Then he stood up in the boat and began to call the millers all sorts of bad names.
“You paltry cowards!” he cried. “Release at once the captive whom you are detaining within your castle. For I am Don Quixote de la Mancha, the Knight of the Lions, whom heaven has sent to set your prisoner free.”
He drew his sword and began to thrust the air with it, as though fighting with an invisible enemy. But the millers gave little heed to his actions, and stood ready with their poles to stop the boat.
Sancho threw himself on his knees in the bottom of the boat and began to pray for deliverance. And, indeed, it seemed as though their time had come, for they were drifting straight into the wheel. Quickly the millers bestirred themselves, and thrusting out their poles they overturned the boat.
Don Quixote and Sancho were, of course, spilled out into the stream. It was lucky that both could swim. The weight of the knight’s armor dragged him twice to the bottom; and both he and his squire would have been drowned had not two of the millers jumped in and pulled them out by main force.
Hardly had our exhausted heroes recovered their senses when the fisherman who owned the boat came running down to the shore. When he saw that the little craft had been broken to pieces in the millwheel, he fell upon Sancho and began to beat him unmercifully.
“You shall pay me for that boat,” he cried.
“I am ready to pay for it,” said Don Quixote, “provided these people will fairly and immediately surrender the prisoners whom they have unjustly detained in their castle.”
“What castle do you mean? and what prisoners?” asked the millers. “Explain yourself, sir. We don’t know what you are talking about.”