No elixir of life, you dreamer; but your mad-brained search for the elixir gave us the secrets of chemistry by which man prolongs life if he doesn’t preserve eternal youth! No fate written on the scroll of the heavens, you star-gazer; but your fool-astrology has given us astronomy, by which man may predict the movements of the stars for a thousand years though he cannot forsee his own fate for a day! No North-West Passage to Asia, you fevered adventurers of the trackless sea; but your search for a short way to China has given us a New World worth a thousand Chinas! Go on with your dreams, you mad-souled visionaries! If it is a will-o’-the wisp you chase, your will-o’-the-wisp is a lantern to the rest of humanity! * * * * * Climbing the rigging to the topmast yardarm, Hudson scanned the sea. His heart sank. His hopes seemed to congeal like the eternal ice of this ice-world. The springs of life seemed to grow both heavy and cold. Far as eye could reach was ice—only ice, while outside the cove there raged a tempest as if all the demons of the North were blowing their trumpets. “There is no passage this way,” said Hudson to his son. Then as if hope only dies that it may send forth fresh growth like the seed, he added, “But we must try Greenland again, on the west side this time.” It was ten o’clock at night when the men returned laden with game; but they, too, had taken counsel among themselves whether to go forward; and the memory of that dead crew’s cross turned the scales against Hudson. It was only the 5th of July, but they would not hear of attempting Greenland this season. From midnight of the 5th to nine o’clock of the 6th, Hudson pondered. No gap opened through the white wall ahead. The Frost Giants, whose gambols may be heard on the long winter nights when the icecracks whoop and romp, had won against Man. “_Being void of hope_,” Hudson records, “_the wind stormy and against us, much ice driving, we weighed and set sail westward_.” Home-bound, the ship anchored on the Thames, August 26. CHAPTER III 1609 HUDSON’S THIRD VOYAGE While Hudson was pursuing his phantom across Polar seas, Europe had at last awakened to the secret of Spain’s greatness—colonial wealth that poured the gold of Peru into her treasury. To counteract Spain, colonizing became the master policy of Europe. France was at work on the St. Lawrence. England was settling Virginia, and Smith, the pioneer of Virginia, who was Hudson’s personal friend, had explored the Chesapeake. [Illustration: James II, Duke of York, Second Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company.]