DON QUIXOTE

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not a lance length from his body, and sees too that with the first
heedless step he will go down to visit the profundities of Neptune's
bosom, still with dauntless heart, urged on by honour that nerves him, he
makes himself a target for all that musketry, and struggles to cross that
narrow path to the enemy's ship. And what is still more marvellous, no
sooner has one gone down into the depths he will never rise from till the
end of the world, than another takes his place; and if he too falls into
the sea that waits for him like an enemy, another and another will
succeed him without a moment's pause between their deaths: courage and
daring the greatest that all the chances of war can show. Happy the blest
ages that knew not the dread fury of those devilish engines of artillery,
whose inventor I am persuaded is in hell receiving the reward of his
diabolical invention, by which he made it easy for a base and cowardly
arm to take the life of a gallant gentleman; and that, when he knows not
how or whence, in the height of the ardour and enthusiasm that fire and
animate brave hearts, there should come some random bullet, discharged
perhaps by one who fled in terror at the flash when he fired off his