Laughing at their folly, he went himself in the boat, ordering his men to take a strong cable along with them. He rowed around me several times, saw my windows, and the great iron loops upon the other side. To one of these loops he ordered his men to fasten a cable and tow the chest along toward the ship. When it was there he told them to fasten another cable to the ring in the cover, and raise the chest up with pulleys. But all the sailors tugging together were able to lift it only three feet. It was then that they saw my stick and handkerchief waving through the hole, and decided that some unlucky man was shut up inside.
He asked me, how it was that I had come there, and I told him my story from beginning to end. And as truth always forces its way into reasonable minds, so this honest gentleman was not slow in believing me. He said he wondered at one thing very much, which was to hear me speak so loudly, and he asked whether either the King or Queen of the giants was deaf. But I explained to him, how for the two years I had lived among the giants I had been like a man on the street talking to people in a steeple far above. I told him, too, how the sailors on the ship had seemed to me the tiniest little creatures I had ever seen, and how I almost laughed when I saw his table set for dinner, with plates the size of a penny, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, and cups not so big as nutshells.
The captain laughed heartily, and during the whole voyage we were the best of friends. With a favorable breeze all the way, we rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and so sailed safely home to the tiny shores of England.
Adapted from Jonathan Swift’s “A Voyage to Brobdingnag.”
