The Man in the Half-Moon

HENRY HUDSON--Llewelyn Powys--Harpers ($4). Two waters on the North American continent were grooved by the bow of Hudson's boat, and now bear his name to witness it.

One is the river that slides down through a quiet country where the hills are piled up like velvet pillows, past the quick glittering chaos of Manhattan, into the quiet Atlantic. Up this river the Captain sailed, hoping to find the splendor of China and a western ocean beyond some twist of a valley in those small and comfortable mountains.

The other water is an enormous shallow bay, spread like a thin shield across the North of Canada. Into this grey harbor also Hudson sailed; and here, after spending a winter on its frozen shore, he stayed to watch his ship, manned by a mutiny, putting back for England, leaving him and two companions to drown or freeze or starve. It is idle and unpleasant to imagine how the tireless captain accomplished death; it is possible, though, to imagine him as he must have looked, sitting in a small boat, listening to the slap of water on its gunwale, watching the departure of his crew with courage, despair and fury.

As written by Author Powys, the story of Hudson's voyages--these two to the U. S. and two earlier ones to the north of Europe--is an intimate and elaborate chronicle. All the familiar details of life that precede and accompany the gaudiest adventures, like the supplies with which a captain fills the hold of his ship before a long voyage, are carefully inserted by Author Powys. He tells how an Indian visited the Half-Moon above Manhattan, how the Indian stole a shirt out of the mate's cabin, and how the mate shot him dead as he was paddling across the silent river valley, back to shore. The sea, the polar bears, the casual, surly, craven sailors of Hudson's crew, the companies who in England planned the hazardous voyages that their captains undertook, the acquittal which an English court allowed the mutineers who had marooned their captain,--none of these things escaped the attention of Author Powys. He writes about them with his customary precision and subtlety and imagination.

The Author is 44 years old, the son of an English vicar, the brother of John Cowper Powys, author and lecturer and T. F. Powys, novel-writer, a graduate of Cambridge. In 1909, afflicted with tuberculosis, he went to a Swiss sanatorium, an experience about which he later wrote a book. In 1914, still diseased, he went to South Africa for five years: this visit supplied the material for Ebony & Ivory, Black Laughter. In 1920, he came to the U. S. without fame, wealth or a wife; in 1925, he left the U. S. with all three and lived in England for two years, writing about Henry Hudson. Now he is back in the U. S., doing book reviews and other things.