Several adventures that happened to the author. The execution of a criminal. The author shows his skill in navigation.
I should have lived quite happily in Brobdingnag if my small stature had not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents. Glumdalclitch frequently carried me into the palace gardens in my smaller traveling box, where she would set me down to walk. I remember one afternoon, before the Queen’s dwarf had been dismissed from court, he followed us into the gardens. To show off my wit, I made a joke comparing the dwarf to some nearby dwarf apple trees. This insulted the malicious fellow so much that he waited until I was walking under one of the trees and shook it violently. A dozen apples, each as large as a barrel, came crashing down around my ears. One struck me on the back and knocked me flat on my face, though I fortunately escaped serious injury.
On another occasion, while I was walking alone on a smooth lawn, a violent hailstorm suddenly broke out. The hailstones were nearly eighteen hundred times larger than those in Europe, hitting me with the force of tennis balls. I was forced to creep on all fours and seek shelter under a border of lemon-thyme. I was so badly bruised that I was confined to my bed for ten days.
A far more dangerous accident occurred in that same garden. Believing I was safe, Glumdalclitch left me alone to enjoy my own thoughts while she walked with her friends. Suddenly, a gardener’s white spaniel, having found its way into the garden, picked me up in its mouth and ran wagging its tail to its master. By sheer luck, the dog had been so well-trained that it carried me between its teeth without tearing my clothes or bruising my body. The gardener was terrified when he realized who I was, but I was so out of breath that I could not speak. This incident made Glumdalclitch resolve never to let me out of her sight again.
I also had constant trouble with the birds, which showed no fear of me whatsoever. A thrush once had the audacity to snatch a piece of cake directly out of my hand. One day, however, I managed to knock down a linnet with a thick stick. I seized the bird by the neck, though it was nearly the size of an English swan, and struggled to hold it as it beat its wings against my head. Eventually, a servant helped me, and the Queen ordered the bird to be served for my dinner the next day.
I was frequently invited to the apartments of the maids of honor, who treated me like a harmless toy. I found these visits rather disgusting, as my acute sense of smell made the scent of their skin—which they covered in heavy perfumes—completely overwhelming. Furthermore, they had no sense of modesty in my presence, undressing before me as if I were a mere insect. From my perspective, their skin appeared coarse and uneven, and I felt nothing but horror at the sight of their enormous features. One frolicsome girl of sixteen used to play tricks on me that I found so offensive I eventually begged Glumdalclitch to find an excuse for us to stop visiting her.
Once, I was taken to witness the execution of a murderer. While I usually abhor such spectacles, my curiosity tempted me. The criminal was placed on a scaffold, and his head was severed with a forty-foot sword. The quantity of blood that sprayed into the air was prodigious, and the sound of the head falling on the floor was so loud that it made me jump, despite being half a mile away.
The Queen, noticing that I grew melancholy when thinking of my sea voyages, asked if I knew how to handle a boat. When I replied that I did, she ordered her joiner to build me a pleasure boat and a large wooden trough to sail in. The trough was three hundred feet long and eight feet deep, placed along the wall of a palace room. Here, I often rowed for the diversion of the Queen and her ladies. Sometimes they would use their fans to create a breeze for my sail, while I demonstrated my skill by steering the vessel across the water.
However, even this pastime was not without peril. On one occasion, a servant carelessly allowed a huge frog to slip into the trough. The creature climbed into my boat, nearly overturning it, and hopped back and forth over my head, covering me with its thick, odious slime. I was forced to fight the beast off with one of my oars until it finally leaped back into the water.
But the greatest danger I ever faced was from a monkey belonging to a kitchen clerk. One warm day, Glumdalclitch left me alone in her closet with the windows open. As I sat at my table, the monkey leaped into the room and, after peeping through the windows of my box, reached in and seized me. He held me as a nurse holds a baby, and when I tried to struggle, he squeezed me so hard that I thought it best to submit. Frightened by a noise at the door, the monkey leaped out of the window and climbed onto the palace roof, carrying me in one of his paws.
A massive uproar followed. Servants ran for ladders while hundreds of people watched from below. The monkey sat on the ridge of the roof, feeding me with food he had stored in his cheek pouches and patting me gently when I refused to eat. Eventually, as men climbed the ladders to reach him, the monkey dropped me on a roof tile and escaped. I sat there, five hundred feet above the ground, trembling with giddiness until a footman climbed up and rescued me.
I was weak and bruised for a fortnight following this ordeal. When I finally attended the King, he teased me about the adventure, asking what I had been thinking while in the monkey’s paw. I tried to defend my honor, claiming that in Europe, monkeys were so small that I could have easily fought off a dozen of them with my sword. I spoke with a fierce tone, but my speech only resulted in a loud fit of laughter from the King and his ministers. This made me reflect on how vain it is for a man to try to maintain his dignity among those who are so much larger and more powerful than himself.
Every day, I seemed to provide the court with some new story to laugh at. Once, while walking in a field, I attempted to show off my agility by jumping over a patch of cow dung. Unfortunately, I jumped short and landed in the middle of it, sinking up to my knees. The story was soon spread throughout the palace, and for several days, all the mirth at court was at my expense.