cloak about mine arm. Five or six skirmishes we had; and for a pretty while, fought off and on.
At last, I getting, with much ado, to the top of a sandy hillock, the horseman nimbly followed up after. By good fortune to me (though bad to himself) he had no petronel or pistols about him: and there clapping spurs to his horse's sides; his intent, as it seemed, was with full career to ride over me, and trample me under his horse's feet. But a providence greater than his fury, was my guard.
Time was it for me to look about warily and to lay about lustily; to defend a poor life so hardly distressed. As therefore his horse was violently breaking in upon me, I struck him in the eyes with a flap of my cloak. Upon which, turning sideward, I took my advantage; and, as readily as I could, stepping in, it pleased GOD that I should pluck my enemy down, and leave him at my mercy for life: which notwithstanding I gave him, he falling on his knees, and crying out in French to me. Pardonnez-moi,je vous prie, je suis un bon Chrêtien. "Pardon me, Sir! I am a good Christian."
I, seeing him brave, and having a soldier's mind to rifle him, I searched for jewels but found none, only five pieces of eight about him in all, amounting to twenty shillings English. Yet he had gold, but that I could not come by. For I was in haste to have sent his Spanish knighthood home on foot, and to have taught his horse an English pace.
Thus far my voyage for oranges had sped well; but in the end, it proved a sour sauce to me: and it is harder to keep a victory than to obtain one. So here it fell out with mine.
For fourteen Spanish musketeers spying me so busy about one of their countrymen, bent [aimed] all the mouths of their pieces to kill me; which they could not well do, without endangering Don JUAN'S life. So that I was enforced (and glad I escaped so too) to yield myself their prisoner.
True valour, I see, goes not always in good clothes. For he, whom before I had surprised, seeing me fast in the snare; and as the event proved, disdaining that his countrymen should report him so dishonoured; most basely, when my hands were in a manner bound behind me, drew out his
