The Mishap That Befell Sancho Panza Through the Visit to the Galleys
THE afternoon of that same day Don Antonio took Don Quixote and Sancho on board one of the galleys, amid all the honors that accompany the visits of great and famous personages. There were fanfares, and cheers, and the firing of guns, and all the high-ranking officers of the army and navy who were in the city had been appealed to by Don Antonio Moreno and turned out to pay him their respects.
Don Quixote was delighted. He could scarcely find words to express his appreciation of such a magnificent and royal reception; and Sancho was almost carried away by the honors that were being paid his master. But when he saw all the men at the oars—stripped to the skin by the captain's command—he became afraid, for they seemed to him like so many devils.
When Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had been presented to all the dignitaries, the captain escorted them to a platform on which he begged them to take their seats beside him. Sancho sat at the edge of the platform, next to one of the rowing devils (who had been instructed in advance by the captain what to do) and suddenly he felt himself lifted in the air by a pair of strong, muscular arms. The next instant he was in the clutches of another devil; and passing from hand to hand, he went the rounds of the crew with such swiftness that the poor superstitious Sancho did not know whether he was dead, dreaming, or alive. Sancho's aërial expedition did not come to an end until he had been most unceremoniously deposited on the poop, where he landed in a strangely unbalanced condition—to the tremendous amusement of the crew and the onlookers. He was so dazed that it is doubtful whether he would have known his name, if he had been asked.
Seeing what had happened to his squire, Don Quixote thought it best to forestall himself from being put through any such ceremony; so he stood up, his hand on the hilt of his sword, and announced with fire in his eyes that any one who dared to attempt such a thing to him would suffer by having his head cut off. He had hardly finished his sentence before a noise was heard that frightened Sancho almost into insensibility. He thought that Heaven was coming off its hinges and about to fall on his sinful head. And even Don Quixote trembled with something closely akin to fear, and grew (if that were possible) pale under his yellow hue.
What the crew had done was to strike the awning and lower the yard and then hoist it up again with as much clatter and speed as they could produce, yet without uttering any human sound. This being done, the boatswain gave orders to weigh anchor, and as he went about on deck signaling with a whistle, he continually lashed and beat the backs of the naked oarsmen with a whip he had in his hand.
When Sancho saw all the red oars moving, he took them to be the feet of enchanted beings, and he thought to himself: "It is these that are the real enchanted things, and not the ones my master talks of. What can those wretches have done to be whipped in that way; and how does that one man who goes along there whistling dare to whip so many? I declare this is Hell, or at least Purgatory!"
But when Don Quixote noticed his squire's interest in the naked creatures at the oars, he turned and said to him softly: "Ah, Sancho my friend, how quickly and cheaply you might finish off the disenchantment of Dulcinea, if you would strip to the waist and take your place among those gentlemen! Amid the pain and sufferings of so many you would not feel your own much; and, moreover, perhaps the sage Merlin would allow each of these lashes, being laid on with a good hand, to count for ten of those which you must give yourself at last."
But Sancho was not to be persuaded, and the general of the fortress, who was eager to know why Sancho was urged to lash himself, could not wait for a reply to his question, for there loomed up on the horizon a ship which attracted his attention, and he immediately gave orders to the captain to steer down upon it.
After an adventure on the seas, the first they had ever experienced, Don Quixote and Sancho came back to Barcelona that afternoon, and returned to the house of their host, escorted by the Viceroy, the General and the other high dignitaries.