway crew, huddling among the engulfing icebergs. That may have been; but it is improbable that the dauntless old pathfinder would have succumbed so supinely. Three traditions, more or less reasonable, exist about his end. When Captain James came out twenty years later seeking the North-West Passage he found on a little island (Danby), south-east from Charlton Island, a number of sticks standing in the ground, with the chip marks of a steel blade. Did the old timbers mark some winter house of Hudson and his castaways? When Radisson came cruising among these islands fifty years later, he discovered an old house 'all marked and battered with bullets'; and the Indians told Radisson stories of 'canoes with sails' having come to the Bay. Had Indians, supplied with firearms overland from Quebec traders, assailed that house where nine white men, standing at bay between starvation and their enemies, took their last stand? The third tradition is of a later day. A few years ago a resident of Fort Frances, who had spent the summer at the foot of James Bay, and who understood the Indian language, wrote that the Indians had told him legends of white men who had come to the Bay long long ago, before ever 'the Big Company came,' and who had been cast away by their fellows, and who came ashore and lived among the Indians and took Indian wives and left red-haired descendants. It is probable that fur traders had told the Indians the story of Hudson; and this would explain the origin of this tradition. On the other hand, in a race utterly isolated from the outside world, among whom neither printing nor telegraph ever existed, traditions handed down from father to son acquire peculiar value; and in them we can often find a germ of truth. The legends are given for what they are worth.
There is no need to relate the fate of the mutineers. The fate of mutineers is the same the world over. They quarrelled among themselves. They lost themselves among the icefloes. When they found their way back through the straits all provisions were exhausted. While they were prisoners in the icefloes, scurvy assailed the crew. Landing to gather sorrel grass as an antidote to scurvy, they were attacked by Eskimos. Only four men were left to man the ship home, and they were reduced to a diet of sea moss and offal before reaching Ireland. Greene perished miserably among the Indians, and his body was thrown into the sea. Old Juet died of starvation in sight of Ireland, raving impotent curses. But however dire Nemesis may be, or however deep may be repentance, neither undoes the wrong; and Hudson had gone to his unknown grave, sent thither by imbeciles, who would not work that they might eat, nor strive that they might win, but sat crouching, as their prototypes sit, ready to spring at the throat of Endeavour.