CHAPTER XIII
How Don Quixote set at liberty many poor Wretches who were being taken to a Place to which they had no wish to go
As they rode onwards, Don Quixote lifted up his eyes and saw coming along the road about a dozen men on foot, strung together on a great wire chain like beads. The chain was fastened round their necks, and they had manacles on their hands. There rode with them two men a-horseback, and two others followed on foot. The horsemen had firelocks, and those on foot javelins and swords.
As soon as Sancho saw them he said: 'This is a chain of galley slaves, people forced by the King to go to the galleys.'
'How! People forced?' asked Don Quixote. 'Is it possible that the King will force anybody?'
'I say not so,' answered Sancho, 'but they are people condemned for their offences to serve the King in the galleys.'
'In fact,' replied Don Quixote, 'however you put it, these folk are being taken where they go by force and not of their own free will.'
'That is so,' said Sancho.
'Then if it be so,' continued his Master, 'here I see before me my duty to redress outrages and to give help to the poor and the afflicted.'
'I pray you, Sir,' said Sancho, 'consider that Justice, representing the King himself, does wrong or violence to nobody, but only punishes those who have committed crimes.'
By this time the chain of galley slaves came up, and Don Quixote in very courteous words asked those in charge of them to be good enough to inform him why they carried people away in that manner.