lamp and morning star, they were sure to bring
their business to a successful issue.

"How am I to march, unlucky being that I am?" said Sancho, "when I can't
stir my knee-caps, for these boards I have bound so tight to my body
won't let me. What you must do is carry me in your arms, and lay me
across or set me upright in some postern, and I'll hold it either with
this lance or with my body."

"On, senor governor!" cried another, "it is fear more than the boards
that keeps you from moving; make haste, stir yourself, for there is no
time to lose; the enemy is increasing in numbers, the shouts grow louder,
and the danger is pressing."

Urged by these exhortations and reproaches the poor governor made an
attempt to advance, but fell to the ground with such a crash that he
fancied he had broken himself all to pieces. There he lay like a tortoise
enclosed in its shell, or a side of bacon between two kneading-troughs,
or a boat bottom up on the beach; nor did the gang of jokers feel any
compassion for him when they saw him down; so far from that,
extinguishing their torches they began to shout afresh and to renew the
calls to arms with such energy, trampling on poor Sancho, and slashing at
him over the shield with their swords in such a way that, if he had not
gathered himself together and made himself small and drawn in his head
between the shields, it would have fared badly with the poor governor,
as, squeezed into that narrow compass, he lay, sweating and sweating
again, and commending himself with all his heart to God to deliver him
from his present peril. Some stumbled over him, others fell upon him, and
one there was who took up a position on top of him for some time, and
from thence as if from a watchtower issued orders to the troops, shouting
out, "Here, our side! Here the enemy is thickest! Hold the breach there!
Shut that gate! Barricade those ladders! Here with your stink-pots of
pitch and resin, and kettles of boiling oil! Block the streets with
feather beds!" In short, in his ardour he mentioned every little thing,
and every implement and engine of war by means of which an assault upon a
city is warded off, while the bruised and battered Sancho, who heard and
suffered all, was saying to himself, "O if it would only please the Lord
to let the island be lost at once, and I could see myself either dead or
out of this torture!" Heaven heard his prayer, and when he least expected
it he heard voices exclaiming, "Vic