any other are
fools.' By all accounts he closed with the enemy, and Grados or Erenetta
mortally wounded him. His last words were: 'Go on! Lord, have mercy upon
me, and prosper your enterprise.' His death excited his men. Diego was
slain, and his force routed. The English stormed the monastery of St.
Francis, in which some of the fugitives had fortified themselves. San
Thome, such as it was, was theirs. They buried Walter, and Captain
Cosmor, described in a letter of March 22 to Alley by Parker as leader
of the forlorn hope, in one grave, near the high altar in the Church of
St. Thomas. On the day of the funeral the belated ships of Whitney and
Wollaston arrived.

[Sidenote: _Failure to reach the Mine._]

Notwithstanding the loss of the town, the Spaniards maintained
resistance. Garcia de Aguilar and Juan de Lazanna, the alcaldes, with
Grados, collected the residue, and constituted a garrison for the women
and children in the Isle of la Ceyva. They laid wait for stray
Englishmen, and cooped the main body within the town. There discords
broke out which George Ralegh had difficulty in pacifying. Not till a
week after the occupation did Keymis venture to make for the Mine,
though he computed that it was but eight miles off. At length he
equipped a couple of launches. In them he, Sir John Hampden, and others
embarked. Near la Ceyva they fell into an ambuscade. Nine out of those
in the first launch were killed or wounded. Keymis was discouraged, and
turned back, he alleged, for more soldiers. Though not a man afraid of
responsibility, he may have shrunk from the prospect, as he intimated,
that he might, through Ralegh's sickness, as well as legal disabilities,
have to bear it alone. Ralegh's detractors inferred from the inactivity
of Keymis that he and Ralegh were as incredulous of the existence of the
Mine as, by his own subsequent account, had always been the King. The
imputation upon the truthfulness of Keymis is altogether groundless. He
had, in his expedition of 1596, ascertained the authenticity of the
Mine, at least to his own satisfaction, and brought home specimens of
its ore. His fancy wildly exaggerated its riches. There is no reason to
suppose that he knavishly invented stories about it. The Spaniards, it
is known, had worked gold mines in the vicinity. The excavations were
lying idle from the mere want of Indian labourers, whom it had just been
declared illegal to press. So lately had the workings been discontin