THE DISPUTED POMMEL
CHAPTER XXVIII
Wherein is continued the wonderful Adventures at the Inn
While Don Quixote hung suspended between heaven and earth, his outcries were so terrible that the Innkeeper ran to the door, and opened it hastily and in great fright, to see who it was that roared so loud.
Maritornes, whom the cries had also awakened, guessing what it was, ran to the hay-loft, and, unseen by any one, loosed the halter that held up Don Quixote, and he fell at once to the ground in the sight of the Innkeeper and the four travellers, who, coming up to him, asked him what ailed him.
He, without any answer slipped the halter from his wrist, and, rising to his feet, leaped on Rozinante, braced on his shield, couched his lance, and, wheeling round the field, rode back at a hard-gallop, crying out: 'Whosoever shall dare to say that I have been with just title enchanted, if my Lady, the Princess Micomicona, will give me leave to do it, I say that he lies, and I challenge him to single combat.'
The travellers were amazed at his words, but the Host told them that they must not mind him, for he was out of his wits.
When Don Quixote saw that none of the four travellers made any account of him or answered his challenge, he was ready to burst with wrath and fury; and could he have found that a Knight Errant might lawfully accept and undertake another enterprise, having plighted his word and faith not to attempt any until he had finished that which he had first promised, he would have fallen upon them all, and made them give him an answer in spite of themselves.
Those in the Inn were now fully aroused, and had come with the Innkeeper to see the new arrivals. Whilst they were talking to the four travellers, in the big room where they had supped, they heard a noise outside, the cause of which was that some dishonest guests, who had stayed there that night, seeing all the people busy to know the cause of the four horsemen coming, had thought to escape scot free without paying their reckoning. But the Innkeeper, who attended his own affairs with more diligence than other men's, stopped them going out and demanded his money, upbraiding their dishonest conduct with such words, that they returned him an answer with their fists; and this they did so roundly that the poor Innkeeper was compelled to cry for help.