Prickett writes:  “Being thus in the ice on Saturday, the one and twentieth of June, at night, Wilson the boat swayne, and Henry Greene, came to mee lying (in my cabbin) lame, and told mee that they and the rest of their associates would shift the company and turne the Master and all the sicke men into the shallop, and let them shift for themselves.  For there was not fourteen daies victuall left for all the company, at that poore allowance they were at, and that there they lay, the Master not caring to goe one way or other:  and that they had not eaten any thing these three dayes, and therefore were resolute, either to mend or end, and what they had begun they would goe through with it, or dye.”

According to his own account, Prickett made answer to this precious pair of scoundrels that he “marvelled to heare so much from them, considering that they were married men, and had wives and children, and that for their sakes they should not commit so foule a thing in the sight of God and man as that would bee”; to which Greene replied that “he knew the worst, which was, to be hanged when hee came home, and therefore of the two he would rather be hanged at home than starved abroad.”  With that deliverance “Henry Greene went his way, and presently came Juet, who, because he was an ancient man, I hoped to have found some reason in him.  But hee was worse than Henry Greene, for he sware plainly that he would justifie this deed when he came home.”

More of the conspirators came to Prickett to urge him to join them in their intended crime.  We have his weak word for it that he refused, and that he tried to stay them; to which he weakly adds:  “I hoped that some one or other would give some notice, either to the Carpenter [or to] John King or the Master.”  That he did not try to give “some notice” himself is the blackest count against him.  The just inference may be drawn from his narrative, as a whole, that he was a liar; and from this particular section of it the farther inference may be drawn that he was a coward.

In the dawn of the Sunday morning the outbreak came.  Prickett tells that it began by clapping the hatch over John King (one of the faithful men), who had gone down into the hold for water; and continues:  “In the meane time Henrie Greene and another went to the carpenter [Philip Staffe] and held him with a talke till the Master came out of his cabbin (which hee soone did); then came John Thomas and Bennet before him, while Wilson bound his arms behind him.  He asked them what they meant.  They told him he should know when he was in the shallop.  Now Juet, while this was a-doing, came to John King into the hold, who was provided for him, for he had got a sword of his own, and kept him at a bay, and might have killed him, but others came to helpe him, and so he came up to the Master.  The Master called to the Carpenter, and told him that he was bound, but I heard no answer he made.  Now Arnold Lodlo and Michael Bute rayled at them, and told them their knaverie would show itselfe.  Then was the shallop haled up to the ship side, and the poore sicke and lame men were called upon to get them out of their cabbins into the shallop.