29. Keymis committed suicide rather than return to face the wrath of the King
When Keymis encountered Sir Walter Raleigh upon returning to the fleet in the mouth of the Orinoco he found the latter unwilling to offer any support to his former friend. “I told him he had undone me by his obstinacy” Raleigh later wrote. When Keymis realized that he had placed Raleigh under a renewed sentence of death for having violated the conditions of his pardon, he first attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a pistol. When the wound did not prove immediately fatal, Keymis plunged a knife into his chest, penetrating the heart, and killing him.