BAFFIN'S VOYAGES. 



149 



procure, were almost entirely without provisions. They, however, stood out to sea, shaping 

 their course for Ireland. At length all their supplies were gone, and they were reduced 

 to eating candles and fried skins and bones. Just before reaching Galloway Bay one of 

 the chief mutineers died of sheer starvation. 



Such are the main points of Pricket's story, and possibly out of compassion for the 

 sufferings they had undoubtedly endured, no inquiry or punishment followed their arrival. 

 But a very suspicious circumstance has to be related : Hudson's journal, instead of terminating 

 at the date, June 21st, on which he was thrust into the boat, finished on August 3rd of the 

 previous year. Pricket had charge o the master's chest, and there can be little doubt 

 but that all portions of the journal which might have implicated them had been destroyed. 

 A subsequent navigator shrewdly remarks of these transactions : " Well, Pricket, I am in great 

 doubt of thy fidelity to Master Hudson." Nevertheless, his character seems not to have 



IN SMITH S SOUND. 



suffered in the eyes of the merchant adventurers ; for we find him employed next year in a 

 voyage under Captain (afterwards Sir) Thomas Button, one object of which seems to have 

 been to follow Hudson's track. They discovered and wintered in Hudson's River, but found 

 no traces of the great navigator or his unfortunate companions. James Hall, who in 1612 

 left England on a voyage of northern discovery, and was mortally wounded by the dart of 

 a Greenland Esquimaux, was accompanied by William Baffin, one of the most scientific 

 navigators of his time. This expedition is noteworthy for having been the first on record 

 where longitudes were taken by observation of the heavenly bodies. Baffin accompanied 

 Bylot in 1615 on a voyage to the north-west. After sighting and leaving Greenland, 

 many enormous icebergs were met, some upwards of two hundred feet out of the water. 

 Baffin records one two hundred and forty feet high above the sea, and says that on the 

 usual computation,* it must have been " one thousand sixe hundred and eightie foote from 



* A cubical or rectangular mass of ice will, floating in the sea, have about six times the depth under water that 

 it has height above. But it will be evident that this will not apply to irregular- shaped masses, which may have very 

 solid bases, rising above in lighter pinnacles or other fantastic forms. The brother of the writer has seen on the 

 Greenland coast icebergs 90 to 100 feet out of the water, grounded at 100 fathoms (600 feet). 



