Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World by Jonathan Swift
page 26 of 174 (14%)
French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca;[15] but all to no purpose.

After about two hours the court retired, and I was left with a strong
guard, to prevent the impertinence, and probably the malice of the
rabble, who were very impatient to crowd about me as near as they durst;
and some of them had the impudence to shoot their arrows at me, as I sat
on the ground by the door of my house, whereof one very narrowly missed
my left eye. But the colonel ordered six of the ring-leaders to be
seized, and thought no punishment so proper as to deliver them bound
into my hands; which some of his soldiers accordingly did, pushing them
forwards with the butt-ends of their pikes into my reach. I took them
all on my right hand, put five of them into my coat-pocket; and as to
the sixth, I made a countenance as if I would eat him alive. The poor
man squalled terribly, and the colonel and his officers were in much
pain, especially when they saw me take out my penknife; but I soon put
them out of fear, for, looking mildly, and immediately cutting the
strings he was bound with, I set him gently on the ground, and away he
ran. I treated the rest in the same manner, taking them one by one out
of my pocket; and I observed both the soldiers and people were highly
delighted at this mark of my clemency, which was represented very much
to my advantage at court.

[Illustration]

Towards night, I got with some difficulty into my house, where I lay on
the ground, and continued to do so about a fortnight, during which time
the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for me. Six hundred beds,
of the common measure, were brought in carriages and worked up in my
house; an hundred and fifty of their beds, sewn together, made up the
breadth and length; and these were four double, which, however, kept me
DigitalOcean Referral Badge