How Panurge caused Dingdong and his sheep to be drowned in the sea.

On a sudden, you would wonder how the thing was so soon done — for my part I cannot tell you, for I had not leisure to mind it — our friend Panurge, without any further tittle-tattle, throws you his ram overboard into the middle of the sea, bleating and making a sad noise. Upon this all the other sheep in the ship, crying and bleating in the same tone, made all the haste they could to leap nimbly into the sea, one after another; and great was the throng who should leap in first after their leader. It was impossible to hinder them; for you know that it is the nature of sheep always to follow the first wheresoever it goes; which makes Aristotle, lib. 9. De. Hist. Animal., mark them for the most silly and foolish animals in the world. Dingdong, at his wits’ end, and stark staring mad, as a man who saw his sheep destroy and drown themselves before his face, strove to hinder and keep them back with might and main; but all in vain: they all one after t’other frisked and jumped into the sea, and were lost. At last he laid hold on a huge sturdy one by the fleece, upon the deck of the ship, hoping to keep it back, and so save that and the rest; but the ram was so strong that it proved too hard for him, and carried its master into the herring pond in spite of his teeth — where it is supposed he drank somewhat more than his fill, so that he was drowned — in the same manner as one-eyed Polyphemus’ sheep carried out of the den Ulysses and his companions. The like happened to the shepherds and all their gang, some laying hold on their beloved tup, this by the horns, t’other by the legs, a third by the rump, and others by the fleece; till in fine they were all of them forced to sea, and drowned like so many rats. Panurge, on the gunnel of the ship, with an oar in his hand, not to help them you may swear, but to keep them from swimming to the ship and saving themselves from drowning, preached and canted to them all the while like any little Friar (Oliver) Maillard, or another Friar J............