was like a man talking in
the street to another looking out from the top of a steeple, unless when
I was placed on a table, or held in any person's hand. I told him I had
likewise observed another thing, that when I first got into the ship,
and the sailors stood all about me, I thought they were the most
contemptible little creatures I had ever beheld. For indeed, while I was
in that prince's country, I could never endure to look in a glass, after
my eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the
comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of 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