try I could never endure to look in a
glass after mine 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 nutshell; 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 with
the old English proverb, that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my
belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted
all day; and continuing in his mirth, protested, that he would have
gladly given a hundred pounds to have seen my closet in the eagle's
bill, and afterward 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 Phaethon[25] was so obvious that he could not forbear
applying it, although I did not much admire the conceit.

[Footnote 25: _Phaethon_ was, according to Greek mythology, the son
of Apollo, the sun god. One day he prevailed upon his father to allow
him to mount the chariot of the sun and drive the white cloud-horses
across the heavens. He was unable to guide his steeds, however, and they
worked great havoc by dragging the sun up and down and from one side of
the sky to the other. Finally, Jupiter hurled the youth into a river.]

The captain having been at Tonquin was in his return to England driven
north-eastward 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-southwest, and then south-south-west till we doubled the Cape of
Good Hope. Our voyage was very prosperous, but I