During this rampage, Sancho Panza was nearly beside himself where he stood on the hill. He was tearing his hair and beard, wishing he had never laid eyes on his master, and berating himself for ever having joined in his mad adventures. When the shepherds had disappeared, he ran to his master's side.
"Did I not tell your worship," he reproached the prostrate knight, "that they were not armies, but droves of sheep!"
But again our hero blamed his misfortune on his arch-enemy, that cursed Sage Friston, who had falsified the armies in such a way that they looked like meek and harmless sheep. Then he begged his squire to pursue the enemy by stealth that he might ascertain for himself that what he had said was true; for he was sure that ere they had gone very far they would resume their original shape.
However, before Sancho Panza had time to make up his mind whether to go or not, his master's sip of the balsam during the battle suddenly began to take effect, and Sancho's presence became for the moment a necessity. Having gone through this ordeal, Don Quixote rose and asked his squire for a remedy for hunger. It was then they discovered that the alforjas had disappeared, with all its precious contents. Both were dejected. Don Quixote tried to impart, out of the abundance of his optimism for the future, new hope to the discouraged Sancho. It was a difficult task, and he might have failed, had not the loss of his teeth and the sorry plight he was in made Sancho sway from his intentions of home-going. When, at his master's request, the squire put his finger in Don Quixote's mouth in order to learn the extent of the damage done in that region of his body, his heart was touched by the terrible devastation there. He could not, of course, leave his master to shift for himself on the highways in such a condition. So he consented to remain, and they proceeded along the road, hoping that they would soon come to a place where they could find shelter for the night, as well as something with which to still their hunger.
CHAPTER XIX
Of the Shrewd Discourse Which Sancho Held with His Master, and of the Adventure That Befell Him with a Dead Body, Together with Other Notable Occurrences
NIGHT had fallen, yet they had discovered no place of refuge. Suddenly, in the darkness, they saw a number of lights that came closer and closer without their being able to make out what it was. Sancho commenced to shake like a leaf, and even Don Quixote was frightened and muttered a paternoster between his teeth while his hair stood on end. They withdrew to the roadside, from where they soon distinguished twenty bodies on horseback, all dressed in white shirts, and carrying lighted torches in their hands. With chattering teeth Sancho stared at this awe-inspiring procession, which was not yet at an end, for behind the mounted bodies there came others, these in black and on mule—back, and surrounding a bier, covered with a large black cloth. All the while a quiet, solemn mumbling came from the moving figures, and Sancho Panza was now so stricken with fear that he was almost paralyzed.
Don Quixote's courage—which likewise had been rather shaky at this passing of ghostlike beings, at such a time of the night—suddenly revived and mounted to such heights that he decided he would ask where they were carrying the wounded king on the bier. This he did without delay. But such a question seemed silly and out of place to one of the guardians of the corpse, and he commanded the knight to move on. This angered Don Quixote beyond measure. He seized the man's mule by the bridle; but this, in turn, annoyed the mule, which rose on its hind legs and flung its rider to the ground. Another man came up to Don Quixote and tried to talk reason to him, but to no avail, and in the disturbance that followed the procession was soon scattered over the fields and plains, with torches glimmering from all points like so many eyes in the black night.
While our knight errant was lunging with his spear in all directions, the meek followers of the dead body became ensnared in their skirts and gowns and long white shirts, and fell head over heels wherever they happened to be, in ditch or field. Moans, groans, and prayers were intermingled, and they all were convinced that the procession had been interrupted by the devil himself, come to carry away the body of the dead man.