Chapter 11: How Sir Gawain falls in a rabbit hole, ends up in Wonderland, makes a quick trip of it, and comes out the other end of the rabbit hole facing the river, where the hideous damosel told him to go.
Sir Gawain woke up in a Victorian-style parlor and despite his delirium, Sir Gawain was genuinely freaked out. He saw a small bottle filled with what looked like mead. It had a tag around it that said "Drink me." Dangeth, Sir Gawain thought, thees peeple canteth spelleth. But Sir Gawain didn't care, since mead is mead, whether the people who bottled it can spell or not, and given what Sir Gawain had been through, he certainly could use a pick-me-up. Sir Gawain began to drink the mead, but he soon became so small that he would have drowned in the bottle's contents. Now, Sir Gawain was more freaked out than he was before. He saw a door that was perfectly his size, and figuring he couldn't end up any worse off than he already was, he went through it. Suddenly, Sir Gawain was standing before a group of grotesque birds running in a circle. He approached them: "Wherefore are you running in a circle?" "We have to get dry," said one of the birds. Sir Gawain then realized his purpose: he must help the birds get dry. "I will help thee," cried Sir Gawain. He climbed on top of a nearby rock and began to declaim:
"A rain of blood will fall and men will suffer a terrible famine. At this, the red dragon will lament, but will recover its strength once the travail is over. Then the German worm will be crowned, and the prince of bronze buried. For a fire breathing worm will come and the heat it emits will burn trees."
The birds began to spin in circles and scream, "Sir, that is not dry, that is pure insanity." Sir Gawain stopped and said, "Fine. Here's dry, but don't complain that it's too dry."
"Then King Arthur and King Ban and King Bors, with their good and trusty knights, set on them so fiercely that they made them overthrow their pavilions on their heads; but the eleven kings of manly prowess of arms took a fair field. But there was slain that morrow tide ten thousand good men's bodies. And so they had afore them a strong passage, yet were they fifty thousand of hardy men. Then it drew toward day. . .
The birds began became so dry that their feathers fell out and their skin began to itch and flake. They begged Sir Gawain to stop, but Sir Gawain was totally oblivious so he didn't. The birds had had enough, so they chucked Sir Gawain into the sea. When Sir Gawain awoke again, he was on the shore of the river he was seeking.