to be moved along; and in the space of an hour, or better, that side
of the box where the staples were, and had no windows, struck against
something that was hard. I apprehended it to be a rock, and found
myself tossed more than ever. I plainly heard a noise upon the cover
of my closet, like that of a cable, and the grating of it as it passed
through the ring. I then found myself hoisted up, by degrees, at least
three feet higher than I was before. Whereupon I again thrust up my
stick and handkerchief, calling for help till I was almost hoarse. In
return to which, I heard a great shout repeated three times, giving me
such transports of joy as are not to be conceived but by those who
feel them. I now heard a trampling over my head, and somebody calling
through the hole with a loud voice, in the English tongue, If there be
anybody below, let them speak. I answered, I was an Englishman, drawn
by ill fortune into the greatest calamity that ever any creature
underwent, and begged, by all that was moving, to be delivered out of
the dungeon I was in. The voice replied, I was safe, for my box was
fastened to their ship; and the carpenter should immediately come and
saw a hole in the cover, large enough to pull me out. I answered that
was needless, and would take up too much time; for there was no more
to be done but let one of the crew put his finger into the ring, and
take the box out of the sea into the ship, and so into the captain's
cabin. Some of them, upon hearing me talk so wildly, thought I was
mad; others laughed; for indeed it never came into my head that I was
now got among people of my own stature and strength. The carpenter
came, and in a few minutes sawed a passage about four feet square,
then let down a small ladder, upon which I mounted, and from thence
was taken into the ship in a very weak condition.
The sailors were all in amazement, and asked me a thousand questions,
which I had no inclination to answer. I was equally confounded at the
sight of so many pygmies, for such I took them to be, after having so
long accustomed mine eyes to the monstrous objects I had left. But the
captain, Mr. Thomas Wilcocks, an honest, worthy Shropshire man,
observing I was ready to faint, took me into his cabin, gave me a
cordial to comfort me, and made me turn in upon his own bed, advising
me to take a little rest, of which I had great need. Before I went to
sleep, I gave him to understand that I had valuable furniture in my
box, too good to be lost: a fine hammock, an handsome field bed, two
chairs, a table, and a cabinet; that my closet was hung on all sides,
or rather quilted, with silk and cotton; that if he would let one of
the crew bring my closet into his cabin, I would open it there before
him, and show him my goods. The captain, hearing me utter these
absurdities, concluded I was raving; however (I suppose to pacify me),
he promised to give order as I desired, and going upon deck sent some
of his men down into my closet, from whence (as I afterwards found),
they drew up all my goods, and stripped off the quilting; but the
chairs, cabinet, and bedstead, being screwed to the floor, were much
damaged by the ignorance of the seamen, who tore them up by force.
Then they knocked off some of the boards for the use of the ship, and
when they had got all they had a mind for, let the hulk drop into the
sea, which, by reason of many breaches made in the bottom and sides,
sunk to rights. And indeed I was glad not to have been a spectator of
the havoc they made; because I am confident it would have sensibly
touched me, by bringing former passages into my mind which I had
rather forget.
I slept some hours, but perpetually disturbed with dreams of the place
I had left and the dangers I had escaped. However, upon waking, I
found myself much recovered. It was now about eight o'clock at night,
and the captain ordered supper immediately, thinking I had already
fasted too long. He entertained me with great kindness, observing me
not to look wildly, or talk inconsistently; and, when we were left
alone, desired I would give him a relation of my travels, and by what
accident I came to be set adrift in that monstrous wooden chest. He
said that about twelve o'clock at noon, as he was looking through his
glass, he espied it at a distance, and thought it was a sail, which he
had a mind to make, being not much out of his course, in hopes of
buying some biscuit, his own beginning to fall short. That upon coming
nearer, and finding his error, he sent out his longboat, to discover
what I was; that his men came back in a fright, swearing they had seen
a swimming house. That he laughed at their folly, and went himself in
the boat, ordering his men to take a strong cable along with them.
That the weather being calm, he rowed round me several times, observed
my windows and the wire lattices that defended them. That he
discovered two staples upon one side, which was all of boards, without
any passage for light. He then commanded his men to row up to that
side, and, fastening a cable to one of the staples, ordered them to
tow my chest (as they called it) toward the ship. When it was there,
he gave directions to fasten another cable to the ring fixed in the
cover, and to raise up my chest with pulleys, which all the sailors
were not able to do above two or three feet. He said they saw my stick
and handkerchief thrust out of the hole, and concluded that some
unhappy man must be shut up in the cavity. I asked whether he or the
crew had seen any prodigious bird in the air, about the time he first
discovered me? To which he answered that, discoursing this matter with
the sailors while I was asleep, one of them said he had observed three
eagles flying towards the north, but remarked nothing of their being
larger than the usual size; which I suppose must be imputed to the
great height they were at; and he could not guess the reason of my
question. I then asked the captain how far he reckoned we might be
from land. He said, by the best computation he could make, we were at
least an hundred leagues. I assured him that he must be mistaken by
almost half, for I had not left the country from whence I came above
two hours before I dropped into the sea. Whereupon he began again to
think that my brain was disturbed, of which he gave me a hint, and
advised me to go to bed in a cabin he had provided. I assured him I
was well refreshed with his good entertainment and company, and as
much in my senses as ever I was in my life. He then grew serious, and
desired to ask me freely, whether I were not troubled in my mind by
the consciousness of some enormous crime, for which I was punished, at
the command of some prince, by exposing me in that chest; as great
criminals, in other countries, have been forced to sea in a leaky
vessel, without provisions; for although he should be sorry to have
taken so ill a man into his ship, yet he would engage his word to set
me safe ashore, in the first port where we arrived. He added that his
suspicions were much increased by some very absurd speeches I had
delivered at first to the sailors, and afterwards to himself, in
relation to my closet or chest, as well as by my odd looks and
behavior while I was at supper.
I begged his patience to hear me tell my story, which I faithfully
did, from the last time I left England to the moment he first
discovered me. And as truth always forceth its way into rational
minds, so this honest, worthy gentleman, who had some tincture of
learning, and very good sense, was immediately convinced of my candor
and veracity. But, further to confirm all I had said, I entreated him
to give order that my cabinet should be brought, of which I had the
key in my pocket (for he had already informed me how the seamen
disposed of my closet). I opened it in his own presence, and showed
him the small collection of rarities I made in the country from whence
I had been so strangely delivered. There was the comb I had contrived
out of the stumps of the king's beard, and another of the same
materials, but fixed into a paring of her majesty's thumb-nail, which
served for the back. There was a collection of needles and pins, from
a foot to half a yard long; four wasp stings, like joiners' tacks;
some combings of the queen's hair; a gold ring which one day she made
me a present of, in a most obliging manner, taking it from her little
finger and throwing it over my head like a collar. I desired the
captain would please to accept this ring in return of his civilities;
which he absolutely refused. I showed him a corn that I had cut off,
with my own hand, from a maid of honor's toe; it was about the bigness
of a Kentish pippin, and grown so hard that when I returned to England
I got it hollowed into a cup, and set in silver. Lastly, I desired him
to see the breeches I had then on, which were made of a mouse's skin.
I could force nothing on him but a footman's tooth, which I observed
him to examine with great curiosity, and found he had a fancy for it.
He received it with abundance of thanks, more than such a trifle could
deserve. It was drawn by an unskillful surgeon, in a mistake, from one
of Glumdalclitch's men, who was afflicted with the toothache, but it
was as sound as any in his head. I got it cleaned, and put it into my
cabinet. It was about a foot long, and four inches in diameter.
The captain was very well satisfied with this plain relation I had
given him, and said he hoped, when we returned to England, I would
oblige the world by putting it in paper, and making it public. My
answer was that I thought we were already overstocked with books of
travels; that nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary;
wherein I doubted some authors less consulted truth than their own
vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers; that my
story could contain little besides common events, without those
ornamental descriptions of strange plants, trees, birds, and other
animals, or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of savage people,
with which most writers abound. However, I thanked him for his good
opinion, and promised to take the matter into my thoughts.
He said he wondered at one thing very much, which was to hear me speak
so loud; asking me whether the king or queen of that country were
thick of hearing. I told him it was what I had been used to for above
two years past, and that I admired as much at the voices of him and
his men, who seemed to me only to whisper, and yet I could hear them
well enough. But, when I spoke in that country, it was like a man
talking in the street to another looking out from the top of a
steeple, unless when I was placed on a table, or held in any person's
hand. I told him I had likewise observed another thing, that when I
first got into the ship, and the sailors stood all about me, I thought
they were the most little, contemptible creatures I had ever beheld.
For, indeed, while I was in that prince's country, I could never
endure to look in a glass after mine eyes had been accustomed to such
prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a
conceit of myself. The captain said that while we were at supper he
observed me to look at everything with a sort of wonder, and that I
often seemed hardly able to contain my laughter, which he knew not
well how to take, but imputed it to some disorder in my brain. I
answered it was very true; and I wondered how I could forbear, when I
saw his dishes of the size of a silver three-pence, a leg of pork
hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a nutshell; and so I went on,
describing the rest of his household stuff and provisions after the
same manner. For, although the queen had ordered a little equipage of
all things necessary while I was in her service, yet my ideas were
wholly taken up with what I saw on every side of me, and I winked at
my own littleness as people do at their own faults. The captain
understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old
English proverb, that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly,
for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all
day; and, continuing in his mirth, protested he would have gladly
given an hundred pounds to have seen my closet in the eagle's bill,
and afterwards in its fall from so great a height into the sea; which
would certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have
the description of it transmitted to future ages; and the comparison
of Phaëthon was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it,
although I did not much admire the conceit.
The captain, having been at Tonquin, was, in his return to England,
driven northeastward to the latitude of 44 degrees, and of longitude
143. But meeting a trade wind two days after I came on board him, we
sailed southward a long time, and coasting New Holland kept our course
west-southwest, and then south-southwest, till we doubled the Cape of
Good Hope. Our voyage was very prosperous, but I shall not trouble the
reader with a journal of it. The captain called in at one or two
ports, and sent in his longboat for provisions and fresh water; but I
never went out of the ship till we came into the Downs, which was on
the third day of June, 1706, about nine months after my escape. I
offered to leave my goods in security for payment of my freight, but
the captain protested he would not receive one farthing. We took a
kind leave of each other, and I made him promise he would come to see
me at my house in Redriff. I hired a horse and guide for five
shillings, which I borrowed of the captain.
As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the
trees, the cattle, and the people, I began to think myself in
Lilliput. I was afraid of trampling on every traveler I met, and often
called aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to
have gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence.
When I came to my own house, for which I was forced to inquire, one of
the servants opening the door, I bent down to go in (like a goose
under a gate), for fear of striking my head. My wife ran out to
embrace me, but I stooped lower than her knees, thinking she could
otherwise never be able to reach my mouth. My daughter kneeled to ask
my blessing, but I could not see her till she arose, having been so
long used to stand with my head and eyes erect to above sixty feet;
and then I went to take her up with one hand by the waist. I looked
down upon the servants, and one or two friends who were in the house,
as if they had been pygmies, and I a giant. I told my wife she had
been too thrifty, for I found she had starved herself and her daughter
to nothing. In short, I behaved myself so unaccountably that they were
all of the captain's opinion when he first saw me, and concluded I had
lost my wits. This I mention as an instance of the great power of
habit and prejudice.
In a little time, I and my family and friends came to a right
understanding; but my wife protested I should never go to sea any
more; although my evil destiny so ordered that she had not power to
hinder me, as the reader may know hereafter. In the meantime, I here
conclude the Second Part of my unfortunate Voyages.
DON QUIXOTE
DON QUIXOTE DETERMINES TO BECOME A KNIGHT
_By Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra_
At a certain village in La Mancha, of which I cannot remember the
name, there lived not long ago one of those old-fashioned gentlemen
who are never without a lance upon a rack, an old target, a lean
horse, and a greyhound. His diet consisted more of beef than mutton;
and with minced meat on most nights, lentils on Fridays, griefs and
groans on Saturdays, and a pigeon extraordinary on Sundays, he
consumed three quarters of his revenue; the rest was laid out in a
plush coat, velvet breeches, with slippers of the same, for holidays;
and a suit of the very best homespun cloth, which he bestowed on
himself for working days. His whole family was a housekeeper something
turned of forty, a niece not twenty, and a man that served him in the
house and in the field, and could saddle a horse, and handle the
pruning hook. The master himself was nigh fifty years of age, of a
hale and strong complexion, lean-bodied and thin-faced, an early
riser, and a lover of hunting. Some say his surname was Quixada, or
Quesada (for authors differ in this particular); however, we may
reasonably conjecture he was called Quixana; though this concerns us
but little, provided we keep strictly to the truth in every point of
this history.
You must know, then, that when our gentleman had nothing to do (which
was almost all the year round), he passed his time in reading books of
knight-errantry, which he did with that application and delight, that
at last he in a manner wholly left off his country sports, and even
the care of his estate; nay, he grew so strangely besotted with these
amusements that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of
that kind, by which means he collected as many of them as were to be
had; but, among them all, none pleased him like the works of the
famous Feliciano de Sylva; for the clearness of his prose and those
intricate expressions with which it is interlaced, seemed to him so
many pearls of eloquence, especially when he came to read the
challenges, and the amorous addresses, many of them in this
extraordinary style: "The reason of your unreasonable usage of my
reason does so enfeeble my reason that I have reason to expostulate
with your beauty." And this: "The sublime heavens, which with your
divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, and fix you the deserver
of the desert that is deserved by your grandeur." These, and such like
expressions, strangely puzzled the poor gentleman's understanding,
while he was breaking his brain to unravel their meaning, which
Aristotle himself could never have found, though he should have been
raised from the dead for that very purpose.
He did not so well like those dreadful wounds which Don Belianis gave
and received; for he considered that all the art of surgery could
never secure his face and body from being strangely disfigured with
scars. However, he highly commended the author for concluding his book
with a promise to finish that unfinishable adventure; and many times
he had a desire to put pen to paper, and faithfully and literally
finish it himself; which he had certainly done, and doubtless with
good success, had not his thoughts been wholly engrossed in much more
important designs.
He would often dispute with the curate of the parish, a man of
learning, that had taken his degrees at Giguenza, who was the better
knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis de Gaul; but Master Nicholas,
the barber of the same town, would say, that none of them could
compare with the Knight of the Sun; and that if any one came near him,
it was certainly Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis de Gaul; for he was
a man of a most commodious temper, neither was he so finical nor such
a puling, whining lover as his brother; and as for courage, he was not
a jot behind him.
In fine, he gave himself up so wholly to the reading of romances, that
at nights he would pore on until it was day, and by day he would read
on until it was night; and thus by sleeping little and reading much,
the moisture of his brain was exhausted to that degree that at last he
lost the use of his reason. A world of disorderly notions, picked out
of his books, crowded into his imagination; and now his head was full
of nothing but enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds,
complaints, amours, torments, and abundance of stuff and
impossibilities; insomuch that all the fables and fantastical tales
which he read, seemed to him now as true as the most authentic
histories. He would say, that the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very brave
knight, but not worthy to stand in competition with the Knight of the
Burning-sword, who, with a single backstroke, had cut in sunder two
fierce and mighty giants. He liked yet better Bernardo del Carpio,
who, at Roncesvalles, deprived of life the enchanted Orlando, having
lifted him from the ground, and choked him in the air, as Hercules did
Antæus, the son of the Earth.
As for the giant Morgante, he always spoke very civil things of him;
for though he was one of that monstrous brood who ever were
intolerably proud and brutish, he still behaved himself like a civil
and well-bred person.
But of all men in the world he admired Rinaldo of Montalban, and
particularly his sallying out of his castle to rob all he met; and
then again when abroad he carried away the idol of Mahomet, which was
all massy gold, as the history says; but he so hated that traitor
Galalon, that for the pleasure of kicking him handsomely, he would
have given up his housekeeper; nay, and his niece into the bargain.
Having thus lost his understanding, he unluckily stumbled upon the
oddest fancy that ever entered into a madman's brain; for now he
thought it convenient and necessary, as well for the increase of his
own honor as the service of the public, to turn knight-errant, and
roam through the whole world, armed cap-a-pie, and mounted on his
steed, in quest of adventures; that thus imitating those
knights-errant of whom he had read, and following their course of
life, redressing all manner of grievances, and exposing himself to
danger on all occasions, at last, after a happy conclusion of his
enterprises, he might purchase everlasting honor and renown.
Transported with these agreeable delusions, the poor gentleman already
grasped in imagination the imperial sceptre of Trebizond, and, hurried
away by his mighty expectations, he prepares with all expedition to
take the field.
The first thing he did was to scour a suit of armor that had belonged
to his great-grandfather, and had lain time out of mind carelessly
rusting in a corner; but when he had cleaned and repaired it as well
as he could, he perceived there was a material piece wanting; for,
instead of a complete helmet, there was only a single headpiece.
However, his industry supplied that defect; for with some pasteboard
he made a kind of half-beaver, or vizor, which, being fitted to the
headpiece, made it look like an entire helmet. Then, to know whether
it were cutlass-proof, he drew his sword, and tried its edge upon the
pasteboard vizor; but with the very first stroke he unluckily undid in
a moment what he had been a whole week a-doing. He did not like its
being broken with so much ease, and therefore, to secure it from the
like accident, he made it anew, and fenced it with thin plates of
iron, which he fixed on the inside of it so artificially that at last
he had reason to be satisfied with the solidity of the work; and so,
without any further experiment, he resolved it should pass to all
intents and purposes for a full and sufficient helmet.
It was time to look to his horse, who had more false quarter than
real, being a worse jade than Gonela's, _qui tantum pellis et ossa
fuit_; however, his master thought that neither Alexander's Bucephalus
nor the Cid's Babieca could be compared with him. He was four days
considering what name to give him; for, as he argued with himself,
there was no reason that a horse bestrid by so famous a knight, and
withal so excellent in himself, should not be distinguished by a
particular name; and therefore he studied to give him such a one as
should demonstrate as well what kind of horse he had been before his
master was a knight-errant, as what he was now; thinking it but just,
since the owner changed his profession, that the horse should also
change his title, and be dignified with another; a good big word, such
a one as should fill the mouth, and seem consonant with the quality
and profession of his master. And thus, after many names which he
devised, rejected, changed, liked, disliked, and pitched upon again,
he concluded to call him Rozinante; a name, in his opinion, lofty,
sounding, and significant of what he had been before, and also of what
he was now; in a word, a horse before, or above, all the vulgar breed
of horses in the world.
When he had thus given his horse a name so much to his satisfaction,
he thought of choosing one for himself; and having seriously pondered
on the matter eight whole days more, at last he determined to call
himself Don Quixote. Whence the author of this most authentic history
draws this inference, that his right name was Quixada, and not
Quesada, as others would maintain. And observing that the valiant
Amadis, not satisfied with the bare appellation of Amadis, added to it
the name of his country, that it might grow more famous by his
exploits, and so styled himself Amadis de Gaul; so he, like a true
lover of his native soil, resolved to call himself Don Quixote de la
Mancha; which addition, to his thinking, denoted very plainly his
parentage and country, and consequently would fix a lasting honor on
that part of the world.