ng
you from being blanketed as I was, and bringing you out victorious and
safe and sound from among all those enemies that were with the dead man;
and if all this does not move or soften that hard heart, let this thought
and reflection move it, that you will have hardly quitted this spot when
from pure fear I shall yield my soul up to anyone that will take it. I
left home and wife and children to come and serve your worship, trusting
to do better and not worse; but as covetousness bursts the bag, it has
rent my hopes asunder, for just as I had them highest about getting that
wretched unlucky island your worship has so often promised me, I see that
instead and in lieu of it you mean to desert me now in a place so far
from human reach: for God's sake, master mine, deal not so unjustly by
me, and if your worship will not entirely give up attempting this feat,
at least put it off till morning, for by what the lore I learned when I
was a shepherd tells me it cannot want three hours of dawn now, because
the mouth of the Horn is overhead and makes midnight in the line of the
left arm."

"How canst thou see, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "where it makes that
line, or where this mouth or this occiput is that thou talkest of, when
the night is so dark that there is not a star to be seen in the whole
heaven?"

"That's true," said Sancho, "but fear has sharp eyes, and sees things
underground, much more above in heavens; besides, there is good reason to
show that it now wants but little of day."

"Let it want what it may," replied Don Quixote, "it shall not be said of
me now or at any time that tears or entreaties turned me aside from doing
what was in accordance with knightly usage; and so I beg of thee, Sancho,
to hold thy peace, for God, who has put it into my heart to undertake now
this so unexampled and terrible adventure, will take care to watch over
my safety and console thy sorrow; what thou hast to do is to tighten
Rocinante's girths well, and wait here, for I shall come back shortly,
alive or dead."

Sancho perceiving it his master's final resolve, and how little his
tears, counsels, and entreaties prevailed with him, determined to have
recourse to his own ingenuity and compel him, if he could, to wait till
daylight; and so, while tightening the girths of the horse, he quietly
and without being felt, with his ass' halter tied both Rocinante's legs,
so that when Don Quixote strove to go he was unable as the horse could
on