DON QUIXOTE

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by this time to be a captain of infantry, to which honourable charge my
good luck rather than my merits raised me; and that day--so fortunate for
Christendom, because then all the nations of the earth were disabused of
the error under which they lay in imagining the Turks to be invincible on
sea-on that day, I say, on which the Ottoman pride and arrogance were
broken, among all that were there made happy (for the Christians who died
that day were happier than those who remained alive and victorious) I
alone was miserable; for, instead of some naval crown that I might have
expected had it been in Roman times, on the night that followed that
famous day I found myself with fetters on my feet and manacles on my
hands.

It happened in this way: El Uchali, the king of Algiers, a daring and
successful corsair, having attacked and taken the leading Maltese galley
(only three knights being left alive in it, and they badly wounded), the
chief galley of John Andrea, on board of which I and my company were
placed, came to its relief, and doing as was bound to do in such a case,