y clothes into my flesh.
At the same time I heard the reapers not a hundred yards behind me.
Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and
dispair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there
end my days. I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children. I
lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage,
against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible
agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose
inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in
the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and
perform those other actions, which will be recorded for ever in the
chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them,
although attested by millions. I reflected what a mortification it must
prove to me, to appear as inconsiderable in this nation, as one single
Lilliputian would be among us. But this I conceived was to be the least
of my misfortunes; for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage
and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a
morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that
should happen to seize me? Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right,
when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by
comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let the Lilliputians
find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to
them, as they were to me. And who knows but that even this prodigious
race of mortals might be equally overmatched in some distant part of the
world, whereof we have yet no discovery.

Scared and confounded as I was, I could not forbear going on with these
reflections, when one of the reapers, approaching within ten yards of the
ridge where I lay, made me apprehend that with the next step I should be
squashed to death under his foot, or cut in two with his reaping-hook.
And therefore, when he was again about to move, I screamed as loud as
fear could make me: whereupon the huge creature trod short, and, looking
round about under him for some time, at last espied me as I lay on the
ground. He considered awhile, with the caution of one who endeavours to
lay hold on a small dangerous animal in such a manner that it shall not
be able either to scratch or bite him, as I myself have sometimes done
with a weasel in England. At length he ventured to