It was certainly with the keenness which marked the young Nun’ Alvarez that Henrique, then twenty-one, embarked with his father, King João I, and his brothers, Duarte and Pedro, in the expedition against Ceuta in 1415. He had his father’s promise that he should be the first to land, and in the storming of the town he was ever in the thickest of the fighting. The Moors defended the town obstinately, and a fresh danger arose when the victorious Portuguese dispersed to plunder. Henry, with a little band of seventeen followers, saved the situation against such odds that news was at first brought to the King that his son was dead. For his gallant behaviour on that day he was made Duke of Vizeu and Lord of Covilhã, while his brother Pedro became Duke of Coimbra. But Henry returned from North-West Africa with perhaps a still greater prize--increased knowledge of the Dark Continent and a fixed determination to explore further a land which he now knew to be no mere sandy and unfertile desert. To this work he devoted the next forty-five years, without a shadow of turning, since political events might hamper but could not weaken his purpose, merely delaying the promised end. It is often asked what was his object, as though the wish to win fresh knowledge, to acquire new territory for his country, and glory and riches, and to extend the Christian faith were unaccountable or unworthy aims. Rather we cannot wonder that the discoveries became the absorbing passion of his life, so that he has been blamed for his lukewarm intervention in contemporary politics and his weak defence of his brother, the Duke of Coimbra. On the discoveries as Grand Master of the Order of Christ he spent its princely revenues, and in 1418, retiring from the Court, he settled on the Sacred Cape, or Sagres, now Cape St. Vincent. His palace and observatory soon drew a village round it, known as Terça Naval, or the Villa do Infante (Princestown). Here, as Governor of Algarve, he spent the greater part of his life, fitting out ships in Lagos harbour, welcoming travellers, poring over maps brought to him by Prince Pedro and others from their travels, observing the heavens, and watching for the return of his ships. His keenness was not inconsistent with a certain shyness and reserve. He was a student prince, but less literary and more scientific than his brothers. All day, and often far into the night, he would be at work, an energetic hermit such as the Middle Ages had not known. His eyes in the intensity and even fierceness of their glance repelled the timid, but they also had the far-away look as of one watching and dreaming, while his firm lips and jaws were those of one planning and willing. His iron will and self-discipline curbed his equally strong temper and impatient eagerness, so that when most moved to anger he would merely say, like an Irishman, “I leave you to God.”