his crazy chivalry and ill-errant notions; and when he saw the poor
knight draw near, without entering into any parley with him, at
Rocinante's top speed he bore down upon him with the pike pointed low,
fully determined to run him through and through, and as he reached him,
without checking the fury of his charge, he cried to him:

"Defend thyself, miserable being, or yield me of thine own accord that
which is so reasonably my due."

The barber, who without any expectation or apprehension of it saw this
apparition coming down upon him, had no other way of saving himself from
the stroke of the lance but to let himself fall off his ass; and no
sooner had he touched the ground than he sprang up more nimbly than a
deer and sped away across the plain faster than the wind.

He left the basin on the ground, with which Don Quixote contented
himself, saying that the pagan had shown his discretion and imitated the
beaver, which finding itself pressed by the hunters bites and cuts off
with its teeth that for which, by its natural instinct, it knows it is
pursued.

He told Sancho to pick up the helmet, and he taking it in his hands said:

"By God the basin is a good one, and worth a real of eight if it is worth
a maravedis," and handed it to his master, who immediately put it on his
head, turning it round, now this way, now that, in search of fitment, and
not finding it he said, "Clearly the pagan to whose measure this famous
head-piece was first forged must have had a very large head; but the
worst of it is half of it is wanting."