e a progress to the frontiers. The author attends
them. The manner in which he leaves the country very particularly
related. He returns to England.
I had always a strong impulse that I should some time recover my liberty,
though it was impossible to conjecture by what means, or to form any
project with the least hope of succeeding. The ship in which I sailed,
was the first ever known to be driven within sight of that coast, and the
king had given strict orders, that if at any time another appeared, it
should be taken ashore, and with all its crew and passengers brought in a
tumbril to Lorbrulgrud. He was strongly bent to get me a woman of my own
size, by whom I might propagate the breed: but I think I should rather
have died than undergone the disgrace of leaving a posterity to be kept
in cages, like tame canary-birds, and perhaps, in time, sold about the
kingdom, to persons of quality, for curiosities. I was indeed treated
with much kindness: I was the favourite of a great king and queen, and
the delight of the whole court; but it was upon such a foot as ill became
the dignity of humankind. I could never forget those domestic pledges I
had left behind me. I wanted to be among people, with whom I could
converse upon even terms, and walk about the streets and fields without
being afraid of being trod to death like a frog or a young puppy. But my
deliverance came sooner than I expected, and in a manner not very common;
the whole story and circumstances of which I shall faithfully relate.
I had now been two years in this country; and about the beginning of the
third, Glumdalclitch and I attended the king and queen, in a progress to
the south coast of the kingdom. I was carried, as usual, in my
travelling-box, which as I have already described, was a very convenient
closet, of twelve feet wide. And I had ordered a hammock to be fixed, by
silken ropes from the four corners at the top, to break the jolts, when a
servant carried me before him on horseback, as I sometimes desired; and
would often sleep in my hammock, while we were upon the road. On the
roof of my closet, not directly over the middle of the hammock, I ordered
the joiner to cut out a hole of a foot square, to give me air in hot
weather, as I slept; which hole I shut at pleasure with a board that drew
backward and forward through a groove.
When we came to our journey's end, the king thought proper to pass a few
days at a palace he has near Flanflas
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