“I might as well talk to a stump as try to persuade you to do a good act,” answered Don Quixote. “Now I see that two rival enchanters have clashed in this adventure. One sent me a boat, the other overwhelmed it in the river. It is very plain that I can do nothing where there is such plotting and counter-plotting.”
Then he turned his face toward the mill and raised his eyes to the window above the wheel.
“My friends!” he cried at the top of his voice, “my friends, whoever you are who lie immured in that prison, hear me! Pardon my ill luck, for I cannot set you free. You must needs wait for some other knight to perform that adventure.”
Having said this, he ordered Sancho to pay the fisherman fifty reals for the boat. Sancho obeyed sullenly, for he was reluctant to part with the money.
“Two voyages like that will sink all our stock,” he muttered.
The fisherman and the millers stood with their mouths open, wondering what sort of men these were who had come so strangely into their midst. Then, concluding that they were madmen, they left them, the millers going to their mill, and the fisherman to his hut.
As for Don Quixote and Sancho, they trudged sorrowfully back to their beasts; and thus ended the adventure of the enchanted bark.
—Retold from Cervantes.