Level B2 · Chapter 73
The Enchanted Boat on the Ebro
Don Quixote and Sancho find an ownerless boat on the Ebro and climb into it. One of them believes they are heading for an adventure and the other that they are going to get wet.
What you will learn
- Suppose something without asserting it, using deber de plus an infinitive.
- Use quizá, tal vez and a lo mejor with the mood each of them takes.
- Keep deber de and deber apart, because they say different things.
Before you read
Almost nothing in this text is asserted. The boat must have been placed there, they must have sailed hundreds of leagues, perhaps the cosmographers were wrong. Two people are guessing at each other all the way down a river. Watch the two ways Spanish marks a guess: one is a verb phrase and the other is an adverb that changes the mood of what follows.The story in easy Spanish
Dos días después de salir de la venta llegaron a las orillas del río Ebro.
Two days after leaving the inn they came to the banks of the river Ebro.
El río iba manso y muy ancho, y el agua le alegró la vista a don Quijote.
The river ran calm and very wide, and the sight of the water cheered Don Quixote.
Atado a un tronco, sin dueño ni remos, había un barco pequeño y viejo.
Tied to a tree trunk, with no owner and no oars, lay a small old boat.
Don Quijote lo miró un buen rato desde arriba antes de decir nada a su escudero.
Don Quixote looked at it for a good while from above before saying anything to his squire.
Dijo por fin que aquella barca debía de estar puesta allí a propósito para él.
He said at last that the boat must have been placed there on purpose for him.
En los libros de caballerías, explicó, un barco vacío nunca está vacío por pura casualidad.
In books of chivalry, he explained, an empty boat is never empty by pure chance.
Es señal de que alguien necesita al caballero a cien o mil leguas de distancia.
It is a sign that somebody needs the knight a hundred or a thousand leagues away.
Sancho contestó que quizá el barco fuese sencillamente de un pescador del pueblo.
Sancho replied that perhaps the boat simply belonged to a fisherman from the village.
Dijo que los pescadores no suelen encantar nada y que aquello olía a red mojada.
He said that fishermen do not usually enchant anything and that it smelled of wet netting.
Añadió que, si se subían, tal vez acabasen los dos remojados y a pie.
He added that if they got in, maybe the two of them would end up soaked and on foot.
Y que a lo mejor perdían por el camino el caballo y el burro para siempre.
And that quite possibly they would lose the horse and the donkey along the way for good.
No hubo manera de convencerlo, como no la había habido nunca en asuntos de caballería.
There was no convincing him, as there never had been in matters of knight-errantry.
Ataron a Rocinante y al rucio a un árbol de la orilla, bien sujetos.
They tied Rocinante and the donkey to a tree on the bank, firmly fastened.
Les encargaron a los dos animales que tuviesen paciencia y que esperasen allí.
They charged the two animals to be patient and to wait there.
Después se metieron en la barca, primero el amo y luego el escudero, sin mirar atrás.
Then they climbed into the boat, master first and squire after, without looking back.
Don Quijote cortó la cuerda con la espada de un solo tajo.
Don Quixote cut the rope with his sword in a single stroke.
La corriente los fue apartando de la orilla despacio, sin ruido y sin remos.
The current carried them away from the bank slowly, without noise and without oars.
Cuando se alejaron unas veinte varas, Sancho oyó rebuznar al rucio y se puso a llorar.
When they were some twenty yards out, Sancho heard the donkey bray and burst into tears.
Su amo le dijo que no llorase por tan poca cosa como un burro.
His master told him not to cry over so small a thing as a donkey.
Le dijo que a aquellas horas debían de haber navegado ya setecientas leguas.
He told him that by that hour they must have sailed seven hundred leagues already.
Añadió que quizá estuvieran pasando en ese mismo momento la línea equinoccial del mundo.
He added that perhaps at that very moment they were crossing the equator of the world.
Para comprobarlo, le mandó que se buscase piojos en el cuerpo con mucho cuidado.
To check, he ordered him to search his body for lice very carefully.
Según los cosmógrafos, le dijo, al pasar la línea se mueren todos de golpe.
According to the cosmographers, he told him, on crossing the line they all die at once.
Sancho se buscó, encontró varios muy vivos y se los enseñó a su amo.
Sancho searched, found several very much alive and showed them to his master.
Dijo que quizá los cosmógrafos no hubiesen viajado nunca en una barca prestada.
He said that perhaps the cosmographers had never travelled in a borrowed boat.
Río abajo aparecieron unas aceñas, que son unos molinos de agua puestos en la corriente.
Downstream some aceñas appeared, which are watermills set in the middle of the current.
Don Quijote las tomó por una ciudad grande o por un castillo con torres.
Don Quixote took them for a large city or for a castle with towers.
Dijo que allí dentro debía de estar preso algún caballero de mucha importancia y linaje.
He said that some knight of great importance and lineage must be held prisoner inside.
Se puso de pie en la barca y pidió a gritos que soltasen al cautivo.
He stood up in the boat and shouted for them to release the captive.
Los molineros salieron con pértigas, blancos de harina de la cabeza a los pies.
The millers came out with poles, white with flour from head to foot.
Gritaban que se apartasen de allí enseguida o los harían pedazos las ruedas del molino.
They were shouting for them to get clear at once or the mill wheels would tear them to pieces.
La barca se metió entre las palas, se rompió por la mitad y volcó.
The boat went in among the paddles, broke in half and capsized.
Sacaron a los dos del agua a tiempo, calados hasta los huesos y sin sombrero.
They fished the two of them out in time, soaked to the bone and without their hats.
Don Quijote pagó cincuenta reales por el barco roto sin discutir el precio con nadie.
Don Quixote paid fifty reales for the broken boat without arguing the price with anyone.
Dijo que aquello debía de ser obra de dos encantadores contrarios entre sí mismos.
He said the whole thing must be the work of two enchanters opposed to each other.
Uno le ofrecía la aventura y el otro se la deshacía antes de acabarla.
One offered him the adventure and the other undid it before he could finish it.
Vocabulary
The river and the boat
- manso
- calm, gentle
- la corriente
- the current
- el remo
- the oar
- la vara
- the yard
- volcar
- to capsize
- remojado
- soaked
- calado hasta los huesos
- soaked to the bone
- río abajo
- downstream
The watermills
- la aceña
- the river watermill
- el molinero
- the miller
- la pértiga
- the long pole
- la harina
- flour
- la pala
- the paddle
- la rueda
- the wheel
- hacer pedazos
- to tear to pieces
- apartarse
- to get clear
Guessing without knowing
- deber de
- must, probably
- quizá
- perhaps
- tal vez
- maybe
- a lo mejor
- quite possibly
- el cosmógrafo
- the cosmographer
- la línea equinoccial
- the equator
- el piojo
- the louse
- rebuznar
- to bray
Guessing: deber de, quizá and tal vez
Aquella barca debía de estar puesta allí a propósito.
Quizá el barco fuese de un pescador del pueblo.
A lo mejor perdían el caballo y el burro.
Spanish has a whole shelf of ways to say I think but I do not know, and this chapter uses most of them because neither character has any idea what is going on.
1. deber de plus infinitive
La barca debía de estar puesta allí a propósito. This is the English must of deduction. It takes an infinitive and it does not touch the mood of anything. For the past, use deber de haber plus a participle: debían de haber navegado setecientas leguas.
| Spanish | English | what it is |
|---|---|---|
| debe de estar preso | he must be a prisoner | a guess |
| debe estar preso | he ought to be a prisoner | an obligation |
Careful reading of that table is worth ten minutes. The whole difference is the word de. In practice modern Spanish blurs the two constantly and you will hear debe estar used for a guess, but write it with de and you will never be misunderstood.
2. quizá, tal vez, acaso, posiblemente
These take the subjunctive when they come first: Quizá el barco fuese de un pescador. If they come after the verb, the indicative returns: El barco era de un pescador, quizá. Both quizá and quizás are correct and mean the same.
3. a lo mejor, igual, lo mismo
These are the colloquial ones and they take the indicative, which surprises everybody. A lo mejor perdían el burro. They belong to speech, and igual and lo mismo in this sense are very informal indeed.
4. The future and conditional of guessing
Spanish also uses plain tenses to guess, which English cannot do. ¿Qué hora será? is not asking about the future, it means what time do you think it is? And ¿Dónde estaría el burro? means where do you suppose the donkey was? Future for a guess about now, conditional for a guess about then.
The same mills, twenty years on
Cervantes is repeating himself on purpose. The most famous scene in the first part turns windmills into giants. Here, in the second, watermills become a castle with a captive knight inside, and the reader is meant to feel the echo. What has changed is everything around it. In the first part the knight charges alone and is thrown off his horse. Here he is on a river he cannot steer, in a boat he did not pay for, and the adventure ends not with an injury but with an invoice for fifty reales.
The scientific joke in the middle is real too. Sailors of the period genuinely believed that lice died when a ship crossed the equator, and the test Don Quixote proposes was described in navigation manuals. What is funny is not that he believes it, but that he applies an ocean-crossing procedure on a river in Aragon, twenty yards from a donkey he can still hear.
The two opposing enchanters he invents at the end are the second part’s most useful invention, because they explain any failure without disturbing any belief. One enchanter offers the adventure, the other spoils it, and the knight is never wrong about anything. That is a closed system, and Cervantes lets his hero build it in front of us while dripping river water onto the bank.
Cervantes in the original
en esta aventura se deben de haber encontrado dos valientes encantadores, y el uno estorba lo que el otro intenta
in this adventure two mighty enchanters must have run into each other, and the one thwarts what the other attempts
From II, 29, said while standing wet on the bank next to a boat he has just paid for. Grammatically it is the lesson in one clause: deben de haber encontrado, the guessing form of deber with its de intact, followed by a perfect infinitive because the guess is about something already over. Cervantes uses the construction correctly and so should you. What the sentence does inside the novel is more interesting. Don Quixote has now been wrong twice in a row, publicly and expensively, and instead of doubting anything he invents a second enchanter. One of them arranges adventures for him and the other ruins them, which means that every success proves the first and every failure proves the second. Nothing can ever count against him again. It is the tidiest piece of self-defence in the book, and it arrives precisely when the evidence against him becomes impossible to ignore.