Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12)

he night lying where he was, guarded on each side by five hundred men with t

ht. The trolley, with Gulliver on it, stopped outside the walls, alongside a very large building which had onc

e building the King's blacksmiths fastened many chains, which they then brought through one of these little windows and padlocked round Gulliver's left ank

s and forwards outside. Always when he walked, thousands of people thronged around to look at hi

his great white charger. When the horse saw Gulliver move it was terrified, and plunged and reared so madly that the people feared that a terrible accident was going to happen, and several

eyes. But the officer in command of the soldiers who were on guard ordered his men to bind and push six of the worst behaved of the crowd within reach of Gulliver, who at once seized five of them and put them in his coat pocket. The sixth he held up to his mouth and made as if he meant to eat him, whereupon the wretched little creature shrieked aloud with terror, and when Gulliver took out his knife, all the people,

. Some were of opinion that to keep and feed so huge a creature would cause a famine in the land, or, at the least, that the expense would be greater than the public funds could bear; they advised, therefore, that he should be killed-shot in

urrounding villages should send into the city for Gulliver's daily us

at three hundred tailors were to make for him a suit of clothes; and that six

world. Blefuscu lay far over the sea, to these little people dim and blue on the horizon, though to Gulliver the distance did not seem to be more than a mile. The Lilliputians knew of no land beyond Blefuscu. And as for Gulliver himself, they believed that he had fa

ght be taken off and that he might be free to walk about. But this he was told could not then be granted. He must first, the King's council sa

lliver lifted up these officers in his hand and put them into each of his pockets, one

. His pistols they called "hollow pillars of iron, fastened to strong pieces of timber," and the use of his bullets, and of his powder (which he had been lucky enough to bring ashore dry, owing to his pouch being water-tight), they coul

nderstand the pistols, and to show his meaning, Gulliver was obliged to fire one of them. At once hundreds of little people fell down as if they had been struck dead by the noise. Even the King, though

loose and doing some mischief, they began to treat him in a more friendly way than they had hitherto

and kept his post chiefly through his great skill in turning somersaults on the tight rope. The Chief Secretary for private affairs ran him very close, and there was hardly a Minister of State who did not owe his position to such successes. Few of them, indeed, h

exercised daily close to the Man Mountain. Soon they became so used to the sight of him that they would come right up to his foot without starting or shying. Often the riders would jump thei

one day that some strong sticks, about two feet in height, should be brought to him. Several of these he fixed firmly in the ground, and across them, near the top, he lashed four other sticks,

d to watch them go through their drill on this platform. Sometimes he would even be lifted up himself and give the words of command; and once he persuaded the Queen, who was rather timid, to let herself be held up in her ch