Sancho reaches his master so limp he cannot urge the ass. Don Quixote concludes the inn is enchanted, because those who diverted themselves with the squire must have been phantoms, and because he himself could neither climb the yard wall nor dismount. Sancho will not have it. The men had flesh and bone and names: Pedro Martinez, Tenorio Hernandez, and the innkeeper Juan Palomeque the Left-handed. The knight's failure to leap came of something else besides enchantments. Adventures of this sort, he says, will end in such misadventures that they will not know which is their right foot, and the wisest course is to return home now that it is harvest-time. Quixote tells him he knows little of chivalry. Sancho tallies the ledger anyway: since they have been knights-errant they have won no battle except the Biscayan, and even that cost half an ear and half a helmet, after which it has been cudgellings, cuffs, a blanketing, and enchanted persons on whom a squire cannot avenge himself.
On the road a thick cloud of dust rises, then another opposite. Quixote takes them for two armies about to meet in the plain. The dust is two droves of sheep, but he names the hosts at once: Alifanfaron, pagan lord of Trapobana, against Pentapolin of the Bare Arm, whose Christian daughter the pagan will not have unless he abandons Mahomet. Sancho, hearing the cause, will help Pentapolin. They withdraw to a hillock, and Quixote, seeing in his imagination what does not exist, assigns arms, colours, devices, and mottoes to Laurcalco of the Silver Bridge, Brandabarbaran de Boliche, Timonel of Carcajona with his cat and the motto Miau, and nations from the Xanthus to the Guadiana. Sancho hangs on the words, turns to look, and can make out neither knight nor giant.
Quixote asks if he does not hear neighing, trumpets, and drums. Sancho hears nothing but a great bleating of ewes and sheep, which is true, for the flocks have come close. Fear, says the knight, deranges the senses; he bids Sancho withdraw, for alone he suffices. He puts the lance in rest and shoots down the slope like a thunderbolt. Sancho shouts that they are sheep, that there is no giant, nor cats, nor shields quartered or whole. Quixote dashes into the ewes and spears them as if they were mortal enemies. The shepherds ungirt their slings and salute his ears with stones as big as a fist. One buries a couple of ribs; he drinks balsam from the flask; a second stone smashes the flask, knocks out three or four teeth, and crushes two fingers. He comes down backwards. The shepherds collect more than seven dead beasts and make off.
Sancho stands on the hill tearing his beard and cursing the hour fortune made him acquainted with this master, then runs down and finds him conscious, still blaming the sage who can turn squadrons into sheep. When Sancho comes close to count the missing grinders, the balsam acts and Don Quixote discharges the flask full into his squire's beard. Sancho, taking it for blood, then knowing by colour, taste, and smell that it is not, vomits over his master in turn. He runs to the ass for the alforjas and does not find them, and in his heart resolves to quit even if he forfeits wages and the island. Quixote, hand to his mouth to keep the teeth in, says one man is no more than another unless he does more than another, and that the evil having lasted long, the good must be nigh. Sancho puts in his fingers and reports the upper jaw as smooth as the palm of his hand. A mouth without teeth, Quixote says, is like a mill without a millstone, yet the austere order of chivalry is liable to all this. He tells Sancho to lead at whatever pace he will.
