The _Half Moon_ was ready to sail on the 25th of July. In spite of Hudson’s commands, six sailors went ashore with heavy old-fashioned musketoons known as “murderers.” Seizing the Indian canoes, they opened fire on the camp. The amazed Indians dashed for hiding in the woods. The sailors then plundered the wigwams of everything that could be carried away. This has always been considered a terrible blot against Hudson’s fame. The only explanation given by Juet in the ship’s log is, “_we drave the savages from the houses and took the spoyle as they would have done of us_.” Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in London, who had Hudson’s account, gives another explanation. He declares the Dutch sailors conducted the raid in spite of all the force with which Hudson could oppose them. The English sailors refused to enforce his commands by fighting, for they were outnumbered by the mutineers. No sooner were the mutineers back on deck than they fell to pummeling one another over a division of the plunder. Any one, who knows how news carries among the Indians by what fur traders describe as “the moccasin telegram,” could predict results. “The moccasin telegram” bore exaggerated rumors of the outrage from the Penobscot to the Ohio. The white man was a man to be fought, for he had proved himself a treacherous friend. Wind-bound at times, keeping close to land, warned off the reefs through fog by _a great rutt or rustling of the tide_, the pirate sailors now disregarding all commands, the _Half Moon_ drifted lazily southward past Cape Cod. Somewhere near Nantucket, a lonely cry sounded from the wooded shore. It was a human voice. Fearing some Christian had been marooned by mutineers like his own crew, Hudson sent his small boat ashore. A camp of Indians was found dancing in a frenzy of joy at the apparition of the great “winged wigwam” gliding over the sea. A present of glass buttons filled their cup of happiness to the brim. Grapevines festooned the dank forests. Flowers still bloomed in shady nooks—the wild sunflower and the white daisy and the nodding goldenrod; and the sailors drank clear water from a crystal spring at the roots of a great oak. Robert Juet’s ship log records that “_the Indian country of great hills_”—Massachusetts—was “_a very sweet land_.”