PART II. A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG.
5. CHAPTER V.
(continued)
In this exercise I once met an accident, which had like to have
cost me my life; for, one of the pages having put my boat into the
trough, the governess who attended Glumdalclitch very officiously
lifted me up, to place me in the boat: but I happened to slip
through her fingers, and should infallibly have fallen down forty
feet upon the floor, if, by the luckiest chance in the world, I had
not been stopped by a corking-pin that stuck in the good
gentlewoman's stomacher; the head of the pin passing between my
shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus I was held by the
middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my relief.
Another time, one of the servants, whose office it was to fill my
trough every third day with fresh water, was so careless as to let
a huge frog (not perceiving it) slip out of his pail. The frog lay
concealed till I was put into my boat, but then, seeing a resting-place, climbed up, and made it lean so much on one side, that I was
forced to balance it with all my weight on the other, to prevent
overturning. When the frog was got in, it hopped at once half the
length of the boat, and then over my head, backward and forward,
daubing my face and clothes with its odious slime. The largeness
of its features made it appear the most deformed animal that can be
conceived. However, I desired Glumdalclitch to let me deal with it
alone. I banged it a good while with one of my sculls, and at last
forced it to leap out of the boat.
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