Raleigh ‘rejects these fancies’; tells him before divers gentlemen that ‘a blind man might find it by the marks which Keymis himself had set down under his hand’: that ‘his case of losing so many men in the woods’ was a mere pretence: after Walter was slain, he knew that Keymis had no care of any man’s surviving. ‘You have undone me, wounded my credit with the King past recovery. As you have followed your own advice, and not mine, you must satisfy his Majesty. It shall be glad if you can do it: but I cannot.’ There is no use dwelling on such vain regrets and reproaches. Raleigh perhaps is bitter, unjust. As he himself writes twice, to his wife and Sir Ralph Winwood, his ‘brains are broken.’ He writes to them both, and re-opens the letters to add long postscripts, at his wits’ end. Keymis goes off; spends a few miserable days; and then enters Raleigh’s cabin. He has written his apology to Lord Arundel, and begs Raleigh to allow of it. ‘No. You have undone me by your obstinacy. I will not favour or colour your former folly.’ ‘Is that your resolution, sir?’ ‘It is.’ ‘I know not then, sir, what course to take.’ And so he goes out, and into his own cabin overhead. A minute after a pistol-shot is heard. Raleigh sends up a boy to know the reason. Keymis answers from within that he has fired it off because it had been long charged; and all is quiet. Half an hour after the boy goes into the cabin. Keymis is lying on his bed, the pistol by him. The boy moves him. The pistol-shot has broken a rib, and gone no further; but as the corpse is turned over, a long knife is buried in that desperate heart. Another of the old heroes is gone to his wild account. Gradually drops of explanation ooze out. The ‘Sergeant-major, Raleigh’s nephew, and others, confess that Keymis told them that he could have brought them in two hours to the mine: but as the young heir was slain, and his father was unpardoned and not like to live, he had no reason to open the mine, either for the Spaniard or the King.’ Those latter words are significant. What cared the old Elizabethan seaman for the weal of such a king? And, indeed, what good to such a king would all the mines in Guiana be? They answered that the King, nevertheless, had ‘granted Raleigh his heart’s desire under the great seal.’ He replied that ‘the grant to Raleigh was to a man _non ens_ in law, and therefore of no force.’ Here, too, James’s policy has worked well. How could men dare or persevere under such a cloud? How, indeed, could they have found heart to sail at all? The only answer is that they knew Raleigh well enough to have utter faith in him, and that Keymis himself knew of the mine.