A Book of American ExplorersHigginson, Thomas Wentworth
History
A Book of American Explorers
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
America -- Discovery and exploration; United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Now was the carpenter at liberty, who asked them if they would be
hanged when they came home. And as for himself, he said he would not
stay in the ship, unless they would force him. They bade him go then;
for they would not stay him. “I will,” said he, “so I may have my chest
with me, and all that is in it.” They said he should; and presently
they put it into the shallop. Then he came down to me to take his leave
of me, who persuaded him to stay, which if he did, he might so work
that all should be well. He said he did not think but they would be
glad to take them in again; for he was so persuaded by the master, that
there was not one in all the ship could tell how to carry her home.
“But,” saith he, “if we must part,”――which we will not willingly do,
for they would follow the ship,――he prayed me, if we came to the capes
before them[371] that I would leave some token that we had been there,
near to the place where the fowls bred, and he would do the like for
us; and so, with tears, we parted. Now were the sick men driven out of
their cabins into the shallop. But John Thomas was Francis Clement’s
friend, and Bennet was the cooper’s: so there were words between
them and Henry Greene,――one saying that they should go, and the other
swearing that they should not go, but such as were in the shallop
should return. When Henry Greene heard that, he was compelled to give
place, and to put out Arnold Lodlo and Michael Bute, which with much
ado they did.
In the mean time, there were some of them that plied their work as if
the ship had been entered by force, and they had free leave to pillage,
breaking up chests, and rifling all places. One of them came by me, who
asked me what they should do. I answered, he should make an end of what
he had begun; for I saw him do nothing but shark[372] up and down. Now
were all the poor men in the shallop, whose names are as followeth:
Henry Hudson, John Hudson, Arnold Lodlo, Sidrack Faner, Philip Staffe,
Thomas Woodhouse or Wydhouse, Adam Moore, Henry King, Michael Bute. The
carpenter got of them a piece,[373] and powder and shot, and some pikes,
an iron pot, with some meal, and other things. They stood out of the
ice, the shallop being fast to the stern of the ship; and so, when they
were nigh out, for I cannot say they were clean out, they[374] cut her
head fast from the stern of our ship, then out with their topsails,
and towards the east they stood in a clear sea. In the end, they took
in their topsails, righted their helm, and lay under their foresail
till they had ransacked and searched all places in the ship. In the
hold, they found one of the vessels of meal whole, and the other half
spent; for we had but two. We found also two firkins of butter, some
twenty-seven pieces of pork, half a bushel of peas; but in the master’s
cabin we found two hundred of biscuit cakes, a peck of meal, of beer
to the quantity of a butt, one with another. Now it was said that the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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