The Captain Timeline and Summary

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• The captain pops into the inn where Don Quixote and Sancho are staying with Dorotea, Cardenio, the curate, and the barber. At first, he cuts a very strange figure, since he has arrived with his lover, Zoraida, a Moorish woman who can't speak Spanish.
• The people in the inn can smell a good story, and they ply the captain to tell them his whole deal. So he starts at the beginning…
• When the captain was young, his father told him and his two brothers that each of them should take up a job in religion, business, or war. The captain was the brother who chose war, and he paid the price for it. He had some early success and got promoted but then was captured in a battle against the Turks. He was enslaved for a long while.
• During his enslavement, he saw a person from a nearby house lowering a cane into his prison yard. Other people tried to grab it, but the cane kept jolting out of reach. It was only when the captain approached it that the person let him take the cane. The thing had a bundle of money tied to it.
• The captain and his men began to speculate that some Christian woman was living in the house and needed their help. But in reality, it seemed like she was helping them more than the other way around.
• Later on, they learned that the house belonged to one of the chief Moors of the area, who had a daughter named Zoraida, whose beauty was legendary around the town.
• The next day, the cane lowered even more money, with a slip of paper. The men learned that the girl giving them the money was trying to slowly give them enough to buy back their freedom and escape from the area.
• After reading the note, the captain realized that the girl had fallen in love with him and planned to give him his freedom if he would take her away and marry her in Spain.
• The captain decided to dictate a letter to the young woman, saying that he was totally on board with her plan.
• The captain and his men made sure to collect enough money until they could buy freedom for one of their friends. This friend then went out and bought a boat big enough to take the whole crew of prisoners (and Zoraida) back to Spain.
• Meanwhile, the captain went to the young woman's summerhouse, where she had told him she'd be staying for a while.
• On the night that the captain was supposed to take her away, Zoraida's father woke up and tried to stop them. The rest of the captain's men wanted to kill the old dude so that he wouldn't send the authorities after them. But the girl pleaded for her father's life.
• Meanwhile, the crew kept making their way back to Spain. Unfortunately, they got stopped by pirates and robbed. All of the wealth that they'd taken from the Moorish girl's house was stolen, leaving them penniless.
• The captain and Zoraida have made it to Spain. But the problem is that they are totally poor. They're just travelling around not knowing what they're going to do next.
• And that brings us back to the inn…
• Don Fernando compliments the stranger for telling such a great story and for entertaining everyone so much. Fernando even offers to help the stranger and Zoraida with their whole money situation.
• But before the situation can go any further, another coach draws up to the inn. This time, a smartly dressed man who appears to be a court judge walks in.
• The captain instantly recognizes the judge and thinks that he might be one of his long lost brothers. He inquires with one of the judge's servants who the man is, and the servant confirms his suspicions. He still doesn't want to reveal his identity to his brother, since he's scared that the guy will reject him for being poor.
• So the curate decides to do the work for the captain and asks the judge if he might be related to someone he knows. He then goes on to describe the captain's entire backstory, right down to the part about his dad telling his kids to take up three different jobs. The judge hears this story and nearly cries because he hasn't seen his brother in so long.
• At this, the captain feels confident enough to reveal himself, and there's a wonderful reunion between the two brothers.