People became quite superior and scornful. There was hardly a person who would discuss giants seriously. The grown-ups would only sniff; and even the children, who were young enough to know better, would cry, “Pooh! There never were any giants.”
Oddly enough, it happened, as those things sometimes do, that one of the most matter-of-fact persons of all, an Englishman and a scientist, came suddenly upon the giants’ country. After that, you may be sure, the people who had been the first to scoff whenever giants were mentioned, became quite silent and respectful. Here is the Englishman’s own story of the adventure, almost as he wrote it in his stiff, honest, grown-up way:
In June, 1702, I, Lemuel Gulliver, ship’s surgeon, went on board the merchant-vessel Adventure bound for Surat. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope, we had a good voyage through the Straits of Madagascar. But just south of the equator a violent gale sprang up, and continuing for twenty days, drove us before it a little to the east of the Spice Islands.
Suddenly, the wind dropped and there was a perfect calm. I was delighted, but the captain, who knew those seas, bade us all prepare for a storm. The next day, just as he had said, a wind called the Southern monsoon set in. We reefed the best we could, but it was a very fierce storm, and the waves broke strange and dangerous. We let our topmast stand, and the ship scudded before the sea.
Thus we were carried about five hundred leagues to the east, so that the oldest sailor aboard could not tell in what part of the world we were. Our provisions held out well, our ship was stanch, and our crew all in good health, but we were in great distress for lack of water.
The wind moderated, and the next day a boy on the topmast discovered land. Soon, we were in full view of an island or continent, on the south side of which was a neck of land jutting out into the sea, and a creek too shallow to hold our ship. We cast anchor about a league away, and our captain sent a dozen of his men well armed, in the long-boat, with buckets for water. I asked his leave to go with them, to see the country and make what discoveries I could.
When we came to land, we saw no river or spring, nor any sign of inhabitants. Our men wandered on the shore, hoping to find some fresh water near the sea, and I walked alone on the other side where the country was all barren and rocky. Beginning to be tired, I started back toward the shore, only to see our men already in the boat rowing for dear life to the ship.
I was going to holloa to them when I saw a huge creature walking after them in the sea. The water was hardly to his knees, and he took prodigious strides. But our men had the start of him by half a league, and as the sea thereabout is full of sharp-pointed rocks, the monster was not able to overtake the boat. This I was told afterward, for I dared not stay to see, but ran as fast as I could the way I first went, and climbed up a steep hill which gave me a view of the country. I found it fully cultivated; but what first surprised me was the length of the grass, which in the hay-fields was about twenty feet high.