DON QUIXOTE

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he was slain by some Arabs to whom, seeing that the fort was now lost, he
entrusted himself, and who offered to conduct him in the disguise of a
Moor to Tabarca, a small fort or station on the coast held by the Genoese
employed in the coral fishery. These Arabs cut off his head and carried
it to the commander of the Turkish fleet, who proved on them the truth of
our Castilian proverb, that "though the treason may please, the traitor
is hated;" for they say he ordered those who brought him the present to
be hanged for not having brought him alive.

Among the Christians who were taken in the fort was one named Don Pedro
de Aguilar, a native of some place, I know not what, in Andalusia, who
had been ensign in the fort, a soldier of great repute and rare
intelligence, who had in particular a special gift for what they call
poetry. I say so because his fate brought him to my galley and to my
bench, and made him a slave to the same master; and before we left the
port this gentleman composed two sonnets by way of epitaphs, one on the
Goletta and the other on the fort; indeed, I may as well repeat them, for