Chapter XXIX. Of the famous adventure of the enchanted boat

By their counted steps, and steps still to count, two days after they left the poplar grove Don Quixote and Sancho came to the river Ebro, and the sight of it gave Don Quixote great pleasure, because he contemplated and gazed on the pleasantness of its banks, the clearness of its waters, the calm of its course, and the abundance of its liquid crystals, whose cheerful sight renewed a thousand amorous thoughts in his memory. Above all he went back and forth over what he had seen in the cave of Montesinos; for even if Master Pedro’s ape had said that of those things some were true and some lies, he held more to the true ones than to the lying ones, quite the opposite of Sancho, who held them all to be the very lie itself.

Going along in this way, then, there came into his view a small boat without oars or any other tackle, which was tied at the water’s edge to the trunk of a tree that stood on the bank. Don Quixote looked in every direction and saw no one at all; and then, without more ado, he got down off Rocinante and ordered Sancho to do the same off the gray and to tie both beasts very securely, together, to the trunk of a poplar or a willow growing there. Sancho wanted to know why this sudden dismounting and this tying up. Don Quixote answered:

“You must know, Sancho, that this boat here is plainly, and without its possibly being anything else, calling me and inviting me to get into it and go in it to give help to some knight, or to some other needy person of rank, who must be in some great woe; for this is the way of the books of chivalric histories and of the enchanters who meddle and talk in them: when some knight is caught in some trouble from which he cannot be freed except by the hand of another knight, though they may be two or three thousand leagues apart, and even more, they either snatch him up in a cloud or provide him with a boat to get into, and before an eye can open and shut they bear him off, through the air or over the sea, wherever they please and wherever his help is needed; so, O Sancho, this boat is placed here for that very purpose; and this is as true as that it is day now; and before the day goes by, tie the gray and Rocinante together, and into the hand of God, and may He guide us, for I would not fail to go aboard though barefoot friars begged me not to.”

“Well, since that’s how it is,” answered Sancho, “and your grace insists at every step on these things that I don’t know whether to call nonsense, there’s nothing for it but to obey and bow my head, heeding the proverb ‘do what your master bids you, and sit down with him at table’; but for all that, for the unburdening of my conscience, I want to warn your grace that it seems to me this boat isn’t one of the enchanted kind but belongs to some fishermen of this river, for the best shad in the world are caught in it.”

Sancho said this while he was tying up the beasts, leaving them to the protection and care of the enchanters, with great sorrow in his soul. Don Quixote told him not to be troubled at leaving those animals unprotected, for he who would carry them over such longinquous roads and regions would take care to provide for them.

“I don’t understand that ‘longinkous,’” said Sancho, “nor have I heard such a word in all the days of my life.”

“Longinquous,” answered Don Quixote, “means far-off; and it is no wonder you do not understand it, for you are not obliged to know Latin, like some who presume they know it and do not.”

“They’re tied now,” replied Sancho. “What are we to do next?”

“What?” answered Don Quixote. “Cross ourselves and weigh iron; I mean, go aboard and cut the mooring by which this boat is tied.”

And, taking a leap into it, with Sancho following him, he cut the cord, and the boat began to drift little by little away from the bank; and when Sancho saw himself about two yards out into the river, he began to tremble, fearing his ruin; but nothing grieved him more than hearing the gray bray and seeing Rocinante struggling to get loose, and he said to his master:

“The gray is braying, grieving at our absence, and Rocinante is trying to get free to throw himself in after us. Oh, dearest friends, stay in peace, and may the madness that takes us away from you, turned into disenchantment, bring us back into your presence!”

And with this he began to weep so bitterly that Don Quixote, vexed and angry, said to him:

“What are you afraid of, cowardly creature? What are you crying about, heart of butter? Who is pursuing you, or who is harrying you, you house-mouse spirit, or what do you lack, needy in the very bowels of abundance? Are you by any chance going on foot and barefoot over the Riphaean mountains, and not seated on a plank, like an archduke, down the smooth course of this pleasant river, from which in a short while we shall come out into the wide sea? But we must already have come out and traveled at least seven or eight hundred leagues; and if I had an astrolabe here with which to take the altitude of the pole, I would tell you how many we have traveled; though either I know little or we have already passed, or shall soon pass, the equinoctial line, which divides and cuts the two opposite poles at equal distance.”

“And when we reach that equinoctial pine your grace speaks of,” asked Sancho, “how far will we have traveled?”

“Far,” replied Don Quixote, “because of the three hundred and sixty degrees that the globe of water and land contains, according to the computation of Ptolemy, who was the greatest cosmographer known, we shall have traveled half on reaching the line I have spoken of.”

“By God,” said Sancho, “a fine person your grace brings me as witness to what you say: a com-puto, a whore, and a cosmó-gafo, a leper, with a Ptolo-meón, a pisser, thrown in, or a meo, or I don’t know what.”

Don Quixote laughed at the interpretation Sancho had given to the name and to the computation and reckoning of the cosmographer Ptolemy, and said to him:

“You must know, Sancho, that the Spaniards and those who take ship at Cádiz to go to the East Indies have, among the signs by which they know they have passed the equinoctial line I told you of, this one: that the lice die on everyone on board the ship, without one being left, nor will they find one in the whole vessel though they pay its weight in gold; and so, Sancho, you can run a hand over your thigh, and if you come upon anything alive, we shall be out of this doubt; and if not, we have passed it.”

“I don’t believe any of that,” answered Sancho, “but all the same, I’ll do what your grace bids me, though I don’t know why there’s any need to make these experiments, since I can see with my own eyes that we haven’t moved five yards away from the bank, nor drifted two yards from where the beasts are, for there are Rocinante and the gray in the very spot where we left them; and, taking a sighting, as I’m taking it now, I swear we aren’t moving or going at an ant’s pace.”

“Make the test I have told you, Sancho, and do not trouble yourself about any other, for you do not know what colures are, or lines, parallels, zodiacs, ecliptics, poles, solstices, equinoxes, planets, signs, points, measures, of which the celestial and terrestrial sphere is composed; for if you knew all these things, or some of them, you would see clearly how many parallels we have cut, how many signs we have seen, and how many constellations we have left behind and are leaving behind now. And I tell you again to feel yourself and fish, for I take it you are cleaner than a sheet of smooth white paper.”

Sancho felt himself, and, bringing his hand gently and carefully toward the back of his left knee, he raised his head and looked at his master and said:

“Either the experiment is false, or we haven’t got where your grace says, not by many leagues.”

“Why, what is it?” asked Don Quixote. “Have you come upon something?”

“Somethings, even!” answered Sancho.

And, giving his fingers a shake, he rinsed the whole hand in the river, down which the boat was gliding quietly down the middle of the current, with no secret intelligence moving it, nor any hidden enchanter, but only the course of the water itself, gentle and smooth just then.

At this they caught sight of some great water mills that stood in the middle of the river; and scarcely had Don Quixote seen them when he said to Sancho in a loud voice:

“Do you see? There, O friend, appears the city, castle, or fortress where some oppressed knight must be, or some queen, infanta, or princess in sore straits, for whose succor I have been brought here.”

“What the devil of a city, fortress, or castle is your grace talking about, sir?” said Sancho. “Can’t you see that those are water mills standing in the river, where they grind the wheat?”

“Hush, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for though they look like water mills, they are not; and I have told you already that enchantments turn all things upside down and change them from their natural being. I do not mean that they really change them from one being into another, but that they seem to, as experience showed in the transformation of Dulcinea, the sole refuge of my hopes.”

At this the boat, having got into the middle of the current of the river, began to move not so slowly as before. The millers of the water mills, seeing that boat coming down the river and about to be sucked into the race of the wheels, came out in haste, many of them, with long poles to stop it, and since they came out floured, their faces and clothes covered with the dust of the flour, they made an ugly sight. They shouted loudly, saying:

“Devils of men! Where are you going? Have you come here in despair? What do you want, to drown yourselves and be smashed to pieces on these wheels?”

“Did I not tell you, Sancho,” said Don Quixote at this point, “that we had come where I am to show how far the valor of my arm can reach? Look how many miscreants and caitiffs come out to meet me, look how many monsters oppose me, look how many ugly mugs pull bogeyman faces at us… Well, now you shall see, you rogues!”

And, standing up in the boat, he began to threaten the millers with loud shouts, saying to them:

“Wicked and worse-counseled rabble, set at liberty and free will the person you hold oppressed in that fortress or prison of yours, high or low, of whatever sort or quality, for I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, called by another name the Knight of the Lions, for whom it is reserved by order of the high heavens to bring this adventure to a happy end.”

And, saying this, he laid hand to his sword and began to brandish it in the air against the millers, who, hearing and not understanding those foolish words, set about stopping the boat with their poles, for it was already entering the race and channel of the wheels.

Sancho went down on his knees, devoutly begging heaven to deliver him from so manifest a danger, which it did, through the skill and quickness of the millers, who, setting their poles against the boat, stopped it, but not in such a way that they did not overturn the boat and tumble Don Quixote and Sancho headlong into the water; but it went well for Don Quixote, who could swim like a goose, though his heavy armor dragged him to the bottom twice; and had it not been for the millers, who threw themselves into the water and hauled them both out bodily, there Troy would have been for the two of them.

Set on land, then, more wet than dying of thirst, Sancho, on his knees, his hands joined and his eyes fixed on heaven, begged God in a long and devout prayer to deliver him from then on from the daring desires and undertakings of his master.

At this the fishermen who owned the boat arrived, for the wheels of the water mills had smashed it to pieces; and, seeing it broken, they set about stripping Sancho and demanding that Don Quixote pay them for it; and he, with great calm, as if nothing had happened to him, told the millers and fishermen that he would pay for the boat most willingly, on condition that they hand over to him, free and with no hidden flaw, the person or persons who were held oppressed in that castle of theirs.

“What persons or what castle are you talking about,” answered one of the millers, “you madman? Do you by any chance want to carry off the people who come to grind wheat at these mills?”

“Enough!” said Don Quixote to himself. “Here it will be preaching in the desert to try to bring this rabble by entreaties to do any good deed. And in this adventure two valiant enchanters must have clashed, and one hinders what the other attempts: one provided me with the boat, and the other tumbled me headlong out of it. God mend it, for this whole world is contrivances and schemes, each one against the other. I can do no more.”

And, raising his voice, he went on, looking at the water mills:

“Friends, whoever you may be, who remain shut up in that prison, forgive me; for, to my misfortune and to yours, I cannot get you out of your woe. For some other knight this adventure must be kept and reserved.”

Having said this, he came to terms with the fishermen and paid fifty reales for the boat, which Sancho handed over very unwillingly, saying:

“Two more boat rides like this one and we’ll send our whole capital to the bottom.”

The fishermen and millers stood amazed, looking at those two figures so far, to all appearances, from the ways of other men, and could not quite understand where the words and questions Don Quixote put to them were leading; and, taking them for madmen, they left them and went back to their mills, and the fishermen to their huts. Don Quixote and Sancho went back to their beasts, and to being beasts, and this was the end of the adventure of the enchanted boat.