ould hop back unconcerned, to hunt for
worms or snails, as they did before. But one day I took a thick
cudgel, and threw it with all my strength so luckily at a linnet that
I knocked him down, and seizing him by the neck with both my hands,
ran with him in triumph to my nurse. However, the bird, who had only
been stunned, recovering himself, gave me so many boxes with his
wings, on both sides of my head and body, though I held him at arm's
length, and was out of the reach of his claws, that I was twenty times
thinking to let him go. But I was soon relieved by one of our
servants, who wrung off the bird's neck, and I had him next day for
dinner, by the queen's command. This linnet, as near as I can
remember, seemed to be somewhat larger than an England swan.

One day, a young gentleman, who was nephew to my nurse's governess,
came and pressed them both to see an execution. It was of a man who
had murdered one of that gentleman's intimate acquaintance.
Glumdalclitch was prevailed on to be of the company, very much against
her inclination, for she was naturally tender-hearted; and as for
myself, although I abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity
tempted me to see something that I thought must be extraordinary. The
malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that
purpose, and his head cut off at one blow with a sword of about forty
feet long. The veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious
quantity of blood, and so high in the air, that the great _jet d'eau_
at Versailles was not equal for the time it lasted; and the head, when
it fell on the scaffold floor, gave such a bounce as made me start,
although I were at least half an English mile distant.

The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea voyage, and took
all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I
understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little
exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health. I answered
that I understood both very well: for although my proper employment
had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often, upon a pinch,
I was forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how
this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was
equal to a first-rate man-of-war among us; and such a boat as I could
manage would never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said, if I
would contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would
pr