myself.  The captain said that while we were at supper he observed me to look at everything with a sort of wonder, and that I often seemed hardly able to contain my laughter, which he knew not well how to take, but imputed it to some disorder in my brain.  I answered, it was very true, and I wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his dishes of the size of a silver threepence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a nut-shell, and so I went on, describing the rest of his household stuff and provisions after the same manner.  For although the queen had ordered a little equipage of all things necessary for me, while I was in her service, yet my ideas were wholly taken up with what I saw on every side of me, and I winked at my own littleness, as people do at their own faults.  The captain understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied that he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all day; and, continuing in his mirth, protested he would have gladly given a hundred pounds to have seen my closet in the eagle’s bill, and afterwards in its fall from so great a height into the sea; which would certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have the description of it transmitted to future ages:  and the comparison of Phaeton[90] was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although I did not much admire the conceit.

[Illustration:  “MY DAUGHTER KNEELED BUT I COULD NOT SEE HER” P. 109.]

The captain having been at Tonquin, was, in his return to England, driven northeastward, to the latitude of 44 degrees, and of longitude 143.  But meeting a trade-wind two days after I came on board him, we sailed southward a long time, and, coasting New Holland, kept our course west-south-west, and then south-south-west, till we doubled the Cape of Good Hope.  Our voyage was very prosperous, but I shall not trouble the reader with a journal of it.  The captain called in at one or two ports, and sent in his long-boat for provisions and fresh water, but I never went out of the ship till we came into the Downs, which was on the third day of June, 1706, about nine months after my escape.  I offered to leave pay goods in security for payment of my freight, but the captain protested he would not receive one farthing.  We took a kind leave of each other, and I made him promise he would come to see me at my house in Redriff.  I hired a horse and guide for five shillings, which I borrowed of the captain.

As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses—­the trees, the cattle, and the people, I began to think myself in Lilliput.  I was afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and often called aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence.