Context: Sancho, in his efforts to prevent his master from going to investigate the noise made at a fulling mill where the hammers are pounding clay into the cloth to stiffen it, tells how a goatherd tires of his courting of a shepherdess. His new coolness inflames her and he has to flee from her, with his flock. At a river, there is a small boat with capacity for an oarsman and one goat, so the goatherd takes one across, returns for another, and another. Then Sancho pauses to ask Don Quixote: