DON QUIXOTE

Back Forward Menu

also, that are on ransom, do not go out to work with the rest of the
crew, unless when their ransom is delayed; for then, to make them write
for it more pressingly, they compel them to work and go for wood, which
is no light labour.

I, however, was one of those on ransom, for when it was discovered that I
was a captain, although I declared my scanty means and want of fortune,
nothing could dissuade them from including me among the gentlemen and
those waiting to be ransomed. They put a chain on me, more as a mark of
this than to keep me safe, and so I passed my life in that bano with
several other gentlemen and persons of quality marked out as held to
ransom; but though at times, or rather almost always, we suffered from
hunger and scanty clothing, nothing distressed us so much as hearing and
seeing at every turn the unexampled and unheard-of cruelties my master
inflicted upon the Christians. Every day he hanged a man, impaled one,
cut off the ears of another; and all with so little provocation, or so
entirely without any, that the Turks acknowledged he did it merely for