Spanish army was upon him. The
whole adventure was a miserable and ignominious failure.

The meeting between Raleigh and Keymis could not fail to be an
embarrassing one. Raleigh could not but feel that all his own mistakes
and faults might have been condoned if Keymis had brought one basket of
ore from the fabulous mine, and he could not refrain from reproaching
him. He told him he 'should be forced to leave him to his arguments,
with the which if he could satisfy his Majesty and the State, I should
be glad of it, though for my part he must excuse me to justify it.'
After this first interview Keymis left him in great dejection, and a day
or two later appeared in the Admiral's cabin with a letter which he had
written to the Earl of Arundel, excusing himself. He begged Raleigh to
forgive him and to read this letter. What followed, Sir Walter must tell
in his own grave words:

I told him he had undone me by his obstinacy, and that I would
not favour or colour in any sort his former folly. He then asked
me, whether that were my resolution? I answered, that it was. He
then replied in these words, 'I know then, sir, what course to
take,' and went out of my cabin into his own, in which he was no
sooner entered than I heard a pistol go off. I sent up, not
suspecting any such thing as the killing of himself, to know who
shot a pistol. Keymis himself made answer, lying on his bed,
that he had shot it off, because it had long been charged; with
which I was satisfied. Some half-hour after this, his boy, going
into the cabin, found him dead, having a long knife thrust under
his left pap into his heart, and his pistol lying by him, with
which it appeared he had shot himself; but the bullet lighting
upon a rib, had but broken the rib, and went no further.

Such was the wretched manner in which Raleigh and his old faithful
servant parted. In his despair, the Admiral's first notion was to plunge
himself into the mazes of the Orinoco, and to find the gold mine, or die
in the search for it. But his men were mutinous; they openly declared
that in their belief no such mine existed, and that the Spaniards were
bearing down on them by land and sea. They would not go; and Raleigh,
strangely weakened and humbled, asked them if they wished him to lead
them against the Mexican plate fleet. He told them that he had a
commission from France, and that they would be pardoned in England if
th