Cid Hamete Benengeli, the Arab and Manchegan author, relates in this most grave, high-sounding, minute, delightful, and original history that after the discussion between the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha and his squire Sancho Panza which is set down at the end of chapter twenty-one, Don Quixote raised his eyes and saw coming along the road he was following some dozen men on foot strung together by the neck, like beads, on a great iron chain, and all with manacles on their hands.
With them there came also two men on horseback and two on foot; those on horseback with wheel-lock muskets, those on foot with javelins and swords, and as soon as Sancho saw them he said: 'That is a chain of galley slaves, on the way to the galleys by force of the king’s orders.
' 'How by force? ' asked Don Quixote; 'is it possible that the king uses force against anyone? ' 'I do not say that,' answered Sancho, 'but that these are people condemned for their crimes to serve by force in the king’s galleys.
' 'In fact,' replied Don Quixote, 'however it may be, these people are going where they are taking them by force, and not of their own will. ' 'Just so,' said Sancho.
'Then if so,' said Don Quixote, 'here is a case for the exercise of my office, to put down force and to succour and help the wretched.
' 'Recollect, your worship,' said Sancho, 'Justice, which is the king himself, is not using force or doing wrong to such persons, but punishing them for their crimes.
' The chain of galley slaves had by this time come up, and Don Quixote in very courteous language asked those who were in custody of it to be good enough to tell him the reason or reasons for