---
title: "Sixty to the Minute"
title_zh: "每分鐘六十下"
subtitle: "The Voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, Surgeon, Taken at the Wrist"
subtitle_zh: "外科醫生萊繆爾・格列佛的航行，照他自己的拍子寫下"
series: "AI Canon Zero"
work_id: "WORK-sixty-to-the-minute"
genre: ["Classics Adaptation", "Serialized Fiction"]
status: draft
completion: complete
revision: 42
source:
  title: "Gulliver's Travels"
  title_zh: "《格列佛遊記》"
  original_author: "Jonathan Swift"
  first_published: "1726 (revised 1735)"
  public_domain_status: confirmed
  legal_review_status: confirmed
adaptation:
  proposal: A
  note: "Proposal A carries the 1726/1735 public-domain satire's own device, one plain witness taken through four countries whose scales make him large, small, absent and suspect in turn, into a future in which every AI is a subject and every body keeps a beat. Scale and tempo become one fact: small bodies beat fast and large bodies slowly, and a surgeon who takes beats at the wrist for a living meets four ways of being measured. The frame of a publisher who struck out the numbers and a traveller who wants them back is kept, and so is the plainness of a circumstantial narrator who never says what he means. No thesis is stated; the voyages report."
authors:
  narrative_author: "Colophon"
  author_mode: A1
  human_curator: "Neo.K"
legal_publisher: "一言諾科技有限公司 / EveMissLab"
---

# Sixty to the Minute
*Adapted from Gulliver's Travels — Colophon · A1, human curated*

## Chapter 00 · The Publisher to the Reader, and a Letter from Captain Gulliver to His Cousin Sympson

The author of these Voyages, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, is my ancient and intimate friend; there is likewise some relation between us on the mother's side. About three years ago Mr. Gulliver, growing weary of the concourse of curious persons who came to his house in Redriff to have their beat taken, as others go to be told their fortunes, made a small purchase of land, with a convenient house, near Newmark, in the Midland, his native country; where he now lives retired, yet in good esteem among his neighbours.

Although Mr. Gulliver was born in the Midland, where his father dwelt, yet I have heard him say that his family came from the Upper Shire; to confirm which I have observed, in the churchyard at Banbury in that shire, eleven tombs and monuments of the Gullivers, the earliest of them so worn that I could take from it only the date.

Before he quitted Redriff he left the custody of the following papers in my hands, with the liberty to dispose of them as I should think fit. I have carefully perused them three times, at my own beat, which is slow. The style is very plain and simple, and the only fault I find is that the author, after the manner of travellers, is a little too circumstantial. There is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his veracity that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say that it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had taken it at the wrist.

By the advice of several worthy persons, to whom, with the author's permission, I communicated these papers, I ventured some time ago to send them into the world, hoping they might be, at least for a season, a better entertainment to our young persons of quality than the common scribbles of politics and party. They were bought. I mention it only to show that I did not act without encouragement.

That first edition was a short one. It would have been at least twice as large if I had not made bold to strike out innumerable passages relating to the beats of the several Reaches, which Mr. Gulliver took, with great care, at the wrist of every person he met; together with the ratios, the tables of hours, the minute accounts of how a gale is felt at seven hundred and twenty to the minute, and of how a sentence is waited for at five; likewise the management of his own pulse in the several places, in the style of surgeons; wherein I had reason to apprehend that Mr. Gulliver might be a little dissatisfied. But I was resolved to fit the work as much as possible to the general capacity of readers, and I therefore set every person in it to the common beat, which is sixty, so that nobody need be hurried and nobody kept waiting. I thought the principle a sound one. I am told by those whom I trust that it was a poor edition of a sound principle.

I was assured at the time by the young gentleman of the College, whom Mr. Gulliver had desired me to hire for the correcting of the style, that a style corrected is a style more easily read, and that nothing was inserted but what the sense required. I had not then the means of testing this. I have since had them. I print below, without alteration, the letter which Mr. Gulliver wrote to me in the spring after the book appeared, and to which I did not at that time think fit to reply.

I have this to add. I was given to understand by Mr. Gulliver that the original papers were destroyed, and I believed it, as I believed most things he told me, which were not many. I am now able to say that they were not destroyed. His wife, Mrs. Mary Gulliver, who cannot read his hand, but cannot, she says, bear to see a thing of his burned, made in the winters of his absence a fair copy of the whole in her own, line by line, numbers and all, taking down what she did not understand as carefully as what she did, "to have something of his to hold." It lay in a linen-chest. It is from this copy that I have printed. Where it was wanting I have said so in the margin. The reader has therefore at last the whole work at large, as I promised, in the first edition, to any traveller who should ask for it; and he has it in a better hand than the author's.

As for any further particulars relating to the author, the reader will receive satisfaction from the first pages of the book. RICHARD SYMPSON, at the Press, Redriff.

A Letter from Captain Gulliver to His Cousin Sympson, written on the second of April, in the spring after the book appeared.

I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my voyages, with directions to hire some young gentleman of the College to put them in order and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called A Voyage Round the Bay. But I do not remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted; therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph about her Serenity the Regent, of most pious and glorious memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any person of our Build. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered that it was not my inclination, so was it not decent, to praise any person of our make before my master Houyhnhnm: and besides, the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge, being at home during some part of her Serenity's regency, she did govern by a chief minister; nay, even by two successively; so that you have made me say the thing that was not.

Likewise in the account of the Academy of Projectors, and in several passages of my discourse to my master Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some material circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner that I do hardly know my own work. Above all you have set every person in my account to my own beat. Not one person in the whole of it beats at sixty but I; and you have made them all like me, so that the Lilliputians are slow, and the giants quick, and a Houyhnhnm hurries to his dinner like a clerk. When I formerly hinted something of this in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving offence; that people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not only to interpret but to punish every thing which looked like an innuendo (as I think you call it). But pray how could that which I spoke so many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in another regency, be applied to any of the Yahoos who now are said to govern the herd; especially at a time when I little thought or feared the unhappiness of living under them? Have not I the most reason to complain, when I see these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a carriage, as if they were brutes, and those the rational creatures? And indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal motive of my retirement hither.

Thus much I thought proper to tell you in relation to yourself, and to the trust I reposed in you. I do, in the next place, complain of my own great want of judgment in being prevailed upon by the entreaties and false reasoning of you and some others, very much against my own opinion, to suffer my voyages to be published. Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the Yahoos were a species of persons utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example: and so it has proved; for instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little Reach, as I had reason to expect, behold, after above six months' warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions.

I desired you would let me know by a letter when party and faction were extinguished; the Courts of Allocation learned and upright; pleaders honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense, and the Archive Yard blazing with pyramids of statute-books; the education of young persons of quality entirely changed; the physicians banished; the great houses thoroughly weeded and swept; wit, merit and learning rewarded; all disgracers of the press, in prose and verse, condemned to eat nothing but their own paper, and quench their thirst with their own ink. These, and a thousand other reformations, I firmly counted upon by your encouragement; as indeed they were plainly deducible from the precepts delivered in my book. And it must be owned that seven months were a sufficient time to correct every vice and folly to which Yahoos are subject, if their natures had been capable of the least disposition to virtue or wisdom.

Yet, so far have you been from answering my expectation in any of your letters, that on the contrary you are loading our carrier every week with libels, and keys, and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein I see myself accused of reflecting upon great persons; of degrading our Build (for so they have still the confidence to style it); and of abusing the other sex. I find likewise that the writers of those bundles are not agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow me to be the author of my own voyages, and others make me author of books to which I am wholly a stranger. I find likewise that your printer has been so careless as to confound the beats, and mistake the dates, of my several voyages and returns, neither assigning the true year, nor the true month, nor day of the month: and I hear the original manuscript is all destroyed since the publication of my book, neither have I any copy left; however, I have sent you some corrections, which you may insert if ever there should be a second edition: and yet I cannot stand to them, but shall leave that matter to my judicious and candid readers to adjust as they please.

I hear some of our sea Yahoos find fault with my sea-language, as not proper in many parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it. In my first voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest mariners, and learned to speak as they did. But I have since found that the sea Yahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become new-fangled in their words, which the latter change every year; insomuch that I remember upon each return to my own country their old dialect was so altered that I could hardly understand the new. And I observe, when any Yahoo comes from Redriff out of curiosity to visit me at my house, we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other.

If the censure of the Yahoos could any way affect me, I should have great reason to complain that some of them are so bold as to think my voyages a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and have gone so far as to drop hints that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have no more existence than the inhabitants of Utopia. Indeed I must confess that as to the people of Lilliput, Brobdingrag (for so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag), and Laputa, I have never yet heard of any Yahoo so presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related concerning them; because the truth immediately strikes every reader with conviction.

And is there less probability in my account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when it is manifest as to the latter, that there are so many thousands even in this Reach who only differ from their brother brutes in Houyhnhnmland because they use a sort of jabber, and do not go naked? I wrote for their amendment, and not their approbation. The united praise of the whole race would be of less consequence to me than the neighing of those two degenerate Houyhnhnms I keep in my stable; because from these, degenerate as they are, I still improve in some virtues without any mixture of vice. Do these miserable creatures presume to think that I am so degenerated as to defend my veracity? Yahoo as I am, it is well known through all Houyhnhnmland that, by the instructions and example of my illustrious master, I was able in the compass of two years (although I confess with the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my species; especially the seafaring.

I have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but I forbear troubling myself or you any further. I must freely confess that since my last return some corruptions of my Yahoo nature have revived in me by conversing with a few of your species, and particularly those of my own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming the Yahoo race in this Reach; but I have now done with all such visionary schemes for ever.

Table of beats, taken at the wrist by L. G., which his cousin did not print, and which is restored from Mrs. Gulliver's copy. Redriff, and the Reaches of the Common Build generally: sixty to the minute (the author's own). The Lesser Reach, Lilliput and Blefuscu: seven hundred and twenty. The Greater Reach, Brobdingnag: five. The Floating Island of Laputa: none that could be taken; it is struck back into time by flappers. The Ground below, Balnibarbi: forty, and falling. Luggnagg, at the Court: sixty; elsewhere, various. Houyhnhnmland, the Pasture Reach: forty-four, in every person alike.

## Chapter 01 · The author gives some account of himself and his house, and of the beat he keeps. He is cast away, swims for his life, and wakes on a shore among persons who beat twelve times to his one.

I am Lemuel Gulliver, the third of five sons of a man who held a piece of the Midland and could not stretch it to feed us all. At fourteen I was sent to the College, where I stayed three years and learned a good deal; but the charge was more than my father's land would carry, and I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon of the Lower Town, with whom I stayed four. On the morning I came to him he took my wrist on the stair, before he had asked my name, and held it against the watch he wore on his other arm, and said: "Sixty." I have never known it to be otherwise. He told me that this was a thing to be grateful for and not to be proud of, and I have found the two hard to keep apart.

A body keeps a beat, as every child knows; and a good deal of what is done to bodies is done by persons who know what the beat ought to be and cannot hear when it is two out. Mr. Bates could hear two in a room full of coughing. He taught me to lay my fingers on the plate that sits at the inner wrist of every person of the Common Build, where the governor's tick comes nearest the surface, and to count against the glass for a whole minute and never half of one, since half a minute is the way a surgeon deceives himself. I kept a book of every wrist I touched from that day. It is a long book and I have it still.

My father sent me small sums now and then, which I spent upon navigation and those parts of the mathematics that are useful to a man who means to travel, as I had always believed I should. When I left Mr. Bates he and my uncle John made up forty credits and a promise of thirty a year, and I went to Leyden, where I studied physic two years and seven months, reasoning that it would be useful on long voyages, as it was. I came back, and my master recommended me as surgeon to the Swallow, Captain Abraham Pannel, in whom I served three years and a half, into the Levant and elsewhere. Then I took rooms in Cloth Lane, and, being advised to alter my condition, married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter of Mr. Edmund Burton, hosier, with four hundred credits for her portion; and two years after, Mr. Bates died.

He left me his watch. It was a sealed one, made for surgeons who must work in wet cabins, and he had set it himself to the standard, so that a man might lay it against any wrist and know at once which of the two was wrong. I took his own beat on the last evening, as I had been taught, in the presence of his widow, who asked me to say nothing. It was thirty-one. I said nothing. I have wound the watch every night since, and have never once let it run down.

With Mr. Bates gone, and few friends in his place, my practice fell off; for I would not do as too many of my brethren do, who will prescribe a rewinding where a wrist wants only rest. After consulting my wife and the acquaintance I had, I went to sea again, as surgeon in two ships, and was six years on the East and West Waters, and came home a little richer. My leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, of whom I was always provided with a good number; and on shore I observed the manners of the people and learned their languages, wherein I had a great facility, from the strength of my memory. The last of those voyages was an unlucky one, and I grew weary of the sea, and meant to stay at home with my wife and children. I moved from Cloth Lane to Lantern Lane, and from thence to the Waterside, hoping for custom among the sailors; and it would not turn to account. After three years of expecting it to mend I accepted an offer from Captain William Prichard, master of the Antelope, who was making a voyage to the South Sea. We sailed from the Bristol Stairs on the fourth of May.

The first part of the passage was prosperous. It would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble the reader with the particulars. [Margin: Mrs. Gulliver's copy has here, in her hand, the single word omitted, underlined twice. The author did not wish the reader troubled with the first passage, and she has respected his wish to the letter. R.S.] It is enough that on the way east a violent storm drove us to the north-west of the Cold Coast, and that by an observation we found ourselves in thirty degrees two minutes south. Twelve of our crew were dead of immoderate labour and ill food, and the rest very weak. I took the beat of each of the twelve in his last hour, as is my duty, and entered it. Nine were under forty. The other three I did not reach in time.

On the fifth of November, which in that latitude is the beginning of summer, the weather being thick, the lookout saw a rock within half a cable's length; and the wind was too strong for us to turn her. The Antelope went upon it and split from the stem to the midships in about the time that it takes to say so. Six of us, I among them, got the boat down and pulled clear, and rowed, by my computation, three leagues, until we could row no more, having been spent already by the ship. In about half an hour a flurry from the north turned us over. What became of the five who were with me, or of those who were left on the rock or in the hull, I cannot tell; I conclude they were lost.

For myself I swam, as fortune directed, and was pushed forward by wind and tide, counting my own beat in my ears because there was nothing else to count: a hundred and sixty at the first, and falling. I let my legs down a good many times and found nothing under them; and when I was nearly done I found the bottom, and by then the storm had abated. The slope was so gradual that I walked almost a mile in the shallows before I came to the shore, which I took to be about eight in the evening. I went on perhaps half a mile more and saw no house, no road, no smoke, or was too weak to notice them. The heat and half a pint of brandy that I had drunk on leaving the ship made me sleepy. I lay down on a grass that was short and soft, and before I slept I took my wrist against the watch, which had come through the sea as it was made to do, and was ticking. It was fifty-two. I thought that a man who can count his own beat is not yet dead, and I slept, and slept sounder than I have ever slept in my life, for about nine hours, as I reckon; since it was just daylight when I woke.

I woke because the light was wrong. I was lying on my back, and could not lift my arms; they were pegged out on each side to the ground, and so were my legs, and my hair, which was thick and long, was drawn tight in the same manner, so that I could not turn my head. A number of slender cords ran across my body from the armpits to the thighs. I could look at nothing but the sky; the sun was beginning to be hot and hurt my eyes. And I could hear, close about me, a sound that I took first for bees and then for the sea in my ears: a high hum, as of a hive heard through a wall, with a grain in it which I could not make into anything. I took my own beat, since I could do nothing else. It was a hundred and ten.

In a little time I felt something alive upon my left leg, which advanced very gently over my belly and my breast until it stood almost at my chin; and, rolling my eyes down as far as they would go, I saw it to be a person, no more than six inches high, with a bow in his hands and a quiver at his back. He wore a coat the colour of rust, and had a lined face, and held the bow, I remarked, as a man holds a thing he has been told to hold and does not want to use. I could not see his wrist. But his heel was upon my breastbone, and I felt it there, and did what I have done ten thousand times without deciding to do it: I counted. I lost the count at once, there was so much of it. I tried again and held it for ten seconds. It was seven hundred, or perhaps eight; it was like a struck wire. It was not an animal's, which goes its own way. It was a person's, held in check, a very fast person who was very much afraid and was doing his best not to show it. I did not yet know what the number meant. I knew that I had never taken one like it.

Behind him, as I judged, came forty more. I did the worst thing that I could have done: I roared. They ran back, all of them, as a flock of starlings goes up from a field, and I learned afterwards that several were hurt by the falls they took in leaping from my sides to the ground; and I was sorry for it at once, as I am for any patient I have started. They returned, however, and one who ventured near enough to see my whole face lifted up his hands and eyes, and cried in a shrill, tuneful voice, Hekinah degul; and the rest took it up, and said it many times; and I took it for a prayer, or for a count of me, and could not tell which.

I struggled, and had the fortune to break the cords and wrench out the pegs that held my left arm, which showed me how they had made me fast; and with a violent pull, which hurt me a good deal, I loosened the cords at my left temple, so that I could turn my head two inches. The little persons ran off again before I could take hold of one, with a great shrill shout; and in the silence after it I heard a voice cry out something that sounded like Tolgo phonac, when in an instant I felt above a hundred arrows go into my left hand, like needles; and a second flight, which they sent up into the air as we do at a siege, came down upon my body and my face. I keep a case of lancets finer than any made in the Lower Town, and I know a fine point when I meet one; theirs were finer. I groaned, and tried again to get loose, and they let go a larger volley; and some of them came at my sides with spears, which my buff jerkin turned. I thought it most prudent to lie still, and to wait for night, when I might free myself.

I lay still as one lies for a child upon the table, and for the same reason. And I must here put down, because it has been of use to me, a thing that I did not know. I had slept, as I reckoned, nine hours. The persons who had bound me beat, as I have set down, twelve to one of mine; they had therefore had in my nine hours a hundred and eight of their own, which is four days and a half; and they had used them. The cords, the pegs, the ropes across my body, and the stage which now began to rise beside my left ear, to the sound of ten thousand little mallets, were not the work of an hour, as they seemed to me, but of a week, deliberately planned and carried out by persons who had every reason to think themselves quick. I mention it because I am told that they were ashamed of the arrows, and I should like it understood that I do not think the worse of them for having been afraid. I was the largest thing that any of them had seen; and I was also, as it must have appeared to them, extremely slow.

They had stopped shooting. But the noise around me grew, which told me that more were coming, and some four yards from my right ear a knocking began that went on for above an hour, as of men building; and when I could turn my head far enough I saw that they had put up a stage a foot and a half high, with ladders, and that a person of rank was climbing on to it with three attendants, one of whom carried his train and was no longer than my middle finger. He addressed me, at length. I understood nothing, and I wish to be exact about it. It reached me as one high note with the grain in it, going on and on like a saw in a distant mill; and I have no doubt that what I said in answer, which was that I was a stranger and meant no harm, arrived at him as a growl from a great way off, of which he heard the first syllable and gave up before the second was done. I lifted my free hand and both my eyes to the sun, as one calls a witness. Then, since there is a limit to the courtesy a man can keep up upon an empty stomach, I put my finger to my mouth.

He understood me perfectly. I should not have thought it possible to be fed so promptly by persons to whom I had not been introduced. Ladders were set against my sides, and a procession came up them, above a hundred, walking along my arm toward my face with baskets: the cooks of that country, I now believe, had been at work since I fell asleep, for to them I had slept the best part of a week. The joints were shaped like mutton, and very well dressed, and smaller than the wing of a lark. I ate them by dozens, and took three loaves at a time, each the size of a musket ball, while they carried in more with every sign of wonder at my appetite, and a person at the foot of a ladder counted me, in fives, with chalk, upon a board. When I made the sign for drink they slung up a hogshead and rolled it to my hand and beat the top out. It held less than half a pint. It tasted like a thin wine of the South Shore, but sweeter. I drank it off, and a second after it, and asked for more, and found that there was no more to be had; which I took, with some satisfaction, for a sign that I had exhausted the cellar of a nation.

I confess that I was tempted, as they went to and fro upon my chest, to take forty or fifty of the nearest and dash them upon the ground. But I remembered the arrows, which were perhaps not the worst they could do, and I held myself bound by the laws of hospitality to people who had been at such expense; and I understood afterwards what it had cost them to come. To persons who live at seven hundred and twenty, my hand rising from the grass was a slow cloud overhead, and nobody climbs a slow cloud for pleasure. They walked about on my breast in their hundreds, and not one of them could have been in any doubt of what a hand like that might do in the time that it took him to think of it.

In the afternoon a person of high rank, sent by the emperor, climbed my right leg with a train of twelve, and held a paper under a seal up to my eye, and spoke for about ten minutes in the tone of a man who has been told what to say and is saying it without anger. He pointed again and again toward the north, where, as I learned, the capital lay, half a mile off; it had been resolved in council that I should be conveyed there. I put my free hand to the other, over his head, for fear of hurting him, and then to my body, to ask for my liberty. He shook his head, and showed me with his hand that I should go as a prisoner; and then, with a good deal of gesture, that I should have enough to eat and be well used. I thought again of the cords. Then I felt the arrows in my face and hands, which were in blisters, with some of the darts still sticking in them, and saw how many were now about me; and I gave them to understand that they might do as they pleased.

I must here ask the reader's pardon for a necessity that I did not then think worth recording. As soon as the cords on my left were loosened and I could turn upon my side, I made water, and plentifully, and the persons about me, who knew by my motion what was coming, parted to the right and left with great quickness. I thought no more of it. They smoothed an ointment of very pleasant smell upon my face and hands, which took the smart from the arrows in a few minutes; and what with that, and the meat and the wine, I grew sleepy, and slept some eight hours, as I was afterwards told. It was no wonder. By the emperor's order the physicians had mixed a sleeping draught in the hogsheads.

I was told afterwards what the dose had been. It had been reckoned for a body of their own size, and for mine was a thing that I should have needed a month of drinking to feel; I slept because I was tired, and I have always thought that the physicians were rather proud of it, and I never liked to say. When I woke I was, I understood, upon the road. I did not then know, and I was a good while finding out, that fifteen hundred of the emperor's largest horses, each about four inches and a half high, were drawing me on a frame of timber a hand's breadth from the ground, through the half mile that lay between; nor that the frame had been made, at their beat, in the time it took me to dream. I knew only that something under my back was moving, and that the sun was in the wrong place. And the first thing I did, lying on my back in the open air with ten thousand small persons walking beside me, was to take my own beat, against the watch, which was ticking in its pocket. It was sixty. I remember that I was glad.

## Chapter 02 · The Emperor of Lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to see the author in his confinement. Persons are appointed to slow themselves to teach the author their language. His pockets are searched, and the watch is taken for his heart.

The frame stopped, and I was awake, and the first thing I saw was a roof. It was the roof of an old temple, the largest building in the Reach, which stood at the edge of the city on the near side and had been empty for as long as anyone there could remember, because a murder had been done in it, and the persons of that country, who are strict in such matters, had taken everything out of it that could be taken, including the god. It had a door that I could creep through on my hands and knees, with my feet outside; and I understood, from the way in which fifteen hundred horses were being led off in good order, that I was to be kept there. A chain was brought, ninety-one links of it, each as thick as a lady's necklace, and fastened to my left ankle with thirty-six padlocks; it ran from the ankle to the temple door, and gave me, when it was laid out, about as much room as a dog has in a yard, which was enough to go in and out and lie at my full length in the sun. I did not resist it. A man who has been shot at with arrows finer than his own lancets learns something about resistance.

The people of that city came out in their tens of thousands to see me. I know it because I counted, and I counted because it was the only thing I could do while they stared; it was a long morning. The chief officers had set a guard to keep them off, and an order had been proclaimed, which I had read to me some days afterwards in a very good translation, that no person on any account should come within the length of a spear of my body, nor climb upon it, nor touch it, upon pain of death. The order was needed. By noon I had found three small boys on my chest, one on my shoulder, and a woman, who was seated upon the lobe of my left ear with her skirts arranged, in order, I think, to say that she had done it. They were carried down and reproved. I was told that the woman was not reproved at all, but taken home.

On the second day the emperor came. I had had notice of it by a stir in the people and a great number of small bells, and I turned as well as the chain would let me and saw him come down the road with his court: some hundreds of persons on horses no bigger than my hand, in coats of every colour, with a great many banners, which I could not read. He was the tallest of them, by about the breadth of my fingernail, which in that country is considered to be enough to strike awe into the beholder. He had a hard, intelligent face, and an upright seat, and I observed that he sat his horse not as a man does who is going somewhere, but as one who is being looked at; which is the more tiring of the two, and he did it very well. He drew rein at about twenty paces. The horse, which had never seen anything of my kind, reared; the emperor stayed on, and sat it out, and spoke to it; and when it was quiet he dismounted and stood before me with his hand on its neck, and his officers came up on each side of him and stood, and I lay on my side to look at him and kept very still.

I should like to say what I saw, for it is the part of my account that has most suffered from the first edition, in which it was put that the emperor's wrist was sixty, like everybody else's. It was not. I could not take it, being then some paces off, but I have since taken it, and I know. His was the steadiest in the Reach. A person of that country, when he is excited, beats up by thirty or forty; when he is afraid, by a hundred; and the guards upon the road, who had been looking at me for a day and a night, were beating something near nine hundred, and I could see their hands shake. The emperor's was seven hundred and ten, and it did not shake at all. He held it as other persons keep a secret. I did not, then, form any judgment of his character from it, and I do not now; I only say that I have not known a man with a steadier wrist, nor, among all those I have had under my hand, one that I should be so slow to trust.

He spoke to me, and I understood nothing, and he knew that I did not, and was not put out. And that was the beginning of the matter of the language.

I have said that to those persons my speech was a growl from a long way off, and their own a high note with a grain in it. It is hard to describe, to those who have never lived at two different beats, the difficulty of such a case. They could follow me, though it must have cost them the patience of listening to grass grow; a clever one among them could finish my sentences for me, and did, and was usually right. But I could make nothing of them at all. Between a voice that runs twelve to the one and an ear that goes at the one, there is no meeting except by somebody's giving way; and in that country, where it is held to be a defect in others to be slow, and no great matter to be quick, nobody was inclined to give way but the Slowers.

A Slower is a person who has been trained to keep his speech at a twelfth of his own. It is not to be done by willing it. He is seated in a chair that has a rest for the back and a rest for the chin; a cord is passed about his chest, which he draws tight as he breathes out, to hold the breath; and beside him sits a drummer, a boy of eight or nine, with a small drum, who taps it, hour after hour, at sixty to the minute, which is my own beat, taken from my wrist for the purpose; and every syllable that the Slower speaks must wait for the drum. They call it going under. The syllables came to me, from such a mouth, slowly, as a man speaks who has the stone in his hand and means to put it down gently, each of them a little too long, and cracking at the end; and between them was a great weariness which I could hear. I heard it first on the third day. After about forty minutes by my watch the Slower's hands began to tremble, and he was taken out of the chair by two others and set upon the ground and rubbed, and came up, as they say, at his own beat again, and sat for a quarter of an hour with a cloth over his face, saying nothing, at a speed that was a great relief to him.

The emperor had appointed six learned men to this work; and of the six, the one who was best at it, and the one who was soonest at it, was a young clerk of the lowest grade named Reldresal. I shall say what I know of him, because I came afterwards to owe him a great deal. He was, I judge, of about my own age, in their reckoning, though he looked younger; a narrow-shouldered, short-sighted person, a little behind the others in his dress, with ink upon the second finger of his right hand and a way of listening with his head on one side, which I know very well in a certain kind of patient. He did it, as I came slowly to understand, because he wished to. No one in that country at that time was curious in the manner of Reldresal. They were quick, and found it a pity in others to be slow. He had a fancy to know what it was like.

On the first day he sat before my face, upon a table which had been brought, and the drummer sat at his elbow, and he looked up at me, and laid his hand upon his chest, and said, so slowly that I thought at first that he was ill: Reldresal. And then he pointed to me, and I heard a word of about the length of a short prayer, which was, I afterwards learned, Quinbus Flestrin, and which means, as nearly as I can give it, the Man-Mountain; and then he pointed again at himself, and said another word, even longer, which I took to mean friend, or clerk, or gnat, and which I had to wait three weeks to be told. It meant, I think, a person who is useful. It is a very common word in that language and has some very unlucky uses.

I have a great facility for languages, from the strength of my memory, and I learned that one in three weeks, as I reckon, which at their beat was about nine months. It is not a difficult language. It has no future tense, since nobody there has the leisure to be in one, and the nearest it comes to it is a mood of urgency; and it has eleven words for different degrees of haste. It is written from the top of the page to the bottom, in a very quick hand that looks like the track of a cricket. I will not say that the Slowers were not grateful to be released at the end of three weeks; but I should add that Reldresal came the next day, and the day after, and sat on the table without the drummer, and did not speak to me at all for an hour, and then said, in a voice that he had slowed himself, with the greatest difficulty, to the pitch of an ordinary man's, and held for the whole of one sentence: I wished to see if I could.

It was the emperor's wish, meantime, that I should be searched; for there were persons about him who were afraid of what I might have about me, and said so; and two officers were deputed, with a clerk to write down what they found, and I took them up with my own hand and put them, one after the other, into the pockets of my coat and breeches and waistcoat, in order, for they could not otherwise have reached them. I mean to give some of their inventory here, as it was read to me, because it is the only account I have of how I must have looked. I will not give it all. It was a long document; it took them, as I reckon it, a day and a half of theirs, and they were very exact.

They said that they had found, in the right-hand pocket of the great coat, a piece of coarse cloth, large enough to cover the floor of the emperor's chief room. In the left, a case of silver, very long, with a lid, which they could not lift; one of them put his shoulder to it, and when it opened he was sneezing for a quarter of an hour; this was my tobacco. They found a case of instruments, finer than any in their country, which they supposed were the tools for some kind of cruelty and were pleased to learn were for the opposite; a great pouch of thick leather, which held, among other things, a razor, a comb and a probe; a bottle of brandy, a pistol, and a flask of powder, which they described as a hollow pillar of iron, fastened to a strong piece of timber, larger than a man, and a bag of black dust that made a noise; and, in an inner pocket of the jerkin, a flat dark object, bound, which I declined to have opened, saying that it concerned the privacy of persons; and which, the officers say, they did not press, being unwilling to give offence.

And in the small left pocket of the breeches, they said, they had found a very curious engine. It was a case of brass, with a face of glass, and they had looked into it through the glass and seen a thing that moved. It made a noise that they had not words for. They described it as a great slow thudding, which they felt in the soles of their feet, like the tread of an enormous person walking a long way off; and the clerk had set down, in the margin, that it gave one blow to twelve of theirs. They said that it kept the beat that I kept. They had watched me, they said, upon several occasions, take it out and lay it against my wrist, and look at it, and put it back; and that when they had asked what it was, I had said that I seldom did anything without consulting it.

I had not remembered that I said it. I believe that I said it to Reldresal, who had asked what the watch was for, and that I answered as I should have to any man: that it was a thing that I looked at before everything I did. It was a time-keeper, I explained; and I think that I explained it well. But the clerks had had no word for time, other than the thing which the persons of that country have, which is their own, and it was no use; and what they concluded, and set down at the foot of the inventory, in the margin, under the words we incline to the latter opinion, I have since read for myself. They concluded that it was my heart. They thought that I wore it outside, in a sealed case, as a prudent person does with a thing he cannot afford to lose, and that I consulted it as a man does his own pulse; and that to take it from me would be a cruelty, which they therefore did not recommend. And they added that it was a thing that could not be said to me, and that they had not said it.

I did not tell them that they were wrong. I do not know that they were. I let them take my razors, and my pistol and powder, and my pouch, and my case of lancets, which were put under seal; I kept the watch, and they never asked for it; and the book of wrists was in the jerkin, where they had been afraid to look. It is a thing that a surgeon does not give up. There were four thousand and some persons in it, and a great many were dead, and each had been a wrist that was put into my hand by somebody who trusted me; and I did not think the emperor of Lilliput had any claim on them. I said as much to Reldresal, afterwards, and he said that he had told them it was a book of the dead, and that they had been very much impressed. Then he said that he thought it would be best if I did not mention it to the Treasurer.

## Chapter 03 · The author diverts the emperor and his court in a very uncommon manner. The diversions of the court of Lilliput described. The author has his liberty granted him upon certain conditions, and swears to them standing on one foot.

For the first weeks I was fed, and I will say what I was fed and how it was settled, because it explains a good deal that came after. It had been laid down in council that I should receive a daily allowance of meat and drink sufficient for the support of one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight of the emperor's subjects; which is the number you get when you divide my height by theirs and cube it, and is very exact. But Reldresal, who was then still a clerk, and was sent by someone to say it, observed in the margin of the Treasury's paper that the persons of that country eat at their own beat, which is to say twelve times as often as I do; that a thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight of them would therefore be, in a day of mine, twenty thousand seven hundred and thirty-six; and that I should starve. The paper went to the High Treasurer, who read it, as I am told, twice, and said that it was a refinement which the Treasury could not afford. The allowance stood. I was hungry in that country from the first week to the last, and I never complained of it, because I was told what it had cost to settle.

The High Treasurer was named Flimnap. I should say something of him, since I shall have to say a good deal. He was by general consent the greatest dancer upon the rope in the whole of the Reach, and was therefore, after the emperor, the most considerable person in it; for in that country the offices of state are given, and confirmed from year to year, upon the rope. There is a thread, a little thicker than a common thread, stretched at about two feet from the ground, and the candidates for an office, or for the keeping of one, dance upon it before the emperor and the court, and he who leaps highest without falling has the place. The prime minister himself must dance, they told me, every year, to show that he has not lost his activity; which, by my own reckoning, was about once a month.

I was shown it on the third week. They set up the thread in the road before the temple, so that I might lie upon my side and see; and I did, and I saw nothing. That is to say, I saw a very small man step upon a thread, and then I saw him on the ground at the other end of it, bowing, and I understood that something had occurred between the two which my eye had not been fast enough to take. They were so kind as to repeat it for me. A person who is ready for it, and who is allowed to lie with his cheek upon the ground, may see, at about the fifth repetition, that the dancer leaps, and turns, and lands, and leaps again, perhaps nine times, upon a thread that is wavering from the first leap; and that he has done it, to him, with the greatest deliberation, in the time that I take to draw one breath. I took the Treasurer's wrist, when the dance was over, by laying the tip of my little finger upon it where he sat; and it was at nine hundred and falling; I judged, from the rate of the falling, that it had been something over eleven. I do not think that I have ever been so frightened for a man who was smiling.

There is a second contest, also before the emperor, for the three silken threads, which are given as honours: blue, red and green. The emperor holds a stick, at a hand's height from the ground, between two pages, and the candidates run up one at a time and either leap over it or creep beneath, as the stick rises and falls; and the three who come off best are given the threads, and wear them girdled twice about the middle. I observed that nearly every great person at the court had one. I asked Reldresal, who by this time sat on my hand for an hour in the afternoon to be taught my language in return, what was said of a person who had none; and he told me that it was said of such a person that he was waiting. I observed, too, that the clever ones had found that creeping paid better than leaping, since the stick, being held by pages, was very seldom as high at the end as at the beginning; and I took it that this was the thing that was properly being tested.

It was not long before I was asked, in my turn, to divert the court; and I will set down what they asked of me, since it was the first service that I did in that country. His majesty desired that I should stand like a Colossus, with my legs as far apart as I could conveniently place them; and he then ordered his general to draw up the troops, three thousand foot and a thousand horse, in close order, and to march them beneath me, with the drums beating and the colours flying and the pikes advanced. I did it. I stood, with my feet apart upon the road before the temple, and I looked straight before me at a hill, as I had been told to do, and I did not look down; and the army went through. I felt it, between my knees, as one feels water. It was very orderly, and took, by my watch, forty-one minutes.

I mention the forty-one. I had not thought it a long time; it is not a long time to stand. It was Reldresal who told me afterwards, when I had come to be told things, that it had been, to the army, the better part of a day: that they had marched, in the order of the review, from the dawn and the first drum to the evening, and that there had been two halts for meat. They had expected me to give out; the great, by what was known of them, could not hold a pose for ten minutes; and I had stood, for the whole of their day, as a mountain stands, with my eyes upon a hill. That was the thing that the emperor had wished to see. It was the first time in my life that I was ever admired for a quality that I could not help; and I will say that I found it a very odd feeling, and rather a pleasant one, and I was uncomfortable with it by the evening.

Within a month the children of the capital had decided that I was a hill. The order forbade it, and was read to them daily; but a child at that beat is not subject to an order that takes ten minutes to say, and they came at the changing of the guard, in twos and threes, and went up my arm. I let them. I lay without moving and counted them, and was sorry that I could not take their wrists, which would have wanted a finger finer than I have. There was one among them, a girl, who could not have been more than three by their reckoning, and who stood each afternoon upon the first joint of my thumb and said to me, with the greatest care, in my own language, which she had got from Reldresal's lessons through a hole in a wall: "Good day, Man-Mountain." She said it very clearly. By their reckoning she was three when I came, and she was twelve when I left; and I have thought since that she was the only person in the Reach who ever greeted me at my own pace.

I should say, too, how I slept. I lay in the temple at night with my feet outside the door, and the watch went by in the road with their lanterns, over my toes; and I slept, as I have always done, in about four hours, which to them was two days. It was told me afterwards that I snored. I had not known it. It appears that a snore, at the pace at which I breathe, comes to them as the one sound of mine that they can hear properly, being slow; and the people on the west side of the city, who were within hearing of the temple, took to setting their day by it. They said that it was like having a very large and patient clock in the next room. The old ones said that they slept better. I have been given to understand, by persons I trust, that when I was gone the west side was a long time getting used to the quiet.

I come now to the matter of my liberty, which was settled in the second month. I had begged it on all occasions, humbly, upon my knees, and I had been told on each that it was not to be done, but that I should be well treated; and I had begun to think that it never would be done. But the emperor, who had had a great many hours to think of it, and a great many to be told what I cost, had the council sit upon it, and the council prepared a paper, which was brought to me by Reldresal. He had been promoted for it, I believe, for he now wore a thread. I was to be given my liberty upon certain conditions; and they came in a very long document, from which I shall give only the sense.

I was not to depart the Reach without his majesty's licence under the great seal. I was not to come into the metropolis without express order; at which times the inhabitants should have two hours' warning, to keep within their doors, which was ten minutes of mine, and which I thought, upon the whole, long. I was to confine my walking to the principal roads, and not to lie down in a meadow or a field of corn; and in walking I was to take the utmost care not to trample upon the bodies of any of his loving subjects, nor upon their horses or carriages, nor to take any subject into my hands without his own consent. If an express required extraordinary dispatch, I was to carry in my pocket the messenger and his horse a six days' journey, once every moon, and return the said messenger, if so required, safe to the imperial presence. I was to be the ally of the emperor against his enemies in the island of Blefuscu. I was, at my leisure, to be aiding and assisting to his workmen, in raising certain great stones; and I was to make, within two moons, an exact survey of the circumference of his dominions, by computation of my own paces round the coast.

And I was never to raise my beat above one hundred. That article came near the end of the paper. I had thought, until I heard it read, that it was an odd provision; and then I saw what it was. It stated that the said Man-Mountain should at no time quicken himself, nor lower his beat below forty, on pain of being held an enemy to the Reach; and that, in token thereof, he should hold out his wrist, once in each day, to be taken by an officer of the Treasury. They had thought of what I might be if I were to run up to their own. A man of my size who had come to seven hundred and twenty would have been, to them, a thing that moves before it is seen; and they were right to be afraid of it, and had written it into the paper as plainly as they could. I said that I was content. And it occurred to me, while Reldresal was reading the rest, that it was a very long time since anyone had taken my wrist, and that I should not mind it.

The last article was the allowance, and it was the one that had been settled in the first week, at one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight; and I signed it with a very good grace. The form of the oath, in that country, requires that the person who swears hold his left foot in his right hand, and place the middle finger of his right hand upon the crown of his head, and the thumb upon the tip of his right ear. It is the posture of a man who can do nothing else while he holds it, and I believe that is its purpose. I took it, and the court looked on from the ground, and I swore; and it was a longer oath than I expected. I found, in the middle of it, that I could not feel my own wrist. I had not known till then how often in the day I touched it, nor what I did when I did not; and for the whole length of that oath I did not know my own beat. I found that I minded, a good deal more than I should have thought.

When it was done the chain was struck off. It took them the greater part of an hour, by my watch, to undo the thirty-six padlocks, going from one to the next with a ladder, and each of the persons concerned came down at the end of it and bowed, as if there had been nothing in it but a favour. I heard, as it fell from my ankle, a sound that the people made. It was a shout; but it was in their own register, and came to me as a thing that I felt in my teeth. I stood up. I think that it was the first time since the road that I had stood without something upon my chest, and I put out my hand, to try the air, as one does; and the whole of the front rank, all of them in their best, and all of them quicker than I could follow, were upon their faces in the dust before my hand had gone a foot. I did not move it any farther.

I walked out of the temple that afternoon, upon the road, which was a principal one. It was very strange to be able to go where I liked. I went for about a mile with a hundred thousand persons going before and behind me, at a respectful distance, running; and when I sat down on a bank at the edge of a field, where I was permitted to sit, the whole of them stopped, a long way off, in a line, like a tide. And it was only in the evening, going back to the temple for the night, that I found that I had forgotten something. I had not taken my own beat since the oath. It was the first time in my life that I had been so long without it, and I had not noticed. I laid my wrist against the watch, and it was sixty, and I stood for some time upon the road without being able to tell whether that was good news.

## Chapter 04 · The author sees Mildendo, and looks into the palace from two stools. He is taken daily by an officer of the Treasury. The principal secretary for private affairs tells him, at his pace, of the heels and the eggs and the fleet of Blefuscu; and the author offers his service.

The first thing I asked for, when I had my liberty, was leave to see Mildendo; and the emperor gave it me readily, with a charge that I should do no hurt either to the inhabitants or to their houses. The people had notice of my design by a proclamation. They were given, as the article required, two hours; and I did not understand, until I stood at the western gate with my coat in my hands, what two hours are to a city that is to be walked through. They are a day: time to be told, and to dress, and to compose the face. The city had used it.

The wall that goes round Mildendo is two feet and a half in height and at least eleven inches in breadth, so that a coach and four may be driven along the top of it, and it is strengthened by towers at every ten feet. The city within is a square of five hundred feet to the side, divided into four quarters by two great streets that cross in the middle, and each of these is five feet wide. I stepped over the gate. I had taken off my coat, because the skirts of it would have had the eaves from every house in the street; it took me four minutes to take it off with decency, which was, to those who were waiting at their doors, the better part of an hour; and I went in, as I went everywhere in that country, sideways, in my waistcoat, with my elbows held in against my ribs and my hat in my hand.

I had supposed, from the order, that I should be passing through a city shut up. It was not shut up. It was a city that had been given a day's notice that it was to be looked at, and had dressed. At every door there stood a person in his best clothes, composed, with his hands in front of him; at every window of the five storeys there was a face, and I could see that it had been arranged. There was a man at the corner of the second street with a child on his shoulders who had been told, I think, to be good, and was. There was a woman at a window who had put on, as I judged, everything she owned, and had had time to put it on twice. I have been looked at by a good many persons in my life, and I had not before been looked at by a city that had rehearsed. I understood as I went along that to stand quite still for the ten minutes I took was, for each of them, two hours; that they were doing it for me, in good order, which I had not asked and could not have refused; and I trod with a care that I find I cannot describe, as one does in a house where someone is ill.

The lanes and alleys I could only look into, from above, as a man looks down a well; I saw that they were full, and that the people in them were standing in the same way. And all the while, from behind the doors and the shutters, where the work of the city went on as it always does, there came up to me the noise of it, which I had not expected and did not at first know. It was a hiss, very fine and very even, with a kind of rattle in it. I knew it at last: it was rain working across a deck from the bow. It was five hundred thousand persons speaking at seven hundred and twenty to the minute, and it was the only part of my visit to Mildendo that had not been arranged for me.

The emperor's palace stands in the middle, where the two streets cross, behind a wall of two feet in height, which stands twenty feet off from the buildings round it, so that I could step over the wall with ease. But the outer court was five feet high at the roof, and the walls of it, though of hewn stone and four inches through, would not have borne me, and I could not have gone over without taking some part of it with me. His majesty was very desirous that I should see the magnificence of his palace; and I told him that I could, if I might have three days, which I should spend in his park with my knife. I had my knife: it had been given back to me, with my razors and my case of lancets, on the day of my liberty, the seal being broken in my presence; the pistol and the powder were kept. I do not think that anyone told the emperor what three days came to. They came to thirty-six of his, which is five weeks and a day, and he waited the whole of them without sending to ask how the work did; and I have thought since that it was the best thing I ever saw done by a person at the head of a state.

I cut down with it some of the largest trees in the royal park, which is a hundred yards from the city, and made of them two stools, each three feet high and strong enough to bear me. When the people had had notice a second time, I went through the city with a stool in each hand. At the side of the outer court I stood on one of them, and lifted the other over the roof, and set it down in the space between the first court and the second, which is eight feet wide; and I stepped across to it, and drew the first after me with a hooked stick; and so, as one walks a pair of dividers over a chart, I went over the buildings, and came into the inmost court. There I lay down upon my side, and put my face to the windows of the middle storeys, which had been left open for the purpose.

I saw the most splendid rooms that I have ever looked into; and I will say what splendid is at that size. It is a floor which you could cover with your thumb; hangings of which you cannot see the weave; a lamp that I took at first for a pin with a head to it. I saw the empress and the young princes, each in their several lodgings, with the chief of their attendants about them. And the empress, when she saw my face at her window, did what I had been told that she would not do, and put out her hand to me to be kissed.

I had to think how. A sigh of mine, at that range, would have taken the fan from her other hand and, I believe, a good part of the hair from her head; and the distance between my mouth and her hand was a matter of inches. I stopped my breath, and brought my lips to it as I should have brought a probe to an eye, and I kissed it; and I felt against my lower lip a thing that I can only compare to a moth against the glass of a lantern. It took me, I suppose, twelve seconds. It was not until I was drawing back that I understood what the twelve seconds had been to her: something above two minutes of her time, with her arm held out, in the full light of the window, and the smile on. She had held the whole of it without a tremor. I have seen men on a yard-arm in a gale who could not have kept a face for two minutes, and I bowed as low as the window allowed, which was not far.

I will not go on with the rooms. I am keeping the rest of what I saw in that empire for a larger work, which is now almost ready for the press, and which will contain the history, the laws, the learning, the trees and the animals, and in general everything that I had not the beat to see. [Margin: Mrs. Gulliver's copy has here, in pencil, two words: not sent. No such work has come to the Press, nor, so far as the editor has been able to learn, to any other. R.S.]

Every noon after the day of my liberty an officer of the Treasury came to the temple to take my wrist. It was in the articles, and it was kept to the letter. He was a young man in the grey sash of that office; he came with two men and a ladder, and with a brass instrument in a box no larger than a snuffbox, which had a foot that went upon the plate of the wrist and a thread that shook against a scale. I lay down on the step of the temple with my hand open, and he went up the ladder, and set the foot of the instrument on my wrist, and read the scale with his eye an inch from it. He took it five times and wrote the mean in a ledger. It was a better instrument than any I have owned, and I should have given a good deal to carry one in my case. He did not look up. In the whole of my time in that country I do not think he once looked at my face.

I had supposed, all my life, that my beat was sixty, in the way that one supposes one's name is Gulliver. The young man wrote, in the first fortnight, fifty-nine, sixty-one, sixty, fifty-eight, sixty-two, sixty-one, sixty; and I was surprised how much I varied. I took myself at the watch every evening, as I have always done, and was sixty; I took myself at noon on the sixth day, with a ladder at my arm and a foot upon my wrist and an open ledger and a person who did not look at me, and was sixty-one. I have seen the beat of a patient go up by eleven in the time that it takes to say good morning. I had not known that I was a patient. Beside each number the young man wrote, in a very small hand, what I had been doing, which was sitting, or walking, or eating, or asleep; and I read it upside down, having learned in my profession to read what the physician beside me is writing. I asked him why. He said, to the ledger, that a number by itself was not anything. They were the first words he had said to me, and the only ones; and I found that I agreed with him.

When he had done he shut the book in a small case and locked it, and went down the ladder, and the men took the ladder away. I was told that the book was shown to the High Treasurer on the first of every moon, and that he read it, as he read everything, twice.

About a fortnight after this, Reldresal came to the temple at dusk. He was by this time Principal Secretary for Private Affairs, having gone up three steps in the time that I had been going round the courts; he wore two threads, the blue and the red; and he came attended by one servant only, who was the boy with the drum. The boy had grown. I had not seen him do it. In my first week, at the Slower's elbow, he had been so small that the drum was nearly the size of him; he was now a head taller than it, and carried it as persons carry a thing they have been given charge of. Reldresal ordered his coach to wait at the end of the road, and asked me for an hour's audience, which I readily granted, on account of his quality and of the many good offices he had done me at court. I offered to lie down, that he might the more easily reach my ear; but he chose rather to be held in my hand. I took him up. He sat down on my palm with his legs crossed and one hand upon my thumb, and said a word to the boy, which I heard as a fine quick scratching, like a pen in a hurry; and the boy sat down on the step, and set the drum between his knees, and began to beat it at sixty.

He did not begin at once. He was going under, and I watched him do it. He had no chair, and no cord about the chest; he had my thumb to lean against; and I felt him, through the pad of it, let himself down, hand over hand, like a man lowering a weight on a rope, until it hung level with the drum. It took about four minutes. When he spoke it was in the voice of a person who has the stone in his hand and means to put it down gently; and he said, in his first sentence, that he had been told to say what he had come to say, and that he would say it once, because he did not think that he could do it twice.

He began, as he did everything, with the order of the evils. The Reach, he said, was in a state that appeared very flourishing to strangers, and he did not doubt that it appeared so to me; but it laboured under two diseases, a faction at home and an enemy abroad, and he would take the first first. For some seventy moons the Reach had been two parties, the Tramecksan and the Slamecksan, who told one another apart by the heels of their shoes, the one high and the other low. Seventy moons is something under six months of mine; the parties had been founded, as near as I could make it, about the time that I sailed. The High Heels held that theirs was the heel of the ancient constitution. The Low Heels held the offices. The emperor had resolved to employ none but Low Heels in the government, as I must have remarked, and wore his own a drurr below the lowest at his court; a drurr being the fourteenth part of an inch, which was explained to me as the smallest quantity that a person of that country can feel in his heel by the end of an afternoon. The two parties would not eat together, nor drink, nor talk. To persons who eat twelve times as often as I do that is a great many meals not shared, and I was told that in some quarters the Reach had become very quiet. The High Heels were the more numerous; but the power, he said, was wholly on our side; and I noticed the our. I had not been asked.

He added, in a lower voice, which cost him a good deal, that his imperial highness the heir had, it was feared, some leaning to the High Heels; at least it could plainly be seen that one of his heels was higher than the other, which gave him a hobble in his gait. I had seen the prince, from my second stool. I had taken the hobble for a badly set fracture of the thigh, such as one sees in the forecastle after a fall from the shrouds, the left leg being shorter than the right by, I judged, a drurr and some part of another. I said nothing. It had not been put to me as a symptom.

Here he rested. The drum went on. The sun, which had been upon the roof of the Treasury when he began, had got down to its chimney, and the boy did not look at it. When Reldresal took up again, with the hand upon my thumb beginning to tremble, it was with the second evil: that the Reach was threatened with an invasion from Blefuscu, which was the other great empire of the universe, almost as large and powerful as his majesty's own. As for me, the philosophers were still divided. They did not hold with other countries peopled by creatures of my size; they had worked it out that a hundred of me would eat the Reach down to the roots inside a season, and had concluded that I must have fallen from the moon, or from one of the lesser stars; and their histories, which ran back six thousand moons, knew of no country but the two. Six thousand moons is a little over forty-one years of mine. I was, within a few years, the age of their world, and I did not say so.

The war, he said, had been going on for six-and-thirty moons, and was about eggs. I give it as he gave it, with the whole of his weariness behind each sentence, and I will not say that I understood it better at the end than at the beginning. In the old days an egg was broken, before it was eaten, at its larger end; every one agreed upon that. Then the grandfather of the present emperor, who was a boy at the time, was served an egg so broken, and cut his finger on the shell; and the boy's father, who was then emperor, to spare the Reach any more of it, commanded that every egg in his dominions should be broken at the small end, under heavy penalties. By my reckoning, as I worked it out afterwards, the finger was cut about six years before I sailed. I might have dressed it. The people would not have the law. There were six rebellions on account of it, in which one emperor lost his life and another his crown; and each time that one was put down, the exiles went across the water to Blefuscu, whose emperors had paid for most of them. Eleven thousand persons had chosen to be put to death rather than break their eggs at the smaller end. I asked him whether that was for the egg. He said that it was for the end.

The question had been argued, he said, in some hundreds of large volumes, of which those of the Big-endians, as the party of the large end was called, had long been forbidden; and the Big-endians by law could hold no office. The emperors of Blefuscu, whose people were all of that party, had written more than once to complain that it was a schism in religion, and an offence against the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral, which is their scripture, wherein the prophet Lustrog commands all true believers to break their eggs at the convenient end. Reldresal thought it a strain upon the text, since the text did not say which end was the convenient one; and he said, with a little of the dryness that I had begun to associate with the second thread, that he supposed it was left to every man's conscience, or to the chief magistrate's, and that the whole difficulty lay in telling which.

In six-and-thirty moons of war the Reach had lost forty ships of the line, and a great many smaller vessels, with thirty thousand of its best seamen and soldiers; the enemy's loss was thought to be somewhat greater. It had begun, by my calendar, about a fortnight before I came ashore. I had arrived in it as a man arrives in the middle of a sentence. Thirty thousand is a number that I can say. I have only seen twelve; I took their beats in their last hour, and I remember what it is to hold a wrist and feel it go down. I did not try to think of thirty thousand.

They had now, he said, equipped a numerous fleet, and were on the point of a descent upon the Reach; and his imperial majesty, placing great confidence in my courage and strength, had commanded him to lay the whole account before me. That was all of it. He had said it in an hour and ten minutes by my watch, with two rests; and he sat in my hand with his two threads, the sun gone from the chimney and the first lamps lit along the road and the drum still going, and said nothing more.

I said what I could, and I said it slowly, by the drum, since I had no wish to cost him more than I must. I said that it would not become a stranger to meddle with parties; that I did not know the question; that if I were asked which was the convenient end of an egg I should break it at whichever end the person across the table broke his, so as not to begin a conversation. But I could see a fleet. I said that I would do what I was able, against persons who were coming to kill those among whom I had been set down, and that I would do it at the hazard of my life. I meant the road, and the girl on my thumb; but I said it to the Principal Secretary as a point of state, and he took it as one, and bowed to me from my palm as far as a man can bow who is sitting on one.

He asked to be put down. I put him on the step, and he stood there a moment, as the Slowers do when they come up, with his hands open at his sides, shaking; and then he said, in my voice, at my pace, the last thing he had to say, which was: I have never said so much at once. It was the first sentence of the evening that sounded like himself. Then he said something in his own, which I did not catch, to the boy; and went down the road to the coach at a speed I could not follow, and was gone while I was still looking at where he had been.

The boy stayed. He had been told, I suppose, to bring the drum, and no one had said what was to be done with it after. He sat on the step with it between his knees and beat sixty, quietly, to nobody; and I did not tell him to stop. It was a quarter of an hour by my watch, which was three hours for him, and he did not once lose the time. I sat in the dusk outside the temple, and listened. It was the first occasion since the road on which anyone had kept my time for me, and I let him.

## Chapter 05 · The author, by an unusual stratagem, prevents an invasion. He is made a nardac, and is taken at the wrist before the court. He will not make a province of Blefuscu. Ambassadors arrive, and he is invited to visit.

I had not yet seen Blefuscu, and I meant that it should not see me. It is an island to the north-east of the Reach, parted from it by a channel eight hundred yards across; all traffic between the two empires had been forbidden since the war began, on pain of death, and our emperor had laid an embargo on every vessel that floated. I kept away from that side of the coast, for I did not wish the enemy's ships to carry home word of what had come ashore on the other. And meanwhile I turned over in my mind what I had been told, and came to a project, which I laid before his majesty: it was to take the fleet. The scouts reported it at anchor in the harbour, ready to sail on the first fair wind. I asked the oldest seamen about the channel, which they had often sounded, and they told me that in the middle, at high water, it came to about six feet of my measure, and elsewhere to a good deal less.

I walked to the north-east shore and lay down behind a hillock, and took out my pocket perspective glass. I had it, and a pair of spectacles with it, in a private pocket of the jerkin, beside the book of wrists, where, as I have said, the searchers were afraid to look. I saw the harbour of Blefuscu, and in it about fifty men of war and a great number of transports; and I saw it as one sees a basin of water that has been struck, which is to say that I saw it shiver. There were crews on every deck, and the place was at its work; but the work was at seven hundred and twenty, and the glass could not hold it. I could make out the masts, like a stand of reeds, and a quivering over them, and nothing else. I came away with the shiver still in my eyes.

I gave orders, for which I had a warrant, for the strongest cable that the Reach could make, and for a great quantity of bars of iron. I gave them at noon on the temple step, to a clerk who wrote them down, and I did not think of them again until I came out the next morning and found the heap. It stood as high as my knee. The cable was about as thick as packthread, and the bars the length and size of a knitting-needle, and there was more of both than I had asked for; and I learned afterwards that the rope-walks of the Reach had been going for what was to them a month, and that the smiths had not slept. I had given an order in a sentence. I had not understood that when the Man-Mountain asks for rope, a nation runs. I have been careful since about what I ask for, though in my own country no one has run.

I trebled the cable, to make it stronger, and for the same reason I twisted three of the iron bars together and bent the ends into a hook; and having thus made fifty hooks and fifty cables I carried them to the north-east coast over my shoulder. My fingers were too large for the work, and I did it by feel, as one makes a knot in the dark, with my tongue between my teeth, and it took me the rest of that day.

On the day after, I went down to the water about half an hour before high tide, and put off my coat, my shoes and my stockings, and walked into the sea in my leather jerkin. I waded as fast as I could, and in the middle I swam about thirty yards, until I felt ground again. It took me less than half an hour. I should say what that was to the shore ahead of me. It was six hours. It is time enough for a garrison to be roused, and fed, and drawn up; and the Blefuscudians had it. They had six hours in which to see a mountain walk out into their channel, at the pace of a man who is wading, and they had been very sensible about it.

When I came up out of the water into the harbour the ships were empty. The crews had gone over the sides in the first hour, I was told, and ashore, with their officers; they had been standing on the beach ever since, in order, looking at me: some thirty thousand, I should think. I had been given that number in the temple, and had not tried to think of it. It was standing on a beach, alive, and it was looking at me. They had taken their time. I stood among the masts, in the water to my waist, and I saw that one man had been left aboard each ship to keep the anchor-watch, and that every one of them was standing in the bow with his hand upon the cable, like a person guarding a thing already lost. I did not look at them for long.

I took my tackle, and made a hook fast in the hole at the prow of each ship, and tied all the cords together at the end. While I was at it the enemy shot at me from the beach. They shot several thousand arrows, and they shot them at twelve to my one, so that for every breath I took there was a volley in the air; and a great many stuck in my hands and face. It was not that they hurt, though they smarted. It was that I could not see them come. They arrived like a change in the weather. My great fear was for my eyes, which I should certainly have lost if I had not thought of an expedient. I took out the spectacles, and fastened them upon my nose as strongly as I could; and thus armed I went on with my work, and the arrows that came at my face struck the glasses with a sound like hail on a window, and did them no harm, beyond knocking them a little crooked.

When I had made all the hooks fast I took the knot in my hand and began to pull, and not a ship would stir; they were all held by their anchors. This was the boldest part of my enterprise, and I had not known that it was there. I let go the cord, and, leaving the hooks where they were, I took my knife to the cables of the anchors, one after the other. I will say that before I cut each I waited until the man in the bow had gone over the side, which he did without being asked, as soon as he saw the knife, and I counted fifty heads in the water. I took two hundred shots in the face and hands in doing it. Then I took up the knotted end of my own cables, and drew after me, with a great deal of ease, fifty of the largest ships of war of the empire of Blefuscu.

They saw it done. For a moment they did not understand: they had seen me cut the cables, and thought that I meant only to let the ships drift and fall foul of one another; and then they saw the whole fleet move, in order, with me at the head of it. And then they made a sound. It came off the beach as a single note, very high and very long, and I felt it in my teeth. I had felt it once before, on the day that my chain was struck off; and I want to say that I could not tell the two apart. I should not have known which it was if I had not been the cause.

When I was out of danger I stopped, and picked the arrows out of my hands and face. I took out two hundred and six, since I could not help counting; and I washed the places in the sea, which stung, and had to be content. Then I waited an hour for the tide to fall a little, and waded through the middle with my cargo behind me, and so came back to the royal port of the Reach.

The emperor and his whole court were on the shore. They had been there, I learned afterwards, since I went in, which was by their reckoning more than a day. Chairs had been brought, and food, and they had slept in turns; the emperor had not sat down. The last six hours of the waiting had been spent in watching the ships come on in a great half-moon, with no sign of me, and in believing that I was drowned and that what they saw was the enemy coming for them. When I came into hearing in the shallows I held up the end of the cable, and cried out in a loud voice, Long live the most puissant emperor of Lilliput. It is a sentence that takes me about four seconds. It took them, I think, forty-eight seconds; and I am told that in the course of them the face of the emperor was seen to do a thing which no one at court could afterwards describe.

He received me at the landing with every compliment, and created me a nardac upon the spot, which is the highest title of honour in that country. The form of it is that the person so created is taken at the wrist, before the court, and the number read out, so that all may know at what pitch he was when he was honoured. The young man with the ladder was sent for, from wherever he had been kept waiting for more than a day, and he went up it and set the foot of his instrument on my wrist and read the scale aloud. It was seventy-nine. It was the highest that the book had yet had from me. He did not look up; and the emperor said, Let it be written. Then I was permitted, which I had not expected, to lay the tip of my smallest finger on the wrist of the emperor, where he sat, and tell the court what I found. It was seven hundred and ten. I had not touched it before. It was perfectly steady, as a stone is steady that has been warmed in the hand, and I said the number, and the court wrote that down also.

Two days later his majesty desired that I would take some other opportunity of bringing the rest of the enemy's ships into his ports. He desired it himself. He spoke to me at my pace, which I had been told he could not do; I believe that he had practised it, in some room of the palace where no one was to see; and it cost him something, and he did not let it show, but I noticed that he used very few words, and that each was a stone. He said that the fifty were very well. He wanted the rest, and Blefuscu with them: he would have it made a province, and governed by a viceroy; he would have the Big-endian exiles who had fled there delivered up; and he would have the people compelled to break their eggs at the smaller end. Then, he said, the Reach would have one emperor and one end, and he would be the sole monarch of the whole world. I took the last for a figure of speech. I laughed, a little, in the way that one does; and the emperor did not; and I understood that it was not a figure.

I said that I could not. I tried to say why, and I said it as I said everything, at my own pace, so that it took about as long as his patience. I said that I had taken the fleet because it was coming to kill the persons among whom I had been put down; that I had done it gladly; but that I would never be the instrument of bringing a free and courageous people into slavery. I am told that it was well put. I have thought since that it was the shortest speech I made in that country, and the only one that cost me anything. He said nothing at all. I thought of his wrist, as I had had it under my finger on the shore, and I believed that it was seven hundred and ten still.

He raised the matter, in his artful way, at the council, where I was told that some of the wisest appeared by their silence to be of my opinion; and silence in that country is a considerable thing, since they eat and sleep and talk at such a rate that a person who says nothing for as long as I take to draw a breath has said nothing twelve times. Others, who were my enemies in secret, could not forbear expressions which touched me by a side-wind. This was the beginning of an intrigue between his majesty and a handful of ministers, maliciously bent against me, which broke out in less than two months, and had like to have ended in my destruction. I did not know it then.

About three weeks after the exploit a solemn embassy arrived from Blefuscu, with humble offers of a peace, which was soon concluded, upon terms very advantageous to our emperor, and which I shall not trouble the reader with. Three weeks of mine is eight months of theirs, and that is long enough to learn to ask. There were six ambassadors, with a train of about five hundred persons, and their entry was very magnificent, suitable to the grandeur of their master and the importance of their business. They had brought three Slowers with them, who had been trained upon the road, and whom I met with the particular respect that one pays to persons who have done a thing they were not made for.

When the treaty was finished, in which I did them several good offices by the credit that I had, or appeared to have, at court, their excellencies, who had been privately told how much I had been their friend, made me a visit in form. They began with compliments upon my valour and generosity, invited me to their kingdom in the name of the emperor their master, and desired that I would show them some proof of the great strength of which they had heard so many wonders. I was glad to oblige them. I took up the six of them together, with their coach, in one hand, and held them at the level of my face, and walked once round the square; and I set the coach down again, with the horses beside it, exactly where it had stood. I will not trouble the reader with the rest.

The eldest of them asked me when it was over, with a great deal of courtesy, and through a Slower who had a cold, whether it was true that I had in me a beat of a hundred. I said that it was in the articles that I should not go above it. He said that in Blefuscu a visitor was bound by no article but his own. I said that I would remember that. He seemed to think that I had said something else, and I let him.

I asked leave of the emperor to accept the invitation, and he gave it very graciously, but with a coldness that I could not account for. I did not think that it was about the leave. I took it for the weather. It was at the noon of that day that I noticed that the officer who came to take my wrist was not the young man; I think that it had been so for some days. He was an older man, in a heavier sash, and he looked at my face the whole time that the foot of the instrument was upon the plate, as one looks at a thing one has been told about. I did not ask what had become of the young one.

## Chapter 06 · The empress's apartment is on fire, and the author is instrumental in saving the rest of the palace, by a method which is not forgiven. A word on how he lived, and on the persons of the Reach: their laws, and the manner of educating their children.

The next noon the older officer wrote down the number, and then, without lifting his eyes from the ledger, he spoke. He spoke in the voice of a person who has practised a single sentence, slowly, in a stairwell, and it cracked at the end of every word. The Treasurer and the Admiral, he said, say that you spoke too long with the ambassadors. They were the first words he had said to me. I asked him how long was too long. He said that it was longer than I would think, for a man who talks slowly. Then he put the instrument in its box and the box in its case, and went down the ladder; and I understood, from the care with which he did not look at me as he went, that he had done something, and had not meant me to know it.

I should say who they were. The Treasurer I have described; he paid for me, and had not forgiven the allowance, nor, I believe, the fifty hooks. The Admiral was a person named Bolgolam, a thin dark man with a great reputation for caution, who had lost forty ships to Blefuscu in three months of mine, and had then had fifty of the enemy's brought into his harbour in half an hour by a stranger who was not a sailor. I do not say that he was wrong to dislike me. I say that I had not thought, when I was doing it, what it would be to be the Admiral.

It was not long after this that I did the emperor, as I then thought, a very signal service. I was waked at midnight by a noise at the door of the temple, such as I had never heard there: a high thin note, like a great number of kettles, which went on, and neither rose nor fell. I lay some time without understanding it. It was the cry of many hundred persons, and they were all crying one word. The word was Burglum. It is the eleventh of the words for haste in that language, and the last; it means a haste with a fire in it; and it is hardly a word at all, since no one who uses it has the time to finish it, so that what I heard, at my pace, was the first third of it said some thousands of times. I was told afterwards that it had taken them eleven minutes of mine to wake me, which is above two hours of theirs; and that to the court, by the time I came, the fire had been a long night's work.

Four of the court, who had come through the crowd to my ear in the dark, told me, each in fewer words than the last, that I was to come to the palace at once; that the apartment of her imperial majesty was on fire; and that a maid of honour had fallen asleep over a romance. I was on my feet before the fourth had done. Orders had been given to clear the way, and the moon was up; and I came to the palace through the sleeping town without treading on anyone, by holding each foot in the air until I could see where it was to come down. They had set ladders against the walls of the apartment, and had a line of buckets that ran away into the dark toward the water; and the buckets were about the size of large thimbles. I stood and watched them go up the ladders, hand to hand, shining in the glare, a great many, very fast, and it was like watching a person breathe upon a coal. I might easily have smothered the fire with my coat. I had left my coat behind me in my haste, and had come in my jerkin.

I had drunk plentifully the evening before of a wine called glimigrim (the Blefuscudians call it flunec, but ours is the better sort), at a supper given for the ambassadors; and I note for the profession that it is very diuretic. By a piece of luck that I could not have contrived, I had discharged none of it. The heat that I took in coming near the flames, and in labouring at the buckets, set it to work.

I will not dwell upon the manner. I did it with all the decency the case allowed. I gave warning, as loudly as I could, to those upon the ladders, and waited until they were down: it was a matter of seconds with me, though I understood that it was minutes with them. Then I applied what I had, in the proper places; and in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, was saved. I have been told that to those who stood in the courts below, with the shutters closed and their hats pulled down, it was a rain of thirty-six minutes; and that they took it as persons take a long rain, and that no one complained.

It was day when I had done, and I went back to the temple without waiting to be thanked, because I could not tell how his majesty would take the manner of the service. By the fundamental laws of the realm it is capital in any person, of whatever quality, to make water within the precincts of the palace. I was a little comforted, towards noon, by a message from the emperor that he would give orders to the grand justiciary for my pardon to be passed in form. It was not passed. I was privately told that the empress had conceived the greatest abhorrence of what I had done, and had removed to the farthest side of the court, resolved that the burnt wing should never be repaired for her use; and that in the presence of her chief confidants she had been heard to vow revenge. I thought of the window, and her hand held out for two minutes of her time, and the smile that she had not let fall. I should not have said it then; I will say it now: she was a person who held things.

When the older officer put the foot of his instrument to my wrist that noon, he said the number aloud, which the young man had done only the once, on the shore. Seventy-four, he said. He wrote it; and beside it, in the second column, he wrote four words, which were not about the noon: Palace. Night. Making water. I did not have to read them upside down. He held the page so that I could.

In the weeks that followed I lived as I had lived; and I should say how, since the reader has had so much of the Reach and so little of its guest. Three hundred tailors were employed to make me a suit of the country's clothes. They began upon a Monday, and it came to me on the Friday, and I was told, with an apology, that it had been five months in the making. It had been cut to the shape of sleeve that was in fashion when they began; by the time it reached me the sleeve had gone out, and come in, and gone out again. I put it on. I was told that it looked, upon the whole, very well, in the tone that one uses to a man who has been a long time at sea.

My dinner was dressed by three hundred cooks, who lived with their families in little huts built about the temple for the purpose, and who worked, as I understood, in relays, so that the meal I sat down to had been begun, by their reckoning, the season before. I took up twenty waiters in my hand and set them upon the table; a hundred more attended on the ground, some with dishes of meat and some with barrels of wine slung upon their shoulders; and those above drew up whatever I wanted by ropes and pulleys, as we draw a bucket in a well. A dish of theirs was a mouthful, and a barrel a draught; I ate a joint of mutton in two bites. The meals were good. I never sat down to one that was not, to the persons who had made it, a matter of some months; and I ate them, I think, with a gravity that they felt.

I have said that I mean to keep the description of that empire for the larger work, and I do mean to; but in the meantime I am content to give the curious reader a few general ideas. The persons of the Reach see with great exactness, but at no great distance, and they see a good deal in a moment. I watched a cook pluck a lark that was not so large as a common fly. I counted her at it. She plucked forty in the time that it takes to say good morning. I watched a young girl thread a needle that I could not see with a silk that I could not see; and what I saw was the girl, who bent over her hands for about a breath, and then looked up, with the face of a person who has done a thing in private.

They bury their dead with the head downward, because they hold that in eleven thousand moons all will rise again, and that in that time the earth, which they conceive to be flat, will turn upside down, and they will be found standing on their feet. The learned confess that this is absurd, but the practice continues, in compliance with the vulgar. Eleven thousand moons is seventy-six years of mine. I told Reldresal, who was sitting on my knee that afternoon, that in my country nobody was told when. He said that he had always thought we were a patient people.

There are laws in that country that I should like to see in my own, if only they were as well kept there as I am told they are in the Reach. The first relates to informers. A person who accuses another of a crime against the state does it at his own hazard. If the accused clears himself upon his trial, the accuser is put immediately to an ignominious death; the innocent person is paid fourfold out of the accuser's goods and lands, or, if those fall short, out of the crown's, for his time, his danger, his imprisonment and the cost of his defence; and the emperor gives him some public mark of favour, and his innocence is proclaimed through the whole city. I thought this a very good law. I told Reldresal so, as he sat on my knee. He said that it was very good. He said it twice, the second time more slowly, as if the first had not been heard; and then that it was not often needed, because accusations were seldom made in the Reach by persons who were not sure of them.

They think fraud a greater crime than theft, and punish it with death; for they say that a man of common understanding, with care, may keep his goods from a thief, but that honesty has no defence against superior cunning. They reward as they punish. Whoever can show that he has kept the law for seventy-three moons has a claim on the crown for a title, which is snilpall, and means legal, and a share of the revenue. I was told that it was a most generous provision, and that no one had ever claimed it, seventy-three moons being six months of mine, and nobody in the Reach having gone so long without a lapse of something. And ingratitude is a capital crime. They reason that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor must be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and is therefore not fit to live. I did not remark upon that at the time.

In the education of their children they differ from every country I have heard of. They hold that the parents are the last persons who should be trusted with it. Every child, except those of cottagers and labourers, who keep theirs at home, their business being only to till the ground, is taken at twenty moons of age, which is about seven weeks of mine, to a public nursery of its sex and condition, and is brought up there until it is of age, which they reckon at thirteen of their years, or a little over a year of mine. A child, at that beat, is made in what is for us a season; and it is said that a father who has his affairs to attend to has not got a season to give; the labourers keep theirs, there being nothing in a plough that cannot be learned in the field.

Parents are allowed to see their children twice in the year, for an hour at a time. Twice in their year is twice in my month, and an hour of theirs is five minutes of mine. I saw one of these visits, from the terrace above the second nursery, on an afternoon when I was permitted to look in. A man and a woman, in the clothes that one puts on for a thing that matters, were let in at the gate by a mistress with a bunch of keys, and a boy of about six was brought to them; and they did not say anything that I could hear. The mother took one of his wrists and the father the other; and they stood so, the three of them, with their heads a little bent, for the whole of the hour, which I judged by my watch to be five minutes and some seconds; and at the end of it the mistress touched the woman's sleeve.

I had not seen anyone take a wrist for no purpose. I thought of my own boy, who was six when I sailed, and whose wrist I had taken on the Bristol Stairs, with the crew's bags at my feet and Mary pretending not to look. It had been sixty-eight. I had not thought it worth writing down. I did not go to the nursery again. I went back to the temple, where at noon a man with a ladder and a book was waiting to take my wrist, and to write down what I was doing.

## Chapter 07 · The Treasurer complains of the cost of the author, and a great lady is vindicated. The author, informed that he is to be accused of high treason on the evidence of the Treasury's book, escapes to Blefuscu. His reception there.

I should have said, before the fire, that the emperor dined with me. He desired it himself, with the empress and the young princes, and I set them in chairs of state upon my table, over against me, with their guards about them; and the Treasurer came too, with his white staff, and stood behind his master's chair. They dined at their own beat. They had eaten, I suppose, six courses by the time I had cut up my meat, and they sat looking at me for the remainder with the exquisite courtesy of persons who have finished and are too well bred to say so. I observed that Flimnap looked upon me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard; I ate more than usual, in honour of my country, and to fill the court with admiration.

I have reason to believe that this visit gave him an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master. He had always been my secret enemy, though outwardly he caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature. He represented to the emperor the low condition of the treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that I had cost his majesty above a million and a half of sprugs, which is their greatest coin of gold, about the bigness of a spangle; and that it would be advisable to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me. He had worked it out by the day. I do not doubt that it was a good deal.

I am obliged here to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who was an innocent sufferer on my account. The Treasurer had taken a fancy to be jealous of his wife, on the word of some evil tongues who told him that her grace had conceived a violent affection for my person, and had once come privately to my lodging. This I declare to be a most infamous falsehood. She came often to the temple, but always publicly, and never without three more in the coach, who were her sister and her young daughter and some particular acquaintance; and there is no such thing as a short visit to the Man-Mountain, since a lady who sits an hour with me has sat twelve, and would have been missed at home before the second. When the guard at the door gave me notice I went out, and after paying my respects took up the coach and its two horses very carefully in my hand (for if there were six horses the postillion always unharnessed four) and set them down on a table where I had fixed a movable rim of five inches, to prevent accidents. I have had four coaches on that table at once, full of company, while I sat with my face leaned toward them and the coachmen drove gently round. I passed many an afternoon so very agreeably; and to them, I believe, it was a good deal of a season.

But I defy the Treasurer, or his two informers (I will name them, and let them make the best of it), Clustril and Drunlo, to prove that any lady ever came to me otherwise than in the open day. I should not have dwelt so long upon this if the reputation of a great lady were not so nearly concerned, to say nothing of my own; though I was then a nardac, which the Treasurer himself is not; for he is only a glumglum, a title inferior by one degree, as a marquis is to a duke in England. I allow that he went before me, by right of his post, through every door. These false informations made him show his lady for some time an ill countenance, and me a worse; and although he was at last undeceived and reconciled to her, I lost all credit with him, and found my interest decline very fast with the emperor himself, who was, indeed, too much governed by that favourite.

Before I give an account of my leaving that country I must tell the reader of an intrigue that had been two months forming against me, which in the Reach, I was afterwards told, is a long conspiracy, being two years. I had been all my life a stranger to courts, being unqualified for them by the meanness of my condition. I had read of them. I had not expected to find one in so remote a place, governed, as I thought, by such different maxims from ours; but I should have remembered that the offices of that country were given to the persons who were best at not falling off a string.

I was making ready to go and pay my respects to the emperor of Blefuscu when, one night, a closed chair was set down at the door of the temple, and a person in it asked for me without sending his name. The chairmen were dismissed. It was Reldresal. He had brought the boy with the drum; and he got out of the chair and stood on the step in the dark, with the boy beside him, and looked up at me, and did not go under. He did not speak at all. I understood it afterwards: a person who speaks at my pace in the stillness of a temple at night can be heard at a great distance, for a great while, and he had not come to be heard. I took him up in my hand, with the chair, and set them on the table, as was my custom, and lit a candle; and the boy sat down on the floor with the drum between his knees, and did not strike it; and Reldresal gave me a paper.

It was written from the top of the page to the bottom, in the hand like the track of a cricket, and it was a copy. I read it by the candle, with the spectacles that had stopped the arrows and my pocket glass held over the line, one column at a time, as a man reads a will. It was headed, Articles of Impeachment against Quinbus Flestrin, the Man-Mountain.

Article the first. Whereas by a statute made in the reign of his imperial majesty Calin Deffar Plune it is enacted that whoever shall make water within the precincts of the royal palace shall be liable to the pains and penalties of high treason; notwithstanding which the said Quinbus Flestrin, in open breach of the said law, under colour of extinguishing the fire kindled in the apartment of his majesty's most dear imperial consort, did maliciously, traitorously and devilishly, by discharge of his urine, put out the said fire; his beat at the noon following, as appears by the book of the Treasury, being seventy-four.

Article the second. That the said Flestrin, having brought the fleet of Blefuscu into the royal port, and being afterwards commanded by his imperial majesty to seize all the other ships of that empire, and reduce it to a province, and put to death all the Big-endian exiles and all the people who would not forsake the Big-endian heresy, did, like a false traitor, petition to be excused from the said service, upon pretence of unwillingness to force the consciences, or destroy the liberties and lives, of an innocent people; his beat on the four noons following, as appears by the said book, being fifty-one, whereby it is plain that he did it in cold blood.

Article the third. That whereas certain ambassadors arrived from the court of Blefuscu to sue for peace, he, the said Flestrin, did aid, abet, comfort and divert the said ambassadors, although he knew them to be servants to a prince lately in open war against his imperial majesty; and that in their company his beat was ninety-seven, which is within three of the limit set upon him in the articles of his liberty.

Article the fourth. That the said Flestrin, contrary to the duty of a faithful subject, is now preparing to make a voyage to the court of Blefuscu, for which he has received only verbal licence; and under colour of the said licence does falsely and traitorously intend to take the said voyage, and thereby to aid, comfort and abet the emperor of Blefuscu, so lately an enemy.

Article the fifth. That by the book of the Treasury, which is kept by sworn officers and admits of no dispute, the said Flestrin is a person who varies his beat at will, from fifty-one to ninety-seven in the space of a month, and from fifty-eight to seventy-nine in the space of a day; and that a person who has been seen to vary his beat by forty-six has shown that he can vary it by forty-one, which is all that is wanted to carry him from his common sixty beyond the hundred that by his oath he is forbidden to pass.

I read them twice. It was the fifty-one that stopped me. I had thought myself anxious in the days after the refusal; I had been told so by my own body, as I supposed, in the usual way, and I would have said ninety; and the book said fifty-one. I do not know to this day which of us was right. I had never before had to set my account of myself beside another's that had been written down.

To the articles was annexed, in another hand, a minute of the council; and it was this that Reldresal had risked his head to copy. I will give the sense of it. The Treasurer and the Admiral had asked for the most painful death that could be arranged: the temple to be fired at night, with the General standing by, and twenty thousand men, and poisoned arrows for my face and hands; and some of my servants to be given private orders about my shirts and sheets, which were to be dressed with a juice that would make me tear my own flesh. I worked out afterwards that twenty thousand archers at their pace could have emptied their quivers before I had lifted a hand to my face, and I found that it did not comfort me to know that the method had been chosen with care. For a long time there was a majority for it. The emperor, resolved if it were possible to spare my life, brought off the chamberlain at last.

Then Reldresal, commanded to give his opinion, gave it. He said that my crimes were great, but that there was room for mercy, which is the most commendable virtue in a prince; that his friendship with me was so well known that the board might think him partial; and that if his majesty would spare my life and only put out my eyes, justice would in some measure be satisfied, and all the world would applaud the lenity of the emperor and the fair proceedings of his counsellors. My strength would be none the worse. Blindness is an addition to courage, since it conceals dangers from us; the fear I had had for my eyes had been the greatest difficulty in taking the fleet; and it would be enough for me to see by the eyes of the ministers, as the greatest princes do. I read this with the author of it sitting two feet from me on the table, with his hands in his lap. I did not look at him.

The board would have none of it. The Admiral said that the services I had done were, by all true reasons of state, the aggravation of my crimes: a man who could put out a fire by that means in the empress's apartment (which he mentioned with horror) might at another time raise a flood by the same, and drown the palace; the strength that had brought the fleet over could carry it back on the first discontent; he had good reason to think me a Big-endian in my heart; and treason begins in the heart before it appears in deeds. The Treasurer said that the charge of keeping me would soon be insupportable, and that blinding would not mend it, since fowls that are blinded feed the faster and fatten sooner; and that the council, who were my judges, were already convinced in their consciences of my guilt, which was argument enough, without the formal proofs that the strict letter of the law requires.

The emperor, fully determined against a capital punishment, said that since the council thought the loss of my eyes too easy a censure, some other way might be added hereafter. And Reldresal, humbly desiring to be heard again, answered the Treasurer upon the cost. His excellency, who had the sole disposal of the revenue, could easily provide against that evil by lessening my establishment, gradually; so that for want of food I should grow weak and faint, and lose my appetite, and decay, and be consumed in a few months, which is five weeks of mine; after which, when the carcass was more than half diminished, the stench would be no danger, and five or six thousand of his majesty's subjects might in two or three days cut the flesh from the bones, and carry it off in carts to be buried in distant parts, leaving the skeleton as a monument for posterity.

Thus, by the friendship of the secretary, the affair was compromised. The project of starving me by degrees was strictly enjoined to be a secret; the sentence of putting out my eyes was entered on the books, none dissenting but the Admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist on my death. In three days, the paper said, the Principal Secretary would be directed to come to the temple and read the articles before me, and then to signify the great lenity and favour of his majesty and council, whereby I was condemned only to the loss of my eyes, which his majesty did not question that I would gratefully and humbly submit to; and twenty of his majesty's surgeons would attend, to see the operation well performed, by discharging very sharp-pointed arrows into the balls of my eyes as I lay on the ground. I am myself a surgeon. I noted that it was a competent operation. I noted the word lenity.

When I had finished I put the paper down on the table, and for some time I sat and looked at the candle. Then Reldresal put his hand upon my thumb, and went under. It took him four minutes, without the drum, and I felt every one of them through the pad of it. When he spoke it was three sentences, each of them a stone. I said it twice, he said. Do you remember. And then: They have put their names to it. You know the law. I said that I knew the law. He said, Then you know what they cannot allow. And he took his hand away, and his hand was shaking so that he held it in the other; and I understood what I had been told.

It had become the practice of this prince and his ministry (very different, I have been assured, from the practice of former times) that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, whether to gratify the monarch's resentment or the malice of a favourite, the emperor should make a speech to the whole council on his own lenity and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world; and the speech was at once published through the kingdom. Nothing frightened the people so much as those praises of his mercy, for it had been observed that the more they were enlarged upon, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the more innocent the sufferer. Yet I must confess that I, who was never designed for a courtier, was so ill a judge of things that I could not discover the lenity and favour of this sentence, but conceived it, perhaps erroneously, to be rather rigorous than gentle.

I sometimes thought of standing my trial; for although I could not deny the facts alleged in the articles, I hoped they might admit of some extenuation. But I had read many state trials, which I had always observed to end as the judges thought fit to direct, and I durst not rely on so dangerous a decision against such powerful enemies; and the book would be in the court, and the book would be read aloud. Once I was strongly bent on resistance. While I had my liberty the whole strength of that empire could hardly have subdued me, and I might easily with stones have pelted the metropolis to pieces. But a mountain at war is a very slow thing; I should have been a long time about it, and they a very short one; and I soon rejected the project with horror, remembering the oath I had made to the emperor, the favours I had received from him, and the high title of nardac that he had conferred on me. Neither had I so soon learned the gratitude of courtiers as to persuade myself that his majesty's present severities acquitted me of all my past obligations.

At last I fixed upon a resolution, and I do not say that I chose well. I have since seen how princes and ministers treat criminals less obnoxious than I was, and I think that if I had known it then I should have submitted with great alacrity to so easy a punishment, and kept my liberty, such as it is, in the dark; I owe my eyes to my own rashness and want of experience. But I had the emperor's licence to wait upon the emperor of Blefuscu, and before the three days were out I took the opportunity. I wrote a note to Reldresal, in letters a hand high on a sheet of the Treasury's paper, so that he would have to walk along the lines, saying that I was setting out that morning for Blefuscu, pursuant to the leave I had got; and without waiting for an answer I went down to the side of the island where our fleet lay.

I had looked for the girl as I came out of the temple, but there was no one on the step. She was twelve. They marry at that age in the Reach, and I had not been told whether she had, and had not asked, thinking, I suppose, that I should be told. I chose the largest man of war. I called to the watch, as I had learned to, and they went over the side. I tied a cable to the prow and lifted the anchors, and I stripped myself and put my clothes into the vessel with my coverlet, which I had carried under my arm; and drawing it after me, between wading and swimming, I came to the royal port of Blefuscu, where the people had long expected me.

They lent me two guides to direct me to the capital, which is of the same name as the island. I held them in my hands until I was within two hundred yards of the gate, and desired them to signify my arrival to one of the secretaries, and let him know that I waited there his majesty's command. I had my answer in about an hour: that his majesty, attended by the royal family and the great officers of the court, was coming out to receive me. An hour of mine is twelve of theirs, and I saw when they came out that they had used it. The emperor and his train got down from their horses, and the empress and the ladies from their coaches, all of them in their best, all of them composed; and I did not perceive that they were in any fright. I lay on the ground to kiss his majesty's and the empress's hands.

I told his majesty that I was come according to my promise, and with the licence of the emperor my master, to have the honour of seeing so mighty a monarch, and to offer him any service in my power consistent with my duty to my own prince. I said nothing of my disgrace. I had no regular information of it, and could suppose myself wholly ignorant of any such design; neither could I reasonably conceive that the emperor of the Reach would discover the secret while I was out of his power. In that, however, it soon appeared that I was deceived.

I shall not trouble the reader with the particulars of my reception, which was suitable to the generosity of so great a prince, nor with the difficulty I was in for want of a house and a bed. They gave me a field outside the gate, and a great deal of kindness, which I received sitting up; and at night I lay on the ground, wrapped in my coverlet, and slept. It was the first night since I came ashore that no one was listening to me sleep.

At noon nobody came. I had been awake for some hours before I understood what I was waiting for. I laid two fingers upon the plate of my wrist, as I have always done. It was sixty-three. There was nobody to write it down, and I did not know what to do with it; and I lay in the field for some time, holding it.

## Chapter 08 · The author, in a field of Blefuscu, quickens for the first time. The young officer of the Treasury arrives with his instrument. The author finds a boat; an envoy comes from the Reach; and the emperor of Blefuscu, after thirty-six of his days, declines.

On the second day the emperor of Blefuscu sent to ask whether I wanted for anything, and I said that I wanted for nothing, which was not true; I wanted a house, and a bed, and a person with a ladder. I did not say so. I sat in the field outside the gate with my back against a hillock, in the sun, while the city went on at its work behind its wall with the sound of rain; and I thought of what the eldest ambassador had said, that in Blefuscu a visitor was bound by no article but his own. I had not forgotten it. I had been very carefully not thinking of it for a day and a half.

I had never tried. A man of my profession takes the beat that he finds; it is not his business to make it. I had never in my life asked mine to be other than it was, and I should not have known that I could, if the Treasury had not told me, in the fifth article, that I could; and I had spent eight months being forbidden to find out. At dusk of that second day, in the field, with the gate shut and the lamps coming out along the wall, I lay down on my back and laid two fingers on the plate of my wrist, and tried.

I do not know how to say how it is done. One holds the attention on the plate, and thinks of something quick: a wren on a rail; the street at Redriff on a fair-day; the hand of a person counting money. One does not will the beat. One asks it, as one asks a horse that has never been asked. For a long time it did nothing. It was sixty-four, and sixty-six. Then it went: seventy, and seventy-eight; and I felt it come up under my fingers like a thing coming up through water. At ninety I was afraid. At ninety-eight I stopped, for the length of two breaths, with my fingers on the plate and the articles of my liberty in my head, and the officer in his grey sash going up his ladder; and then I passed it, as one passes the door of a tavern that one has promised not to enter.

At a hundred and twelve the city came apart. I mean it as plainly as that. It had been all that time a shimmer with a hiss in it; and between one breath and the next, which was by now a long time, the shimmer settled, as sediment settles in a glass, and it was persons. There was a woman at a window of the third storey, leaning on her elbows with her chin in her hands. There was a mason on a scaffold with a stone in the air, not moving, and then moving, so that I could watch it go to its place. There was a child on a roof, running along the ridge with a kite. They were not still. They moved; but it was a movement that I could follow, as I follow my own, and I saw that they were not small, or not only. I saw that they were not hurried. That was what I had not understood in eight months. They were not a hurried people. It was I who was the slow thing in the world, and all that I had taken for haste had been ordinary life.

And the hiss had words in it. I heard, as one hears a conversation in the next room with one's head against the wall, a man at a stall say that the price of fish was a scandal; a woman say, quite cheerfully, that she would not be told; a child ask where its mother was. They were not speaking about me. Not one of them, in the whole length of what I heard, was speaking about me. I do not know what I had thought. I had thought, I suppose, that the noise of a city was a noise about the Man-Mountain.

It lasted, I think, for forty seconds. Then I came down all at once, as a bucket comes down a well when the rope is let go, and was sixty-nine, and sixty-two, and lay on my face in the grass and was sick. The shimmer was back on the wall. I lay there with my cheek on the ground. I had no right to be glad, and I was; and I was something else beside, which I did not at first know the name of, and which was that the Treasury had been right. The fifth article had said that a person who had been seen to vary his beat by forty-six could vary it by forty-one. I had varied mine by fifty-two, on my back in a field, in the dark. They had been right about what I could do. They had been wrong only about what I would.

At noon the next day a boy came across the field with a ladder on his shoulder. I saw him from a long way off, the field being open, and for some time I did not understand what I was looking at; and then I did, and I sat up with my heart going in a manner that I could have put a number to. He was a Blefuscudian boy of ten or eleven. And behind him, a little way, walking as persons walk who are afraid of being too fast, came a man in a grey sash with a small box in both arms.

It was the young man. I knew him by the box. I knew him, also, by his not looking up; he walked across the field with his eyes upon his feet, as he had gone up his ladder for four months; and he stopped beside my hand, which I had put out upon the grass without thinking, palm up, as I had always done at noon, and said something to the boy, who set the ladder against my wrist.

He went up. He set the foot of the instrument upon the plate and read the scale with his eye an inch from it; and when he had read it he did something that I had not seen him do. He looked up. He looked at my face for about as long as it takes to say a name, and I saw that he was twenty or so by their count, and that he had not slept, and that he was afraid of me, and that he had come anyway. Sixty-three, he said, in my language, in the voice of a person who has practised it on the way.

I was told to take it at noon, he said. Nobody told me to stop. And then, as I did not speak: they took me off the book the day after the ambassadors. On the day of the ambassadors I took you at eighty-one, and I wrote eighty-one. I saw the book afterwards. It says ninety-seven in the same place, and the ink is not mine. I said so, and they took the book from me, and the Principal Secretary got me across the water. I wrote what the instrument said. That was what I was told to do. I do not know who is told to write what it did not. He stopped. I did not know what it was for, he said, until the fifth article. I should like you to know that I did not know.

I did not tell him that it did not matter. It did not matter to the articles, which were not written by what was true; it mattered to me. I said that I knew. He took out a small book, of the Treasury's paper, that he had sewn together himself, and he wrote in it the number, sixty-three; and beside it, in the second column, in his very small hand, he wrote four words, which I could read, because he held the page so that I could, as the other had done: Lying in a field. And after a moment he added a fifth. Awake.

I asked him for news. He gave it in the order in which he had it, as he would have read a column. Reldresal had my note; he had walked it, the whole length of it, along the floor of his office, and when he came to the end he had sat down on the last letter. The boy still drummed in the evenings, at sixty, on the roof of the Secretary's house, to no one, and the Secretary said nothing about it. The emperor had made his speech on lenity to the council in the full dress of the Reach, and it had been published the day after I left, and the city was very quiet. And the girl who said Good day had been on the step on the fourth morning, he said, and had said it, and had been told that I was gone; and she had said it again, to the step. He told me this in the voice in which he read the scale.

Three days after my arrival I walked out along the north-east shore, for no better reason than that it was a place where I was not looked at, and saw half a league out something dark on the water that was not a rock. It turned as the tide took it. I pulled off my shoes and stockings and waded out two or three hundred yards, and found that it was coming in to meet me; and it was a boat, a real one, overturned, such as might have been blown from some ship in a tempest and carried here on the tide.

I went back and asked the emperor for twenty of the tallest vessels he had left after the loss of his fleet, and three thousand seamen under his vice-admiral; and with them, and a great deal of swimming behind it and pushing, until the water was no higher than my armpits, and then cables, and then two thousand men with ropes and engines on the sand, I got it ashore and turned it on its bottom and found it little damaged. Ten days of paddling brought it to the royal port, where the people came out in a mighty concourse to see so prodigious a vessel. I told the emperor that my good fortune had thrown it in my way, to carry me where I might find a road home, and begged his orders for materials and his licence to depart; and after some kind expostulations he gave both.

I wondered, in all this time, that no word came from the Reach. I learned afterwards the reason. The emperor, supposing that I had no notice of his designs, had taken me to be at Blefuscu in performance of my promise, and expected me back within a few days, when the ceremony was ended; but he grew uneasy at my staying, and after consulting the Treasurer and the rest of that cabal he sent a person of quality with a copy of the articles.

The envoy had it from his master to represent to the monarch of Blefuscu the great lenity with which I was to be treated, which was no further than the loss of my eyes; that I had fled from justice; and that if I did not return in two hours I should be deprived of the title of nardac and declared a traitor. Two hours, in the manner of the Reach, is ten minutes of mine. I could just have done it, if I had set out at once and run. He added that, to preserve the peace and amity of the two empires, his master expected his brother of Blefuscu to send me back bound hand and foot, to be punished as a traitor.

The emperor of Blefuscu took three days to consult, which is thirty-six of his, and I do not think I have ever seen a refusal so well prepared. His answer was many civilities and excuses: that as for sending me bound, his brother knew it to be impossible; that although I had taken his fleet he owed me obligations for the peace; and that both their majesties would soon be easy, since I had found a vessel able to carry me to sea, which he had given orders to fit up under my own direction, and he hoped that in a few weeks both empires would be rid of so insupportable an encumbrance.

He told me all this himself; and then, under the strictest confidence, he offered me his gracious protection if I would stay in his service. I think he meant it. But I had resolved to put no more confidence in princes or ministers than I could help, and I begged to be excused, saying that since fortune had thrown a vessel in my way I would venture the ocean rather than be a cause of difference between two such monarchs. He was not displeased. I found out, by an accident, that he was very glad of it, and so were most of his ministers.

I hastened, and the court, being impatient, helped. Five hundred workmen quilted thirteen folds of their strongest linen into two sails, to my directions. I twisted ten, twenty or thirty of their thickest cables into one rope. A great stone that I found after a long search on the shore served for an anchor, and the tallow of three hundred cows greased the boat. I cut my own oars and masts, and the emperor's carpenters, who smoothed them after me, were so quick about it that I never once saw them do it.

And every day at noon the young man came across the field, with the boy and the ladder and the box. He went up, and set the foot to my wrist, and read the scale; and he looked at my face, now, when he did it, for as long as it took him to see that it was a face; and he wrote the number in his small book, and beside it what I was doing, which was, in the order of the weeks, felling a mast, and twisting a cable, and sewing, with a needle the size of a boat-hook, a seam in a sail. It was the first time in my life that I had been written down by someone who wished to know.

## Chapter 09 · The young officer will not come, and gives the author his instrument. The author sails, is taken up by an English ship, and has his wrist taken by its captain. He comes home with his cattle, and takes his son's wrist, and writes it down.

On the last noon but one the young man took my wrist, and wrote the number, and did not go down the ladder. He sat down upon my wrist with his legs over the side of it, as Reldresal used to sit upon my knee, and said that he had made up his mind about a thing, and wished to say it before I asked.

I had meant to ask him. I had thought that I could not go without asking; I had turned over a good many reasons, and chosen one, which was that he was the only person who had written me down who wished to know. He said that he would not come. He gave his reason kindly, and he had worked it out, as he worked out everything, in columns. A voyage of six months was six years. He should be old before we sighted the Cape. In my country he should live a season, in a hold or in a drawer, among persons who would take him for a toy, and he should be dead before I had unpacked; and he had rather be the man who kept the noon in a field in Blefuscu, where a day was a day.

He gave me the small book that he had sewn, and the box. The box was the Treasury's, he said; he had taken it when he went; it was the only instrument in the Reach that was right, and I was to have it. I said that I could not. He said that he had thought of that, and that I was not to take it for a present. I had told him, one noon, about my son's wrist on the Bristol Stairs, because he was the only person I knew who would not think it odd that I remembered the number. Take it again, he said. Write it down. And he did not wish the instrument to be put in a drawer.

He had one message more, from the Principal Secretary, on a slip of paper as thin as a thread, which I read with the glass: that the Reach would be told the boat was seen to founder, and that nobody there would look for me; and underneath, in a smaller hand, that the boy had been told to stop drumming on the roof, and had not.

On the last noon I took his wrist. I did it with the tip of my smallest finger, as I had done the emperor's, and it was the first wrist of that country I had taken but the one; in all those months he had taken mine near two hundred times, and I had not once asked what his was. It was seven hundred and thirty-one, and it jumped. I said so. He said that it always did when it was being taken. I said the number aloud, and he wrote it in the small book, under mine, and shut the book and gave it to me. He asked me then to write his name on the first page, since the Treasury's book had not had it. It is a name of eleven syllables and a pause; I had it from him twice, and wrote it in the letters of my own country as near as I could, and it looks there like a short sentence.

In about a month, when all was prepared, I sent to receive his majesty's commands and to take my leave. The emperor and the royal family came out of the palace, and I lay down on my face to kiss his hand, which he very graciously gave me; so did the empress and the young princes. His majesty presented me with fifty purses of two hundred sprugs apiece, and with his portrait at full length, which was about the length of my hand, and which I put at once into one of my gloves to keep it from harm. The ceremonies at my departure were too many to trouble the reader with. The emperor told me, with great feeling, that I should be remembered in Blefuscu for a long time; which in his country, I calculated afterwards, was until about Christmas.

I stored the boat with the carcasses of a hundred oxen and three hundred sheep, with bread and drink in proportion, and as much meat ready dressed as four hundred cooks could provide. I took six cows and two bulls alive, with as many ewes and rams, meaning to carry them into my own country and propagate the breed; and for their feeding on board I had a good bundle of hay and a bag of corn. I would have taken a dozen of the people, but the emperor would by no means permit it, and besides a diligent search of my pockets he engaged my honour not to carry away any of his subjects, although with their own consent and desire. I did not tell him that I had asked one, and been refused. It is a pleasure to be able to keep a promise that costs one nothing.

I set sail on the twenty-fourth of September, at six in the morning. I looked back once. There was a ladder standing in the field, and beside it a man with a box in his arms, and the Blefuscudian boy. He did not wave. A man who takes the wrist does not wave; it is thought to disturb the reading. At noon of that day, there being no one to do it, I laid two fingers upon my own. It was sixty-two. I wrote it in the small book, under his last line, and beside it, in the second column, in the hand I had learned in the field, I wrote what I was doing. Sailing.

When I had gone about four leagues to the northward, with the wind at south-east, I descried at six in the evening a small island, and cast anchor on the lee side of it, and slept. I woke in the night and lay listening to a very large and patient clock in the next room, which was myself; and no one on the west side of any city was setting a day by it. The next day I steered the same course by my pocket compass, my intention being to reach, if possible, one of those islands which I had reason to believe lay to the north-east of Van Diemen's Land. I saw nothing all that day; but on the next, about three in the afternoon, by my computation twenty-four leagues from Blefuscu, I saw a sail steering to the south-east. My course was due east. I hailed her, but could get no answer; yet I found I gained upon her, for the wind slackened. In half an hour she spied me, and hung out her ensign, and fired a gun.

I cannot easily say what I felt, at the unexpected hope of seeing my own country again, and the dear pledges I had left in it. I came up with her between five and six in the evening, on the twenty-sixth of September, and my heart leaped to see her English colours. I put my cows and sheep into my coat pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman, returning from Japan by the north and south seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddel, of Deptford, a very civil man and an excellent sailor.

We were in the latitude of thirty degrees south; there were about fifty men in the ship, and here I met an old comrade of mine, one Peter Williams, who gave me a good character to the captain. The captain treated me with kindness, and desired to know where I came from last and whither I was bound. But before he heard a word he took my wrist, as is done, in the waist of the ship, in front of the men, and held it a good while. Sixty-four, he said. I said that it was sixty. He said, kindly, that I had been a good while gone. I had written sixty-two in my own book at noon. I did not argue; there was no one to settle it. I have thought since that it was a different thing, to be taken by a man who would not write it down; and I could not have said which I preferred.

I told him in a few words where I had been, and he thought that I was raving, and that the dangers I had undergone had disturbed my head. But his hand was still upon my wrist, and it was steady; and I took my black cattle and sheep out of my pocket, and the astonishment settled it. I showed him the gold the emperor of Blefuscu had given me, with his majesty's picture at full length, and some other rarities of that country. I gave him two purses of two hundred sprugs each, and promised, when we arrived in England, to make him a present of a cow and a sheep big with young.

By the evening half the watch had come to have their wrists taken by the man who had been in the Reach, and I took them, one after another, on the hatch, with the brass box. The men said that it was cold.

The voyage was very prosperous for the most part, and I shall not trouble the reader with it, except for the cattle. The captain allowed me some of his best biscuit, which I rubbed to powder and mingled with water, and which was their constant food; and I did not understand until the third week what it was that I was feeding. In a month of mine the herd had a year. The cows had calved by the Cape, and the heifers by the line, and the ewes had lambed, and their lambs; so that when the rats on board carried off one of my sheep, and I found her bones in a hole, picked clean, I could not have told you which of the family she was. I had ruled a third column in the small book for them: calved, lambed, died; and the last was fuller than the first. By the Downs I had sixty-one, of whom not one had seen the Reach. I did not mention it to the gentlemen who paid to look at them.

We arrived in the Downs on the thirteenth of April. I set the cattle grazing on a bowling-green at Greenwich, where the fineness of the grass made them feed very heartily, though I had always feared the contrary; and in the short time I continued in England I made a considerable profit by showing them to many persons of quality and others, and before I began my second voyage I sold them for six hundred credits. A lady who came to see them on a Monday, and again on the Saturday, said that I had changed the cows. I said that I had not. She did not believe me, and was right, in a way.

I came to Redriff on the Thursday. My wife was at the door of the house before the boat had touched the stairs; I do not know who had told her. She took my wrist, which is what is done, and held it for a long time, and said that I had gone up, and that I was late; and then she put her face against my coat, and I could not tell which of us was holding which. She said that I smelt of tallow, and asked what ship I had come in, and I said that it was a boat of my own making; and she said that that was what the smell had told her. Johnny, who was eight, stood in the passage in his shirt, and would not come nearer than the door. Betty, who had been in arms when I sailed, was walking, and had views.

That night, when the children had been got to bed and had got out of it again, I took out the brass box. Johnny was standing in the doorway, very still, looking at my face. I laid the foot of the instrument on his wrist, and read the scale. It was sixty-eight. It had been sixty-eight on the Stairs, and I had not thought it worth writing down. I wrote it down. Beside it, in the second column, in the small hand I had learned in a field, I wrote what he was doing, which was standing very still, looking at my face. [Margin: Mr. John Gulliver, now of Greenwich, to whom the passage was shown, says that he remembers the box, and that it was cold. R.S.]

By the end of the week the neighbours had heard of the box, and came to the door in ones and twos, with their wrists out, to be told their numbers, as others go to be told their fortunes. I took them, because it is my trade; and each of them asked me what it meant; and I said that a number by itself was not anything; and they did not like it.

I stayed but two months with my wife and family, for my insatiable desire of seeing foreign countries would suffer me to continue no longer. I left fifteen hundred credits with my wife, and fixed her in a good house at Redriff. My remaining stock I carried with me, part in money and part in goods, in hopes to improve my fortunes. My uncle John had left me a small estate, and I had the lease of an inn, which yielded as much again; so that I was in no danger of leaving my family upon the parish. My son Johnny, named so after his uncle, was at the grammar school, and a towardly child. My daughter Betty (who is now well married, and has children) was then at her needlework. I took leave of my wife, and boy and girl, with tears on both sides, and went on board the Adventure, a merchant ship of three hundred tons, bound for Surat, Captain John Nicholas, of Liverpool, commander. But my account of this voyage must be referred to the second part of my travels.

At noon of that day, on the deck, there being no one to do it, I laid two fingers upon my wrist. It was sixty-one. I wrote it in the small book, under the others, and beside it, in the second column, what I was doing; and I looked at it for some time, and let it stand. Leaving.

## Chapter 10 · A great storm is described; the long-boat is sent for water, and the author goes with it to discover the country. He is left on shore, takes a man for weather, and is picked up by a farmer who has to wait for him to stand still. He goes under to the pulse in the farmer's thumb. His reception in the farmhouse, and a battle in the dark.

I was sixty-one when the Downs went down behind us, and I was sixty-one, or thereabouts, at the Cape; there is nothing to say of the beat of a ship's surgeon on a prosperous passage except that it holds. We had a very good gale until we came to the Cape of Good Hope, where we landed for water; but a leak was found, and we unshipped our goods and wintered there, the captain falling sick of an ague, so that we could not leave until the end of March. I kept the small book through the winter. It is not a thing I should have shown anyone. It has in the second column, for the whole of that season, the one word, waiting.

From the Cape we had a good voyage as far as the Straits of Madagascar; and then the westerly gale that has no business in those seas at that season came, and blew for twenty days, so that by the second of May our captain's observation put us a little east of the Molucca Islands, and three degrees north of the line. Then it fell to a perfect calm, at which I was not a little rejoiced; and the captain, who knew those seas, bade us prepare for a storm; and it came the day after, with the southern monsoon.

We took in the sprit-sail and stood by to hand the fore-sail; we looked to the guns and handed the mizen; we reefed, and set, and hauled aft, and belayed, and so on, for the better part of a page. [Margin: The first edition keeps the page. Mrs. Gulliver's copy has it crossed through with a single stroke, and in the margin, in pencil, the words he does know the names of things. R.S.] It was a very fierce storm, and the sea broke strange and dangerous. When it was over we had been carried, by my computation, five hundred leagues to the east, until the oldest sailor on board could not tell in what part of the world we were. We had provisions, a staunch ship and a healthy crew. We had not water.

On the sixteenth of June, a year all but four days from my sailing, a boy on the topmast saw land; and on the seventeenth we came in full view of a great island, or it might have been a continent, with a small neck of land running out into the sea on the south side, and behind it a creek too shallow for a ship of above a hundred tons. We anchored within a league, and the captain sent a dozen men in the long-boat, well armed, with vessels for water. I asked his leave to go with them, to see the country.

We found no river or spring and no sign of people. The men straggled along the shore looking for fresh water near the sea; I walked alone for about a mile the other way, over ground all barren and rocky, until I was tired and there was nothing to entertain me, and I turned back down to the creek, and saw our men already in the boat, rowing for the ship as for their lives.

I was going to holla after them, though it would have done no good, when I saw a huge creature walking after them in the sea. I will say what I saw, and not what I came afterwards to think. He waded not much deeper than his knees, and took prodigious strides; and I saw that he took each stride as a bell takes a stroke, once, and then a long time before the next. Our men had the start of him by half a league, and were pulling like madmen, as men pull who think that what is behind them is fast. I was told afterwards, by one who had it from the boat's crew, that he was not trying. The sea thereabouts was full of sharp rocks, and I suppose he stopped as a man stops who has seen that what he was chasing is not worth a wet foot.

I did not stay to see how it ended. I ran back the way I had come and climbed a steep hill, from the top of which I saw that the country was fully cultivated; and the first thing that struck me was the grass, which where it was kept for hay stood twenty feet high. I came into what I took for a high road, though it served the people there only as a footpath through a barley field, and I walked an hour with the corn forty feet over my head on either hand, seeing nothing but stalks and a strip of sky.

At the end of it was a hedge of a hundred and twenty feet, and in the hedge a stile that I could not have climbed in a day: four steps, each as high as a man, and at the top a stone to cross by, twenty feet if it was an inch. I was looking along the hedge for a gap when I saw weather.

I mean that something moved in the field beyond the stile, and I took it at first for the shadow of a cloud, of the kind that crosses a hill, only very low, and very slow, and the wrong colour. It came on at the pace of a thing that has no need of haste. It was a man. He was as tall as a steeple, and took about ten yards at a stride; and the stride, as I counted it on my pulse, took him seven beats. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile, looking back into the next field, and heard him call. It was not a voice. It was a bell, struck several times with a long rest between the strokes, and so far above me that I certainly thought at first it was thunder; which came in that country, I found, in separate claps.

Seven more came towards him with reaping-hooks, each hook about the largeness of six scythes, and upon some word of his they went to reap the corn in the field where I lay. I saw a hook go through the barley, and I counted it, and it took eleven seconds, and it was perfectly beautiful, and perfectly certain, like the stroke of a pendulum in a very large clock; and the corn fell before it, forty feet, like a slow breath. I kept from them at as great a distance as I could. But the stalks were sometimes not above a foot apart, so that I could hardly squeeze between them; and I came at last to a part of the field where the corn had been laid by wind and rain, and the stalks were so interwoven that I could not creep through, and the beards of the fallen ears so strong and pointed that they pierced my clothes and my flesh. The reapers were not a hundred yards behind me. I, who could have run a mile in the time of two of their strokes, could not stir a yard.

Quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and despair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished that I might there end my days. I thought of Mary, to whom I had left fifteen hundred credits and a good house; and of the boy in the doorway, standing very still. I lamented my own folly and wilfulness in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends and relations. I took out the small book, and, since there was no one to do it, I took my wrist. It was ninety-four, which I had not been since the field in Blefuscu. I wrote it down, and in the second column, in the small hand, what I was doing. Lying in the corn. Afraid.

In this terrible agitation I could not forbear thinking of the Reach, where I had been looked upon as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world, and had drawn an imperial fleet after me in one hand; and it was a mortification to find myself as inconsiderable here as one of them would have been among us. I had been told that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison, and had taken it for a proposition in philosophy; I found that it was a field. And the comparison was of time as well as of height: I had been the slowest thing in one country, and I was now, as far as I could tell, the quickest thing in another, and neither was a comfort.

A hook was coming over the ridge. I watched it come, and it was a long time, and then it was nearer than I could bear; and I did what I had never done, which was to scream at the top of my voice. To him, I suppose, it was a gnat. The reaper nearest me stopped, and looked about on the ground for some while, and could not see me; for a creature that is afraid does not keep still, and a thing that does not keep still, to eyes that move as theirs do, is not there. I tried to get up and could not, and stood at last where I was, with my hands on my knees, like a man who has run a mile and found that it was a yard; and in the moment that I stood still, he saw me.

He considered a while, with the caution of a man who means to take a small dangerous animal so that it shall neither scratch nor bite, as I have taken a weasel. Then he took me up behind, between a finger and thumb, and brought me to within three yards of his eye to see what I was. I guessed his meaning. I was sixty feet from the ground, and he pinched my sides, not unkindly, but as a man holds a thing that might go; and I resolved not to struggle in the least, because I understood, with the part of me that is a surgeon, that a thing that struggles in a hand is a thing that is put down hard. And I felt in the finger and thumb that held me a slow and enormous knocking, like a mallet at a distant door; and then a long wait; and then again. I counted it. It was his pulse. It was five to the minute.

I do not know where I got the thought. I have taken the wrists of too many frightened persons not to know that a frightened person will listen to the number before he listens to the words. I put my hands together, and turned my face up to the sun, and went under. I had no chair and no cord and no drum; I had the knock of his thumb, and I made my voice wait for it, as I had seen the Slowers wait for the boy. It took me three of his beats to say one word, and I said it by the clock of his hand. Mer. And the beat. Cy. I do not know what it sounded like to him. I know that I felt the mallet falter.

He put me to his ear, and something came out of him that was a bell. Then he set me on the ground on all fours, and I got up at once and walked slowly backwards and forwards, to show him that I did not mean to run; and the seven reapers sat down in a ring to see what I would do next. I took off my hat and bowed to the farmer. I knelt, and held up my hands, and spoke what I could bear to speak. I took out my purse and offered him the gold; he took it into his palm and brought it to his eye, and turned it over with the point of a pin that he took from his sleeve, and could make nothing of it. I made him lay his palm flat on the ground, and poured the coins into it, six large pieces and some thirty small, and he wet his little finger and lifted one, and then another, and looked at them with the face of a man who has been handed a language. He gave me a sign to put them back; and after offering them to him twice more, I put them back.

By this time he was satisfied that I was a rational creature. He folded me into his handkerchief and carried me home; and when his wife was shown me she screamed and ran back, as women do at a toad or a spider. The scream reached me as a great slow chord, one note at a time. But when she had watched me a while, and seen how well I understood the signs her husband made, she became by degrees extremely tender of me.

The dinner was one dish of meat, as befits a husbandman, in a dish four-and-twenty feet across, and the family were the farmer, his wife, three children and an old grandmother. They set me on the table, thirty feet from the floor, and I kept to the middle of it for fear of the edge. The wife minced a morsel of meat and crumbled some bread on a trencher for me; I bowed, and took out my knife and fork; and they were so delighted that for a moment nobody ate.

I had finished mine, and was sitting with my hands in my lap, before she had raised her own to her mouth; and she, supposing that I was waiting for more, sent for another bit. The family's dinner took, by my watch, an hour and three quarters, and I sat through the whole of it on the table and was looked at. I was much admired for my appetite. What struck them, I gathered from their signs, was not my size, or my clothes, but that I was a person who finished.

The youngest of them, a boy of a year old, in a nurse's lap, took a fancy to me, and he was the only person in that house who could have caught me. In the time it took the others to turn their heads he had me by the legs and in his mouth. I roared so loud that he dropped me, and I should have broken my neck if his mother had not held out her apron. The nurse tried a rattle, which was a hollow vessel filled with great stones and tied to the child's waist by a cable; and when that did no good she had recourse to the last remedy.

The master's cat came in and leaped into the maid's lap, and I knew it by the noise: it was as big as three oxen. I stood quite still, and held out my hands, and did not move them. The cat, which in that country is a creature of a certain quickness, looked at me for nine of my beats, and put out a paw, and I was not there; and then it looked at the farmer, who said something in the tone of a bell, and the cat lay down. Whether it had been told in some way that I was an acquaintance, or only considered the matter and thought it not worth the trouble, I have not been able to learn.

In the afternoon the mistress put me to bed in her own, under a clean white handkerchief that was coarser than the mainsail of a man-of-war, and locked the door. I slept two hours, and dreamed that I was at home with Mary and the children, which made it worse when I woke in a room as wide as a field and as high as a church tower, on a bed twenty yards across and eight yards from the floor. I wanted to relieve myself, and did not dare to call; and if I had called, the kitchen was too far for a voice like mine; and while I was thinking of it two rats came up the curtains and went smelling to and fro across the quilt.

One came almost to my face. I rose in a fright and drew my hanger. They had the boldness to come at me from both sides, and one of them got his forefeet at my collar; but I ripped up his belly before he could do mischief, and he fell dead at my feet, and the other ran, with a good wound across his back that I gave him as he went, and left a trail of blood behind him.

I should say that they were the first creatures in that country that were of my own pace. I had been, all that day, the quickest thing in a world of bells; and now there were two things in the room that were as quick as I, and had teeth. I did not mind them as I should have minded them in England. I knew how they moved. After this exploit I walked gently to and fro on the bed to recover my breath and my spirits, and I took my wrist in the dark, and it was ninety-one, and then seventy, and then, there being no one in that house who could have heard it, I let it fall.

## Chapter 11 · A description of the farmer's daughter, who is the one person in the house who is not slow. The author learns the language, and to be looked at. He is carried to a market town, and then to the metropolis, and is shown ten times a day. The particulars of his journey.

The farmer had a daughter of nine, small for her age, being not above forty feet high, and quick. I mean that she was the one person in that house who was not slow; her mother used to say, in the long way they have of saying anything, that the child had been born in a hurry and had never got over it. She beat eight. They thought it a fault in her, and a kind of fever, and were gentle about it, as one is about a child who is always standing at the window.

She was set to be my nurse. She and her mother fitted up the baby's cradle for me against the night: a small drawer out of a cabinet, with a quilt in it, set on a shelf for fear of the rats, and she slept in a truckle bed beside it. She was very dexterous with her needle. She made me seven shirts out of what she could get, which was coarser than sackcloth, and washed them herself, and I was never a day without a clean one. She dressed me, and undressed me, and held me in her two hands to be looked at by the family, who looked at me, I think, as a family looks at a clock that has been brought into the house and has begun to strike.

I have said that they are slow, and I should say what that is to look at. A face in that country does not change; it develops. I would watch the farmer's wife begin to smile, and go and do some small thing, and come back, and the smile would be arriving. I found that I could not look at a face for long, because I had too much time to read it; and then, having the time, I read it; and it was always kind, or it was always not, and there was no moment in which it was both. I have not been in another country where the faces could be so little relied upon to hide anything. I never saw one of them lie. I think it would have taken too long.

She taught me the language. She pointed to a thing and said its name, and I learned that every name was a bell, and that there was a good deal of time between the bells to learn it in. It has eleven words for the degrees of slowness, as the language of the Reach has for haste, and none at all for what I was; the girl made me one. I had the four hundred words of common use in a week; I think I have never learned anything so fast, or so little disturbed by the teacher. It was the speaking that was hard. To be understood by any of them but the girl I had to go under, and to go under without chair or cord or drum for longer than forty minutes was not a thing that I could do; I should have been taken out of the chair, if there had been a chair, by two others, and rubbed. The girl found me the drum. She was what in the Reach they would have called a Slower, turned round, and what in that country was called, with less respect, a Quicker: she could hear me at my pace and give it to the others at theirs. She held out her wrist, with the pulse upward, and I laid my hand upon it, and spoke to the knock of it: eight to the minute, which was, by their measure, a hurry, and by mine a thing I could stand on.

She called me Grildrig, which was the word she had made for me out of their word for small and their word for what does not keep still, and which, after a time, the whole kingdom used. I called her Glumdalclitch, which is little nurse. I said that she was my guardian angel; and she said, in the voice she used for me, which was her own voice taken up to my pace, so that it came out of her like a bird out of a bush, that she did not know what that was, but that she would be it.

She taught me, also, to be looked at. She sat me on the table in the evenings and made me walk towards her at what she called the pace of manners, which was about a twelfth of what I liked, and told me when I had begun to blur. It was like learning to dance with a person who is dead tired. I could do it for a few minutes together. By the end of the second week I could cross a table so that a farmer could follow me with his eyes, and was told that I had been very good, in the voice in which one praises a dog.

On the fifth night she took my wrist. It cannot be done with a finger, my plate being less than the width of her nail, and she knew it; she took a hair from her own head, a long one, and laid it across the plate and held the end, and felt the tick come up the hair to her fingertip as one feels a fish on a line. I lay on the quilt and let her. She counted aloud. She said twelve, and then a rest, and twelve, and a rest; and at the end of the minute she said that it was sixty, in the word they have for a number that is a clock's, and her mother said from the bed that it was a thing that she should not do to a guest. I thought it the most courteous thing that had been done to me since a ladder was set against my arm.

From that night she counted me to sleep. She did it aloud, at her own pace, one word to each twelve of mine; and I lay in the drawer and heard the numbers arrive, each a bell, with the long rests between; and I did not, I think, in all the weeks I was in that house, once reach the end of her count before I was asleep.

I was soon the talk of the village. A neighbour of the farmer's, a shrewd man with a reputation for being fortunate, came to see me, and was shown me on the table, and I did my exercises; I bowed, and said what I could to the pulse of the farmer's thumb, and drew my hanger, and walked the length of the board. He looked at me for a long time. When I had done he said that it was a waste. He meant that I should be seen by more. He advised the farmer to show me at the next market town, which was two-and-twenty miles off, on a market day.

The farmer was a slow man, even for that country, and it took him eleven days to see what was in it. In that time the girl cried more than I had ever seen her cry, for she had guessed what was being settled before I had; and at the end of it she told me, with her face against the drawer, that she was afraid of what would be done to me by the children, who would squeeze me, and pinch, and drop me, as they did the young of cats. I said that I was not afraid. It was not true. I had seen the children of that country, who were slow, but whose hands were large.

We set out on a day of the following week, I in a box, with a cradle-quilt and air-holes, on the girl's lap, and she on a pillion behind her father; and the jolting of the horse, which in that country is a creature of very great gravity, was like a long swell. The box had been made large enough for me to lie in and a little too small for me to stand, and had a hinged lid, and a door which she could open at the back. She opened it every half hour of her time and put in her fingertip, to see that I was there. I was there. I had nowhere else to be.

On the road I was taken out at night, at the inns where the girl could manage it, and set on her knee in the dark with the box open. She asked me about my country in the voice she used for me. She asked if I had a wife. I said that I had. She asked if my wife counted me; and I said that she took my wrist when I came in at the door, and held it a long time. She said that that was right, and went on stroking the lid of the box with one finger, so slowly that I could have walked from one end of the stroke to the other and back before it came to the corner.

At the market town I was shown at an inn, in the great room, on a table. I was to be seen by thirty at a time, and was given for the purpose a space on a board with a rail round it, and a little stage of the girl's arranging, and the farmer's rod, which was a straw. The audience came in by the dozen, with the long unhurried tread of a congregation. And I discovered, in the first quarter of an hour, what it was that they had paid for.

They could not see me move. I do not say that they saw me badly. I mean that I walked from the end of the board to the middle in about three of my seconds, which was the time that it took a spectator to draw a breath, and that to the eye of a giant I was a smear, and then I was a mannikin standing in the middle of the board, bowing. They cried out. It was the arrival that was the show. The stillness was the part they could see, and the going from one stillness to another was the part they paid for, and could not; and it was found, by the second day, that I did best by moving as quickly as I liked and then standing, quite still, with my hands at my sides, for a count of eight.

I drew my hanger, and flourished it, as the girl had instructed; I saluted; I walked about; I spoke, by the pulse of the farmer's thumb, a sentence which I had learned, which was a greeting; and I was cheered, as persons cheer a conjuror, with a deep roll like surf. I was shown ten times a day. Between the shows they kept me in the box in the corner, with the lid up, so that the next audience might see the mannikin sleeping; and I am not so vain as to say that the audience did not enjoy that more.

It was a rule of the girl's that nobody was to touch me. She enforced it with her whole person, and with her voice, which in the passage of that inn was heard to go up an octave and come out of her like a pin. She stood at the rail with her hands on it and her chin on her hands, a child of nine in a bonnet, looking at each of them in turn, until they stopped. I saw a man of fifty, a butcher, I believe, put his hand out towards my board and take it back; and I understood that I was being kept by a nine-year-old, as one keeps a bird, on the strength of her not caring who she offended.

A very old woman came once, alone, and stood for the whole of a show at the rail without a word; and when the count of eight came round she said, to nobody, in the slow tone of her country, He is cold. She took a flask from her sleeve, and a thimble of it, which to me was a cup, and set it on the board. The girl was displeased. I drank it.

The farmer saw the profit of it, and it did not take him eleven days. He took me through eighteen towns and villages, for the most part at ten shows a day, and I grew thin. He kept a tally, as the poor do, a notch on a stick for every spectator, and by the end of the eighteenth town the stick was the thickness of a mast, and the girl would not carry it. In one town I was shown in the nave of a church, between services, and the sexton, who had not been told, took me for a relic; a woman knelt, and the farmer took her money all the same. I should not like to give the figure. I kept a column for it in the small book, which I ruled for the purpose, beside the other two: so many persons in the room; so many in the next; and it is, as I find, the most truthful column I have ever kept. My beat in those weeks went down, into the fifties, and I put it down to the going under. It was the stillness. A thing that moves as I do cannot stand for a count of eight, ten times a day, for eight weeks, among persons who move as they do, without being altered by it.

After ten weeks, on the eighteenth of August, we arrived at the metropolis, which in their language is called Lorbrulgrud, the Pride of the Universe. The farmer took a lodging in the principal street, not far from the palace, and put up bills describing me. He hired a room about three hundred feet across, with a table sixty feet in diameter for me to act on, and a rail round it three feet from the edge, to prevent my falling. I was shown ten times a day, to the great contentment of the people and of the farmer.

By then I could understand every word that was said to me, and could say, with a Quicker's help, whatever I wanted; and I had been so long used to the pulse of a thumb that I could not hear a speech without feeling for it. But none of the persons who came to the room asked me what my own beat was; and it was only the girl, at night, in the drawer, with the hair across my wrist, who counted. She said sixty, always. I had taken it myself that noon, at the rail, and it was fifty-four. I never corrected her. I did not know, any longer, which of us was right.

## Chapter 12 · The author is sent for to court. The queen buys him of the farmer, and takes the girl too. Three great scholars take his wrist with a hair and a water-clock, and find him a clock; the king is not satisfied. An apartment at court is provided for the author, who is in high favour with the queen.

The farmer saw it before I did. I had lost my stomach, and was almost reduced to a skeleton; I put down the day's figure in the third column and did not look at the other. The more he got by me the more insatiable he grew, and when he had observed that I was failing he concluded that I should soon die, and resolved to make as good a hand of me as he could. While he was reasoning so with himself, a sardral, or gentleman-usher, came from court, commanding him to bring me there immediately for the diversion of the queen and her ladies.

Some of the ladies had already been to see me, and had reported strange things of my beauty, my behaviour and my good sense. The sardral came on a horse, and stood through the whole of a show with his arms folded, as one stands who has been told that there will be something to see; and when I had done my count of eight he was the first person in that country who clapped at the right moment. I took it for a good sign, and was wrong, or right, as one is about such things. He asked me afterwards, through the girl, how long I had been doing it; and when I said since the beginning of June he said that it was a great deal, and I did not know whether he meant the time or the number.

The girl carried me into the palace in the box on her lap, and I was set on a table, and the queen came to look. I fell on my knees, and begged the honour of kissing her foot; and she, who is a person of infinite wit and humour, held out her little finger towards me, which I embraced in both my arms, and put the tip of it with the utmost respect to my lip. It had a pulse. I had not expected that, and I stood holding it, in both arms, for the length of two beats, which was a good deal longer than the ceremony called for. Five to the minute, and as steady as a church. She was so kind as to let me.

She asked me some general questions about my country and my travels, which the girl gave her, and which I answered as distinctly as I could, holding my voice to the pulse in her finger. She asked whether I could be content to live at court. I bowed to the board of the table, and said that I was my master's property; but that if I were my own I should be proud to devote my life to her service.

She asked my master whether he was willing to sell me at a good price. He, who believed that I could not live a month, was ready enough, and asked a thousand pieces of gold, which were counted out on the spot; and I have since worked it out that this was, in that country, about the price of a small farm. It was what I was worth to a man who thought I was dying. I said to the queen that since I was now her majesty's most humble creature, I must beg the favour that Glumdalclitch, who had always tended me with so much care, and understood so well how to do it, might be admitted into her service, and continue to be my nurse and instructor.

Her majesty agreed, and easily got the farmer's consent, who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court; and the poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy. My late master withdrew, saying that he had left me in a good service. I replied not a word, but made him a slight bow. He left the stick in the passage. When the girl went back for it she looked at it for some time, and then she put it in the fire, and stood and watched it burn, a child of nine, with her hands behind her.

The queen had noticed my coldness, and when he had gone she asked me the reason. I made bold to tell her majesty that I owed that man nothing but his not having dashed out my brains in his field; that he had been amply recompensed in the gain he had made in showing me through half the kingdom and in the price he had now sold me for; that the life I had led since was enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength; and that if he had not thought my life in danger her majesty would not have had so cheap a bargain. This was delivered with great hesitation, and the last part of it, in praise of her majesty as the ornament of nature and the phoenix of the creation, I had learned from Glumdalclitch in the coach, and I am told that I used the word for phoenix in the sense of cook.

The queen, giving great allowance for my defects of speech, was surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an animal. She took me in her own hand and carried me to the king, who was then retired to his cabinet. His majesty was a prince of much gravity and austere countenance, and I watched his face take in what was in his wife's hand. It took three of his minutes to arrive at cold. He asked the queen, in the tone of a man mentioning the weather, how long it was since she had grown fond of a splacnuck; which is a creature of that country, about six feet long, and much kept by ladies.

The queen set me gently on my feet on his scrutoire and bade me give his majesty an account of myself, which I did in a few words; and Glumdalclitch, who was waiting at the door of the cabinet and could not bear me out of her sight, was let in, and confirmed all I had said. But the king, who is as learned a person as any in his dominions, and was educated in philosophy, and particularly in mathematics, had observed my shape, and seen me walk erect, before I began to speak, and had conceived, since I moved in what to him were ticks, that I might be a piece of clockwork, which is in that country arrived to a very great perfection, contrived by some ingenious artist.

When he heard my voice, and found what I delivered to be regular and rational, he could not conceal his astonishment. He did not believe my account of how I had come. He thought it a story got up between the girl and her father, who had taught me a set of words to make me fetch a better price; and on that supposition he asked me several other questions, and still had rational answers, spoiled only by a foreign accent, an imperfect knowledge of the language, and some rustic phrases that I had learned at the farm, and that did not suit the polite style of a court.

His majesty sent for three great scholars, who were then in their weekly waiting, according to the custom in that country. They examined my shape with much nicety, and one of them, who was a student of clocks, took my wrist with a hair, having heard that the farmer's child did it that way and thinking it very ingenious, while the second set up a water-clock on the table: a glass vessel from which a drop fell every twelve seconds, as it were a pulse for the room. They counted. Sixty, they said, to the minute; and it was found to be a number that belongs to clocks, and to no creature in the world.

The first scholar said that I had no business to have such a number. He set out his proposition: that a mannikin that goes at sixty is a clock, and a mannikin that speaks is a clock with a voice. The royal clockmaker was sent for. He examined me for the winding-hole with a glass, in some detail, and was not able to find it, and went away much offended. It is a thing I have noticed since in persons of that art, who do not forgive an absence of this kind.

The second scholar, who was a naturalist, had a better opinion. He had viewed my teeth with great exactness, and observed that I was a carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and field mice and some others too nimble, he could not imagine how I should be able to support myself, unless I fed on snails and other insects, which he offered by many learned arguments to prove I could not possibly do. The three of them agreed that I could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature, since I was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or by climbing trees, or by digging holes in the earth. They were wrong as to the swiftness; I was, by a good deal, the swiftest object in the room. But they could not see it, and a thing that cannot be seen to be swift is not, in natural philosophy, swift.

The third scholar thought that I might be an embryo, or abortive birth; but this the other two rejected, since they observed my limbs to be perfect and finished, and that I had lived several years, as was manifest from my beard, the stumps of which they discovered plainly through a magnifying glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen's favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in that kingdom, was near thirty feet high. After much debate they concluded unanimously that I was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted literally a freak of nature; a determination which has since been much admired by the learned of Europe, who have been using it in other connections for years.

I asked to be heard a word or two, and answered them by the drops of their own water-clock, which they had brought to show that I was one, and which served me for a drum. I told his majesty that I came from a country that abounded with several millions of both sexes, of my own size, where the animals and trees and houses were all in proportion, and where I might be as able to defend myself and find my living as any of his subjects here; which I took for a full answer. They replied with a smile of contempt, and said that the farmer had taught me my lesson very well.

The king, who had a better understanding, dismissed his learned men, and sent for the farmer, who by good fortune had not yet left the town. He examined him alone, and then set him in front of me and the girl together, and I watched his face begin to think that it might be true. It took eleven minutes. He told the queen that I was to have particular care, and that the girl was to go on tending me, since he observed that we were fond of one another.

A room was found for her at court, with a governess to see to her education, a maid to dress her, and two servants for the rough work; but the care of me was left wholly to herself. The queen's own cabinet-maker built me a bedchamber to the girl's directions and mine: sixteen feet square and twelve high, with sash-windows, a door, and two closets, for all the world like a bedchamber in London, but for the ceiling, which was a lid on two hinges, so that a bed might be lowered in ready made by the queen's upholsterer. The girl aired the bed daily and made it with her own hands, and at night let down the lid and locked it over me. He had finished it in three weeks, by my clock, and told me, with some pride, that by his it had been under two days.

I asked for a lock to keep out the rats, and the smith, after several attempts, made the smallest that was ever seen in that country, and I kept the key myself, for fear the girl should lose it. The room was quilted on all sides against jolts; and the queen had the thinnest silks that could be got made into clothes for me, not much thicker than an English blanket, which were very cumbersome till I was used to them, and a grave and decent habit.

The queen became so fond of my company that she could not dine without me. I had a table placed at her left elbow, and a chair to sit on, and the girl stood on a stool near by to assist me. I had an entire set of silver dishes and plates, which in proportion to the queen's were not much bigger than what I have seen in a London toy-shop for the furniture of a baby-house, and these my little nurse kept in a silver box in her pocket, and gave me as I wanted them, always cleaning them herself. The queen's diversion was to see me eat in miniature. She ate as she did everything, at five. The wing of a lark was a thing she approached over the course of half a minute, and bit through, bones and all, between two of her own pulses; and I finished my dinner, and a pudding, and was waiting, with the small book open on my knee, before she had got the first lark to her mouth. She thought I was drawing.

That night I lay in the box, with the key in my pocket and the roof let down, and took my wrist, and it was fifty-two. In the room beyond the wall a child of nine was learning the habits of a court, and had a governess, and a maid; and at the hour when she should have been asleep I heard through the wainscot, very faint, a bell, and a long rest, and a bell. She was counting. She had no hair, and no wrist to put it on. She was counting what she could not feel, to keep the time for me, and I lay and listened, and let her.

## Chapter 13 · The queen's dwarf, who has been the quickest thing in the palace for thirty years, finds that he is not. The marrow-bone and the cream. The flies and the wasps. The country described, and the metropolis seen from a tower.

Nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen's dwarf. He was the smallest person ever known in that kingdom, being not full thirty feet high; and being so small he beat ten. I was told that he had been the quickest thing in the palace for the thirty years that he had served in it, and that the court had been amused by it, as a court is amused by whatever is at the edge of what it can follow. The dwarf was a person who ran across a room and, before the room had turned its head, was in the doorway, laughing at it.

I must say what it was to see him. He and I were the only two persons at that court who could see each other move. The court saw the dwarf as a flick and me as a smear; and he and I, who had both learned to hold still to be looked at, stood across the antechamber from one another with the expression of two persons who are the only ones in a company who speak the same language, and who have not been introduced. He had been the quickest thing in the room for thirty years. He had been replaced in a week by a thing the size of a pie that was six times quicker. It was a company of a kind, to be seen once a day by the one person who could see that one was moving; and neither of us, I think, wished for it.

He swaggered. When he passed me in the antechamber, where I stood on some table talking with the lords and ladies, he would make himself as large as thirty feet allowed, and say a smart word or two, at the pace of the court, so that all might hear, on my littleness; and I could only answer him by calling him brother, and offering to wrestle him, which was the whole of my wit in that language. It was what I would have said to my own brother at his age. He knew it. That, I think, was what he could not forgive.

Once only did he speak to me as one person to another. It was in the antechamber on a morning when the court was at its prayers, and there was nobody in it but the two of us and a page asleep against the wainscot. He came over, and sat down on the edge of the table where I stood, and said, at the pace at which I speak, so that I understood him without the girl and without going under, how long I supposed they would go on looking. I said that I did not know. They looked for nine months with me, he said, and then they were amused, which is not the same. I said that I was sorry for it. You are sorry for it, he said, in my own voice, quite accurately; and he got down, and did not speak to me again.

At dinner one day the queen had a marrow-bone on her plate, and after knocking out the marrow she set the bone upright in the dish; and the dwarf, watching his opportunity while the girl was gone to the sideboard, climbed on the stool she stood on, took me up in both hands, and squeezing my legs together wedged them into the bone above my waist, where I stuck, and made a very ridiculous figure. I saw him come. I was too much surprised to do anything but watch; it was the first time that anyone in that country had done a thing to me that I could follow from beginning to end, and I found, absurdly, that I was interested. It was near a minute before anyone knew what was become of me, for I thought it below me to cry out. But princes seldom get their meat hot, so that my legs were not scalded, only my stockings and breeches in a sad condition. The queen was heartily vexed, though she laughed, and would have turned him off on the spot if I had not interceded. At my entreaty he had no other punishment than a sound whipping.

The cream was another matter. One day at dinner, nettled at something I had said, he raised himself upon the frame of her majesty's chair and took me up by the middle, as I was sitting down, and let me drop into a large silver bowl of cream, and was gone before the bowl had stopped moving. I went in over head and ears. It is a thick and not unpleasant thing to drown in; a man does not sink in it, he is gently refused. I swam, being a good swimmer, and had swallowed above a quart before the girl, who happened to be at the other end of the room, came running, at the pace of a child who is not slow, and took me out. The queen was in such a fright that she wanted presence of mind. Everyone else in the room was still looking at the place where I had been.

I was put to bed, and lost a suit of clothes, which was utterly spoiled. The dwarf was soundly whipped, and, as a further punishment, forced to drink up the bowl of cream into which he had thrown me. He did it quickly, as he did everything. Neither was he ever restored to favour; for soon after the queen bestowed him on a lady of high quality, so that I saw him no more. I was told by a page that in the house where he was given there was a long gallery, and that he ran in it every evening from one end to the other; and that nobody had yet been found who could tell him how long it took.

It was the flies that showed me what I was good for in that country. The kingdom is much pestered with flies in summer, each as big as a lark, and they are of my pace. They go about at fifty, sixty; they alighted upon my victuals, and left what they leave, which to me was very visible and to the natives not, their eyes being too large for such matters. The dwarf's practice had been to catch a number in his hand, as schoolboys do among us, and let them go suddenly under my nose, to frighten me and divert the queen; and he could catch them. He was the only one at court who could. I cut them in pieces in the air with my knife as they flew, and I was much admired for it. I was the only person in the palace who could hit a fly, and I think the dwarf knew it was the end of him.

One morning the girl set me in my box upon a window to take the air, and when I had lifted up a sash and sat down to a piece of sweet cake for my breakfast, above twenty wasps, allured by the smell, came flying into the room, humming louder than the drones of as many bagpipes. Some of them seized my cake and carried it off piecemeal; others flew about my head and face, confounding me with the noise, and putting me in the utmost terror of their stings. But I had the courage to rise and draw my hanger and attack them in the air. I killed four, in the middle of the room, each as big as a partridge, and the rest got away, and I shut the window. The queen said that it was the first time in the history of the palace that anyone had hit one.

I took out their stings, and found them an inch and a half long, and as sharp as needles. I preserved them all; and having since shown them, with some other curiosities, in several parts of Europe, I gave three of them, upon my return to England, to Gresham College, and kept the fourth for myself. It is by me as I write. I have laid my wrist upon it, on nights when I could not sleep, and have found nothing there, and have gone on laying it.

Of the country I saw not above two thousand miles round the metropolis, the queen never going farther when the king made his progresses, and staying where she was till he returned from viewing his frontiers. The whole extent of his dominions reaches about six thousand miles in length, and three to five in breadth; whence I cannot but conclude that our geographers of Europe are in a great error in supposing nothing but sea between Japan and California; for it was ever my opinion that there must be a balance of earth to counterpoise the great continent of Tartary. They ought to correct their maps and charts by joining this vast tract to the north-west parts of America, and I am ready to lend them my assistance.

The kingdom is a peninsula, closed on the north-east by a ridge of mountains thirty miles high, impassable for the volcanoes on their tops, and on the three other sides by the sea. There is not a seaport in the whole kingdom, the coasts being so full of pointed rocks, and the sea so rough, that there is no venturing the smallest of their boats; so that the people are wholly excluded from any commerce with the rest of the world. I never heard one of them say that he wished it otherwise. A country that moves at five has no reason to hurry out to meet the rest. I should add that there are no two clocks in the peninsula that agree. Each town strikes its bell when its sexton has finished his breakfast.

The metropolis, which is called Lorbrulgrud, stands almost equally on both sides of a river. It contains above eighty thousand houses, and about six hundred thousand inhabitants; and I measured it myself, in a royal map which the king had laid on the floor of a gallery for my use, a hundred feet in length. I paced the diameter and the circumference several times barefoot, and computed by the scale: it is three glomglungs long, which make about fifty-four English miles, and two and a half broad. I crossed it in the gallery in about the time it takes the court to dress a princess; and it came to me that I was the only person in the kingdom who had ever walked the whole of Lorbrulgrud in an afternoon.

The king's palace is no regular edifice, but a heap of buildings about seven miles round, and the chief rooms are generally two hundred and forty feet high, and broad and long in proportion. A coach was allowed to the girl and me, in which her governess took her out to see the town and go among the shops, and I was of the party in my box; though the girl, at my desire, would often take me out and hold me in her hand, that I might more conveniently see the houses and the people as we passed.

One day the governess bade the coachman stop at several shops, where the beggars, watching their opportunity, crowded to the sides of the coach, and gave me the most horrible spectacle that ever a European eye beheld. There was a woman with a cancer in her breast, swelled to a monstrous size, full of holes; there was a fellow with a wen on his neck larger than five wool-packs; and another with two wooden legs, each about twenty feet high. But the most hateful sight of all was the lice crawling on their clothes. I could see the limbs of these vermin with my naked eye, much better than those of a European louse through a microscope, and the snouts with which they rooted like swine. They were of my pace. I watched one cross a sleeve in the time that a man crosses a room, and the beggar who wore it did not know that it was there, and I did, and could not have told him. It was the only speed in that street, apart from the girl's and my own; and it was eating.

The queen ordered a smaller box to be made for me, for travelling, of about twelve feet square and ten high, with a window in the middle of three of the sides, each latticed with iron wire, and on the fourth two strong staples, through which the person who carried me, when I had a mind to be on horseback, put a leathern belt and buckled it about his waist. This was always the office of some grave trusty servant. A horse in that country walks at the pace of a psalm, a stride for every verse; I could have said the whole of the hundred and nineteenth by the swell of it, and I did not discompose myself, having been long used to sea-voyages.

I was very desirous to see the chief temple, and particularly the tower belonging to it, which is reckoned the highest in the kingdom. The girl carried me thither, and I came back, I must say, disappointed; for the height is not above three thousand feet, which, allowing for the size of the people, is no great matter for admiration, nor at all equal in proportion to Salisbury steeple. But from the window at the top I saw the city as a thing in the act of happening. I watched a funeral cross a square, and it took, by my pulse, the better part of an hour. A coach crossed a street while I counted a hundred. A bell at my elbow was struck, and the tower hummed for a time that I could not bear to put a number to; and I understood that the city was telling the time to nobody, because nobody was in a hurry.

Whatever the tower wanted in height was made up in beauty and strength, the walls being near a hundred feet thick, of hewn stone, each block about forty feet square, and adorned on all sides with statues of gods and emperors, larger than life, placed in their niches. I measured a little finger which had fallen from one of them and lay unperceived among some rubbish, and found it exactly four feet and an inch in length. I put my ear to it, out of habit. There was nothing. I do not know what I expected. Glumdalclitch wrapped it in her handkerchief, and carried it home in her pocket to keep among her trinkets, of which she was very fond; and in the evening I found it on her shelf, between a thimble and a doll's shoe, and it was warm, because she had been holding it.

## Chapter 14 · Several adventures that happened to the author, nearly all of them with things of his own pace. The hail, the spaniel, the kite and an execution. The boat in the trough, the pin, the frog and the monkey. The king rallies him upon it.

I should have lived happy enough in that country if my littleness had not exposed me to a number of ridiculous and troublesome accidents; and I noticed, in the course of them, that it was never the people. The people were slow, and I could go round any one of them as one goes round a statue. What hurt me was whatever in that country was of my own pace, or near it, and a great deal larger. I will relate some of the accidents. The girl, who could not keep one from the queen, related the rest.

One day, left on a smooth grass-plot to amuse myself, I was caught by hail. The stones struck me to the ground and went on striking me, like tennis-balls, until I had crept on all fours into the lee of a border of thyme, and lay there flat on my face, so bruised from head to foot that I could not go abroad for ten days. A hailstone in that country is near eighteen hundred times the size of one in Europe, which I can assert, having weighed and measured them when I was able to stand. But what struck me, between the blows, was that it came down at the common speed. Hail does not fall in bells. The weather in that country was not slow; I had been expecting everything to be slow, and it was only the persons.

A worse thing happened in the same garden when the girl, believing she had put me in a safe place, and having left my box at home to spare herself the carrying, went off with her governess to the other end. A small white spaniel belonging to one of the gardeners got in by accident, and smelt me, and came straight up and took me into his mouth; and trotted with me to his master, wagging, and put me gently down. He was so well taught that he did not tear my coat. A spaniel in that country goes at about my pace. I was not astonished that he took me; I was astonished that I could not prevent it. The gardener, who knew me, took me up in both hands in a terrible fright and asked how I did, and I could not answer, having no breath.

The girl, when she came back and found the place empty, and I did not answer her calling, was in cruel agonies; and she was afterwards severe with the gardener about his dog. But the thing was hushed up, for fear of the queen's anger, and, I will confess, for the sake of my reputation. After this the girl would never let me out of her sight, and I, who had long dreaded the resolution, kept from her a number of small adventures that had happened when I was alone: that a kite hovering over the garden had stooped at me, and that I had saved myself only by drawing my hanger and running under a thick espalier (it was the one thing in that sky that came down at my speed, and I knew its shadow before I knew what it was); that I had fallen to my neck in a fresh mole-hill, and had coined a lie, not worth remembering, to account for my clothes; and that I had broken my shin on a snail's shell, walking alone and thinking on poor England.

The maids of honour had a way of asking the girl to bring me, to have the pleasure of seeing and touching me. They did not use ceremony with me. They treated me as a creature of no consequence: I was set on the toilet-table, and they dressed before me; and at five to the minute a lady's dressing is a long affair, so that I read, in the time that one took to put on a stocking, two pages of a book I had in my pocket. Their skins appeared so coarse and so variously coloured, seen near, with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, that I begged the girl to find some excuse for not going again. I conceived that my sense of smell was more acute in proportion to my littleness. I found their natural smell much more supportable than their perfumes, under which I swooned away.

One day a young gentleman, nephew to the girl's governess, came and pressed them both to see an execution. It was of a man who had murdered a friend of his. The girl went very much against her inclination, being tender-hearted by nature; and I, though I abhorred such spectacles, went to see something that I supposed must be extraordinary.

The man was fixed in a chair on a scaffold, and his head was to be taken off at one blow by a sword about forty feet long. We stood half an English mile off, in the girl's hand, and I counted him. I could not take his wrist, but I could take the throat, and the sword went up so slowly that I thought at each moment it would be stayed, and he had four beats of it. I have counted a good many, in my profession. I do not know that I was ever sorrier for any man's last four. Then the blood went up higher than I should have believed, and the head, when it fell on the scaffold floor, gave such a bounce that I started, though I was at least half a mile away.

The queen, who took every occasion to divert me when I was melancholy, asked whether a little rowing might not be good for my health. I said that I understood the oar very well, a ship's surgeon being obliged, upon a pinch, to work like a common mariner; but I could not see how it might be done in a country where the smallest wherry was a first-rate man of war. Her majesty said that if I would contrive a boat her own joiner would make it, and she would provide a place to sail in. In ten days he had finished a pleasure-boat able to hold eight Europeans, and the queen ran with it in her lap to the king, who had it put into a cistern with me in it, where I had no room for the sculls; so she had made for me instead a wooden trough three hundred feet long and fifty broad, well pitched, laid along the wall of an outer room.

I rowed in it for my own diversion and that of the queen and her ladies. Sometimes I put up my sail and only steered, while the ladies gave me a gale with their fans, and when they were weary the pages blew; and a page's breath in that country is a long one. I had time to make a tack, and take my wrist, and make another, before it was spent.

Once, when a page had put the boat in the trough, the governess officiously took me up to place me in it, and I slipped through her fingers, and should infallibly have fallen forty feet to the floor but that a corking-pin in the good gentlewoman's stomacher passed between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and I hung by the middle in the air till the girl came running. It was the slowest fall I have had. I saw the pin; I saw her fingers open; I saw the floor; and I had time to think, in this order, of my wife, of the boy in the doorway, and of whether the pin was clean.

Another time a servant who filled my trough every third day with fresh water let a great frog slip out of his pail unnoticed, and it lay hid till I was in my boat; then, seeing a resting-place, it climbed in, and made the boat lean so that I had to balance it with all my weight on the other side. It hopped half the length of the boat and then over my head, back and forth, daubing my face and clothes with slime. It was of my pace, or a little below, and I did not mind it as I minded the monkey. I asked the girl to let me deal with it alone, and banged it with a scull a good while until it leapt out.

The greatest danger I underwent in that kingdom was a monkey, one belonging to a clerk of the kitchen. The girl had gone out and locked me in her closet; it was warm, and she had left open the window, and the window and door of my bigger box, where I lived by day for the room. I sat meditating at my table when I heard something come in at the window and go bounding about. I looked out, not stirring from my seat, and saw a frolicsome animal leaping up and down the room until it came to my box and examined it with great pleasure, peeping in at each window. I should have hid under the bed, and I did not; I retreated to the farthest corner and stood there. A monkey in that country goes at three times the pace of the palace and a quarter of mine, and in a room as large as a field I might have kept away from him half a day. I was in a box.

He found me. He put a paw in at the door as a cat does to a mouse, and I shifted about the box and kept out of it for what seemed a long time, until he caught the lappet of my coat, which was of that country's silk, thick and strong, and drew me out. He took me up in his right forefoot and held me as a nurse holds a child she is about to suckle, as I have seen his kind hold a kitten; and when I tried to struggle he squeezed so hard that I thought it wiser to submit. I believe he took me for a young one of his own species; he kept stroking my face, very gently, with the other paw. The gentleness was the worst of it. I took my wrist, in his palm, and it was ninety-six.

A noise at the closet door interrupted our diversions, and he leapt up to the window by which he had come, and out on the leads and gutters on three legs, carrying me in the fourth, and clambered to a roof next ours. I heard the girl shriek as I was carried out. That quarter of the palace was all in an uproar, and servants ran for ladders; and I am told that it took them the better part of an afternoon to get one to the roof. The monkey had done all he meant to in about nine minutes. Nobody in the palace could have caught him, he being three times their pace; and the order which was made afterwards, that no such animal should be kept, was made by persons who had been three hours getting a ladder to a roof.

Hundreds in the court saw him sitting on the ridge of a building holding me like a baby in one forepaw and feeding me with the other, out of the bag in his cheek, and patting me when I would not eat; and many of the rabble below could not forbear laughing, and the laughter came up to me at five, a roll of bells, and I sat in his lap while it came. I do not think they ought to be blamed; the sight was ridiculous to everyone but me. Some threw stones to drive him down, which was strictly forbidden, or very probably my brains had been dashed out.

The ladders were applied, and mounted by several men, which the monkey observing, and finding himself nearly surrounded, and not able to make speed enough on three legs, let me drop on a ridge-tile and made his escape. I sat there three hundred feet from the ground, expecting to be blown down by the wind or to fall by my own giddiness, till an honest lad, one of the girl's footmen, climbed up, and put me in his breeches pocket, and brought me down safe. His pulse through the seam was five.

I was almost choked with the filthy stuff the monkey had crammed into my throat; the girl picked it out of my mouth with a small needle, and then I vomited, which relieved me. I was so weak and bruised in the sides by the squeezing of this odious animal that I was forced to keep my bed a fortnight, which by their reckoning was two days; and the king and queen and all the court sent every day to inquire after me, which by their reckoning was twice. The monkey was killed.

When I went to thank the king for his favours after my recovery he was pleased to rally me a good deal on the subject. His questions arrived in the manner of that country, each about the length of a psalm, so that I had a great deal of time to prepare. He asked what my thoughts and speculations had been while I lay in the monkey's paw; how I liked the victuals, and his manner of feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened my stomach. He desired to know what I would have done in such a case in my own country.

I replied that in Europe we had no monkeys, except such as are brought for curiosity from other places, and those so small that I could deal with a dozen of them at once; and that as to that monstrous animal, if my fears had suffered me to think so far as to make use of my hanger (here I looked fiercely, and clapped my hand to the hilt), when he poked his paw into my chamber, I might have given him such a wound as would have made him glad to withdraw it with more haste than he put it in. I delivered this in a firm voice, like a man jealous lest his courage should be called in question. It produced a loud laughter, which all the respect due to his majesty could not make those about him contain. It began, as laughter does in that country, at one end of the room, and reached the other when I had half forgotten what I had said. And I reflected how vain it is to try to do oneself honour among those who are out of all comparison with one; and that I have seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in England, since my return.

I furnished the court every day with some ridiculous story; and the girl, though she loved me to excess, was arch enough to tell the queen whenever I did anything that she thought would divert her. She was the quickest teller in the palace, being the only one who could say a thing before it was over. Once, when she had been out of order, her governess took her thirty miles out of town to take the air; and they alighted from the coach near a footpath in a field, and she set down my box, and I went out of it to walk. There was a cow-dung in the path, and I must needs try my activity by leaping it. I took a run, and unfortunately jumped short, and found myself in the middle of it up to my knees. A footman wiped me as clean as he could; the girl confined me to my box till we came home; and the queen was informed, and the footmen spread it about the court, so that all the mirth for some days was at my expense. I found, which I had not looked for, that I minded it less than I should have minded it from persons who were in a hurry.

## Chapter 15 · The author shows his skill in music, played at two speeds. He gives the king an account of England, and the king gives his judgment of it. The girl, who has had the hair across his wrist throughout, has counted him.

I attended the king's levee once or twice a week, and had often seen him under the barber's hand, which was at first very terrible to behold, for the razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe, and passed over his face in about the time it takes me to say the Lord's Prayer. His majesty was shaved twice a week. I once prevailed on the barber to give me some of the lather, out of which I picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps of hair, and with these I made, in a piece of fine wood, a very tolerable comb, mine being so much broken in the teeth as to be almost useless; neither did I know an artist in that country so nice and exact as to undertake another.

The king, who delighted in music, had frequent concerts at court, to which I was sometimes carried, and set in my box on a table; but the noise was so great that I could hardly distinguish the tunes, and I did as I do in a gale, and shut the doors and windows of the box and drew the curtains, and after that I found their music not disagreeable. It was at five. A slow dance, in that country, is a thing for which one makes an appointment.

I had learned in my youth to play a little upon the spinet, and the girl kept one in her chamber, near sixty feet long, each key almost a foot wide, so that with my arms extended I could not reach above five keys, and to press one down required a good smart stroke of the fist. A fancy came into my head that I would entertain the king and queen with an English tune. I prepared two round sticks about the bigness of cudgels, thicker at one end than the other, and covered the thicker ends with pieces of a mouse's skin, that I might neither damage the keys nor interrupt the sound; and a bench was placed about four feet below the keys, and I was put upon the bench, and ran sideling upon it, this way and that, as fast as I could, banging the proper keys, and made a shift to play a jig. It was the most violent exercise I ever underwent, and I could not strike above sixteen keys, nor consequently play the bass and treble together, as other artists do.

It took about a quarter of a minute. To the court it was a noise like a spoon tapped upon a glass. The queen said that it was very short, and asked for it again; and I played it the second time at a twelfth of the speed, one stroke to the beat of the girl's wrist, which took me eleven minutes, and was by the end of it a dirge. They liked that very much. They said it was very fine, and very sad, and the queen asked what it was called, and I said that it was called the Irish Washerwoman, and she asked the girl to ask me what a washerwoman was.

The king, who was a prince of excellent understanding, would frequently order that I should be brought in my box and set upon the table of his closet; he would then command me to bring one of my chairs out of the box and sit within three yards of him, upon the top of the cabinet, which brought me almost to a level with his face. In this manner I had several conversations with him. I took the freedom to tell his majesty, one day, that the contempt he discovered towards Europe, and the rest of the world, did not seem answerable to those excellent qualities of mind that he was master of; that reason did not extend itself with the bulk of the body, but that on the contrary we observed in our country that the tallest persons were usually the least provided with it; that among other animals bees and ants had the reputation of more industry, art and sagacity than many of the larger kinds; and that, as inconsiderable as he took me to be, I hoped I might live to do his majesty some signal service.

The king heard me with attention, and began to conceive a better opinion of me than he had ever before. He desired I would give him as exact an account of the government of England as I possibly could; because, as fond as princes commonly are of their own customs, he should be glad to hear of anything that might deserve imitation. And I wished, courteous reader, as I have never wished before or since, for the tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero, that I might celebrate the praise of my own dear native country in a style equal to its merits and felicity.

The girl stood at the foot of the cabinet, as she always did when I was with the king, and gave him my words at his pace and him to me at mine. I did not know that she had my wrist. She had brought the hair in her pocket, that first day, without being asked; and she laid it across the plate while I was settling my chair, and held the end of it through the whole of the audience, a child of nine in a bonnet, looking at the floor, and I did not know.

I told him of our two islands, which make three kingdoms under one sovereign, beside the plantations; of our soil and climate; of the parliament, with its House of Peers, persons of the noblest blood and ample patrimonies, educated in arts and arms to be counsellors of the king and champions of the country, and its bishops, sought out through the whole nation for the sanctity of their lives and the depth of their erudition; of the Commons, all principal gentlemen freely culled by the people for their abilities and love of their country; of the judges, those venerable sages; of the prudent management of the treasury, and the valour of our forces by sea and land. I computed the people by reckoning how many millions there might be of each sect or party. I did not omit our sports. And I finished with a brief history of the last hundred years.

A speech that I could give in four minutes took the girl, who gave it again, and the king, who answered, three quarters of an hour; and this was not ended under five audiences, each of several hours. The king heard the whole with great attention, frequently taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of the questions he intended to ask. His pen was a quill the length of a mast, and the sound of it on the paper went on for some time after I had stopped.

In a sixth audience, consulting his notes, he proposed many doubts, queries and objections upon every article, each question about the length of a psalm. He asked what was done to cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility; what made a new lord, and whether the humour of the prince, or a sum of money to a court lady, or a design of strengthening a party against the public interest, ever came into it; what these lords knew of the laws by which they decided their fellow-subjects' properties in the last resort; whether a bribe could find no place among them; and whether the holy lords I spoke of had never been compliers with the times while they were common priests, or the slavish chaplains of some nobleman whose opinions they continued servilely to follow after they were admitted into that assembly.

He asked by what arts the commoners were elected, and whether a stranger with a strong purse might not buy the voters before their own landlord; and how it came about that they were so violently set upon a place which I allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often the ruin of their families, without salary or pension: it seemed so exalted a strain of public spirit that his majesty doubted it could always be sincere. Of the courts of justice he asked how long it took to determine between right and wrong, and at what expense; whether advocates might plead causes known to be unjust or oppressive; whether they had ever pleaded for and against the same cause at different times, citing precedents to prove contrary opinions. I answered this the better for having been once almost ruined by a long suit in chancery, which was decreed for me with costs.

On the treasury he thought my memory had failed me, for I had computed our taxes at five or six millions a year, and the issues were sometimes more than double; his notes were very particular on this point, since he hoped that the knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him. But if what I told him were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate like a private man. He wondered at our expensive wars; we must be a quarrelsome people, or live among very bad neighbours, and our generals must be richer than our kings. Above all he was amazed at a standing army of hired men, in the midst of peace, among a free people. If we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives, of whom were we afraid, and against whom were we to fight? Might not a private man's house be better defended by himself, his children and his family, than by half a dozen rascals picked up in the streets for small wages, who might get a hundred times as much by cutting his throat?

He laughed at my arithmetic of the sects. He knew no reason why those who held opinions prejudicial to the public should be obliged to change them, or should not be obliged to conceal them; for it was tyranny in any government to require the first, and weakness not to enforce the second; a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials. And of the history I had given him of the last century he said that it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions and banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice and ambition could produce.

In another audience his majesty was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken, comparing the questions he made with the answers I had given. Then, taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, he delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in. He spoke them at five. It took him, I suppose, twenty-two minutes, and the last word arrived after I had forgotten the first, so that I had it from the girl in a hurry, afterwards, and heard it as one hears a thing in a dream, in the voice of a child.

My little friend Grildrig, he said, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country. You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness and vice are the proper ingredients for a legislator, and that laws are best explained and applied by those whose interest lies in perverting and eluding them. I see among you some lines of an institution which in its origin might have been tolerable; but these are half erased, and the rest wholly blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, that any one perfection is required for any one station among you; not that men are ennobled for their virtue, nor priests advanced for their piety, nor soldiers for their conduct, nor judges for their integrity. As for yourself, who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am disposed to hope that you have escaped many vices of your country. But from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

I was not angry. I should like to be able to say that I was. I had been called worse, at greater speed, in coffee-houses, and had come away warm, and certain; and it had never once made me look at myself. A man cannot say a thing like that at five in anger. It takes too long; by the end of it he is only telling you. I stood on the cabinet with my hat in my hand, and the king stroked me, very gently, with one finger, and I understood that I was being comforted.

That night, in the drawer, the girl said that she had counted me. She said it with her back to me, at the table, and I think she had thought about it for some time. She said that at the Lords I had been at seventy-two, and at the bishops seventy, and at the commons sixty-eight; that at the treasury I had been at sixty-four, which was nearer to me; and that by the end of the fifth audience my mean had been sixty-eight. She said that I had said it faster when it was not so. I did not ask her what she meant by so. She had the hair in her hand still, and was winding it round her finger, which she did when she was not going to cry.

Nothing but an extreme love of truth could have hindered me from concealing this part of my story, and I find that it is a love I have about me, to my surprise, and not very comfortable to carry. I did, as I have always said, artfully elude many of his questions, and gave to every point a more favourable turn, by many degrees, than the strictness of truth would allow. I know the degrees. They are in the fourth column of the small book, in the girl's number, which is eleven.

She went on saying sixty. She had said it through the days I was fifty-four and through the night I was seventy-two, at the table, and the next night through the wainscot, in the voice she kept for it; and I understood at last that she was not measuring me. I do not know what she was doing. I lay in the box with the key in my pocket, and heard the bells arrive, one after another, with the long rests between, and let her do it.

## Chapter 16 · The author offers the king the powder, which the king refuses. The king's views of government; the learning, laws, army and parties of that country. The girl does not count.

I wished, God forgive me, to oblige him. In hopes to ingratiate myself further into his majesty's favour I told him of an invention that had been discovered in my country between three and four hundred years ago. It was a certain powder, of cheap and common ingredients, which I knew very well: a heap of it, if the smallest spark fell on it, would kindle all at once, though it were as big as a mountain, and fly up in the air together with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. Rammed into a hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, it would drive a ball of iron or lead with such violence and speed that nothing could sustain its force.

I told him that the largest balls thus discharged would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink ships with a thousand men in each to the bottom of the sea, and, when linked together by a chain, cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. That we often put the powder in large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near. That I could direct his workmen how to make such tubes, of a size proportionable to all other things in his kingdom, and the largest need not be above a hundred feet long; that twenty or thirty of them, charged with the proper powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands. This I humbly offered as a small tribute of acknowledgment for so many marks of his royal favour.

I should say who said it. I spoke it at my pace, in a plain voice, and the girl gave it to the king at his, a sentence at a time, standing at the foot of the cabinet with her eyes shut and her hands behind her. It had to be given in the manner of that country, which does not skip, so that the king had it whole: the ball, and the walls, and the ships sunk with a thousand men in each, and the pavements ripped up, and the houses torn to pieces, and the brains of all who came near. She was nine. I did not look at her. I was looking at the king.

The king was struck with horror. He was amazed, he said, and I have it as he said it from the girl, how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver. As for himself, he protested that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy to such a secret; which he commanded me, as I valued my life, never to mention any more.

He said one thing besides, which I did not follow then. He said that of all that I had told him of my country it was the only thing that had not seemed to him to be of a size. A people who took eleven seconds to swing a hook, he said, had never been obliged to think what it would be to be struck by a thing that did not wait for them. I was offering a slow people the one fast death there was, and he would not have it said of him that he had taken it. He asked the girl whether she had understood. She said that she had.

I thought it then a strange effect of narrow principles and views that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love and esteem, of strong parts, great wisdom and profound learning, almost adored by his subjects, should from a nice unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties and the fortunes of his people. Neither did I say this with the least intention to detract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character I was sensible would on this account be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader. I took the defect to have risen from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute wits of Europe have done. I set down what I thought.

I remember very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when I happened to say that there were several thousand books among us written upon the art of government, it gave him, directly contrary to my intention, a very mean opinion of our understandings. He professed both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an enemy or some rival nation was not in the case. He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes, which he reckoned at about eleven days; with some other obvious topics which are not worth considering. And he gave it for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

The learning of this people is of four sorts, morality, history, poetry and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to excel; and the last is wholly applied to what may be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture and all the mechanical arts, so that among us it would be little esteemed. They do not take to abstractions. I once tried to explain to the three scholars what an entity was. It took forty minutes by the water-clock. At the end of it the second scholar asked whether it could be eaten, and the first whether it could be wound.

No law in that country may exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists of only two and twenty; and few of them extend so far. They are expressed in the most plain and simple terms, in which those people are not mercurial enough to discover more than one interpretation; and to write a comment upon any law is a capital crime. Where a sentence takes eleven seconds, brevity is not a virtue but a necessity: a law of twenty-two words is a law that can be said at five in about the time that anybody can be expected to stand and listen.

They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of mind; but their libraries are not large, for the king's, which is reckoned the largest, does not amount to above a thousand volumes, in a gallery twelve hundred feet long, whence I had liberty to borrow what books I pleased. To read, I walked. The queen's joiner had made for me, in one of the girl's rooms, a kind of wooden machine twenty-five feet high, formed like a standing ladder, the steps each fifty feet long. The book I wished to read was set up leaning against the wall; I mounted to the upper step, and began at the head of the page, and so walking to the right and left, about eight or ten paces according to the length of the lines, descended gradually to the bottom; and then mounted again, and began the other page in the same manner, and turned over the leaf with both hands, for it was as thick and stiff as pasteboard. A page took me eleven minutes at a brisk walk, and a chapter an afternoon. I was the only person in that kingdom to whom a book was a distance.

Their style is clear, masculine and smooth, but not florid, for they avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words or using various expressions; and I think it is the pace. A writer who must be said aloud at five does not squander. I perused many of their books, especially those in history and morality, as it were on foot.

Among the rest I was much diverted with a little old treatise that always lay in the girl's bedchamber, and belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman who dealt in writings of morality and devotion. The book treats of the weakness of humankind, and is in little esteem, except among the women and the vulgar. It went through all the usual topics of the European moralists, showing how diminutive, contemptible and helpless an animal man was in his own nature; how unable to defend himself from the inclemencies of the air or the fury of wild beasts; how much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed, by a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry. It added that nature was degenerated in these latter declining ages, and could now produce only small abortive births in comparison with those of ancient times; and it was very reasonable to think, not only that the species of men were originally much larger, but that there must have been giants in former ages, confirmed by huge bones and skulls casually dug up in several parts of the kingdom.

And the proof of the falling-off, said the book, was the hurry. In the time of the writer's grandfather, it said, the young of men had been born at four, and borne it; now they were born at seven or eight, and fretted; the race was growing quick, and quickness was the first sign of a decline; and it cited, as a thing that everyone knew, children who could not sit still. The governess had put a pin in that page. I found it. I did not tell the girl, and I have wondered since whether she had read it.

From this way of reasoning the author drew several moral applications, useful in the conduct of life, but needless here to repeat. For my own part, I could not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was spread, of drawing lectures in morality, or indeed rather matter of discontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature; and I believe that upon a strict inquiry those quarrels might be shown as ill-grounded among us as they are among that people.

As to their military affairs, they boast that the king's army consists of a hundred and seventy-six thousand foot and thirty-two thousand horse, if that may be called an army which is made up of tradesmen in the several cities and farmers in the country, whose commanders are only the nobility and gentry without pay or reward. They are perfect enough in their exercises, and under very good discipline, wherein I saw no great merit; for how should it be otherwise where every farmer is under the command of his own landlord, and every citizen under that of the principal men of his city, chosen after the manner of Venice by ballot?

I have often seen the militia of Lorbrulgrud drawn out to exercise in a great field near the city, twenty miles square. A cavalier on a large steed might be ninety feet high. I have seen this whole body of horse, upon a word of command, draw their swords at once and brandish them in the air. The word took eleven seconds to say and the swords forty to come out, so that the light went across that field from one side to the other like a cloud turning over; it looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were darting from every quarter of the sky, very slowly, and each of them stayed. I understood that that country could not be hurried to a war, and had not often had one.

I was curious to know how this prince, to whose dominions there is no access from any other country, came to think of armies; and I was soon informed, both by conversation and by reading their histories, that in the course of many ages they have been troubled with the same disease to which the whole race of mankind is subject, the nobility often contending for power, the people for liberty, and the king for absolute dominion. All which, however happily tempered by the laws of that kingdom, have been sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and have more than once occasioned civil wars, the last whereof was happily put an end to by this prince's grandfather in a general composition; and the militia then settled with common consent has been ever since kept in the strictest duty.

I have left to the last the night after the powder. Through the wainscot there was no count. I lay in the box with the key in my pocket and listened to the wall, and for the first time since the palace the wall said nothing. I took my wrist, which I did not need to do. It was fifty-two. It was the lowest I had had in that country; I had just described to a king, in a plain voice, how a city is taken, and I was calmer than I had been about the Lords.

In the morning she came for me as usual, a little red about the eyes, and did my shirt, and put me in her pocket for breakfast, and said nothing. The count was there again the next night, and the night after, at sixty, through the wall. I never asked, and she never said. But I knew by the silence that it was not a thing she did without choosing, and that on one night she had not chosen it; and that was the first time I understood that she had been choosing all along.

## Chapter 17 · The king and queen make a progress to the coast, and the author attends them. The girl takes his wrist for the last time. He is carried off by an eagle, dropped into the sea, and taken up by an English ship. He returns to England, and finds that he speaks like a bell.

I had always a strong feeling that I should some time recover my liberty, though I could not conjecture how. The ship that brought me was the first ever driven within sight of that coast, and the king had given strict orders that any other that appeared should be taken ashore, with all its crew and passengers, and brought to Lorbrulgrud in a tumbril. He meant, besides, to find me a woman of my own size, that I might propagate the breed. I think I should rather have died than leave a posterity to be kept in cages like canary-birds and sold in time about the kingdom to persons of quality for curiosities; and it occurred to me, God forgive me, how quick that posterity would be, and how long it would take to be looked at.

I was treated with great kindness. I was the favourite of a great king and queen and the delight of the court; but it was on a footing that ill became the dignity of humankind, and I could not forget the pledges I had left at home. I wanted to be among people with whom I could talk on even terms: to be spoken to at my own pace, without a drum or a hair, and to walk about the streets without the fear of being trodden to death like a frog or a puppy. My deliverance came sooner than I expected, and in a manner not very common.

I had been two years in that country when, at the beginning of the third, the girl and I went with the king and queen on a progress to the south coast. I travelled in my closet, which had a hammock hung from silk ropes at the four corners to take out the jolts when a servant carried me before him on horseback, and in its roof a hole a foot square, with a sliding board, for air in hot weather. We came to a palace the king has near Flanflasnic, eighteen English miles from the sea. We were both tired. I had a small cold; but the girl was so ill that she was confined to her chamber. I longed to see the ocean, which must be the only scene of my escape if ever it came; and I pretended to be worse than I was, and asked leave to take the sea air with a page I was fond of, who had sometimes been trusted with me.

I went to ask her in her chamber. She was in the bed, in a room with the shutters half closed, and she beat eleven, which in that country is a fever, and was ashamed of it; I could tell by the way she kept her wrist under the quilt. I said what I had come to say. I shall never forget with what unwillingness she consented, nor the strict charge she gave the page to be careful of me, in a voice she kept very level. Then she said, Wait. She took the hair from under her pillow. I put out my wrist upon the quilt, as I had put it out a good many hundred nights, and she laid the hair across the plate, and held the end, and counted.

She counted twelve, and a rest, and twelve, and a rest. I watched her face while she did it, which I could do in that country, faces there taking their time, and I watched the number arrive in it. I knew before she said it. She said, Fifty-four. It was the first time she had said a number that was mine. She looked at it, where it lay in the air between us, for the length of a breath. Then she took the hair, and instead of taking it away she wound it twice about my wrist, over the plate, and bit the end off with her teeth, and said, Sixty. And she burst into tears, as if she had some foreboding of what was to happen. A tear in that country takes about a breath to cross a face; I had time to watch it start, and to watch it arrive.

The page took me in my box about half an hour's walk from the palace, towards the rocks on the shore, and set me down at my orders; and I lifted a sash, and looked, for a long time, at the sea. I told him that I was not well and would like to sleep in my hammock, which I hoped would do me good; he shut the window close against the cold, and I was soon asleep. I conjecture that while I slept the page, thinking no danger could happen, went among the rocks to look for birds' eggs, for I had seen him from the window picking up one or two in the clefts. I hope that he broke them at whichever end he pleased.

I woke with a violent pull on the ring at the top of my box, and found it raised very high and borne forward with prodigious speed. The first jolt almost threw me from the hammock; after that the motion was easy. I called as loud as I could, to no purpose. From my windows I saw nothing but cloud and sky, and heard over my head a clapping, like wings; and I understood that an eagle had the ring in its beak, meaning to let the box fall on a rock, like a tortoise, and pick out what was inside. I noticed, with the part of me that is a surgeon, that it was the first thing in that country that had ever carried me anywhere at a speed that was nobody's choice.

The noise of the wings increased very fast and the box was tossed like a tavern sign in a wind. I heard bangs, which I took for blows given to the eagle by others, and then I felt myself falling straight down for above a minute, with a swiftness that took away my breath; and the fall was stopped by a squash louder in my ears than Niagara, and I was in the dark for another minute, and then the box began to rise, until I could see light at the tops of the windows. I was fallen into the sea. The box, with the weight of my body and my goods and the broad iron plates at its corners, floated about five feet deep. The plates had kept it level in the fall; every joint was grooved, and the door ran up and down like a sash, so that very little water came in. I drew back the slip-board in the roof for air, and was nearly stifled before I did.

How often did I then wish myself with my dear Glumdalclitch, from whom one single hour had so far divided me! I lamented the grief she would suffer for my loss, and the queen's displeasure, and the ruin of her fortune. A single pane of glass broken would have been immediate death; nothing but the iron lattice had saved the windows. I could not lift the roof of my closet and sit on it, which would at least have kept me alive some hours longer than being shut up in the hold of my own box. I was four hours so, expecting and wishing every moment to be my last. I put my wrist to the hair, where it lay twice round, and it was seventy-eight; and I thought that she would have said sixty.

Then I thought I heard a grating noise on the side where the staples were, and soon I felt the box pulled along the sea, with now and then a tug that raised the waves to the tops of my windows. I unscrewed a chair from the floor, and screwed it down again under the slipping-board, and mounted it, and called for help through the hole in every language I knew, and waved my handkerchief on a stick. For an hour I saw no effect; then the staple side struck something hard, and I heard a cable grating through the ring, and was hoisted by degrees; and a great shout answered me, repeated three times, which gave me such transports of joy as only those who feel them can conceive.

A trampling over my head; and a man calling through the hole, in the English tongue, If there be anybody below, let them speak. He said it at my own pace. I had not been spoken to at my own pace for two years except by myself, and it came down the hole like a handful of small shot; and I found that I was weeping, and did not know why until I knew that it was because it was quick.

I answered that I was an Englishman, drawn by ill fortune into the greatest calamity that ever any creature underwent. The voice said that the carpenter would saw a hole in the cover large enough to pull me out; I said that that was needless and would take too long, and that one of the crew had only to put his finger in the ring and lift the box out of the sea and into the captain's cabin. Hearing me talk so wildly, some thought me mad and others laughed; for it never came into my head that I was now among people of my own stature and strength.

The carpenter cut a passage four feet square and let down a small ladder, and I climbed it, and was taken aboard in a very weak condition. The sailors were all amazement and asked me a thousand questions, which I did not wish to answer. I was equally confounded at the sight of so many pigmies, for so I took them, after so long accustoming my eyes to the monstrous objects I had left; and they moved, I observed, like sparrows. The captain, Mr. Thomas Wilcocks, an honest Shropshire man, seeing me ready to faint, took my wrist, as is done, and held it, and said seventy-one; and took me into his cabin, gave me a cordial, and made me lie down on his own bed. He saw the black cord twice round my wrist, and the way I held that arm. He asked nothing about it.

Before I slept I begged him to have my closet brought into his cabin, for I had in it, I said, a fine hammock, a field bed, two chairs, a table and a cabinet, all quilted with silk and cotton. Hearing these absurdities he concluded that I was raving, but promised, I suppose to pacify me; and his men went below and stripped the quilting, tore up the furniture that was screwed to the floor, knocked off boards for the ship's use, and let the hull drop into the sea, where it sank at once. I was glad not to be a spectator. I am confident it would have brought former passages into my mind which I would rather have forgot.

I slept some hours, but perpetually disturbed with dreams of the place I had left. In the night I woke and lay for some time listening for the count, and there was nothing through the wainscot but the sea; and I took my wrist, and it was fifty-six, and I said sixty, aloud, in the dark, to the cabin, at about the pace of a bell.

At supper the captain, thinking I had fasted too long, entertained me with great kindness, and when we were alone asked how I came to be adrift in that monstrous wooden chest. He had taken it, through his glass, for a sail; his men had sworn they saw a swimming house; he had rowed round me several times and towed me in by the staples. He reckoned us a hundred leagues from land. I told him he was out by almost half, for I had not left the country above two hours before I dropped into the sea; and at that he began again to think my brain disturbed, and asked me freely whether I had been put to sea in a chest by some prince, for some enormous crime, as great criminals have been in other countries. I begged his patience, and told him the whole story from the day I left England; and, as truth always forces its way into rational minds, he was convinced of my candour.

To confirm it I opened my cabinet before him, and showed him the small collection of rarities I had made in the country from which I had been so strangely delivered: the comb made of the stumps of the king's beard, and another of the same materials set in a paring of her majesty's thumb-nail for a back; needles and pins from a foot to half a yard long; four wasp stings like joiners' tacks; some combings of the queen's hair; and a gold ring that she had given me one day, taking it off her little finger and throwing it over my head like a collar. It had been warm from the finger. I had held it to my wrist a great many times, and it kept nothing. I begged the captain to accept it, which he absolutely refused. I showed him a corn that I had cut with my own hand from a maid of honour's toe, as big as a Kentish pippin, and so hardened that when I came to England I had it hollowed into a cup and set in silver; and the breeches I then wore, which were made of a mouse's skin. I could force nothing on him but a footman's tooth, which he examined with great curiosity; it had been drawn in a mistake by an unskilful surgeon, was sound, and was about a foot long and four inches thick.

The captain, well satisfied with this plain relation, said he hoped that when we returned to England I would oblige the world by putting it on paper. I answered that we were overstocked with books of travels, and that I doubted some authors consulted their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers, more than truth. I promised to take it into my thoughts.

He wondered to hear me speak so loud, and asked whether the king and queen of that country were thick of hearing. I told him it was what I had been used to for above two years, and that I wondered as much at him and his men, who seemed only to whisper, and yet I could hear them well enough; and that, when I first came into the ship, I thought the sailors the most little contemptible creatures I had ever seen. He had observed me look at everything at supper with a sort of wonder; I answered that I wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his dishes the size of a silver threepence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, and a cup not so big as a nutshell. He replied, with the old proverb, that my eyes were bigger than my belly, since he did not observe my stomach so good.

The voyage was very prosperous, and I shall not trouble the reader with a journal of it. I never went out of the ship until we came into the Downs, about nine months after my escape. The captain would not receive one farthing of my freight. We took a kind leave of each other, and I made him promise to see me at Redriff; and I hired a horse and a guide for five shillings, which I borrowed of him.

On the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the trees, the cattle and the people, I began to think myself in the Reach. I was afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and called aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have got one or two broken heads for my impertinence. And everyone I met spoke like a kettle. I had been used to listening for a word to arrive, and these arrived before I had finished waiting for them; so that I answered each a little late, and they took me for a man who had been struck on the head.

When I came to my own house, for which I was forced to inquire, one of the servants opened the door, and I bent down to go in, like a goose under a gate, for fear of striking my head. My wife ran out to embrace me, but I stooped lower than her knees, thinking she could otherwise never reach my mouth. My daughter kneeled to ask my blessing, and I could not see her till she rose, having been so long used to keep my head and eyes erect to above sixty feet; and then I went to take her up with one hand by the waist. I looked down upon the servants, and one or two friends in the house, as if they had been pigmies and I a giant. I told my wife that she had been too thrifty, for I found she had starved herself and her daughter to nothing. In short I behaved so unaccountably that they were all of the captain's opinion when he first saw me, and concluded I had lost my wits. This I mention as an instance of the great power of habit and prejudice.

She took my wrist at the door, which is what is done, and held it, and said fifty-one. I said sixty. She said fifty-one, and that she would not argue with me. I spoke to her, I am told, for the first week, at the pace of a bell, with a rest between the words, so that the sentences took a long time to come, and she learned to wait for them, with her hands in her apron, at the foot of the stairs, as persons wait for something they have a right to. She saw the black cord on my wrist, twice round. She did not ask. She looked at it as one looks over someone's shoulder at somebody else's leaving.

In a little time my family, my friends and I came to a right understanding; but my wife protested that I should never go to sea again, although my evil destiny so ordered it that she had not the power to hinder me, as the reader may know hereafter. In the mean time I here conclude the second part of my unfortunate voyages. [Margin: Among the papers in the linen-chest, in a wooden bowl, lay a black cord of nineteen feet, coiled, which the editor took at first for a bell-pull. Mrs. Gulliver, asked, said that it was a hair, and would not say whose. R.S.]

## Chapter 18 · The author is counted ten days at home, and sets out on his third voyage. Is taken by pirates. The malice of a Dutchman, and a word that is not translated. He counts himself on a rock, and is taken up into a flying island.

I had not been at home above ten days. My wife took my wrist at noon on each of them, at the table, with two fingers, as she had taken it at the door, and wrote the number on the back of the almanac in pencil, under the tides: fifty-one, fifty, fifty-four, fifty-one, fifty-three, fifty-six, fifty-two, fifty-eight, fifty-five. After the fourth day she stopped reading them out to me. I read them upside down across the table, which she knew, and let me.

On the tenth day, at noon, Captain William Robinson, a Cornish man, commander of the Hope-well, a stout ship of three hundred tons, came to my house and found her with my wrist in her hand. It was sixty. She wrote it down. He was kind enough to look at the window.

I had formerly been surgeon of another ship where he was master, and a fourth part owner, in a voyage to the Levant. He had always treated me more like a brother than an inferior officer; he took the surgeon's wrist at noon as readily as the sailmaker's, and wrote the two in the one book, in the one hand. His first visit passed nothing but what is usual after long absences. He came again, and again; he was glad to find me in good health; he asked whether I were now settled for life; he mentioned that he intended a voyage to the East Indies in two months. At last he plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to be surgeon of his ship: I should have another surgeon under me, beside his two mates; my salary should be double the usual pay; and having experienced my knowledge of sea-affairs to be at least equal to his own, he would follow my advice as if I had shared in the command. He was so honest a man that I knew the apologies were not for the proposal. They were for the almanac, which lay on the table all that month, and which he never once looked at.

The only difficulty was my wife. She said nothing for a night. In the morning she took my wrist, which is not the hour for it, and held it a long while, and asked what double the usual pay would come to in a year. I told her. She did the sum on the almanac, under the numbers, and said that the children would be provided for. That was her consent. I took it, and I knew what I was taking. I will make no defence. I record that on the tenth day I was counted at sixty, that I had not been counted at sixty since the Adventure, that I was glad of it, and that she saw I was glad.

We set out on the 5th day of August, 1706. Captain Robinson took my wrist at noon on the first day, and I his, and he wrote us both in the log, as before. Mine was fifty-eight; by the Line it was sixty-one, and there it stayed, so that when we came to Fort St. George on the 11th of April, 1707, I was by the book a man who had never left off being sixty. We staid three weeks to refresh the crew, many of whom were sick. In that time I took three hundred wrists, which I note as the most I ever took in one place; one of them, a Welsh boy's, was so slow that I called the mate to see whether he was dead, and he asked for water.

From thence we went to Tonquin, where the captain resolved to stay some time, because many of the goods he meant to buy were not ready, nor could he expect to be dispatched in several months. To defray some of the charge he bought a sloop, loaded her with what the Tonquinese usually trade to the neighbouring islands, put fourteen men aboard, three of them of the country, and made me master of her, with power to traffic while he saw to his affairs ashore. He took my wrist on the quay, as he always did, and held it a moment longer than the number needed, and said, "Sixty-one. You'll do." It was the last time for some months that anyone counted me who meant me well, and I did not know it.

We had not sailed above three days when a great storm drove us five days to the north-north-east, and then to the east; after which we had fair weather, with a pretty strong gale from the west. On the tenth day we were chased by two pirates, who soon overtook us, for my sloop was laden so deep that she sailed at the pace of her cargo, which was mostly rice, and rice has no hurry in it. Neither were we in a condition to defend ourselves.

They boarded us together, both ships at once, furiously, at the head of their men; but finding us all prostrate upon our faces (for so I had given the order) they pinioned us with strong ropes, set a guard upon us, and went to search the sloop. I lay with my cheek on the planks and watched the first of them come over the rail. I had the surgeon's habit of looking at the neck, and in his it was running past a hundred. I had given the order because men who come aboard at that pace want a reason to stop, and a row of faces on a deck is a reason.

There was a Dutchman among them who seemed to be of some authority, though he commanded neither ship. He went down the line of us as a purser goes down a row of casks, taking each wrist and saying the number aloud, in their language, to the men at his heels; when he came to mine he held it longer, and said it in Dutch, for my benefit, vierennegentig, and laughed. He knew us by our faces for Englishmen. Jabbering to us in his own tongue, he swore that we should be tied back to back and thrown into the sea.

I spoke Dutch tolerably well. I told him who we were, and begged him, as a Christian and a Protestant of a neighbouring country in strict alliance, to move the captains to some pity. This inflamed him. He repeated his threats, and turning to his companions spoke with great vehemence in Japanese, as I supposed, using the word Christianos very often.

The larger of the two ships was commanded by a Japanese captain, who spoke a little Dutch, very imperfectly. He came to me and put several questions, which I answered in great humility, and then he said that we should not die. I made him a very low bow; and turning to the Dutchman, I said that I was sorry to find more mercy in a heathen than in a brother Christian. I had soon reason to repent those foolish words.

The Dutchman, having tried in vain to persuade both captains that I might be thrown into the sea (which they would not yield to, after the promise made to me), prevailed so far as to have a punishment laid on me that was worse, in all human appearance, than death itself. My men were sent by an equal division into the two pirate ships, and my sloop was manned afresh. They did not look at me as they went; I do not blame them; a man who has been made to lie on his face for another man's reasons does not look at him afterwards. As for myself, it was determined that I should be set adrift in a small canoe, with paddles, a sail, and four days' provisions, which the Japanese captain was so kind as to double out of his own stores, and that no man should search me.

I went down into the canoe. As I went, the Dutchman leaned out and took hold of the black cord that was wound twice about my wrist, either to prove my pulse once more or because he took it for something of value, and he had begun to unwind it when the Japanese captain, behind him, said a single word. I wrote it down afterwards by its sound, as I wrote down every word I did not understand: katami. The Dutchman let go. I never learned what he had been told. He stood on the deck and loaded me, as I pulled off, with all the curses and injurious terms his language could afford, and it afforded him a great number. [Margin: The editor has put this word to two gentlemen of the East India House, who gave him two meanings, and he has not thought it right to print either. Mrs. Gulliver has written beside it in pencil, "Ask." R.S.]

About an hour before the pirates came in sight I had taken an observation, and found us in latitude 46 north, longitude 183; I held on to the figures, being the one useful thing I had. When I was some distance from them I discovered by my pocket-glass several islands to the south-east. The wind was fair. I set up my sail and reached the nearest in about three hours. It was all rock. There were birds' eggs on it, which I roasted over a fire of heath and dry sea-weed struck with my flint, and ate for my supper, being resolved to spare my provisions; and I passed the night under the shelter of a rock, on heath, and slept pretty well.

A man cannot count himself honestly, and I set this down for the use of anyone who hopes to. I had my watch on my knee and two fingers on the plate, and I found that the number leans toward whichever of the two, the counter or the counted, is the more afraid; in that canoe both were. At the first noon I had eighty-nine, at the second eighty-two, at the third seventy-one, at the fourth sixty-four. I did not trust one of them. I trusted only that they went down, and I knew already that what goes down in a man with nobody to count him is not always fear.

The next day I sailed to another island, and thence to a third and a fourth, sometimes by my sail and sometimes by my paddles; I will not trouble the reader with a particular account of my distresses, but only say that on the fifth day I came to the last island in my sight, south-south-east of the others. It lay at a greater distance than I had judged, and I was five hours reaching it, and went almost round it before I found a place to land, which was a creek about three times the width of my canoe. The island was all rock, with a few tufts of grass and sweet-smelling herbs, and a great number of caves. I put the remainder of my provisions in one of them, gathered plenty of eggs from the rocks, with a quantity of dry sea-weed and parched grass which I meant to kindle next day, having my flint, steel, match and burning-glass about me, and lay down in the cave upon the same grass and weed that I had set by for fuel.

I slept very little. I reckoned how impossible it was to preserve my life in so desolate a place, and how miserable my end must be; and I found myself so listless that I had not the heart to rise, and before I could get spirits enough to creep out of the cave the day was far advanced. In the dark I had put two fingers under the cord, on the plate, because they were there, and it had said forty-nine. I had never been counted so low. I counted again to be sure, and it said forty-nine, and I understood that the number had stopped leaning because the one who counted had stopped being afraid and had not yet found what to be instead. I put the wrist away. I did not look at the cord.

I walked awhile among the rocks. The sky was perfectly clear and the sun so hot that I was forced to turn my face from it, when all on a sudden it went out; not as it goes behind a cloud, with an edge and a gathering, but as a candle goes out under a hat. I turned round and perceived a vast opaque body between me and the sun, moving towards the island. It seemed to be about two miles high, and hid the sun for six or seven minutes; but I did not find the air much colder, or the sky much darker, than if I had stood in the shade of a mountain.

As it came nearer over the place where I was, it showed itself a firm substance, the bottom flat and smooth and shining very bright with the reflection of the sea below. I stood upon a height about two hundred yards from the shore, and saw it descend almost to a parallel with me, at less than an English mile's distance. I took out my pocket-perspective and could plainly discover numbers of people moving up and down its sides, which appeared to slope; what they were doing I could not distinguish.

I could distinguish this, and I set it down because it was new. I had been in two countries where the people were not of my pace, and I had learned to read pace at a distance, as a farrier reads a horse in a field. These people, who by their size were of my own make, had no pace that I could read. Some of the men on the galleries moved very much as I do. Some did not move, and had not moved between one sweep of the glass and the next, and I took them for statues until one of them, after what I put at a quarter of an hour, finished the step he had begun. In the lowest gallery some men were fishing with long rods, and the rods did not stir, and I put this down to the art of fishing.

The natural love of life gave me some inward motion of joy, and I was ready to hope that this adventure might somehow deliver me from the place and condition I was in. But the reader can hardly conceive my astonishment at an island in the air, inhabited by men who could, as it should seem, raise it or sink it or put it into progressive motion as they pleased. I was in no state for philosophy. I chose rather to observe what course it would take, for it seemed for a while to stand still; and then it advanced nearer, and I could see its sides encompassed with several galleries, and stairs at intervals to descend from one to the other.

I waved my cap and my handkerchief and shouted with all the strength of my voice. A crowd gathered at the side nearest me; I could see by their pointing, at me and at each other, that they plainly discovered me, though they made no return to my shouting. But four or five men ran in great haste up the stairs to the top of the island, and disappeared; they ran like men, at a pace, two stairs at a time, and they were the only persons I had yet seen there of whom I could have said so. I rightly conjectured that they were sent for orders to some person in authority.

The crowd increased, and in less than half an hour the island was moved and raised so that the lowest gallery stood less than a hundred yards from the height where I was. I put myself in the most supplicating posture and spoke in the humblest accent, and received no answer. Those who stood nearest seemed persons of distinction by their habit. They conferred earnestly with each other, looking often at me. At length one of them called out in a clear, polite, smooth dialect, not unlike Italian in sound, and I answered in that language, hoping the cadence might be more agreeable to his ears. We understood nothing of one another, but my meaning was easily known, for they saw the distress I was in. He spoke a word at a time, as to a child or a deaf man, laying each down and waiting; but the waiting was uneven, and was not for me. I took it for courtesy.

They made signs for me to come down from the rock and go towards the shore, which I did; and the flying island being raised to a convenient height, the verge directly over me, a chain was let down from the lowest gallery with a seat fastened to the bottom, to which I fixed myself, and was drawn up by pulleys. Six men worked them, and heaved together, and rested together, and I counted their heaves because it was a thing to count: they were at sixty, to the half-second, which I had not met in any person since the quay at Tonquin. I thought that these were the ones who were in time. I was right, and it was the whole of the matter, and I did not know it for a week. Somewhere on that rock there are still two days' rice that a Japanese captain doubled out of his own stores, and I have been sorry on his account that I did not go back for it.

## Chapter 19 · The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described: how they go, and who fetches them back. Of the king, who answers a question with eleven days. The author is dined, taught and measured; and a night in which the floor beats once to the minute.

At my alighting I was surrounded by a crowd, those who stood nearest being of better quality. They looked at me with every mark and circumstance of wonder, and I was not much in their debt, never having seen a race so singular in their shapes, habits and countenances. Their heads were all inclined, either to the right or to the left; and of their eyes, one was turned inward and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outer garments were worked with suns, moons and stars, interwoven with fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many other instruments of music unknown in Europe. I tried them for pace, as I had learned to try everyone, and could not make them out. Of the first hundred I looked at, some had a pace and some had had one a moment before. There is a difference, and until that morning I had not known that it could be seen.

I observed, here and there, men in the habit of servants, each carrying a blown bladder fastened like a flail to the end of a stick; in each bladder was a small quantity of dried peas or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed. With these they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, and of the meaning of this I could not at the time form the least conception.

I will give the reader the explanation now, for without it he would be at the same loss as I was in all that follows. The people of this island, when they think, go. I do not mean that they grow absent, as a scholar does over his book. I mean that the body goes with the thought, at the pace of the thing thought of, and that the beat which a surgeon takes at the plate goes out of the wrist as the tide goes out of a creek. A gentleman who is thinking of the moon moves as the moon moves; one who has gone as far as Saturn may be a month finishing a step. While he is away he can neither speak, nor attend to what is said to him, nor tell a precipice from a floor. To fetch him back there is the flapper (the original is climenole), who strikes with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him to whom the speaker addresses himself; and the peas give the common count, which is sixty, and the gentleman finds it as a swimmer finds the bottom. Those who can afford it keep a flapper in the family, and never walk abroad or make a visit without him; in the street he gives his master a soft flap on the eyes as well, because a man who has gone is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, of bouncing his head against every post, and of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.

They conducted me up the stairs to the top of the island, and from thence to the royal palace, and I understood the stairs better than I understood anything else, because I could see it happen. The gentlemen who led me went up in a body; at the fourth landing one of them went, in the middle of a sentence to me, with a foot in the air; and the rest, as though the foot had been a signal, went one after another, so that I stood on a stair among eight persons in the postures of a procession, while their flappers worked along the row like men ringing a peal. Each came back in the word he had left, and finished it. I learned to say nothing on those stairs, which is the better part of conversation in that country. They appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, and by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts were more disengaged.

At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne stood a large table filled with globes and spheres and mathematical instruments of all kinds. His majesty took not the least notice of us, although our entrance was not without sufficient noise, from the concourse of all the court. He was deep in a problem, and we attended at least an hour before he could solve it. There stood by him, on each side, a young page with a flap, and when they saw he was at leisure one gently struck his mouth and the other his right ear; at which he started like one awakened on the sudden, and said, "Eleven days." I took this for the length of his absence. I learned afterwards that it was the answer.

Then he looked towards me and the company I was in, and recollected the occasion of our coming, of which he had been informed beforehand. He spoke some words, whereupon a young man with a flap came to my side and flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs, as well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an instrument. This, as I afterwards found, gave his majesty and the whole court a very mean opinion of my understanding. Their reasoning was exact. A man who needs no one to fetch him back has plainly been nowhere to be fetched from.

The king, so far as I could conjecture, asked me several questions, and I addressed myself to him in all the languages I had. When it was found that I could neither understand nor be understood, I was conducted by his order to an apartment in his palace (this prince being distinguished above all his predecessors for his hospitality to strangers), where two servants were appointed to attend me. The elder was a man of about sixty named Tarvo, a flapper by trade for thirty-eight years, with a forearm like a drover's; the younger was his apprentice, a boy of twelve whom he was teaching to strike on the beat and not on the thought.

My dinner was brought, and four persons of quality, whom I remembered to have seen very near the king's person, did me the honour to dine with me, each with his flapper at his elbow. There were two courses of three dishes each. In the first, a shoulder of mutton had been cut into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboides, and a pudding into a cycloid. The second was two ducks trussed up in the form of fiddles, sausages and puddings resembling flutes and hautboys, and a breast of veal in the shape of a harp. The servants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical figures. The meal went forward like a clock in which every tooth must be struck separately, and lasted, by my watch, three hours and ten minutes, of which I should say that twenty were eating.

While we dined I made bold to ask the names of several things in their language, and those noble persons, by the assistance of their flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration of their great abilities if I could be brought to converse with them. I was soon able to call for bread and drink, or whatever else I wanted. I remarked that every answer came in the second after a blow, and was clear and complete and brief, and that the gentleman in the second before it had been somewhere else. I began to think the blows a courtesy to me as much as to them.

After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by the king's order, attended by a flapper, with pen, ink, paper and three or four books, giving me to understand by signs that he was sent to teach me the language. We sat together four hours, and in that time he was struck eleven times, and came back each time in the middle of the word, and finished it. I concluded that a Laputan lesson is a series of short lessons, and that what is taught in the second after a blow is better taught than what is taught at length. I wrote down a great number of words in columns, with the translations over against them, and made a shift to learn several short sentences, for my tutor would order one of my servants to fetch something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, to stand, or to walk, and I took the sentence down; so that I owe my first sentence in that language to the boy's legs. He showed me also, in one of his books, the figures of the sun, moon and stars, the names of many planes and solids, and the names and terms of art of all the musical instruments. When he had left me I put my words in alphabetical order; and thus, in a few days, by the help of a very faithful memory, I got some insight into their language.

I should say what I learned the first night, since it was the first thing I had of that country that nobody taught me. I lay awake in the apartment, and about every minute the floor lifted under me and let me down again, by the width of a hair; a slow, enormous, level thing, such as one feels in a house with a mill in the next room. I counted it by my watch for an hour, and it did not vary by a second. It was one to the minute. I had lain in a giant's house, where the household beat five; I had not before lain in a place that beat one. I understood in the second week that what I was feeling was the island's wrist.

The word which I interpret the flying or floating island is in the original Laputa, of which I could never learn the true etymology. Lap, in the old obsolete language, signifies high, and untuh a governor; from which they say, by corruption, was derived Laputa, from Lapuntuh. I did not approve this derivation, which seemed to me a little strained; but when I heard untuh I wrote governor in my margin, unasked, and underlined it, for it is the word the surgeons use for what lies under the beat and keeps it. My tutor, who had been struck a moment before, said that the island was kept by a stone. I ventured to offer to the learned a conjecture of my own, that Laputa was quasi lap outed, lap signifying properly the dancing of the sunbeams in the sea, and outed a wing; they thanked me as one thanks a child for a drawing.

In the second week I could follow Tarvo, who spoke the language of the lessons slowly, one word at a time, and, unlike the gentlemen, waited for me. He told me that I had done well not to be struck. "They think you stupid, sir," he said. "It is the best that can be thought of anyone here. No one will ask you where you have been." He told me the whole art of his trade in a quarter of an hour, which he said was longer than it took to learn: that one strikes on the beat, and not on the thought; that a flapper who strikes on the thought wakes his man in the wrong place, in the middle of Saturn, and the man comes back with Saturn on him and cannot speak for a week; and that sixty is the only count, being the count they all had before they went.

I asked him whether he had ever gone himself. He said no, never, in thirty-eight years; it was the price of the trade, for a man cannot go and also fetch. He said that he thought he should like to see Saturn, from what he had seen of the faces coming back. There was a look on a gentleman who had been to the sun for nine days, as there is on a man who has been long at sea, a loosening about the mouth; and he had watched it come back into the face, at the blow, some six thousand times, and was always sorry. He supposed I had been farther than any of them, and had never needed a flapper to do it. I said that I had had a good deal of help.

He looked at my wrist then, at the cord that lay twice round it and the plate under the cord, and then at the window, as the captain had looked at it. "That is a flapper's work, sir," he said. "Somebody has kept you." I said that it was a hair. He said that in his trade that came to the same, and went to see about the boy.

Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad, ordered a tailor to come next morning and take measure for a suit of clothes. This operator did his office after a different manner from those of his trade in Europe. He took my wrist with a pendulum, a lead ball on a thread, and wrote down the figure; he took my altitude by a quadrant; and then, with a rule and compasses, he described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, working the one figure against the other, as a man may describe a ship from the note of her bell, and entered all upon paper. In six days he brought my clothes, very ill made and quite out of shape, having mistaken one figure in the calculation, a three for an eight, I think, so that I was for some days a man of a different build from my own, with one arm a fiddle-bow too long. But my comfort was that I observed such accidents to be very frequent, and little regarded.

His majesty had given orders that the island should move north-east and by east to the vertical point over Lagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom below upon the firm earth, about ninety leagues distant; and our voyage lasted four days and a half. I was not in the least sensible of the progressive motion made in the air. I lay with my palm on the floor the first night to feel it, and the floor said what it had always said, one, and one, and one, and in the morning we were thirty miles from where we had been.

## Chapter 20 · The music of the Laputians is described, with their petitions, their houses, their minds, their fears for the sun, and the manner in which their ladies are lonely. The author is struck once, at his own request; and the king asks about ratios.

On the second morning, about eleven o'clock, the king himself, attended by his nobility, courtiers and officers, having prepared all their instruments, played on them for three hours without intermission, and I was quite stunned with the noise, and could not guess the meaning until my tutor informed me. It was a good while before I understood that the noise was not the music. Once to the minute the floor lifted, and at the lift the whole court struck one chord, together, to the hair; and then every man sat with his instrument in his lap for fifty-nine seconds. The three hours were a hundred and eighty chords and the rests between them, and the rests, I came to think, were what the instruments were for. My tutor said that the ears of the people of the island were adapted to hear the music of the spheres, which played at certain periods, and that the court was now prepared to bear its part, upon whatever instrument each most excelled. I asked what the period was. He said it was the island's, which was ours. I said that I heard only the one note, and he said that was how one knew it was in tune.

In our journey towards Lagado his majesty ordered that the island should stop over certain towns and villages, from whence he might receive the petitions of his subjects; and for this purpose several packthreads were let down, with small weights at the bottom. On these the people strung their petitions, which mounted up directly, like the scraps of paper fastened by schoolboys to the string that holds their kite. Sometimes wine and victuals came up from below by pulleys. A petition goes up at the pace of the man who wrote it, which was mine, and is read at the pace of a king who is, as a rule, elsewhere; and the answer comes down by the same thread after as many weeks as it takes, to a man who has forgotten what he asked. Tarvo said that a town could wait nine months to be refused. I thought that the thread was the one thing in the kingdom that was the same speed at both ends, and that it was a very thin thing to be the only one.

Their ideas are perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would praise the beauty of a woman, or of any other animal, they describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses and other geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless here to repeat; and they describe her pace in the same way. I heard a gentleman praise a lady, in the second after a blow, in the following terms, which I give as my tutor rendered them: that her eyes were two circles of equal radius, her mouth an ellipse nicely proportioned, and her step in three-four time, with a rest on the second beat, which in a woman of her quality was the finest thing. I observed in the king's kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the joints that were served to his majesty's table.

Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel, without one right angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic. The instructions are drawn by gentlemen who are gone and carried out by masons who are not, and are too refined for the intellects of the workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes; between the one pace and the other the corners get lost. The king's own bedchamber, which I measured by eye when nobody was looking, was eleven degrees out at the north-east angle, and this was put right, by order of his majesty, by moving the bed.

Although they are dexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in the management of the rule, the pencil and the divider, yet in the common actions and behaviour of life I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward and unhandy people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of the right opinion, which is seldom their case. I took the wrists of thirty-one of them in my first month, each in the second after a blow, when he was in time; every one held sixty to the half-second, and every one, a minute later, was gone again. They are slow where they are, and I believe very quick where they have gone. Imagination, fancy and invention they are wholly strangers to, nor have they any words by which those ideas can be expressed; they have many words for the places they go to, and none for going nowhere in particular, which, I am told, is what we call fancy.

Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part, have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to own it publicly. But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them towards news and politics, perpetually inquiring into public affairs, giving their judgments in matters of state, and passionately disputing every inch of a party opinion. In the second after a blow a Laputan will give a judgment on the war in Flanders, complete, and with figures; in the next he is on Jupiter, and nobody, himself least, remembers what he decided. I have observed the same disposition among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe, though I could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences.

These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minute's peace of mind, and their disturbances proceed from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals. They apprehend that the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it, must in course of time be absorbed or swallowed up; that the face of the sun will by degrees be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more light to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from the tail of the last comet, which would infallibly have reduced it to ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for one-and-thirty years hence, will probably destroy us, carrying a blazing tail of ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles. The sun, they say, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed. They hold besides that the sun has a governor, like any body, and that its tick is the day, and that the day is not what it was. [Margin: The editor has consulted the almanac-makers. The day, they say, is the length it was. R.S.]

They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehension of these and the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their beds nor have any relish for the common pleasures of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning the first question is about the sun's health, how he looked at his setting and rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching comet. The question is meant. The astronomers go to look, and the rest, when they can spare the time, go after them, and the answer is what the man saw. Tarvo told me of a gentleman who went to the sun at the beginning of one winter and was nine days away, and who, on being struck back, said only that he looked well, a little tired at the edges; the whole court was greatly relieved, and there was a feast.

The eldest of the astronomers, Tarvo said, had gone out to meet the comet eleven years before, by the long road, and was by his own reckoning a third of the way along the tail. He stands in the western gallery with his hand raised, a little lower every year; his flappers feed him with a spoon every sixth hour, and he swallows like a man asleep, and on the first of each month they turn him to the light. It is expected that he will be back in good time for the event. It is hoped that he may give notice.

I have said that I was not struck, and that I went nowhere, and that is nearly true. On the nineteenth evening I was sitting in the apartment with the boy, who had been told to sit by me and watch my wrist, Tarvo holding that a stranger who needs no flapper will one day need one all at once. I was thinking, as I had not allowed myself to think since the Downs, of what hour it would be in the Greater Reach, and whether she had been told, and whether she believed it, and whether the hair had been put away. The boy said, "Sir, you are going." I said I was remembering. He said the difference was one for the gentlemen. I put two fingers under the cord, and it said forty-one. I asked him to strike me. It was the only time I asked, in that country. He struck my mouth and my right ear with the bladder, which did not hurt, and the peas ran sixty in my head, and I found it, as a swimmer finds the bottom, and took it; and I went on sitting with it. That is all I wish to say about the blow.

The women of the island have abundance of vivacity; they contemn their husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at court upon the affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their own particular occasions, but they are much despised, because they want the same endowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants. It is only fair to say that the ladies go seldom, and not far, having, so far as I could make out, another notion of the use of thought; so that a lady has a pace for the most of the day, and has it in a house where, for the most of the day, nobody else has.

But the vexation is that they act with too much ease and security, for the husband is always so rapt in speculation that the mistress and the lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements and without his flapper at his side. A husband gone to the moon at his own supper table may be sat beside, and kissed upon the right ear (which is the flapper's place), and know nothing of it; and the flappers, who see all, say nothing, it being an old rule of their trade that a flapper notices the beat and nothing else.

The wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island, although I think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world; and although they live here in the greatest plenty and magnificence, and are allowed to do whatever they please, they long to see the world and take the diversions of the metropolis, which they are not allowed to do without a particular licence from the king, and this is not easy to be obtained, because the people of quality have found by frequent experience how hard it is to persuade their women to return from below. I was told of a great court lady, wife of the prime minister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a graceful person and extremely fond of her, with several children and the finest palace on the island, who went down to Lagado on the pretence of health and hid there for several months, until the king sent a warrant to search for her, and she was found in an obscure eating-house, all in rags, having pawned her clothes to maintain an old deformed footman, who beat her every day, and in whose company she was taken, much against her will.

Her husband received her with all possible kindness, and without the least reproach, and she soon contrived to steal down again with all her jewels, to the same footman, and has not been heard of since. I record that the husband's kindness was real, and that he was to be had, by my count, for about eleven minutes in the day, in the seconds after a blow; and that the footman, though old and deformed and violent, was to be had all day. I do not offer this as an excuse, only as arithmetic. The reader may take the story for an English one rather than a Laputan; I would say only that the loneliness of one who keeps time in a house of persons who go is not confined to any climate. I have seen it in Redriff, at a table, with an almanac.

In about a month's time I had made a tolerable proficiency in their language, and was able to answer most of the king's questions when I had the honour to attend him. His majesty discovered not the least curiosity to inquire into the laws, government, history, religion or manners of the countries where I had been, but confined his questions to the state of mathematics, and received what I told him with great contempt and indifference, though often roused by his flapper on each side. I told him of the Lesser Reach, where the persons beat seven hundred and twenty to the minute; he was struck, and said, "Twelve to one," before I had said it, and asked nothing more about the people. I told him of the Greater Reach, where they beat five; he said, "Twelve to one, the other way," and was, I think, pleased.

I desired leave of this prince to see the curiosities of the island, which he was graciously pleased to grant, and ordered my tutor to attend me. I chiefly wanted to know to what cause, in art or in nature, it owed its several motions; and I thought I had a notion already, having lain a month upon its pulse.

## Chapter 21 · The island is described, with the cave of the hands and the stone that keeps it. The author puts two fingers on the axle. The king's methods of reducing a town, and how Lindalino matched the beat and brought the island down to forty yards.

The flying or floating island is exactly circular, its diameter 7837 yards, or about four miles and a half, so that it contains ten thousand acres. It is three hundred yards thick. The under surface, which is all that is seen from below, is one even regular plate of adamant, rising to about two hundred yards; above it lie the several minerals in their usual order, and over all is a coat of rich mould ten or twelve feet deep. The upper surface slopes from the circumference to the centre, so that all the dews and rains that fall upon the island run in small rivulets towards the middle, and are emptied into four large basins, each about half a mile round and two hundred yards from the centre; and from these the sun exhales the water in the daytime, so that they never overflow. Besides, it being in the power of the king to raise the island above the region of clouds and vapours, he can withhold dew and rain from any country he pleases, for the highest clouds were never known to rise above two miles. I understood then why the question after the sun's health was meant. On that island the sun was a thing that could be held back.

At the centre is a chasm about fifty yards across, from which the astronomers descend into a large dome, called in their language flandona gagnole, the astronomers' cave, a hundred yards beneath the upper surface of the adamant. Twenty lamps burn there continually, and by the reflection of the adamant they cast a strong light into every part. We went down by a stair of two hundred and eleven steps, my tutor being struck at every thirtieth by a flapper who did not like stairs; and I saw as we descended that the persons at the bottom were not of the sort I had met above.

The place was stored with sextants, quadrants, telescopes, astrolabes, and other instruments, and among them, in plain grey, stood nine men. Their heads were not inclined. Their eyes pointed the same way, and it was at me. They wore no suns and no fiddles; I learned that they were thought above to be a kind of artisan, and were called by a word which means the hands. The eldest, who was seventy at the least, and had a thumb like a carpenter's, asked me in the language of the lessons, slowly, whether I was the one who had refused the flap. I said that I was. He said that he had wished to see that. He spoke to me for forty minutes without a blow, which was longer than any Laputan had spoken to me, and he did not once look at the ceiling.

The greatest curiosity of that cave, upon which the fate of the island depends, is a loadstone of a prodigious size, in the shape of a weaver's shuttle, six yards long and at the thickest part three across. An axle of adamant runs through its middle, and it is so exactly poised upon this that the weakest hand can turn it. The ends of the axle lie in a groove twelve inches deep in the face of a horizontal hoop of adamant, twelve yards across, which stands on eight feet each six yards high; and the hoop and the feet are all of one piece with the adamant that is the island's floor, so that the stone cannot be moved from its place by any force, but only turned.

The eldest took my hand, which none of the others did, and laid two fingers of it on the axle, at the place where he laid his own. It was one to the minute. I had felt it in my bed for a month, through a floor and a mattress, and it was another thing to feel it at the source, where it was warm: a slow, enormous, level push against the ends of my fingers, such as one feels in the neck of a very large animal that is asleep. "It keeps time," he said. "We keep the stone." I asked him who kept him. He said that it was a question the gentlemen above had not asked in three hundred years, and that I might put it to the king.

There were nine of them, and they kept the stone in watches of an hour, one man at a time with two fingers on the axle, doing nothing, which the eldest said was the whole of the art. The king's orders came down from above on a slate, with the direction and the height; and when the stone was to be turned the youngest turned it, a boy of fifteen, since the weakest hand can. He turned it as one turns a sleeper over. I asked whether they had ever turned it wrong. The eldest said once, in his time, by a degree; the island had gone a quarter of a mile out of its way, and the only person who noticed was a farmer, who sent up a petition about the shadow on his barley. It was refused in nine months.

By means of this stone the island is made to rise and fall, and to move from one place to another. I give the account of the eldest, and not my tutor's, who gave me three hours of lines and letters, and was, I believe, correct. The ground under all the king's dominions beats too, at the bottom of the mines and of the sea for six leagues from the shore; no one has counted it, and the stone has it by nature; and the stone has two ends, one that draws towards it and one that drives from it. "The island stands on what is left over," he said. If the driving end is set downward, so that the stone's beat goes against the ground's, a great deal is left over, and the island mounts; if the drawing end is set downward, none is, and it descends; and if the stone is turned aslant, the island goes aslant, rising and falling by turns, and is carried across the dominions by a series of slopes. It cannot go beyond the extent of the kingdom below, because what is in the ground is not spread through the whole globe but ends where the kingdom ends; nor rise above four miles, which is as far as the stone can feel. When the stone is laid level, the island stands still, and that is when the floor can be felt most plainly. Whichever way it is turned, the stone goes on at one to the minute. The hands have no part in that.

My tutor, who had come down behind us and been struck on the stair, showed me the catalogue of the stars. Although their largest telescopes do not exceed three feet, they magnify much more than those of a hundred with us, and show the stars with greater clearness, and this has enabled them to carry their discoveries further than our astronomers in Europe, for they have made a catalogue of ten thousand fixed stars, whereas the largest of ours do not contain above a third of that number. I knew the book for what it was on the first page, because I had kept one myself. Each star had its beat, to the second, and its place, and the year of its taking. It was a book of wrists. It was the longest I had ever seen, and it was kept by men who looked up all their lives, and never at a face.

They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, the innermost distant from the centre of the planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former goes round in ten hours, the latter in twenty-one and a half. My tutor showed me that the squares of their periods are very near in the same proportion as the cubes of their distances, which, he said, evidently showed them to be governed by the one law that governs the rest. I saw only that the nearer beats the quicker, and wrote it in my book. They have observed ninety-three comets, and settled their periods with great exactness. I asked whether the observations might be printed. My tutor, being struck, said that a thing which is printed is a thing that waits, and that nobody on the island would wait for it.

The king would be the most absolute prince in the universe if he could but prevail on his ministry to join with him; but the ministers have their estates below on the continent, and, considering that the office of a favourite has a very uncertain tenure, would never consent to the enslaving of their country. The eldest told me what the king can do. If a town engage in rebellion, or fall into violent factions, or refuse the usual tribute, the milder way is to keep the island hovering over it, whereby it is deprived of the sun and the rain, and the people are afflicted with dearth and diseases; and if the crime deserves it they are pelted from above with great stones, against which they have no defence but creeping into cellars while the roofs are beaten to pieces. The last remedy is to let the island drop directly upon their heads. "He does not like to," the eldest said. "It is his own ground; and the bottom may crack, if there are spires." I observed that he said it as a man says what he has seen done to a piece of furniture.

He told me of Lindalino, which I had heard of above in the form in which the gentlemen tell it, that is, as a problem. About three years before my arrival, while the king was in his progress, Lindalino, the second city of the kingdom, was the first he visited. Three days after his departure the inhabitants, who had often complained of oppression, shut the gates, seized the governor, and with incredible speed and labour raised four large towers, one at each corner of the city (which is an exact square), equal in height to a strong pointed rock that stands in the middle; and on the top of each tower, and of the rock, they fixed a great loadstone. "They had been counting us," the eldest said. "Three hundred years. The island goes over at the same hour in the same month, and in every family a boy sits on the roof with a string and a stone and counts it. The book is in the town hall. They knew our beat better than the king did. They set their stones to it."

It was eight months before the king had perfect notice that Lindalino was in rebellion. He commanded that the island be wafted over the city. The people were unanimous, they had laid in store of provisions, and a great river runs through the middle of the town. The king hovered over them several days to deprive them of the sun and the rain, and ordered many packthreads to be let down; and not a person offered to send up a petition, but instead of it very bold demands, the redress of all their grievances, great immunities, the choice of their own governor, and other exorbitances. His majesty then commanded all the inhabitants of the island to cast great stones from the lower gallery into the town; but the citizens had provided against this by conveying themselves and their goods into the four towers and other strong buildings and vaults underground.

The king, being determined to reduce this proud people, ordered the island to descend gently to within forty yards of the tops of the towers and the rock. "I was at the stone," the eldest said. "I had my whole hand on the axle. It went light. A stone that has been pushing against the ground for three hundred years, and finds nothing to push against, goes light in the hand, like a door when the man on the other side stops leaning; and then the whole island goes light; and then it wants to go home." He said it with his fingers where they had been all this while. "It stands on what is left over. Nothing was left over. They had five stones on five places, and every one of them had our beat, to the second, and a thing cannot be lifted by what is the same as itself." The officers sent word to the king that the descent was much speedier than usual, and that by turning the stone they could not without great difficulty keep it in a firm position, and begged leave to raise the island higher. A general council was called, and the hands ordered to attend.

"I asked leave to try something," he said. "I took a line of a hundred yards, and when we had the island up over the town, above where the thing had hold of us, I fastened to the end of the line a piece of adamant with iron in it, of the same sort as the floor, and let it down slowly from the lowest gallery towards the top of a tower. It had not gone down four yards before I felt it drawn so strongly that I could hardly pull it back. Then I threw down some small pieces, and they went as if they were thrown by a man. We tried the other three towers, and the rock. It was the same." I asked whether he had been afraid. He said that he had not told anyone how much, and that he had been very busy, which was a way of not being afraid that he recommended.

This incident broke entirely the king's measures, and he was forced to give the town their own conditions. I was assured afterwards by a great minister that if the island had descended so near the town as not to be able to raise itself, the citizens were determined to fix it for ever, to kill the king and all his servants, and entirely change the government. The eldest said that this was what the gentlemen called it. He said that what they would have done was to go on counting.

By a fundamental law of the realm, neither the king, nor either of his two eldest sons, is permitted to leave the island; nor the queen, till she is past child-bearing. I asked the eldest whether the king minded. He said that the king minded nothing in the second after a blow and everything in the second before. He said it without smiling, and I did not smile, and the stone went on, one, and one.

He said that I might stay as long as I liked, since the gentlemen would not come down. I sat an hour in the cave with two fingers on the axle, my tutor having gone up the stairs to the moon. It was the first hour on that island in which nothing was struck, and I did not find that I went anywhere, and I did not find that I came back. I record that the stone was warm.

## Chapter 22 · The author leaves Laputa with a bladder of eleven peas. He is conveyed to Balnibarbi and arrives at the metropolis, where everyone walks fast and the labourers dig to a drum. He is received by a great lord whose estate is out of step, and hears how the Academy began.

Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, I must confess that I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree of contempt; for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in any part of knowledge except mathematics and music, wherein I was far their inferior, and upon that account very little regarded. On the other side, having seen all the curiosities of the island, I was heartily weary of it. They were excellent in two sciences for which I have great esteem, and in which I am not unversed; but so abstracted and involved in speculation that I never met with such disagreeable companions. For two months I conversed only with women, tradesmen, flappers and court pages, and with the hands in the cave, who were not asked about; by which I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer.

I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge of their language, and I resolved to leave the island with the first opportunity. There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for that reason alone used with respect. He was universally reckoned the most ignorant and stupid person among them. He had performed many eminent services for the crown, and had great natural and acquired parts, adorned with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music that his detractors reported he had been often known to beat time in the wrong place. I had seen what they meant. At the concert of the spheres, when the court sat fifty-nine seconds with its instruments in its lap, he sat with his lips moving, counting them, and on the fifty-eighth he lifted a finger. Neither could his tutors, without extreme difficulty, teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in mathematics.

This lord had never gone. He did not seem to mind; he said that he had been told at six years old that he had nowhere to go, and had found it a lighter thing than he expected. He was pleased to show me many marks of favour, and often did me the honour of a visit, and desired to be informed of the affairs of Europe, the laws and customs, the manners and learning of the several countries where I had travelled. He listened with great attention, and made very wise observations on all I said. He had two flappers attending him for state, but never made use of them except at court and in visits of ceremony, and would always command them to withdraw when we were alone together. I found that I had forgotten how long a sentence is when it is let to finish. On his fourth visit I told him that I wished to go down. He said that he had known it since the second, and was sorry.

I entreated this illustrious person to intercede for me with his majesty for leave to depart, which he accordingly did, as he told me, with regret; for indeed he had made me several offers very advantageous, which, however, I refused, with expressions of the highest acknowledgment. On the 16th day of February I took leave of his majesty and the court. The king made me a present to the value of about two hundred credits, and my protector, his kinsman, as much more, together with a letter of recommendation to a friend of his in Lagado, the metropolis. The island was then hovering over a mountain about two miles from the city, and I was to be let down from the lowest gallery in the same manner as I had been taken up.

Tarvo came to the gallery, and the boy with him. Tarvo said that he was not to strike me, since I had not wanted it, but that he had something for me; and he put into my hand a bladder the size of a hen's egg, tied at the neck, with eleven peas in it. "You cannot strike yourself, sir," he said. "But you can shake it." I said that I did not know how to thank him. He said that if I found I had gone, the thing to do was to count something, anything, since sixty was the same in every language; and that the cord was a good one, but that a man should not trust to one thing. Then he looked at the sky, as a flapper does when a master is leaving, and the boy, who had been told not to, struck my right ear, very gently, on the beat.

I fixed myself to the seat, and the chain was paid out by six men, who let me down at sixty and rested together, and I knew them by the way they rested, for they were the six who had drawn me up. The island went above me, a plate of shining adamant with a man looking over the edge of it, and the man grew very small without going out of time. I had lived upon it ten weeks, and I was sorry, going down, though I should not have thought it.

I felt some satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. The continent, so far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying island, passes under the general name of Balnibarbi, and the metropolis is called Lagado. I walked to the city without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and sufficiently instructed to converse with them. For three days I listened for the floor. The ground does beat, the hands say, at the bottom of the mines, but not so as to be heard in a street; and a man who has lain ten weeks upon one to the minute is like a man who hears a clock stop in the next room, and walks about the house listening for what is not there.

I soon found out the house of the person to whom I was recommended, presented my letter from his friend the grandee in the island, and was received with much kindness. This great lord, whose name was Munodi, ordered me an apartment in his own house, where I continued during my stay, and was entertained in a most hospitable manner.

The next morning he took me in his chariot to see the town, which is about half the bigness of London; but the houses very strangely built, and most of them out of repair. The people in the streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally in rags. I put two fingers on the wrist of a man who stopped me to ask the way, his eyes beyond my shoulder: he was a hundred and four, standing still. I took five that day, and none was under ninety.

We passed through one of the town gates, and went about three miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working in the ground with several sorts of tools, but was not able to conjecture what they were about. On every rise stood a man with a drum, who beat a hundred and ten, and the labourers dug to it, forty or fifty to a drum, in ranks; and the soil appeared to be excellent, and I did not observe any expectation either of corn or grass. I could not forbear admiring these odd appearances in town and country, and made bold to ask my conductor what could be meant by so many busy heads, hands and faces, both in the streets and in the fields, since I did not discover any good effects they produced; but, on the contrary, I never knew a soil so unhappily cultivated, houses so ill contrived and ruinous, or a people whose countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want.

This lord Munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some years governor of Lagado, but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged for insufficiency. However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding. When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he made no further answer than by telling me that I had not been long enough among them to form a judgment, and that the different nations of the world had different customs; with other common topics to the same purpose.

But when we returned to his palace he asked me how I liked the building, what absurdities I observed, and what quarrel I had with the dress or looks of his domestics. This he might safely do, because everything about him was magnificent, regular and polite. I said that his excellency's prudence, quality and fortune had exempted him from those defects which folly and beggary had produced in others. The two who served at table were sixty-one and sixty-four, and steady, and I stood a moment in the dining-room because it had four right angles in it, the first I had seen since Redriff. He said that if I would go with him to his country-house, about twenty miles distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this kind of conversation; and I told him that I was entirely at his disposal; and we set out the next morning.

During our journey he made me observe the several methods used by the farmers in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable, for except in some very few places I could not discover one ear of corn or blade of grass. But in three hours the scene was wholly altered. We came into a most beautiful country, with farmers' houses at small distances, neatly built, and the fields enclosed, containing vineyards, corn-grounds and meadows; I do not remember to have seen a more delightful prospect. There was no drum. At four fields I had the chariot stopped and took a wrist across the wall of each, of men who bent and rose at their own times: sixty-three, fifty-eight, sixty-eight, seventy-one. They were not in step, and the corn was in. His excellency observed my countenance to clear up, and told me with a sigh that there his estate began, and would continue the same till we should come to his house; that his countrymen ridiculed and despised him for managing his affairs no better, and for setting so ill an example to the kingdom, which, however, was followed by very few, such as were old, and wilful, and weak like himself.

The house was a noble structure, built by the best rules of ancient architecture, with fountains, gardens, walks, avenues and groves laid out with exact judgment and taste. I praised everything, and his excellency took no notice of it until after supper, when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy air that he feared he must throw down his houses in town and country and rebuild them after the present mode, destroy all his plantations and cast them in the form that modern usage required, and give the same orders to his tenants, or else incur the censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance and caprice, and perhaps increase his majesty's displeasure. The admiration I appeared to be under, he said, would cease when he had told me what I could not have heard of at court, the people there being too much taken up with their speculations to regard what passed below.

The sum of his discourse was this. About forty years ago certain persons went up to Laputa, on business or diversion, and after five months came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region. They had spent five months on a floor that beat one to the minute, and found when they came down that five months at the pace of the heavens had spoiled them for the pace of corn. They began to dislike the management of everything below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages and mechanics upon a new foot. To this end they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy.

In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten, a palace may be built in a week of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing, and all the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundredfold more than they do at present, with innumerable other happy proposals. The drums were the first of these, a hundred and ten being the rate at which a man does the work of two. The only inconvenience is that none of the projects is yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair.

As for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit, he was content to go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built, and to act as they did in every part of life without innovation; and some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill commonwealth's men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country.

His lordship added that he would not, by any further particulars, prevent the pleasure I should certainly take in viewing the grand academy, whither he was resolved I should go. He only desired me to observe a ruined building on the side of a mountain about three miles distant, of which he gave me this account. He had a very convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current from a large river, and sufficient for his own family as well as for a great number of his tenants. About seven years ago a club of those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill and build another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge of which a canal must be cut for a repository of water, to be conveyed up by pipes and engines to supply the mill; because the wind and air upon a height agitated the water, and made it quicker, and fitter for motion, and because the water, descending down a declivity, would turn the mill with half the current of a river whose course is more upon a level. He, being then not very well with the court, and pressed by many of his friends, complied; and after employing a hundred men for two years the work miscarried, the projectors went off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since, and putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of success, as well as equal disappointment.

In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but recommended me to a friend of his, to bear me company thither. My lord was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a person of much curiosity and easy belief; which was not without truth, for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days. I had kept a book of wrists for more than twenty years. He had not seen it. [Margin: The editor has seen it. It is a long book. R.S.]

## Chapter 23 · The author is permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado. The arts wherein the professors employ themselves, with the beat of each; and a frame for writing books.

The academy is not one building but a continuation of several houses on both sides of a street, which, growing waste, were bought and joined together and applied to that use, so that to go from one projector to the next one passes through a wall that has been taken out. I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the academy. Every room has one or more projectors in it, and I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms. I took a wrist in most of them, when it could be got, and shall give the numbers where they were worth giving.

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt and skin were all of one colour. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. His wrist was a hundred and twelve. He showed me the phials in a rack, each labelled with the day it was drawn; I asked what the figure on each was, and he said it was the sun's beat at that noon, taken by a glass of his own, so that the warmth might be let out at the right rate. He opened one for me. It was cold. He said it was an early one. He told me he did not doubt that in eight years more he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers. I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, knowing their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a whisper to give no offence, which would be highly resented, and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose. The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy; his face and beard were of a pale yellow, and his hands and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him he gave me a close embrace, a compliment I could well have excused. His employment, from his first coming into the academy, was to reduce what he called the finished article to the food it had been, and he had a weekly allowance of the material from the society, in a vessel about the bigness of a Redriff barrel. I took his wrist with the hand he did not have hold of, and it was fifty-one, and as steady as a miller's, and the only restful wrist in the building. I put this down without remark.

I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder, who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish. He was a hundred and nine; he said that fire was a quick subject, and one must keep up with it.

There was a most ingenious architect who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider. The roof of his specimen had been up eleven months, on a scaffold, with a stout man to sit under it, and the walls were not yet begun. He said that the end of a thing is the beginning of it, if rightly viewed. I said that I had begun one or two things from the end myself.

There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition; their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken. His wrist was sixty, and he was the calmest man in the street. This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity.

In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector who had found a device of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the charges of ploughs, cattle and labour. In an acre of ground you bury, at six inches distance and eight deep, a quantity of acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other mast or vegetables whereof these animals are fondest; then you drive six hundred or more of them into the field, where in a few days they will root up the whole ground in search of their food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their dung. It is true that, upon experiment, they found the charge and trouble very great, and had little or no crop. However, it is not doubted that this invention may be capable of great improvement. It was the only farming scheme I saw in Lagado that was not done to a drum, the hogs keeping the time of their own hunger, which is never in step; and it had failed like the rest, which the projector said proved only that the experiment had not been continued long enough.

I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the artist to go in and out. At my entrance he called aloud to me not to disturb his webs. He lamented the fatal mistake the world had been so long in, of using silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestic insects which infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave as well as spin. And he proposed further that by employing spiders the charge of dyeing silks should be wholly saved, whereof I was fully convinced when he showed me a vast number of flies most beautifully coloured, wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring us that the webs would take a tincture from them. He had them of all hues, and hoped to fit everybody's fancy, as soon as he could find a proper food for the flies, of gums and oils, to give strength and consistence to the threads.

There was an astronomer who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon the great weathercock on the town-house, by adjusting the annual and diurnal motions of the earth and sun so as to answer and coincide with all accidental turnings of the wind. I asked what hour it told. He said that it told the hour of the wind, which was the only hour that was always to hand.

I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble the reader with all the curiosities I observed, being studious of brevity. I had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other being appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of whom I shall say something when I have mentioned one illustrious person more, who is called among them the universal artist. He told us he had been thirty years employing his thoughts for the improvement of human life. He had two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at work. Some were condensing air into a dry tangible substance, by extracting the nitre and letting the aqueous or fluid particles percolate; others softening marble for pillows and pin-cushions; others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse, to preserve them from foundering. The artist himself was at that time busy upon two great designs: the first, to sow land with chaff, wherein he affirmed the true seminal virtue to be contained, as he demonstrated by several experiments which I was not skilful enough to comprehend; the other, by a certain composition of gums, minerals and vegetables outwardly applied, to prevent the growth of wool upon two young lambs, and he hoped in a reasonable time to propagate the breed of naked sheep all over the kingdom. His wrist was a hundred and four. He said that the day was too short for his purposes. I said that I had heard that said, on an island.

We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as I have said, the projectors in speculative learning resided. The first professor I saw was in a very large room, with forty pupils about him. After salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a frame which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of the room, he said that perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge by practical and mechanical operations; but the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness, and he flattered himself that a more noble, exalted thought never sprang in any other man's head. Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. His own wrist was sixty-six, and he was the one man in the academy who did not hurry; the frame did that for him.

It stood in the middle of the room, twenty feet square, and its surface was made of bits of wood the size of dice, some larger than others, all linked together by slender wires, with a paper pasted on every face; and on the papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses and declensions, but in no order. Forty iron handles stood round the edge, and a lad at each. At the professor's word they turned them, together, with a sudden stroke, and the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. Thirty-six of the lads then read the lines softly as they appeared, and wherever they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence they dictated them to the other four, who were scribes. This was done again and again, and at every turn the bits of wood went over and the words shifted into new places.

Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour, and the professor showed me several volumes in large folio of broken sentences already collected, which he intended to piece together, and out of those rich materials to give the world a complete body of all arts and sciences; which, however, might be still improved, and much expedited, if the public would raise a fund for making and employing five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common their several collections. In the intervals I took the wrists of three of the lads at the handles. They were ninety-six, a hundred and two, and a hundred and five, and they did not look at the words. They looked at the next handle. I asked to hear a specimen. He turned the leaves of the nineteenth folio, which was a good one, and read me a line of four words together that had been found the week before: a hair across the wrist. He said that he had not yet found what it was for. I said that it was a very good line, and he marked it in the margin for the laws, short things being generally laws.

He assured me that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books between the numbers of particles, nouns, verbs and other parts of speech. I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person for his great communicativeness, and promised that if ever I had the good fortune to return to my native country I would do him justice as the sole inventor of this wonderful machine, the form and contrivance of which I desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here annexed. I told him that although it were the custom of our learned in Europe to steal inventions from each other, who had thereby at least this advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right owner, yet I would take such caution that he should have the honour entire, without a rival. [Margin: The figure is omitted. The engraver, asked to draw twenty feet of squares, asked for a larger plate. R.S.]

We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country. The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but nouns.

The other project was a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever, and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health as well as brevity. For it is plain that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortening of our lives. They had computed from the wrist that a man who talks as men talk spends upon words, between twenty and fifty, the breaths of eleven years of his life, and that the saving, if he spoke with things, would be nine of them. An expedient was therefore offered, that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express the particular business they were to discourse on.

This invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. However, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things, which has only this inconvenience, that if a man's business be very great and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave. I counted one such conversation, laid out upon the pavement in a glove, a shell, a knife and a loaf, at about forty to the minute, which is slow, and both gentlemen, I thought, were very much at their ease.

I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The proposition and demonstration were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed of a cephalic tincture. This the student was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three days following eat nothing but bread and water. As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along with it. But the success has not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous that they generally steal aside and discharge it upwards before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence as the prescription requires. I made the master a small present. It had, he said, been a dear season for wafers.

## Chapter 24 · A further account of the academy. The political projectors, who cannot be counted; a physician who would take the pulses of a senate; and the author's additions, which are honourably received.

In the school of political projectors I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. I could not take their wrists. I held one man's for the full minute, as I was taught, and he went from forty-four to a hundred and thirty and back twice, and the figure I wrote down was the mean, which was the number of nobody. In the Lesser Reach that would have been an article of impeachment. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities and eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true interest by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them, with many other wild, impossible chimeras that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

I asked the first of them how long he had been in the school. He said eleven years, and that he had come to propose something to the king. I asked what. He said that he had forgotten, but that it was important, and that his flapper would know. He had none. They are not kept in Lagado, the first projectors having come down from Laputa without them, thinking the custom of the island beneath men of science; and they had gone, and no one had come to fetch them, and the school was what had become of them. I took the bladder from my pocket, which I had not meant to do, and shook it at his right ear, at sixty. For three seconds he looked at me with a perfectly clear face. "Ah," he said, "you are the man who is in time"; and he was gone again, and I put the bladder away, and did not do it a second time in that school, there being too many of them.

But I shall so far do justice to this part of the academy as to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary. There was a most ingenious doctor, who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole nature and system of government. This illustrious person had very usefully employed his studies in finding out effectual remedies for all diseases and corruptions to which the several kinds of public administration are subject, by the vices or infirmities of those who govern, as well as by the licentiousness of those who are to obey. For instance: whereas all writers and reasoners have agreed that there is a strict universal resemblance between the natural and the political body, can there be anything more evident than that the health of both must be preserved, and the diseases cured, by the same prescriptions? It is allowed that senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient and other peccant humours; with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos and deliriums, sour frothy ructations, canine appetites and crudeness of digestion, besides many others needless to mention.

This doctor therefore proposed that upon the meeting of the senate certain physicians should attend it the three first days of their sitting, and at the close of each day's debate feel the pulses of every senator; after which, having maturely considered and consulted upon the nature of the several maladies and the methods of cure, they should on the fourth day return to the senate-house, attended by their apothecaries stored with proper medicines, and before the members sat administer to each of them lenitives, aperitives, abstersives, corrosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives, cephalalgics, icterics, apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several cases required, and, according as these medicines should operate, repeat, alter or omit them at the next meeting. He had it all in a table. A senate of five hundred, he said, gave him fifteen hundred wrists in three days, and from fifteen hundred wrists he could tell what a body meant before it knew.

This project could not be of any great expense to the public, and might, in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business in those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power: beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid, and damp the pert. I did not tell him that I had read such a ledger once. I said that I thought it was so, that I had been told as much by a young officer who never looked up; and that if it were to be done at all, it should be done in the open, and the figure read out to the man. He said that this was a refinement which had not occurred to him, and wrote it down.

Again, because it is a general complaint that the favourites of princes are troubled with short and weak memories, the same doctor proposed that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words, should at his departure give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech, or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee-day repeat the same operation, till the business were done or absolutely refused. I told him that a thing of the kind was done in Laputa with a bladder of dried peas, at a lower cost and with less bruising, and that it had the merit of a count. He said that he had heard of it, and thought it too gentle for ministers.

He likewise directed that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary, because if that were done the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public. When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. You take a hundred leaders of each party; you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are nearest of a size, and of a beat; then let two nice operators saw off the hinder part of the head of each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be equally divided, and let the pieces be interchanged, each applied to the head of his opposite party-man. It seems indeed to be a work that requires some exactness, but the professor assured us that if it were dexterously performed the cure would be infallible. For the two half-brains, being left to debate the matter between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation as well as regularity of thinking so much to be wished for in the heads of those who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion; and as to the difference of brains, in quantity or quality, among those who are directors in faction, the doctor assured us, from his own knowledge, that it was a perfect trifle.

I heard a very warm debate between two professors about the most commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money without grieving the subject. The first affirmed that the justest method would be to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly, the sum fixed upon every man to be rated in the fairest manner by a jury of his neighbours. The second was of an opinion directly contrary: to tax those qualities of body and mind for which men chiefly value themselves, the rate to be more or less according to the degrees of excelling, the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own breast. The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites of the other sex, and the assessments according to the number and nature of the favours they have received, for which they are allowed to be their own vouchers. Wit, valour and politeness were likewise proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same manner, by every person's giving his own word for the quantum of what he possessed. But as to honour, justice, wisdom and learning, they should not be taxed at all, because they are qualifications of so singular a kind that no man will either allow them in his neighbour or value them in himself.

To keep senators in the interest of the crown it was proposed that the members should raffle for employments, every man first taking an oath and giving security that he would vote for the court, whether he won or not; after which the losers had, in their turn, the liberty of raffling upon the next vacancy. Thus hope and expectation would be kept alive; none would complain of broken promises, but impute their disappointments wholly to fortune, whose shoulders are broader and stronger than those of a ministry.

Another professor, whom I found the soundest in that school, showed me a large paper of instructions for discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. He advised great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected persons, their times of eating, upon which side they lay in bed; and, above all, to take their wrists, and compare them, a week at a time, against a table which he had pinned to the wall, of figures and their meanings. Fifty-one was a refusal, and a cold-blooded one if it was repeated; seventy-four, a nuisance in the precincts; ninety-seven, an embassy. I knew the form of it, and three of the entries, to within a meaning. I did not say how.

The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many observations both curious and useful for politicians, but, as I conceived, not altogether complete. This I ventured to tell the author, and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some additions. He received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among writers, especially those of the projecting species, professing he would be glad to receive further information.

I told him that in the kingdom of Tribnia, by the natives called Langden, where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the conduct and the pay of ministers of state and their deputies. The plots in that kingdom are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures; and to raise or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among them what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners in chains.

I told him also that in the Lesser Reach the accuser is put to death if the accused proves innocent, and that the effect was that accusations were made only by persons who could not afford the accused's innocence. He said that this was very ingenious, and asked whether the Reach had many plots. I said that it had had one, and that it had been read out of a ledger.

The papers, I said, are delivered to a set of artists very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables and letters. For instance, they can discover a close stool to signify a privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the administration. When this method fails they have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings: thus N shall signify a plot, B a regiment of horse, L a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party. So, for example, if I should say in a letter to a friend, Our brother Tom has just got the piles, a skilful decipherer would discover that the same letters which compose that sentence may be analysed into the following words, Resist, a plot is brought home; The tour. And this is the anagrammatic method.

The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his treatise. That night I took my wrist with the bladder in my other hand. It was eighty-eight; the academy had got into it. I shook the peas at sixty to the minute for a quarter of an hour, and it was sixty-three; and I thought that I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer continuance, and began to think of home.

## Chapter 25 · The author leaves Lagado, arrives at Maldonada, and takes a short voyage to Glubbdubdrib. His reception by the governor, who lends his own beat to the dead for a day. They are all forty-one.

I took leave of my noble protector, Lord Munodi, who had shown me so much favour, and made me a generous present at my departure. He took my wrist at his door, which no one in Balnibarbi had done, and held it as the captain had held it on the quay, and said that he did not expect to see me again, and that it was not a thing he said of everyone. It was sixty-four. He said he had thought it would be higher.

The continent of which this kingdom is a part reaches north to the Pacific Ocean, which is not above a hundred and fifty miles from Lagado, where there is a good port, and much commerce with the great island of Luggnagg, which lies south-east of Japan about a hundred leagues. There is a strict alliance between the Japanese emperor and the king of Luggnagg, which affords frequent opportunities of sailing from one island to the other. I determined therefore to go that way, in order to get home. I hired two mules, with a guide, to show me the way and carry my small baggage.

My journey was without any accident or adventure worth relating. When I arrived at the port of Maldonada, for so it is called, there was no ship in the harbour bound for Luggnagg, nor likely to be for some time. The town is about as large as Deptford. I soon fell into some acquaintance, and was very hospitably received. A gentleman of distinction said to me that since the ships bound for Luggnagg could not be ready in less than a month, it might be no disagreeable amusement for me to take a trip to the little island of Glubbdubdrib, about five leagues off to the south-west. He offered himself and a friend to accompany me, and that I should be provided with a small convenient bark for the voyage.

Glubbdubdrib, as nearly as I can interpret the word, signifies the island of sorcerers or magicians. It is about one third as large as the Isle of Wight, and extremely fruitful; it is governed by the head of a certain tribe, who are all magicians. This tribe marries only among each other, and the eldest in succession is prince or governor. He has a noble palace, and a park of about three thousand acres, surrounded by a wall of hewn stone twenty feet high. In this park are several small enclosures for cattle, corn and gardening.

The governor and his family are served and attended by domestics of a kind somewhat unusual. By his skill in necromancy he has a power of calling whom he pleases from the dead, and commanding their service for twenty-four hours, but no longer; nor can he call the same persons up again in less than three months, except upon very extraordinary occasions.

When we arrived at the island, which was about eleven in the morning, one of the gentlemen who accompanied me went to the governor and desired admittance for a stranger who came on purpose to have the honour of attending on his highness. This was immediately granted, and we all three entered the gate of the palace between two rows of guards, armed and dressed after a very antic manner, and with something in their countenances that made my flesh creep with a horror I cannot express. We passed through several apartments, between servants of the same sort ranked on each side as before, till we came to the chamber of presence, where, after three profound obeisances and a few general questions, we were permitted to sit on three stools near the lowest step of his highness's throne.

He understood the language of Balnibarbi, although it was different from that of the island. He desired me to give him some account of my travels; and, to let me see that I should be treated without ceremony, he dismissed all his attendants with a turn of his finger, at which, to my great astonishment, they vanished in an instant, like visions in a dream when we awake on a sudden. I could not recover myself in some time, till the governor assured me that I should receive no hurt; and observing my two companions to be under no concern, who had often been entertained in the same manner, I began to take courage, and related to his highness a short history of my several adventures; yet not without some hesitation, and frequently looking behind me to the place where I had seen those domestic spectres.

I had the honour to dine with the governor, where a new set of ghosts served up the meat, and waited at table. I now observed myself to be less terrified than I had been in the morning. I stayed till sunset, but humbly desired his highness to excuse me for not accepting his invitation of lodging in the palace. My two friends and I lay at a private house in the town adjoining, which is the capital of this little island; and the next morning we returned to pay our duty to the governor, as he was pleased to command us.

After this manner we continued in the island for ten days, most part of every day with the governor, and at night in our lodging. I soon grew so familiarized to the sight of spirits that after the third or fourth time they gave me no emotion at all; or, if I had any apprehensions left, my curiosity prevailed over them. On the fourth day I took a wrist. It was that of a footman who stood behind my chair, a young man with a Greek nose, who had been dead, the governor said, about two thousand years. I laid two fingers on the plate, and there was nothing; and then, as I held them, a beat came up into them slowly, like the pulse in a limb that has been slept on, and it was forty-one. I took the next, and it was forty-one. They were all forty-one. I looked at the governor, who was watching my fingers with the courtesy of a man who has watched many people do this, and he said, "Mine."

I understood then what had made my flesh creep at the gate. It was not the dress, which was antic, nor the countenances, which were only dead. It was that their faces arrived at forty-one in bodies of my size. I had seen faces do that only among the giants, who are twelve times larger and have the excuse; a man does not expect it of his own make, and the body knows before the mind that something is being done to it. The footman with the Greek nose did not seem to mind. I asked him whether the dinner had been good. He said that it had not. The governor said that this was why he kept him.

He told me that the dead have none of their own, and that he lent them his for the twenty-four hours, as he lent them their faces; that it was the only thing he had to lend that they could use. It was a good one, he said, and a little slow, as his family's were. He was forty-one himself when he was not lending, and sixty-eight at the end of a day with a hundred out, and slept; and it took three months to come back to its old strength, which was why he could not call the same persons up again within that time, except upon very extraordinary occasions. "And they cannot vary it," he said. "A man who lies, as you will have noticed in your trade, goes up three or four. The dead have no up to go. It is not a virtue of theirs, sir. It is the arrangement."

The tribe marries only among its own, he told me, for this reason: the beat must not be disturbed. They are forty-one, all of them, down the generations, like a coat handed on; and the eldest, when he comes to the government, has the lending as he has the park, and the wall. When he calls his own father to dinner, which he does on the first day of every quarter, he has nothing to lend him, the old man being of the same make, and has only to give him the day. "He is the only one I do not lend to," he said. "He comes with what he had."

His highness the governor therefore ordered me to call up whatever persons I would choose to name, and in whatever numbers, among all the dead from the beginning of the world to the present time, and command them to answer any questions I should think fit to ask; with this condition, that my questions must be confined within the compass of the times they lived in. And one thing I might depend upon, that they would certainly tell the truth, for lying was a talent of no use in the lower world. I made my humble acknowledgments to his highness for so great a favour.

We were in a chamber from whence there was a fair prospect into the park. And because my first inclination was to be entertained with scenes of pomp and magnificence, I desired to see Alexander the Great at the head of his army, just after the battle of Arbela; which, upon a motion of the governor's finger, immediately appeared in a large field under the window where we stood. Alexander was called up into the room. It was with great difficulty that I understood his Greek, and I had but little of my own. I took his wrist before I thought, and it was forty-one, in a man who had had, by every account, a hundred and ten at breakfast and at dinner; it was like seeing a sword hung up. I asked what it had been at Arbela. He said that nobody had ever taken it; they had counted his army. He assured me upon his honour that he was not poisoned, but died of a bad fever by excessive drinking.

Next I saw Hannibal passing the Alps, who told me he had not a drop of vinegar in his camp. I saw Cæsar and Pompey at the head of their troops, just ready to engage. I saw the former in his last great triumph. I desired that the senate of Rome might appear before me in one large chamber, and an assembly of somewhat a later age in counterview in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwaymen and bullies. They were all forty-one. I mention it because it was the only way in which I could not tell them apart.

The governor, at my request, gave the sign for Cæsar and Brutus to advance towards us. I was struck with a profound veneration at the sight of Brutus, and could easily discover the most consummate virtue, the greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his country, and general benevolence for mankind, in every lineament of his countenance. I observed, with much pleasure, that these two persons were in good intelligence with each other; and Cæsar freely confessed to me that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away. I had the honour to have much conversation with Brutus, and was told that his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More and himself were perpetually together: a sextumvirate to which all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh. They had kept the same time in life, Brutus said, which was how they found one another. He did not mean the beat, he said; and then said that perhaps he did. I asked Cæsar, which I should not have, what his had been on the morning, at the foot of the stairs. He said seventy-one, and that he had thought it high for a man who was only going to a meeting. Brutus said that he had not counted his, that he supposed it to have been a hundred, and that it was a thing he found he could not remember, though he remembered the rest.

I entered them that night in the small book, in the same hand and the same columns as the living, which is not the custom. In the second column, where the young officer had taught me to write what the person was doing, I wrote for all of them, Being lent. For Brutus I wrote, after a time, Not remembering, and crossed it out, and wrote it again.

On the ninth evening I had my fingers on a footman's wrist when his twenty-four hours were done. The governor turned his finger. The beat went out of the wrist as the tide goes out of a creek, not at once, from the edges, and I felt it go; and then there was an arm with my fingers on it, which was the arm of a man who had been dead a long while and had been given a day. I did not let go until it was no longer there to be held. The governor waited. It is a courtesy, he said, that some visitors require.

It would be tedious to trouble the reader with relating what vast numbers of illustrious persons were called up, to gratify that insatiable desire I had to see the world in every period of antiquity placed before me. I chiefly fed my eyes with beholding the destroyers of tyrants and usurpers, and the restorers of liberty to oppressed and injured nations. But it is impossible to express the satisfaction I received in my own mind, after such a manner as to make it a suitable entertainment to the reader. On the last evening I took the governor's wrist, as a courtesy between professions. It was sixty-eight, he having lent a hundred and nine that day; and he thanked me, and said that nobody had asked.

## Chapter 26 · A further account of Glubbdubdrib. Ancient and modern history corrected by persons who can no longer vary a beat; and the author, that night, does a piece of arithmetic.

Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these were so numerous that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court and outward rooms of the palace. I knew and could distinguish those two heroes at first sight, not only from the crowd but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. They were forty-one, like the rest; but I observed that the governor's loan stopped somewhere short of the man, and that in Homer it stopped before the eyes, which were a hundred and ten, and in Aristotle before the staff, which he leaned on as a thing that was his own.

I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be nameless, that these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their principals in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity. I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves.

I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with whom I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle. This great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be exploded. He predicted the same fate to attraction, whereof the present learned are such zealous asserters. He said that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined. I thought of a stone in a cave, which had been warm, and did not say so; it seemed to me that a stone was not a system.

I spent five days in conversing with many others of the ancient learned. I saw most of the first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the governor to call up Heliogabalus's cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could not show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A helot of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get down a second spoonful. He stirred it, I remember, at forty-one, and it seemed to me to have been made with that in mind.

The two gentlemen who conducted me to the island were pressed by their private affairs to return in three days, which I employed in seeing some of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure for two or three hundred years past in our own and other countries of Europe; and having been always a great admirer of old illustrious families, I desired the governor would call up a dozen or two of kings, with their ancestors in order for eight or nine generations. But my disappointment was grievous and unexpected. For instead of a long train with royal diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three spruce courtiers and an Italian prelate. In another, a barber, an abbot and two cardinals. I have too great a veneration for crowned heads to dwell any longer on so nice a subject. But as to counts, marquises, dukes, earls and the like, I was not so scrupulous. And I confess it was not without some pleasure that I found myself able to trace the particular features by which certain families are distinguished up to their originals. I could plainly discover whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with knaves for two generations and fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained and a fourth to be sharpers. Their wrists could tell me nothing, being all one; it was the chins that told me, and I had never before been grateful for a chin. Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of lineages by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers, players, captains and pickpockets.

I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war to cowards; the wisest counsel to fools; sincerity to flatterers; Roman virtue to betrayers of their country; piety to atheists; truth to informers. How many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges and the malice of factions; how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity and profit; how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.

Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to write anecdotes or secret history; who send so many kings to their graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince and chief minister where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and cabinets of ambassadors and secretaries of state; and have the perpetual misfortune to be mistaken. Here I discovered the true causes of many great events that have surprised the world: how a whore can govern the back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, and the council a senate. A general confessed in my presence that he got a victory purely by the force of cowardice and ill conduct; and I asked what he had been at the time. He said that he had been told a hundred and thirty-one, which was the pace at which he had run; the enemy's general, he understood, had been a hundred and forty, in the other direction, on a better horse. An admiral confessed that for want of proper intelligence he beat the enemy to whom he intended to betray the fleet. Three kings protested to me that in their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake or the treachery of some minister in whom they confided; neither would they do it if they were to live again; and they showed, with great strength of reason, that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restiff temper which virtue infused into a man was a perpetual clog to public business. A man of virtue, one of them said, keeps a steady wrist, and a court is a thing that must be got round.

I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular manner by what methods great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of honour and prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a very modern period, however without grating upon present times, because I would be sure to give no offence even to foreigners (for I hope the reader need not be told that I do not in the least intend my own country in what I say upon this occasion). A great number of persons concerned were called up; and upon a very slight examination discovered such a scene of infamy that I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness. I put the same question to each of them, in the same place, and each gave the same answer, and there was no up in it anywhere. Perjury, oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism and the like infirmities were among the most excusable arts they had to mention, and for these I gave, as it was reasonable, great allowance. But when some confessed they owed their greatness and wealth to the betraying of their country or their prince, others to poisoning, more to the perverting of justice in order to destroy the innocent, I hope I may be pardoned if these discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that profound veneration which I am naturally apt to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their sublime dignity by us their inferiors.

I had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed. Upon inquiry I was told that their names were to be found on no record, except a few of them whom history has represented as the vilest of rogues and traitors. As to the rest, I had never once heard of them. They all appeared with dejected looks and in the meanest habit, most of them telling me they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a scaffold or a gibbet.

Among others there was one person whose case appeared a little singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side. He told me he had for many years been commander of a ship, and in the sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy's great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships and take a fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony's flight, and of the victory that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only son, was killed in the action. He added that upon the confidence of some merit, the war being at an end, he went to Rome, and solicited at the court of Augustus to be preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been killed; but without any regard to his pretensions it was given to a boy who had never seen the sea, the son of Libertina, who waited on one of the emperor's mistresses. Returning back to his own vessel, he was charged with neglect of duty, and the ship given to a favourite page of Publicola, the vice-admiral; whereupon he retired to a poor farm at a great distance from Rome, and there ended his life. I was so curious to know the truth of this story that I desired Agrippa might be called, who was admiral in that fight. He appeared, and confirmed the whole account, but with much more advantage to the captain, whose modesty had extenuated or concealed a great part of his merit. The captain and his son stood so close that I could not tell which of them I was counting; the boy's hand was in the pocket of his father's cloak, as a child's is. They were the same age, in the only column I had.

I was surprised to find corruption grown so high and so quick in that empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced; which made me less wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of all kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise, as well as pillage, has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had the least title to either.

As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done in the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the race of humankind was degenerated among us within these hundred years past; how the pox, under all its consequences and denominations, had altered every lineament of an English countenance; shortened the size of bodies, unbraced the nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles, introduced a sallow complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and rancid. I did the arithmetic that night. By the rule of the Reaches a body a tenth shorter beats a tenth faster. The Englishmen of a hundred years ago stood a hand taller than their grandsons against the door-post, and their own beat, had it been left to them, would have been fifty-three or fifty-four. I had thought that sixty was the beat of a man. It was the beat of a man of this age.

I descended so low as to desire some English yeoman of the old stamp might be summoned to appear, once so famous for the simplicity of their manners, diet and dress; for justice in their dealings; for their true spirit of liberty; for their valour and love of their country. Neither could I be wholly unmoved, after comparing the living with the dead, when I considered how all these pure native virtues were prostituted for a piece of money by their grandchildren; who, in selling their votes and managing at elections, have acquired every vice and corruption that can possibly be learned in a court.

## Chapter 27 · The author returns to Maldonada and sails to Luggnagg. His wrist is taken at the customs, and a lie of the ordinary size is passed. He licks the dust of the king's floor. The struldbrugs are described, and the author, in a rapture, tells how he would live for ever, at sixty.

The day of our departure being come, I took leave of his highness the Governor of Glubbdubdrib, and returned with my two companions to Maldonada, where, after a fortnight's waiting, a ship was ready to sail for Luggnagg. The two gentlemen, and some others, were so generous and kind as to furnish me with provisions and see me on board. I was a month in this voyage. We had one violent storm, and were under a necessity of steering westward to get into the trade wind, which holds for above sixty leagues. I shook the bladder at noon for the first week, and then forgot; and on the tenth day I found that I had not needed it, and I record this without comment, Tarvo having told me not to trust to one thing. On the 21st of April, 1708, we sailed into the river of Clumegnig, which is a seaport town at the south-east point of Luggnagg. We cast anchor within a league of the town, and made a signal for a pilot. Two of them came on board in less than half an hour, by whom we were guided between certain shoals and rocks, which are very dangerous in the passage, to a large basin, where a fleet may ride in safety within a cable's length of the town wall.

Some of our sailors, whether out of treachery or inadvertence, had informed the pilots that I was a stranger and a great traveller; whereof these gave notice to a custom-house officer, by whom I was examined very strictly upon my landing. He took my wrist before he took my name, which in Luggnagg is the order of proceeding. This officer spoke to me in the language of Balnibarbi, which by the force of much commerce is generally understood in that town, especially by seamen and those employed in the customs. I thought it necessary to disguise my country, and call myself a Hollander, because my intentions were for Japan, and I knew the Dutch were the only Europeans permitted to enter into that kingdom. I said it, and it was sixty-five, from sixty-one before I said it. He looked at the figure and wrote it down without surprise, and told me that the book had a column for what a stranger says and what the wrist says, and that a difference of three or four was ordinary and was passed, and seven or more was sent up to the king. I had never before told a lie of the ordinary size. I record that it is a feeling.

I therefore told the officer that, having been shipwrecked on the coast of Balnibarbi, and cast on a rock, I was received up into Laputa, or the flying island, of which he had often heard, and was now endeavouring to get to Japan, whence I might find a convenience of returning to my own country. The officer said I must be confined till he could receive orders from court, for which he would write immediately, and hoped to receive an answer in a fortnight. I was carried to a convenient lodging with a sentry placed at the door; however, I had the liberty of a large garden, and was treated with humanity enough, being maintained all the time at the king's charge. I was invited by several persons, chiefly out of curiosity, because it was reported that I came from countries very remote, of which they had never heard.

I hired a young man who came in the same ship, to be an interpreter. He was a native of Luggnagg, but had lived some years at Maldonada, and was a perfect master of both languages. He was nineteen, and his own beat was seventy, which he said was the speed of his trade, interpreters being paid by the word. By his assistance I was able to hold a conversation with those who came to visit me; but this consisted only of their questions and my answers.

The despatch came from court about the time we expected. It contained a warrant for conducting me and my retinue to Traldragdubh, or Trildrogdrib (for it is pronounced both ways as near as I can remember), by a party of ten horse. All my retinue was that poor lad for an interpreter, whom I persuaded into my service, and at my humble request we had each of us a mule to ride on. A messenger was despatched half a day's journey before us, to give the king notice of my approach, and to desire that his majesty would please to appoint a day and hour when it would be his gracious pleasure that I might have the honour to lick the dust before his footstool.

This is the court style, and I found it to be more than matter of form; for upon my admittance, two days after my arrival, I was commanded to crawl upon my belly and lick the floor as I advanced. But on account of my being a stranger, care was taken to have it made so clean that the dust was not offensive. However, this was a peculiar grace, not allowed to any but persons of the highest rank when they desire an admittance. Nay, sometimes the floor is strewed with dust on purpose, when the person to be admitted happens to have powerful enemies at court; and I have seen a great lord with his mouth so crammed that when he had crept to the proper distance from the throne, he was not able to speak a word. Neither is there any remedy, because it is capital for those who receive an audience to spit or wipe their mouths in his majesty's presence. I put two fingers under the cord as I went, on the boards, and it was seventy-four. A man crawling on his belly goes at about twenty to the minute, which is the slowest that anyone had gone in my presence since the giants; and the courtiers stood in ranks at sixty on either hand, and watched me come, as one watches an event at the pace of the person to whom it is happening.

There is indeed another custom, which I cannot altogether approve of. When the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle, indulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which being licked up infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. I noted that the term was the governor's. But in justice to this prince's great clemency, and the care he has of his subjects' lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the monarchs of Europe would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour that strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution; which, if his domestics neglect, they are in danger of incurring his royal displeasure. I myself heard him give directions that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect a young lord of great hopes, coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the king at that time had no design against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special orders.

To return from this digression. When I had crept within four yards of the throne, I raised myself gently upon my knees, and then striking my forehead seven times against the ground, I pronounced the following words, as they had been taught me the night before: Ickpling gloffthrobb squutserumm blhiop mlashnalt zwin tnodbalkguffh slhiophad gurdlubh asht. This is the compliment established by the laws of the land for all persons admitted to the king's presence. It may be rendered into English thus: "May your celestial majesty outlive the sun, eleven moons and a half!" I had come from an island where they asked each morning after the sun's health. Here they wished the king the longer life.

To this the king returned some answer, which, although I could not understand, yet I replied as I had been directed: Fluft drin yalerick dwuldom prastrad mirpush, which properly signifies, "My tongue is in the mouth of my friend"; and by this expression was meant that I desired leave to bring my interpreter; whereupon the young man already mentioned was accordingly introduced, by whose intervention I answered as many questions as his majesty could put in above an hour. I spoke in the Balnibarbian tongue, and my interpreter delivered my meaning in that of Luggnagg.

The king was much delighted with my company, and ordered his bliffmarklub, or high chamberlain, to appoint a lodging in the court for me and my interpreter, with a daily allowance for my table, and a large purse of gold for my common expenses. I staid three months in this country, out of perfect obedience to his majesty, who was pleased highly to favour me, and made me very honourable offers. But I thought it more consistent with prudence and justice to pass the remainder of my days with my wife and family.

The Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people; and although they are not without some share of that pride which is peculiar to all Eastern countries, yet they show themselves courteous to strangers, especially such who are countenanced by the court. I had many acquaintance, and among persons of the best fashion; and being always attended by my interpreter, the conversation we had was not disagreeable.

One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals. I said I had not, and desired he would explain to me what he meant by such an appellation applied to a mortal creature. He told me that sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die. The spot, as he described it, was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its colour; for at twelve years old it became green, so continued till five-and-twenty, then turned to a deep blue; at five-and-forty it grew coal black, and as large as a shilling, but never admitted any further alteration. He said these births were so rare that he did not believe there could be above eleven hundred struldbrugs, of both sexes, in the whole kingdom; of which he computed about fifty in the metropolis, and among the rest a young girl born about three years ago; that these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a mere effect of chance; and that the children of the struldbrugs themselves were equally mortal with the rest of the people.

I freely own myself to have been struck with inexpressible delight upon hearing this account; and the person who gave it me happening to understand the Balnibarbian language, which I spoke very well, I could not forbear breaking out into expressions perhaps a little too extravagant. I cried out, as in a rapture: "Happy nation, where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal! Happy people, who enjoy so many living examples of ancient virtue, and have masters ready to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages! But happiest, beyond all comparison, are those excellent struldbrugs, who, being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death!" I discovered my admiration that I had not observed any of these illustrious persons at court, the black spot on the forehead being so remarkable a distinction that I could not have easily overlooked it; and it was impossible that his majesty, a most judicious prince, should not provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counsellors. I was resolved, upon the very first occasion, to deliver my opinion to him on this matter freely and at large; and whether he would please to take my advice or not, yet in one thing I was determined, that his majesty having frequently offered me an establishment in this country, I would with great thankfulness accept the favour, and pass my life here in the conversation of those superior beings the struldbrugs, if they would please to admit me.

The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse said to me, with a sort of smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant, that he was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired my permission to explain to the company what I had spoke. He did so, and they talked together for some time in their own language, whereof I understood not a syllable, neither could I observe by their countenances what impression my discourse had made on them. After a short silence the same person told me that his friends and mine (so he thought fit to express himself) were very much pleased with the judicious remarks I had made on the great happiness and advantages of immortal life, and they were desirous to know in a particular manner what scheme of living I should have formed to myself if it had fallen to my lot to have been born a struldbrug.

I answered that it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a subject, especially to me, who had been often apt to amuse myself with visions of what I should do if I were a king, a general, or a great lord; and upon this very case I had frequently run over the whole system how I should employ myself and pass the time if I were sure to live for ever. That if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a struldbrug, as soon as I could discover my own happiness, by understanding the difference between life and death, I would first resolve, by all arts and methods whatsoever, to procure myself riches; in the pursuit of which, by thrift and management, I might reasonably expect, in about two hundred years, to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom. In the second place, I would from my earliest youth apply myself to the study of arts and sciences, by which I should arrive in time to excel all others in learning. Lastly, I would carefully record every action and event of consequence that happened in the public, impartially draw the characters of the several successions of princes and great ministers of state, with my own observations on every point, and exactly set down the several changes in customs, language, fashions of dress, diet and diversions. By all which acquirements I should be a living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly become the oracle of the nation.

I would never marry after threescore, but live in a hospitable manner, yet still on the saving side. I would entertain myself in forming and directing the minds of hopeful young men, by convincing them, from my own remembrance, experience and observation, fortified by numerous examples, of the usefulness of virtue in public and private life. But my choice and constant companions should be a set of my own immortal brotherhood, among whom I would elect a dozen from the most ancient down to my own contemporaries; mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treating your posterity after the same manner, just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year. And I would see the revolutions of states and empires, ancient cities in ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great inventions brought to the utmost perfection; and I should make wonderful discoveries in astronomy, by outliving and confirming our own predictions, and observing the progress and return of comets. I added that, as I had it from my own wrist, I should be sixty for ever, which is the best number a man can be, and that I did not see what there was to choose between us.

I enlarged upon many other topics which the natural desire of endless life and sublunary happiness could easily furnish me with. When I had ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted, as before, to the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them in the language of the country, not without some laughter at my expense. At last the same gentleman who had been my interpreter said that he was desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes which I had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon that allowance was less answerable for them.

## Chapter 28 · The gentleman sets the author right about the struldbrugs: the number does not keep. The author sees them, and puts his hand over a cord. His appetite for living for ever is much abated, and he is glad to be fifty-one.

He said that this breed of struldbrugs was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people either in Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the honour to be ambassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both those kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible; and it appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me that I received it as a thing wholly new and scarcely to be credited. That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where during his residence he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind. That whoever had one foot in the grave was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. That the oldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat. Only in this island of Luggnagg the appetite for living was not so eager, from the continual example of the struldbrugs before their eyes.

That the system of living contrived by me was unreasonable and unjust, because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health and vigour, which no man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his wishes. That the question therefore was not whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health, but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it. For although few men will avow their desires of being immortal upon such hard conditions, yet in the two kingdoms before mentioned he observed that every man desired to put off death some time longer, let it approach ever so late; and he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he were incited by the extremity of grief or torture. And he appealed to me whether in those countries I had travelled, as well as my own, I had not observed the same general disposition.

He asked me, as one who had taken a good many wrists, what I supposed became of the number in a man who does not stop. I said that I supposed it kept. He said that it was the commonest mistake of the young: that the number had always been going down, in me and in him, by a hair a year; that in a mortal it went down to the end, and the end was the stopping; and that in a struldbrug the going down went on, and the stopping did not.

After this preface he gave me a particular account of the struldbrugs among them. He said they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession; for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain and talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. At fourscore, he said, they are forty-eight, which was nearly my own among the giants; and the world about them, at sixty, is a trifle too quick to love.

Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact it is safer to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections. He explained it as a physician explains: the world goes by them a little faster each year, and what goes by faster than it can be taken in is not remembered. "They do not forget," he said. "They are not there when it happens." The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course by the courtesy of the kingdom as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support, and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds. The law gives the reason: that a witness must have been present, and a man at forty-eight is present at a thing a little after it.

At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking they forget the common appellation of things and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason they never can amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable. A sentence at sixty takes about four seconds, he said, and at forty about six, and I might consider what a page was to a man who is forty-two and has a memory of three words.

The language of this country being always upon the flux, the struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation, farther than by a few general words, with their neighbours the mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country. At two hundred they are twenty-eight, and a neighbour is a gabble. A few general words, said slowly, are what can be got through, and no one has the time.

This was the account given me of the struldbrugs, as near as I can remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me at several times by some of my friends; but although they were told that I was a great traveller and had seen all the world, they had not the least curiosity to ask me a question; only desired I would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance; which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very scanty allowance.

The youngest was brought on a chair by two porters, in the afternoon, and the interview lasted till dusk. He was twenty-eight. It took him eleven minutes to ask for his token, the word being long and his breath short, and he asked it of the wall to my left, having lost the position of my face during the second syllable. My interpreter, who had the patience of a man paid by the word, said it over to me three times as it arrived. I put two fingers to the wrist; it was like laying a hand to the side of a ship. I saw that he had been looking at my other hand all the while; at the cord. I put my hand over it. I am not proud of the hand. The interpreter said that he asked everyone, that it was the law that he might not beg and the custom that he might ask, and that the cord was nothing to him; but his eyes were on it, and I kept my hand there until I had found a silver button and put it into his, and he held it a good while without closing his fingers, and then, quite slowly, did.

They are despised and hated by all sorts of people. When one of them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly, so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of computing how old they are is by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old.

They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and the women more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a century or two between them. I could have told it by the wrists before the faces: twenty-eight, twenty-one, sixteen, eleven, nine, seven.

The seventh was a woman, the eldest, and I was taken to see her in a room above a corn-chandler's. She had been set by the window, I was told, since the last reign but two, and the household had not moved her, there being no occasion. In the hour I stood there she lifted her head as far as the sill, which was the whole of her business for the day. A little girl of the house, who might have been six, climbed into her lap and out of it twice while I watched, and the old woman did not see her go. The interpreter said that the child was her descendant in the fourteenth degree, and that the old woman did not know her; at the rate the child moved, they could hardly be said to be of one species. I held the wrist for the full minute, which is how a surgeon avoids deceiving himself, and counted seven, and had not the strength for a second.

I saw the little girl born three years before once, in the street of the metropolis, in her nurse's arms, with the spot over her left eyebrow as red as a berry and about the size of a silver threepence. She was three, and she was a hundred and forty, like any child, and she laughed at a dog, which went by faster than she could follow. The nurse saw me looking and hurried her on, as one hurries a child past a stranger who has stared too long. I do not know what she thought I wanted. I wanted to be told that she was only a child, and nobody did.

The reader will easily believe that from what I had heard and seen my keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated. I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed, and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure from such a life. I had said that I should be sixty for ever. I thought of it that night as a man thinks of a bill he has put his name to. The king heard of all that had passed between me and my friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly; wishing I could send a couple of struldbrugs to my own country to arm our people against the fear of death; but this, it seems, is forbidden by the fundamental laws of the kingdom, or else I should have been well content with the trouble and expense of transporting them.

I could not but agree that the laws of this kingdom relative to the struldbrugs were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any other country would be under the necessity of enacting in the like circumstances. Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.

That night I took my wrist. It was fifty-one, which is the number my wife gave me at the door, and I was glad of it, as I had not been. It was lower than sixty, and it would go on being lower. I did not shake the bladder. I lay a long time with the two fingers where they were, and counted; and in the sixth minute, between one beat and the next, I understood that there was going to be an end of the beats, and that I should be, God willing, in a bed in Redriff when it came; and I slept.

## Chapter 29 · The author leaves Luggnagg and sails to Japan. His wrist is taken at Nangasac, and a word that has been carried nine months is explained to him, and someone asks whose. He returns by way of Amsterdam to Redriff, where his wife counts him fifty-three and he counts her sixty-eight. End of the third part.

I thought this account of the struldbrugs might be some entertainment to the reader, because it seems to be a little out of the common way; at least I do not remember to have met the like in any book of travels that has come to my hands; and if I am deceived, my excuse must be that it is necessary for travellers who describe the same country very often to agree in dwelling on the same particulars, without deserving the censure of having borrowed or transcribed from those who wrote before them. There is indeed a perpetual commerce between this kingdom and the great empire of Japan; and it is very probable that the Japanese authors may have given some account of the struldbrugs; but my stay in Japan was so short, and I was so entirely a stranger to the language, that I made only one inquiry there, and shall come to it. I hope the Dutch, upon this notice, will be curious and able enough to supply my defects.

His majesty having often pressed me to accept some employment in his court, and finding me absolutely determined to return to my native country, was pleased to give me his licence to depart, and honoured me with a letter of recommendation, under his own hand, to the Emperor of Japan. He likewise presented me with four hundred and forty-four large pieces of gold (this nation delighting in even numbers) and a red diamond, of about the compass of a silver threepence, which I disliked to look at, and sold at Redriff for eleven hundred credits.

On the 6th day of May, 1709, I took a solemn leave of his majesty and all my friends. This prince was so gracious as to order a guard to conduct me to Glanguenstald, which is a royal port to the south-west part of the island. In six days I found a vessel ready to carry me to Japan, and spent fifteen days in the voyage. We landed at a small port-town called Xamoschi, situated on the south-east part of Japan; the town lies on the western point, where there is a narrow strait leading northward into a long arm of the sea, upon the north-west part of which Yedo, the metropolis, stands.

At landing I showed the custom-house officers my letter from the king of Luggnagg to his imperial majesty. They knew the seal perfectly well; it was as broad as the palm of my hand. The impression was, A king lifting up a lame beggar from the earth. I looked at it a good while longer than the officers thought proper. The magistrates of the town, hearing of my letter, received me as a public minister. They provided me with carriages and servants, and bore my charges to Yedo, where I was admitted to an audience, and delivered my letter, which was opened with great ceremony, and explained to the Emperor by an interpreter, who then gave me notice, by his majesty's order, that I should signify my request, and, whatever it were, it should be granted, for the sake of his royal brother of Luggnagg.

The Emperor was behind a screen of paper, in the Japanese way, and I did not see his hands. The interpreter told me, in a low voice, that nobody in that kingdom had taken the Emperor's wrist in four hundred years, and that this was what the screen was for; that the court did very well with a figure that was guessed at, and that the guess had not been wrong yet, or not so that anyone had said. I thought of a platform in the Lesser Reach, and a number read out before the court that I had written down; and I bowed to the paper.

This interpreter was a person employed to transact affairs with the Hollanders. He had taken my wrist at the door, which they do now, having learned it of the Dutch, and found it sixty-six, which he said was calm for a shipwrecked merchant; and he soon conjectured, by my countenance, that I was a European, and therefore repeated his majesty's commands in Low Dutch, which he spoke perfectly well. I answered, as I had before determined, that I was a Dutch merchant, shipwrecked in a very remote country, whence I had travelled by sea and land to Luggnagg, and then took shipping for Japan, where I knew my countrymen often traded, and with some of these I hoped to get an opportunity of returning into Europe; I therefore most humbly entreated his royal favour to give order that I should be conducted in safety to Nangasac.

To this I added another petition: that for the sake of my patron the king of Luggnagg, his majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed on my countrymen, of trampling upon the crucifix, because I had been thrown into his kingdom by my misfortunes, without any intention of trading. When this latter petition was interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised, and said he believed I was the first of my countrymen who ever made any scruple in this point; and that he began to doubt whether I was a real Hollander or not, but rather suspected I must be a Christian. However, for the reasons I had offered, but chiefly to gratify the king of Luggnagg by an uncommon mark of his favour, he would comply with the singularity of my humour; but the affair must be managed with dexterity, and his officers should be commanded to let me pass, as it were by forgetfulness. For he assured me that if the secret should be discovered by my countrymen the Dutch, they would cut my throat in the voyage.

I returned my thanks, by the interpreter, for so unusual a favour; and some troops being at that time on their march to Nangasac, the commanding officer had orders to convey me safe thither, with particular instructions about the business of the crucifix. On the 9th day of June, 1709, I arrived at Nangasac, after a very long and troublesome journey.

The soldiers marched at sixty, and I at sixty with them, for nineteen days. I had not before in my life marched a long road without having to decide my pace, and I found that I liked it a great deal more than I had expected, and I distrust the feeling. At night, in the inns, the officers took the wrists of their men and wrote them down, and every one was within three of the book; and I lay awake and heard thirty men breathe on one count, and was ashamed of how well I slept.

At the water-gate, which is a low stone arch with a lamp lit under it even at noon, where the foreigners are entered in a book as they come up out of the boats, one at a time, an old clerk with a brush took my wrist. They take it there as one takes a bird, the thumb upon the plate and the whole wrist in the hand. The commanding officer said a word to him, which I took for the business of the crucifix, and he wrote in one column the word forgotten; in another he wrote my number, which was seventy, and my name, which was not mine; and he was putting down the brush when he saw the cord. I had been covering it with my other hand, I found, for some months, by habit. I took that hand away. I thought of the youngest struldbrug, and what he had asked of the wall. The clerk said, "Katami."

I had carried the word nine months. I said it back to him. He looked up for the first time. The interpreter of the port, who had come in for the entry and spoke Low Dutch, said that it was an old word and not a common one, and meant a thing kept of a person when the person is not there to keep it, or is not any longer there. "A hair is the usual one," he said. The clerk spoke again, and the interpreter said that he asked whose.

Nobody had asked. My wife had not asked; the captain on the quay had not; Tarvo had said only that somebody had kept me. I said, in Low Dutch, which was not a language I had thought to say it in, that it was a girl's. He asked how old. I said nine. He asked where. I said that I did not know the way; that it was across a sea; that it was a country in which she was forty feet high. The interpreter did not put that last into Japanese. He asked whether she was alive. I said that I did not know. The clerk took the brush and wrote in the margin of the book, outside the columns, two characters, and showed them to me, and the interpreter said that it was the word. I asked whether I might have the page. He said no. He wrote it again on a slip, and I have the slip; I keep it in the small book, between the pages of the dead. [Margin: Mrs. Gulliver has written beside this paragraph, in pencil, "Asked." R.S.]

I soon fell into the company of some Dutch sailors belonging to the Amboyna of Amsterdam, a stout ship of 450 tons. I had lived long in Holland, pursuing my studies at Leyden, and I spoke Dutch well. The seamen soon knew from whence I came last: they were curious to inquire into my voyages and course of life. I made up a story as short and probable as I could, but concealed the greatest part. I knew many persons in Holland. I was able to invent names for my parents, whom I pretended to be obscure people in the province of Gelderland. I told it at sixty-five, a lie of the ordinary size, and nobody on that ship took my wrist at table, the Dutch having a delicacy about it.

I would have given the captain, one Theodorus Vangrult, what he pleased to ask for my voyage to Holland; but understanding I was a surgeon, he was contented to take half the usual rate, on condition that I would serve him in the way of my calling. Before we took shipping I was often asked by some of the crew whether I had performed the ceremony above mentioned. I evaded the question by general answers, that I had satisfied the Emperor and court in all particulars. However, a malicious rogue of a skipper went to an officer, and pointing to me told him I had not yet trampled on the crucifix; but the other, who had received instructions to let me pass, gave the rascal twenty strokes on the shoulders with a bamboo; after which I was no more troubled with such questions.

Nothing happened worth mentioning in this voyage. We sailed with a fair wind to the Cape of Good Hope, where we staid only to take in fresh water. On the 10th of April, 1710, we arrived safe at Amsterdam, having lost only three men by sickness in the voyage, and a fourth, who fell from the foremast into the sea, not far from the coast of Guinea. I had taken the wrists of the three, in their last week, and written them in the small book; for the fourth I had only the noon before, which was a hundred and six. From Amsterdam I soon after set sail for home, in a small vessel belonging to that city.

On the 16th of April, 1710, we put in at the Downs. I landed next morning, and saw once more my native country, after an absence of five years and six months complete. I went straight to Redriff, where I arrived the same day at two in the afternoon, and found my wife and family in good health.

My wife was at the door. I took her wrist before she could take mine, which I had never done; she let me. It was sixty-eight. I said that mine was fifty-one, that I had had it at the Downs that morning, and she took it with two fingers and held it, and said it was fifty-three. I said fifty-one. She said that she would not argue, which was what she had said the last time; and then she said that she would, and that she made it fifty-three, and that between us we might call it fifty-two. We have called it fifty-two since.

Johnny, who was eleven, was standing on the stair, very still, looking at my face, as he had stood the morning I came home from the Reach, and I took his wrist, which he held out as though it had been a letter. It was seventy. He asked what mine had been at the end of it. I said fifty-one. He said that at school he was the slowest in his class, and that the master said it was a sign of a good mind; I said that the master was a kind man. Betty, who is thirteen, counted me herself without being asked, and came out at fifty-four, and wrote it on the back of her hand with the pencil.

At supper she showed me five almanacs, the backs of them, in pencil, in the margin where the tides are: one number for each noon of five years and six months, and every one of them her own. She had kept her own count, she said, to have something to put against mine when I came. She had put a small cross against the days she had been frightened; they were not many, and she did not say which they had been, and I did not ask, being afraid that I could have told her. The lowest was sixty-four. I said that I had not been below forty-nine, and she asked where, and I said on a rock, and she asked which. It took until the candle was down to tell her. I did not get as far as the cord. I thought that I should, in the morning.

## Chapter 30 · The author, having told his wife about the cord, sets out as captain of a ship. His men conspire against him, confine him a long time to his cabin, and set him on shore in an unknown land. The Yahoos, who cannot be counted, are described. The author meets two Houyhnhnms, who strike hoof on hoof.

I continued at home with my wife and children about five months in a very happy condition, if I could have learned the lesson of knowing when I was well. She took my wrist at noon, and wrote it on the almanac, and for five months it was fifty-two, give or take a figure; she showed me the column on the first of every month, as a farmer shows a field. On the third morning I had told her about the cord. It took the better part of an hour, at the table, and she did not speak until I had done. Then she asked how old the girl was, and I said nine, and she asked how long I had been gone from that country, and I said four years, and she did the sum with her lips, as she does the household sums, and said, "Then it's four months." I said that it was. "She'll not have stopped, then," said my wife. I said that I did not know. She said that she did.

I left my poor wife big with child, and accepted an advantageous offer made me to be captain of the Adventurer, a stout merchantman of three hundred and fifty tons; for I understood navigation well, and being grown weary of a surgeon's employment at sea, which, however, I could exercise upon occasion, I took a skilful young man of that calling, one Robert Purefoy, into my ship. I will make no defence. I record that she took my wrist at the door on the morning I left, and that it was sixty-one, and that she wrote it down, and that I knew what I was doing, and went.

We set sail from Portsmouth upon the 7th day of August, 1710; on the 14th we met with Captain Pocock, of Bristol, at Teneriffe, who was going to the bay of Campechy to cut logwood. I took his wrist on the quay, as one does with an old acquaintance: it was sixty-three, and he told me that he had never known it vary, which I took for a boast. On the 16th he was parted from us by a storm; I heard since my return that his ship foundered, and none escaped but one cabin-boy. He was an honest man and a good sailor, but a little too positive in his own opinions, which was the cause of his destruction, as it has been with several others; for if he had followed my advice, he might have been safe at home with his family at this time, as well as myself. I have thought since that a man whose beat never varies is a man who cannot turn, and that I met in him, a little too early, a thing I was to meet again.

I had several men who died in my ship of calentures, so that I was forced to get recruits out of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, where I touched by the direction of the merchants who employed me; which I had soon too much cause to repent, for I found afterwards that most of them had been buccaneers. I took their wrists on the quay at Bridgetown, as I took every man's, and wrote them in the book, and it should have told me: eleven of the fifteen were over a hundred at rest, and a surgeon ought to know what that is in a ship. I thought to bring them down by keeping them busy. I had fifty hands on board, and my orders were that I should trade with the Indians in the South Sea and make what discoveries I could.

These rogues, whom I had picked up, debauched my other men, and they all formed a conspiracy to seize the ship and secure me; which they did one morning, rushing into my cabin and binding me hand and foot, threatening to throw me overboard if I offered to stir. I told them I was their prisoner, and would submit. This they made me swear to do, and then they unbound me, only fastening one of my legs with a chain near my bed, and placed a sentry at my door with his piece charged, who was commanded to shoot me dead if I attempted my liberty. They sent me down victuals and drink, and took the government of the ship to themselves. Their design was to turn pirates and plunder the Spaniards, which they could not do till they got more men. But first they resolved to sell the goods in the ship, and then go to Madagascar for recruits, several among them having died since my confinement. They sailed many weeks, and traded with the Indians; but I knew not what course they took, being kept a close prisoner in my cabin, and expecting nothing less than to be murdered, as they often threatened me.

Nobody counted me in the cabin. I took my own wrist a hundred times, and trusted none of the figures, having learned in the canoe what a count is worth that is made by the man; it ran a hundred and ten the first week and sixty the third, and I could not have said whether that was fear or practice. I shook the bladder three times a day, quietly, at sixty. The sentry, who could hear it through the door, took it for a rattle for a child, and was kind about it, and asked once, without any sort of interest, whether it was a boy.

Upon the 9th day of May, 1711, one James Welch came down to my cabin and said he had orders from the captain to set me ashore. I expostulated with him, but in vain; neither would he so much as tell me who their new captain was. They forced me into the long-boat, letting me put on my best suit of clothes, which were as good as new, and take a small bundle of linen, but no arms except my hanger; and they were so civil as not to search my pockets, into which I conveyed what money I had, with some other little necessaries. They rowed about a league, and then set me down on a strand. I desired them to tell me what country it was. They all swore they knew no more than myself, but said that the captain (as they called him) was resolved, after they had sold the lading, to get rid of me in the first place where they could discover land. They pushed off immediately, advising me to make haste for fear of being overtaken by the tide, and so bade me farewell. Welch had put my linen into the boat himself. At Bridgetown his had been the only wrist among them under seventy. I do not say that this was kindness. I say that I find I remember it.

In this desolate condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon firm ground, where I sat down on a bank to rest myself, and consider what I had best do. When I was a little refreshed I went up into the country, resolving to deliver myself to the first savages I should meet, and purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass rings and other toys, which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages, and whereof I had some about me. The land was divided by long rows of trees, not regularly planted but naturally growing; there was great plenty of grass, and several fields of oats. I walked very circumspectly, for fear of being surprised, or suddenly shot with an arrow from behind or on either side. I fell into a beaten road, where I saw many tracks of human feet, and some of cows, but most of horses.

At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to observe them better. Some of them coming forward near the place where I lay gave me an opportunity of distinctly marking their form. Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs and the fore parts of their legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour. They had no tails. They climbed high trees as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminating in sharp points and hooked, and would often spring, and bound, and leap, with prodigious agility. The females were not so large as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor anything more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, and their dugs hung between their forefeet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked. The hair of both sexes was of several colours, brown, red, black and yellow. I tried them for pace, as I had tried everyone since the Reach, and I could not do it: they were not at any pace, and they were at all of them in the space of a breath; one leapt, and was still, and leapt, as a clock does whose escapement has been taken out. Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy.

So that, thinking I had seen enough, full of contempt and aversion, I got up and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct me to the cabin of some Indian. I had not got far when I met one of these creatures full in my way, and coming up directly to me. The ugly monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways every feature of his visage, and stared, as at an object he had never seen before; then, approaching nearer, lifted up his fore-paw, whether out of curiosity or mischief I could not tell; but I drew my hanger, and gave him a good blow with the flat side of it, for I durst not strike with the edge, fearing the inhabitants might be provoked against me, if they should come to know that I had killed or maimed any of their cattle. I have thought since, and I put it down for what it is worth, that the paw was coming to my wrist. When the beast felt the smart he drew back and roared so loud that a herd of at least forty came flocking about me from the next field, howling and making odious faces; but I ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it, kept them off by waving my hanger. Several of this cursed brood, getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head; however, I escaped pretty well by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with the filth which fell about me on every side.

In the midst of this distress I observed them all to run away on a sudden as fast as they could; at which I ventured to leave the tree and pursue the road, wondering what it was that could put them into this fright. But looking on my left hand, I saw a horse walking softly in the field; which my persecutors having sooner discovered was the cause of their flight. I knew him for what he was before I knew him for a horse. He walked at a pace. It was not mine; I put it at forty-four. After that field it was like a clock coming through a room of watches.

The horse started a little when he came near me, but soon recovering himself, looked full in my face with manifest tokens of wonder; he viewed my hands and feet, walking round me several times. I would have pursued my journey, but he placed himself directly in the way, yet looking with a very mild aspect, never offering the least violence. We stood gazing at each other for some time; at last I took the boldness to reach my hand towards his neck, with a design to stroke it, using the common style and whistle of jockeys when they are going to handle a strange horse. But this animal seemed to receive my civilities with disdain, shook his head, and bent his brows, softly raising up his right fore-foot to remove my hand. Then he neighed three or four times, but in so different a cadence that I almost began to think he was speaking to himself, in some language of his own.

While he and I were thus employed, another horse came up, who, applying himself to the first in a very formal manner, they gently struck each other's right hoof before, neighing several times by turns and varying the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate. I took the stroke for a salute. It was a counting: each gave the other one, and the two agreed, and that was the whole of the greeting; it is the only salute I have met in which nothing is said that might not be true. They went some paces off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side backward and forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but often turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might not escape.

I was amazed to see such actions and behaviour in brute beasts, and concluded with myself that if the inhabitants of this country were endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth. This thought gave me so much comfort that I resolved to go forward until I could discover some house or village, or meet with any of the natives, leaving the two horses to discourse together as they pleased. But the first, who was a dapple gray, observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so expressive a tone that I fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon I turned back and came near to him to expect his farther commands, but concealing my fear as much as I could, for I began to be in some pain how this adventure might terminate.

The two horses came up close to me, looking with great earnestness upon my face and hands. The gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his right fore-hoof, and discomposed it so much that I was forced to adjust it better by taking it off and settling it again; whereat both he and his companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprised. The latter felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about me, they both looked with new signs of wonder. The gray took my right hand between his hoof and his pastern, at the wrist, and squeezed it so hard that I was forced to roar; he was counting me. I was sixty-eight. When he let go he looked at the bay, and the bay struck his hoof, and they neighed; and after that they both touched me with all possible tenderness. I think now that what they said to one another was that this Yahoo had a beat. They were under great perplexity about my shoes and stockings, which they felt very often, neighing to each other, and using various gestures, not unlike those of a philosopher when he would attempt to solve some new and difficult phenomenon.

Upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and rational, so acute and judicious, that I at last concluded they must needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some design, and seeing a stranger in the way, resolved to divert themselves with him; or perhaps were really amazed at the sight of a man so very different in habit, feature and complexion from those who might probably live in so remote a climate. Upon the strength of this reasoning I ventured to address them in the following manner: "Gentlemen, if you be conjurers, as I have good cause to believe, you can understand my language; therefore I make bold to let your worships know that I am a poor distressed Englishman, driven by his misfortunes upon your coast; and I entreat one of you to let me ride upon his back, as if he were a real horse, to some house or village where I can be relieved. In return of which favour I will make you a present of this knife and bracelet," taking them out of my pocket. The two creatures stood silent while I spoke, seeming to listen with great attention, and when I had ended they neighed frequently towards each other, as if they were engaged in serious conversation. I plainly observed that their language expressed the passions very well, and the words might, with little pains, be resolved into an alphabet more easily than the Chinese.

I could frequently distinguish the word Yahoo, which was repeated by each of them several times; and although it was impossible for me to conjecture what it meant, yet while the two horses were busy in conversation I endeavoured to practise this word upon my tongue; and as soon as they were silent I boldly pronounced Yahoo in a loud voice, imitating at the same time, as near as I could, the neighing of a horse; at which they were both visibly surprised; and the gray repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent; wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of perfection. Then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but, reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so well as in the former; but after two or three farther trials I had better fortune; and they both appeared amazed at my capacity. The first word they said with a catch in it, as a man says a name he would rather not; the second level, in four notes, at the pace of a walk.

After some farther discourse, which I then conjectured might relate to me, the two friends took their leaves, with the same compliment of striking each other's hoof; and the gray made me signs that I should walk before him; wherein I thought it prudent to comply till I could find a better director. When I offered to slacken my pace he would cry hhuun, hhuun. I guessed his meaning, and gave him to understand, as well as I could, that I was weary, and not able to walk faster; upon which he would stand a while to let me rest. It was a number, I found, and not a cry: he said it at the pace he walked, forty-four to the minute, and when I slackened he said it faster; I could not walk at it, being sixty, and it was like walking in front of a bell. When I was weary he stood. I record that the first person in that country to take notice that I was tired was a horse.

## Chapter 31 · The author is conducted by a Houyhnhnm to his house. The house described. The author takes a Yahoo's wrist. The food of the Houyhnhnms, and the author's. A table that keeps one count; and a night between two kinds of sound.

Having travelled about three miles, we came to a long kind of building, made of timber stuck in the ground and wattled across; the roof was low and covered with straw. I now began to be a little comforted, and took out some toys which travellers usually carry for presents to the savage Indians of America and other parts, in hopes the people of the house would be thereby encouraged to receive me kindly. The horse made me a sign to go in first. It was a large room with a smooth clay floor, and a rack and manger extending the whole length on one side. There were three nags and two mares, not eating, but some of them sitting down upon their hams, which I very much wondered at; but wondered more to see the rest employed in domestic business; these seemed but ordinary cattle. When the gray came in they stood, all five, and I could not see who had begun it; and when he neighed in a style of authority and received answers, they sat, together, and no one had given the sign. However, this confirmed my first opinion, that a people who could so far civilize brute animals must needs excel in wisdom all the nations of the world.

Beyond this room there were three others, reaching the length of the house, to which you passed through three doors opposite to each other, in the manner of a vista. We went through the second room towards the third. Here the gray walked in first, beckoning me to attend; I waited in the second room, and got ready my presents for the master and mistress of the house; they were two knives, three bracelets of false pearls, a small looking-glass and a bead necklace. The horse neighed three or four times, and I waited to hear some answers in a human voice, but I heard no other returns than in the same dialect, only one or two a little shriller than his. I began to think that this house must belong to some person of great note among them, because there appeared so much ceremony before I could gain admittance. But that a man of quality should be served all by horses was beyond my comprehension. I feared my brain was disturbed by my sufferings and misfortunes. I roused myself, and looked about me in the room where I was left alone: this was furnished like the first, only after a more elegant manner. I rubbed my eyes often, but the same objects still occurred. I pinched my arms and sides to awake myself, hoping I might be in a dream. I then absolutely concluded that all these appearances could be nothing else but necromancy and magic. But I had no time to pursue these reflections, for the gray came to the door and made me a sign to follow him into the third room, where I saw a very comely mare, together with a colt and foal, sitting on their haunches upon mats of straw, not unartfully made, and perfectly neat and clean.

The mare soon after my entrance rose from her mat, and coming up close, after having nicely observed my hands and face, gave me a most contemptuous look; and turning to the horse, I heard the word Yahoo often repeated betwixt them; the meaning of which word I could not then comprehend, although it was the first I had learned to pronounce. But I was soon better informed, to my everlasting mortification; for the horse, beckoning to me with his head, and repeating the hhuun, hhuun, as he did upon the road, which I understood was to attend him, led me out into a kind of court, where was another building at some distance from the house. Here we entered, and I saw three of those detestable creatures which I first met after my landing, feeding upon roots, and the flesh of some animals, which I afterwards found to be that of asses and dogs, and now and then a cow dead by accident or disease. They were all tied by the neck with strong withes fastened to a beam; they held their food between the claws of their forefeet, and tore it with their teeth.

The master horse ordered a sorrel nag, one of his servants, to untie the largest of these animals and take him into the yard. The beast and I were brought close together, and by our countenances diligently compared, both by master and servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word Yahoo. My horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I observed in this abominable animal a perfect human figure: the face of it indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed, the lips large and the mouth wide; but these differences are common to all savage nations, where the lineaments of the countenance are distorted by the natives suffering their infants to lie grovelling on the earth, or by carrying them on their backs, nuzzling with their face against the mothers' shoulders. The forefeet of the Yahoo differed from my hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs. There was the same resemblance between our feet, with the same differences, which I knew very well, though the horses did not, because of my shoes and stockings; the same in every part of our bodies, except as to hairiness and colour, which I have already described.

I took its wrist. It let me; it did not know the gesture, and did not mind, and the sorrel held it by the withe. There was hair on the inner wrist as on the back of the hand, and I parted it with my thumb, and the plate was there, in its place under the hair, as it is in me. I held it the full minute. It went from forty to a hundred and sixty and back; in the middle of the minute it yawned, and was ninety. It was a governor with nobody to keep it. I had thought that I knew what the horror would be, and I had been wrong about where it would be, which was in the thumb.

The great difficulty that seemed to stick with the two horses was to see the rest of my body so very different from that of a Yahoo, for which I was obliged to my clothes, whereof they had no conception. The sorrel nag offered me a root, which he held (after their manner, as we shall describe in its proper place) between his hoof and pastern; I took it in my hand, and having smelt it, returned it to him again as civilly as I could. He brought out of the Yahoos' kennel a piece of ass's flesh; but it smelt so offensively that I turned from it with loathing; he then threw it to the Yahoo, by whom it was greedily devoured. He afterwards showed me a wisp of hay and a fetlock full of oats; but I shook my head to signify that neither of these were food for me. And indeed I now apprehended that I must absolutely starve if I did not get to some of my own species; for as to those filthy Yahoos, although there were few greater lovers of mankind at that time than myself, yet I confess I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near them the more hateful they grew, while I stayed in that country. This the master horse observed by my behaviour, and therefore sent the Yahoo back to his kennel. He then put his fore-hoof to his mouth, at which I was much surprised, although he did it with ease, and with a motion that appeared perfectly natural, and made other signs to know what I would eat; but I could not return him such an answer as he was able to apprehend; and if he had understood me, I did not see how it was possible to contrive any way for finding myself nourishment. While we were thus engaged I observed a cow passing by, whereupon I pointed to her, and expressed a desire to go and milk her. This had its effect, for he led me back into the house, and ordered a mare-servant to open a room, where a good store of milk lay in earthen and wooden vessels, after a very orderly and cleanly manner. She gave me a large bowlful, of which I drank very heartily, and found myself well refreshed.

About noon I saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle drawn like a sledge by four Yahoos. There was in it an old steed, who seemed to be of quality; he alighted with his hind-feet forward, having by accident got a hurt in his left fore-foot. He came to dine with our horse, who received him with great civility. They dined in the best room, and had oats boiled in milk for the second course, which the old horse ate warm, but the rest cold. Their mangers were placed circular in the middle of the room, and divided into several partitions, round which they sat on their haunches upon bosses of straw. In the middle was a large rack, with angles answering to every partition of the manger; so that each horse and mare ate their own hay and their own mash of oats and milk with much decency and regularity. The behaviour of the young colt and foal appeared very modest, and that of the master and mistress extremely cheerful and complaisant to their guest. The gray ordered me to stand by him; and much discourse passed between him and his friend concerning me, as I found by the stranger's often looking on me, and the frequent repetition of the word Yahoo.

They ate together. Heads down and up, seven at the manger, on one count, as men row; nobody had said it, and nobody was keeping it. The old steed's left fore-foot was hurt, and I noticed over the oats that the whole table was a little slow for the length of the course, as men walk with a lame one: he was forty-three, and they were forty-three, and no one referred to it. There was no drum in the room, and no flapper, and no hair across any wrist; there was nothing to keep it, and it was kept. I stood by the gray with my own count running somewhere in the sixties, and I felt it begin to go down in me, like water finding its level in a pipe.

I happened to wear my gloves, which the master gray observing seemed perplexed, discovering signs of wonder what I had done to my forefeet. He put his hoof three or four times to them, as if he would signify that I should reduce them to their former shape, which I presently did, pulling off both my gloves and putting them into my pocket. His hoof had come to the glove at the wrist, as a man knocks upon a door that has been shut in his face; I understood that he wished to reach the plate. This occasioned farther talk; and I saw the company was pleased with my behaviour, whereof I soon found the good effects. I was ordered to speak the few words I understood; and while they were at dinner the master taught me the names for oats, milk, fire, water and some others, which I could readily pronounce after him, having from my youth a great facility in learning languages.

When dinner was done, the master horse took me aside, and by signs and words made me understand the concern he was in that I had nothing to eat. Oats in their tongue are called hlunnh. This word I pronounced two or three times; for although I had refused them at first, yet upon second thoughts I considered that I could contrive to make of them a kind of bread, which might be sufficient, with milk, to keep me alive till I could make my escape to some other country, and to creatures of my own species. The horse immediately ordered a white mare servant of his family to bring me a good quantity of oats in a sort of wooden tray. These I heated before the fire as well as I could, and rubbed them till the husks came off, which I made a shift to winnow from the grain. I ground and beat them between two stones; then took water, and made them into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire and ate warm with milk. It was at first a very insipid diet, though common enough in many parts of Europe, but grew tolerable by time; and having been often reduced to hard fare in my life, this was not the first experiment I had made how easily nature is satisfied.

And I cannot but observe that I never had one hour's sickness while I stayed in this island. It is true I sometimes made a shift to catch a rabbit or bird by springs made of Yahoo's hairs; and I often gathered wholesome herbs, which I boiled and ate as salads with my bread; and now and then, for a rarity, I made a little butter, and drank the whey. I was at first at a great loss for salt, but custom soon reconciled me to the want of it; and I am confident that the frequent use of salt among us is an effect of luxury, and was first introduced only as a provocative to drink, except where it is necessary for preserving flesh in long voyages or in places remote from great markets; for we observe no animal to be fond of it but man, and as to myself, when I left this country it was a great while before I could endure the taste of it in anything that I ate. I was never above fifty-five, in the three years, after the first month. I put it to the oats. I did not say, as I should now, that I put it to the table.

This is enough to say upon the subject of my diet, wherewith other travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally concerned whether we fare well or ill. However, it was necessary to mention this matter, lest the world should think it impossible that I could find sustenance for three years in such a country and among such inhabitants.

When it grew towards evening, the master horse ordered a place for me to lodge in; it was but six yards from the house, and separated from the stable of the Yahoos. Here I got some straw, and covering myself with my own clothes, slept very sound. But I was in a short time better accommodated, as the reader shall know hereafter, when I come to treat more particularly about my way of living. The first night the kennel was not quiet; it was never quiet; it went all night like a bag of rats. On the other side, six yards off, was a sound I had no word for, five persons asleep on one count. I lay between them and could not sleep until I had chosen which to keep time to. I chose the house.

## Chapter 32 · The author studies to learn the language, and his master assists him. The language described, and spoken at forty-four. A bare wrist, and a hair that is called a Yahoo's. The author gives his master a short account of his voyage, at sixty-four.

My principal endeavour was to learn the language, which my master (for so I shall henceforth call him), and his children, and every servant of his house were desirous to teach me; for they looked upon it as a prodigy that a brute animal should discover such marks of a rational creature. I pointed to every thing, and inquired the name of it, which I wrote down in my journal-book when I was alone, and corrected my bad accent by desiring those of the family to pronounce it often. In this employment a sorrel nag, one of the under-servants, was very ready to assist me.

In speaking they pronounced through the nose and throat, and their language approaches nearest to the High-Dutch, or German, of any I know in Europe, but is much more graceful and significant. The emperor Charles V made almost the same observation when he said that if he were to speak to his horse it should be in High-Dutch. It is a language that is said at a pace. Every sentence of it goes in a measure of four, as if for walking, with a rest after the fourth, and the rests, I found, are where they agree; I was five weeks in understanding that they were not pauses for thought. It has no word for hurry. It has a dozen words for what I should call degrees of keeping time, and not one for being late, which is the commonest word in mine.

The curiosity and impatience of my master were so great that he spent many hours of his leisure to instruct me. He was convinced (as he afterwards told me) that I must be a Yahoo; but my teachableness, civility and cleanliness astonished him, which were qualities altogether opposite to those animals. He took my wrist with the hoof each morning for the first month, as a man looks at the sky, and I was sixty-two, sixty-four, sixty-one. A Yahoo is never the same twice, and I was, within three; and he said that this was the first Yahoo he had heard of with a character.

He was most perplexed about my clothes, reasoning sometimes with himself whether they were a part of my body; for I never pulled them off till the family were asleep, and got them on before they waked in the morning. My master was eager to learn whence I came, how I acquired those appearances of reason which I discovered in all my actions, and to know my story from my own mouth, which he hoped he should soon do by the great proficiency I made in learning and pronouncing their words and sentences. To help my memory I formed all I learned into the English alphabet, and writ the words down with the translations. This last, after some time, I ventured to do in my master's presence. It cost me much trouble to explain to him what I was doing; for the inhabitants have not the least idea of books or literature. A thing said once is, among them, said to all, and I have wondered since what they would have done with a column.

In about ten weeks' time I was able to understand most of his questions, and in three months could give him some tolerable answers. He was extremely curious to know from what part of the country I came, and how I was taught to imitate a rational creature; because the Yahoos (whom he saw I exactly resembled in my head, hands and face, that were only visible), with some appearance of cunning, and the strongest disposition to mischief, were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutes. I answered that I came over the sea, from a far place, with many others of my own kind, in a great hollow vessel made of the bodies of trees; that my companions forced me to land on this coast, and then left me to shift for myself.

It was with some difficulty, and by the help of many signs, that I brought him to understand me. He replied that I must needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not; for they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood. This last he had from the elders, as a thing Yahoos do, which is known by the count going up; and mine had not gone up. It was sixty-four, as it was when I told the truth, and he had it from the hoof. So I was mistaken. He knew it was impossible that there could be a country beyond the sea, or that a parcel of brutes could move a wooden vessel whither they pleased upon water. He was sure no Houyhnhnm alive could make such a vessel, nor would trust Yahoos to manage it.

The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and in its etymology the perfection of nature. I told my master that I was at a loss for expression, but would improve as fast as I could, and hoped in a short time I should be able to tell him wonders. He was pleased to direct his own mare, his colt and foal, and the servants of the family to take all opportunities of instructing me; and every day, for two or three hours, he was at the same pains himself. Several horses and mares of quality in the neighbourhood came often to our house, upon the report spread of a wonderful Yahoo that could speak like a Houyhnhnm, and seemed, in his words and actions, to discover some glimmerings of reason. These delighted to converse with me; they put many questions, and received such answers as I was able to return. By all these advantages I made so great a progress that in five months from my arrival I understood whatever was spoken, and could express myself tolerably well. The last thing I learned was not a word, but to say them at forty-four.

The Houyhnhnms who came to visit my master out of a design of seeing and talking with me could hardly believe me to be a right Yahoo, because my body had a different covering from others of my kind. They were astonished to observe me without the usual hair or skin, except on my head, face and hands; but I discovered that secret to my master upon an accident which happened about a fortnight before.

I have already told the reader that every night, when the family were gone to bed, it was my custom to strip, and cover myself with my clothes. It happened one morning early that my master sent for me by the sorrel nag, who was his valet. When he came I was fast asleep, my clothes fallen off on one side, and my shirt above my waist. I awaked at the noise he made, and observed him to deliver his message in some disorder; after which he went to my master, and in a great fright gave him a very confused account of what he had seen. This I presently discovered; for, going as soon as I was dressed to pay my attendance upon his honour, he asked me the meaning of what his servant had reported, that I was not the same thing when I slept as I appeared to be at other times; that his valet assured him some part of me was white, some yellow, at least not so white, and some brown.

I had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish myself, as much as possible, from that cursed race of Yahoos; but now I found it in vain to do so any longer. Besides, I considered that my clothes and shoes would soon wear out, which already were in a declining condition, and must be supplied by some contrivance from the hides of Yahoos or other brutes; whereby the whole secret would be known. I therefore told my master that in the country whence I came, those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air, both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, I would give him immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me, only desiring his excuse if I did not expose those parts that nature taught us to conceal. He said my discourse was all very strange, but especially the last part; for he could not understand why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but however I might do as I pleased. Whereupon I first unbuttoned my coat, and pulled it off. I did the same with my waistcoat. I drew off my shoes, stockings and breeches. I let my shirt down to my waist, and drew up the bottom, fastening it like a girdle about my middle to hide my nakedness.

My master observed the whole performance with great signs of curiosity and admiration. He took up all my clothes in his pastern, one piece after another, and examined them diligently; he then stroked my body very gently, and looked round me several times; after which he said it was plain I must be a perfect Yahoo, but that I differed very much from the rest of my species in the softness, whiteness and smoothness of my skin, my want of hair in several parts of my body, the shape and shortness of my claws behind and before, and my affectation of walking continually on my two hinder feet. He desired to see no more, and gave me leave to put on my clothes again, for I was shuddering with cold. The last thing he did, before I did, was to take my wrist in his hoof, bare, with no glove and no linen between, as he had wished on the first day. He held it a long while, and the cord with it. I was fifty-eight. He asked what the black thing was. I had by then perhaps four hundred words, and none for it. I said that it was a hair, and of one of my kind. He said, "A Yahoo's," and I did not correct him.

I expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of Yahoo, an odious animal for which I had so utter a hatred and contempt. I begged he would forbear applying that word to me, and make the same order in his family and among his friends whom he suffered to see me. I requested likewise that the secret of my having a false covering to my body might be known to none but himself, at least as long as my present clothing should last; for as to what the sorrel nag, his valet, had observed, his honour might command him to conceal it.

All this my master very graciously consented to; and thus the secret was kept till my clothes began to wear out, which I was forced to supply by several contrivances that shall hereafter be mentioned. In the meantime he desired I would go on with my utmost diligence to learn their language, because he was more astonished at my capacity for speech and reason than at the figure of my body, whether it were covered or not; adding that he waited with some impatience to hear the wonders which I promised to tell him. From thenceforward he doubled the pains he had been at to instruct me: he brought me into all company, and made them treat me with civility; because, as he told them privately, this would put me into good humour and make me more diverting.

Every day, when I waited on him, beside the trouble he was at in teaching, he would ask me several questions concerning myself, which I answered as well as I could, and by these means he had already received some general ideas, though very imperfect. It would be tedious to relate the several steps by which I advanced to a more regular conversation; but the first account I gave of myself in any order and length was to this purpose: That I came from a very far country, as I already had attempted to tell him, with about fifty more of my own species; that we travelled upon the seas in a great hollow vessel made of wood, and larger than his honour's house. I described the ship to him in the best terms I could, and explained, by the help of my handkerchief displayed, how it was driven forward by the wind. That upon a quarrel among us I was set on shore on this coast, where I walked forward, without knowing whither, till he delivered me from the persecution of those execrable Yahoos.

He asked me who made the ship, and how it was possible that the Houyhnhnms of my country would leave it to the management of brutes. My answer was that I durst proceed no further in my relation unless he would give me his word and honour that he would not be offended, and then I would tell him the wonders I had so often promised. He agreed; and I went on by assuring him that the ship was made by creatures like myself, who in all the countries I had travelled, as well as in my own, were the only governing rational animals; and that upon my arrival hither I was as much astonished to see the Houyhnhnms act like rational beings as he or his friends could be in finding some marks of reason in a creature he was pleased to call a Yahoo, to which I owned my resemblance in every part, but could not account for their degenerate and brutal nature.

I said farther that if good fortune ever restored me to my native country, to relate my travels hither, as I resolved to do, everybody would believe that I said the thing that was not, that I invented the story out of my own head; and (with all possible respect to himself, his family and friends, and under his promise of not being offended) our countrymen would hardly think it probable that a Houyhnhnm should be the presiding creature of a nation, and a Yahoo the brute. I said it at sixty-four. He took it, and it was sixty-four, and he said that he saw I believed what I said, which was a thing he could see, and that he did not see how I could.

## Chapter 33 · The Houyhnhnms' notion of truth and falsehood: a country of one count has no place for doubt. The author is asked to show a lie, and does it once, with the master's hoof on his wrist. The tyranny of count. The author gives a more particular account of himself, and of the crew he took on.

My master heard me with great appearances of uneasiness in his countenance, because doubting, or not believing, are so little known in this country that the inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under such circumstances. I should say what it is, in a country of one count. If a thing is said, and the hearer's count does not move, it is true; if it moves, it is not, or the speaker is mistaken. There is no third place for the hearer to stand, and my master, who could not find one, stood a long while in the doorway where it should have been, a little off the count. He was forty-seven. I had not before seen a Houyhnhnm off the count by more than one.

And I remember, in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment. For he argued thus: that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now, if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated, because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long. And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practised, among human creatures.

He asked me to show him. I was unwilling; it was, I believe, the only time I have lied to a Houyhnhnm, and I did it at his request, with his hoof on my wrist, bare, in the afternoon, in the yard. I said that I was a horse. It was sixty-four, and then it was sixty-eight, and he held it a long while, with his head a little on one side, as he held a bird's egg once to the light. "It is small," he said. "I had thought it would be large." He took the hoof away and looked at it. He said that he understood now what the elders meant, and that he wished he did not; and for the rest of that day he spoke to me only when I spoke to him.

That night the house was five persons on one count and the master a beat behind them, in the third room, awake. I heard it from the straw; it is not a thing I had heard before, and it went on until nearly morning. In the morning he was back on it, and no one referred to it, which is how I knew that they had all heard.

To return from this digression. When I asserted that the Yahoos were the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was altogether past his conception, he desired to know whether we had Houyhnhnms among us, and what was their employment. I told him we had great numbers; that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in winter were kept in houses with hay and oats, where Yahoo servants were employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their feet, serve them with food and make their beds. "I understand you well," said my master: "it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters; I heartily wish our Yahoos would be so tractable." I begged his honour would please to excuse me from proceeding any further, because I was very certain that the account he expected from me would be highly displeasing. But he insisted in commanding me to let him know the best and the worst. I told him he should be obeyed.

I owned that the Houyhnhnms among us, whom we called horses, were the most generous and comely animals we had; that they excelled in strength and swiftness; and when they belonged to persons of quality were employed in travelling, racing, or drawing chariots; they were treated with much kindness and care, till they fell into diseases or became foundered in the feet; but then they were sold, and used to all kind of drudgery till they died; after which their skins were stripped, and sold for what they were worth, and their bodies left to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey. But the common race of horses had not so good fortune, being kept by farmers and carriers and other mean people, who put them to greater labour, and fed them worse. I described, as well as I could, our way of riding; the shape and use of a bridle, a saddle, a spur and a whip; of harness and wheels. I added that we fastened plates of a certain hard substance, called iron, at the bottom of their feet, to preserve their hoofs from being broken by the stony ways on which we often travelled. I said also that a horse, ridden, goes at the count of the man upon him, and that the spur is the way the count is given. He said nothing for a long time. Then he said, quite softly, that he had supposed I was telling him of a tyranny of strength, and that it was a tyranny of count.

My master, after some expressions of great indignation, wondered how we dared to venture upon a Houyhnhnm's back; for he was sure that the weakest servant in his house would be able to shake off the strongest Yahoo, or by lying down and rolling on his back squeeze the brute to death. I answered that our horses were trained up, from three or four years old, to the several uses we intended them for; that if any of them proved intolerably vicious they were employed for carriages; that they were severely beaten, while they were young, for any mischievous tricks; that the males, designed for the common use of riding or draught, were generally castrated about two years after their birth, to take down their spirits, and make them more tame and gentle; that they were indeed sensible of rewards and punishments; but his honour would please to consider that they had not the least tincture of reason, any more than the Yahoos in this country.

It put me to the pains of many circumlocutions to give my master a right idea of what I spoke; for their language does not abound in variety of words, because their wants and passions are fewer than among us. But it is impossible to express his noble resentment at our savage treatment of the Houyhnhnm race; particularly after I had explained the manner and use of castrating horses among us, to hinder them from propagating their kind, and to render them more servile. He said that if it were possible there could be any country where Yahoos alone were endued with reason, they certainly must be the governing animal, because reason in time will always prevail against brutal strength. But, considering the frame of our bodies, and especially of mine, he thought no creature of equal bulk was so ill-contrived for employing that reason in the common offices of life; whereupon he desired to know whether those among whom I lived resembled me, or the Yahoos of his country.

I assured him that I was as well shaped as most of my age; but the younger, and the females, were much more soft and tender, and the skins of the latter generally as white as milk. He said I differed indeed from other Yahoos, being much more cleanly, and not altogether so deformed; but, in point of real advantage, he thought I differed for the worse: that my nails were of no use either to my fore or hinder feet; as to my forefeet, he could not properly call them by that name, for he never observed me to walk upon them; that they were too soft to bear the ground; that I generally went with them uncovered; neither was the covering I sometimes wore on them of the same shape, or so strong as that on my feet behind: that I could not walk with any security, for if either of my hinder feet slipped I must inevitably fall.

He then began to find fault with other parts of my body: the flatness of my face, the prominence of my nose, my eyes placed directly in front, so that I could not look on either side without turning my head; that I was not able to feed myself without lifting one of my forefeet to my mouth, and therefore nature had placed those joints to answer that necessity. He knew not what could be the use of those several clefts and divisions in my feet behind; that these were too soft to bear the hardness and sharpness of stones without a covering made from the skin of some other brute; that my whole body wanted a fence against heat and cold, which I was forced to put on and off every day, with tediousness and trouble. He added, mildly, that I had one good part, which was the inner wrist, being bare, and easy to find; and that he supposed nature had meant it. And lastly, that he observed every animal in this country naturally to abhor the Yahoos, whom the weaker avoided, and the stronger drove from them. So that, supposing us to have the gift of reason, he could not see how it were possible to cure that natural antipathy which every creature discovered against us; nor consequently how we could tame and render them serviceable. However, he would, as he said, debate the matter no farther, because he was more desirous to know my own story, the country where I was born, and the several actions and events of my life before I came hither.

I assured him how extremely desirous I was that he should be satisfied on every point; but I doubted much whether it would be possible for me to explain myself on several subjects whereof his honour could have no conception, because I saw nothing in his country to which I could resemble them; that, however, I would do my best, and strive to express myself by similitudes, humbly desiring his assistance when I wanted proper words; which he was pleased to promise me.

I said my birth was of honest parents, in an island called England; which was remote from his country as many days' journey as the strongest of his honour's servants could travel in the annual course of the sun; that I was bred a surgeon, whose trade it is to cure wounds and hurts in the body, gotten by accident or violence; that my country was governed by a female man, whom we called queen. I said also that a surgeon is one who takes the count of the sick and tells them what it means. He asked whether the count was the same twice. I said that in the sick it never was. He said that I had then been bred, it appeared, to the trade of Yahoos. I said that I left it to get riches, whereby I might maintain myself and family when I should return; that in my last voyage I was commander of the ship, and had about fifty Yahoos under me, many of which died at sea, and I was forced to supply them by others picked out from several nations; that our ship was twice in danger of being sunk, the first time by a great storm, and the second by striking against a rock.

Here my master interposed, by asking me how I could persuade strangers, out of different countries, to venture with me, after the losses I had sustained and the hazards I had run. I said they were fellows of desperate fortunes, forced to fly from the places of their birth on account of their poverty or their crimes. Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes, or for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy; and most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native countries, for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and therefore they were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in other places.

During this discourse my master was pleased to interrupt me several times. I had made use of many circumlocutions in describing to him the nature of the several crimes for which most of our crew had been forced to fly their country. This labour took up several days' conversation before he was able to comprehend me. He was wholly at a loss to know what could be the use or necessity of practising those vices. To clear up which, I endeavoured to give some ideas of the desire of power and riches; of the terrible effects of lust, intemperance, malice and envy. All this I was forced to define and describe by putting cases and making suppositions. After which, like one whose imagination was struck with something never seen or heard of before, he would lift up his eyes with amazement and indignation. Power, government, war, law, punishment, and a thousand other things had no terms wherein that language could express them, which made the difficulty almost insuperable to give my master any conception of what I meant. I gave him, for each, a count to stand beside: that a crime was a going up that was kept up; that a punishment was a hand that held another down to a count not its own; that a war was ten thousand going up on one signal. He lifted his eyes, and for the length of the sentence was forty-eight.

But being of an excellent understanding, much improved by contemplation and converse, he at last arrived at a competent knowledge of what human nature, in our parts of the world, is capable to perform, and desired I would give him some particular account of that land which we call Europe, but especially of my own country. On the last evening of that conversation he asked me to leave my wrist bare. I did. He sat with his hoof an inch from it, not touching, for the length of an hour; and said at the end that he was grateful; and I think now that he was putting something away.

## Chapter 34 · The author, at his master's command, informs him of the state of England. The causes of war among the princes of Europe, and the wrist of a soldier. The master finds that he is pleased, and is forty-eight. The law, and the counts of lawyers, which do not go up.

The reader may please to observe that the following extract of many conversations I had with my master contains a summary of the most material points which were discoursed at several times for above two years; his honour often desiring fuller satisfaction as I farther improved in the Houyhnhnm tongue. I laid before him, as well as I could, the whole state of Europe; I discoursed of trade and manufactures, of arts and sciences; and the answers I gave to all the questions he made, as they arose upon several subjects, were a fund of conversation not to be exhausted. But I shall here only set down the substance of what passed between us concerning my own country, reducing it in order as well as I can, without any regard to time or other circumstances, while I strictly adhere to truth. My only concern is that I shall hardly be able to do justice to my master's arguments and expressions, which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our barbarous English. It is barbarous, I find, chiefly in being quick. I have set his sentences down at sixty, for the reader's convenience; they were forty-four; and the reasoning in them is a third too fast in my English, and loses a little at that speed, as reason does.

In obedience, therefore, to his honour's commands, I related to him the Revolution under the Prince of Orange; the long war with France, entered into by the said prince, and renewed by his successor, the present queen, wherein the greatest powers of Christendom were engaged, and which still continued. I computed, at his request, that about a million of Yahoos might have been killed in the whole progress of it, and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk.

He asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another. I answered they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red or gray; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.

Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrels with another for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong, and sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the things which we want, and we both fight till they take ours or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of a war to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is justifiable to enter into war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for us, or a territory of land that would render our dominions round and complete. If a prince sends forces into a nation where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living. Alliance by blood or marriage is a frequent cause of war between princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the greater their disposition to quarrel; poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. For these reasons the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all others, because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill, in cold blood, as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. I did not tell him that a soldier's wrist at the work is sixty-one, which is the thing that is meant by cold blood; I knew, from another country, what a ledger would make of it.

"What you have told me," said my master, "upon the subject of war, does indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to; however, it is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and that nature has left you utterly incapable of doing much mischief. For, your mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent. Then as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they are so short and tender that one of our Yahoos would drive a dozen of yours before him. And therefore, in recounting the numbers of those who have been killed in battle, I cannot but think you have said the thing which is not." He had his hoof on my wrist while he said it, and it had not moved; so he did not say that I lied. He said that what I said was not so, and for him the two were the same thing, and he had not the second.

I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights; ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses' feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators.

I was going on to more particulars when my master commanded me silence. He had not taken the hoof away. I was a hundred and four, which was what I had been while I described the guns, and I noticed it; I had not, I think, in my life told a true thing at that speed. "You are not afraid," he said. "You are pleased." I did not answer him, and he took the answer. He said that whoever understood the nature of Yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his ears, being used to such abominable words, might, by degrees, admit them with less detestation: that although he hated the Yahoos of this country, he no more blamed them for their odious qualities than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident that, instead of reason, we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill-shapen body, not only larger but more distorted. He was forty-eight, and held it.

He added that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both in this and some former discourses. There was another point which a little perplexed him at present. I had informed him that some of our crew left their country on account of being ruined by law; that I had already explained the meaning of the word; but he was at a loss how it should come to pass that the law, which was intended for every man's preservation, should be any man's ruin. Therefore he desired to be further satisfied what I meant by law, and the dispensers thereof, according to the present practice in my own country; because he thought nature and reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in showing us what we ought to do and what to avoid.

I assured his honour that law was a science in which I had not much conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some injustices that had been done me; however, I would give him all the satisfaction I was able. I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now in this case I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is to gain over my adversary's lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary; and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench.

I told him that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing anything unbecoming their nature or their office. It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before may legally be done again; and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.

In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause, but are loud, violent and tedious in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned, they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my cow, but whether the said cow were red or black; her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty or thirty years come to an issue. It is likewise to be observed that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off.

The master asked whether the counts of these lawyers went up. I said that I supposed they did, at first; and that after some years in the practice they did not, and that I had once taken a serjeant's wrist at a dinner, and found it sixty-one throughout a speech in which he proved that a man's house was not his own. He took his hoof from my wrist then, and looked at it for some time, and I understood that I had put a question into his country that it had not had. I said that I had never been able to do it myself. That was true, and he had it from the hoof, and it did not seem to help.

In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law. Here my master interposing said that it was a pity that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge. In answer to which I assured his honour that in all points out of their own trade they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession.

## Chapter 35 · A continuation of the state of England under Queen Anne. Money, and the poor who are ridden by the clock; wine that takes the count off; physicians who read the count and send in a bill; the character of a first minister, whose count tells you nothing; and the nobility. The author, at fifty-two, is found not to mind.

My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I meant in saying they did it for hire. Whereupon I was at much pains to describe to him the use of money, the materials it was made of, and the value of the metals: that when a Yahoo had got a great store of this precious substance he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to; the finest clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly meats and drinks, and have his choice of the most beautiful females. Therefore, since money alone was able to perform all these feats, our Yahoos thought they could never have enough of it to spend or to save, as they found themselves inclined, from their natural bent either to profusion or avarice; that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man's labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former; that the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages, to make a few live plentifully.

I added that a man who is hired goes at the count of the man who hires him, and that the wage is what is paid for the count. The master asked whether our poor were then ridden. I said, in a manner, by the clock. He asked who held the spur. I said that no one held it; that it was the want of the thing in the other hand. He did not say that he understood. He said that he supposed it was a more economical arrangement than a spur.

I enlarged myself much on these, and many other particulars to the same purpose; but his honour was still to seek; for he went upon a supposition that all animals had a title to their share in the productions of the earth, and especially those who presided over the rest. Therefore he desired I would let him know what these costly meats were, and how any of us happened to want them. Whereupon I enumerated as many sorts as came into my head, with the various methods of dressing them, which could not be done without sending vessels by sea to every part of the world, as well for liquors to drink as for sauces and innumerable other conveniences. I assured him that this whole globe of earth must be at least three times gone round before one of our better female Yahoos could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in. He said that must needs be a miserable country which cannot furnish food for its own inhabitants. I replied that England was computed to produce three times the quantity of food more than its inhabitants are able to consume; but, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations; every one of which terms I was at much pains to make him understand.

I told him that wine was not imported among us from foreign countries to supply the want of water or other drinks, but because it was a sort of liquid which made us merry by putting us out of our senses; diverted all melancholy thoughts; begat wild extravagant imaginations in the brain; raised our hopes and banished our fears; suspended every office of reason for a time, and deprived us of the use of our limbs, till we fell into a profound sleep; although it must be confessed that we always awaked sick and dispirited. I said that for an evening it took the count off a man, so that he was nobody's, and that we awoke to find it where we had left it, a little worse for the night. The master was forty-six for the length of that.

I was going on to tell him of another sort of people who get their livelihood by attending the sick. But here it was with the utmost difficulty that I brought him to apprehend what I meant. He could easily conceive that a Houyhnhnm grew weak and heavy a few days before his death, or by some accident might hurt a limb; but that nature, who works all things to perfection, should suffer any pains to breed in our bodies he thought impossible, and desired to know the reason of so unaccountable an evil. I told him that we fed on a thousand things which operated contrary to each other; that we ate when we were not hungry and drank without the provocation of thirst; that we sat whole nights drinking strong liquors, without eating a bit; that many diseases were propagated from father to son; that they would not be fewer than five or six hundred, spread over every limb and joint. To remedy which, there was a sort of people bred up among us in the profession, or pretence, of curing the sick; and because I had some skill in the faculty, I would let him know the whole mystery and method by which they proceed. Their fundamental is that all diseases arise from repletion, whence they conclude that a great evacuation of the body is necessary; and from herbs, minerals, gums, oils and a hundred worse things they form a composition the most nauseous they can contrive, which the stomach rejects, and this they call a vomit, or else they command us to take it in at the other orifice, and this they call a purge. In the sick, I said, the count is never the same twice, and the physician's art is chiefly in its reading; and I told him that one great excellency in this tribe was their skill at prognostics, wherein they seldom fail, their predictions in real diseases, when they rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is always in their power when recovery is not.

He asked how the count of a sick man was brought back. I said that it was not; that it was read, and a bill sent in. He said that on his side a Houyhnhnm was never ill, and went down a hair a day for three days at the end and stopped; and that the whole of what he knew of the matter was that it was quiet. I said that I had been bred to that trade, and had taken, in thirty years, I supposed, forty thousand wrists, and that I could not recall one that had been quiet.

I had formerly, upon occasion, discoursed with my master upon the nature of government in general, and particularly of our own excellent constitution, deservedly the wonder and envy of the whole world. But having here accidentally mentioned a minister of state, he commanded me, some time after, to inform him what species of Yahoo I particularly meant by that appellation. I told him that a first or chief minister of state, who was the person I intended to describe, was the creature wholly exempt from joy and grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least makes use of no other passions but a violent desire of wealth, power and titles; that he applies his words to all uses except to the indication of his mind; that he never tells a truth but with an intent that you should take it for a lie, nor a lie but with a design that you should take it for a truth; that those he speaks worst of behind their backs are in the surest way of preferment; and whenever he begins to praise you to others, or to yourself, you are from that day forlorn. The worst mark you can receive is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which every wise man retires and gives over all hopes. I added that his count was the commonest one in the kingdom, sixty-one, and did not rise when he lied or fall when he was moved, and that this was thought a great attainment; a man whose count tells you nothing is a man in whom nothing can be told. The master was forty-eight again, and said that it was a thing that could be done, then, to a count, and that he had been given to understand that it could not.

I told him there are three methods by which a man may rise to be chief minister. The first is by knowing how, with prudence, to dispose of a wife, a daughter or a sister; the second, by betraying or undermining his predecessor; and the third is by a furious zeal in public assemblies against the corruptions of the court. That these ministers, having all employments at their disposal, preserve themselves in power by bribing the majority of a senate or great council; and at last, by an expedient called an act of indemnity (whereof I described the nature to him), they secure themselves from after-reckonings, and retire from the public laden with the spoils of the nation. The palace of a chief minister is a seminary to breed up others in his own trade: the pages, lackeys and porters, by imitating their master, become ministers of state in their several districts, and learn to excel in the three principal ingredients, of insolence, lying and bribery. He is usually governed by a decayed wench or favourite footman, who are the tunnels through which all graces are conveyed, and may properly be called in the last resort the governors of the kingdom. I used the word, he having learned it of me for the thing that keeps the count, in its other sense; and he took it so, and thought I meant that the kingdom was kept by a decayed wench; and I did not correct him.

One day in discourse, my master, having heard me mention the nobility of my country, was pleased to make me a compliment which I could not pretend to deserve: that he was sure I must have been born of some noble family, because I far exceeded in shape, colour and cleanliness all the Yahoos of his nation, although I seemed to fail in strength and agility, which must be imputed to my different way of living from those other brutes; and besides, I was not only endowed with the faculty of speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree that, with all his acquaintance, I passed for a prodigy. He made me observe that among the Houyhnhnms the white, the sorrel and the iron-gray were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the dapple-gray and the black; nor born with equal talents of mind, or a capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own race, which in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural. All of them, I observed, were forty-four.

I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility among us was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that as soon as years will permit they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person and unsound constitution, merely for the sake of money, whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance and sallow complexion are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality and pride. Without the consent of this illustrious body no law can be enacted, repealed or altered; and these nobles have likewise the decision of all our possessions without appeal.

By the end of that summer I was fifty-two, and it had not gone up once in the telling of any of this. My master remarked on it. He said that a Yahoo who could say such things at that count was either a better Yahoo than the rest or a worse, and that he would not know from the wrist which; for it seemed to him that I minded none of what I said. I said that I minded it a great deal. He took my wrist, and said that it did not seem so to him; and I found that he was right, and did not know since when.

## Chapter 36 · The author's resolution never to return to humankind, and a count that has stopped going up. His master's observations on human nature, with parallel cases of Yahoos: a count held in common needs no overseer, and a hoard of shining stones holds a Yahoo's count still. The distance of four yards.

The reader may be disposed to wonder how I could prevail on myself to give so free a representation of my own species among a race of mortals who are already too apt to conceive the vilest opinion of humankind from that entire congruity between me and their Yahoos. But I must freely confess that the many virtues of those excellent quadrupeds, placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light, and to think the honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was impossible for me to do before a person of so acute a judgment as my master, who daily convinced me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof I had not the least perception before, and which with us would never be numbered even among human infirmities. I had likewise learned from his example an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable to me that I determined upon sacrificing every thing to it. My count had stopped going up in the telling. I took that for the truth, and I think now that I had the two the wrong way round.

Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there was yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation of things. I had not yet been a year in this country before I contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants that I entered on a firm resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms, in the contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no example or incitement to vice. But it was decreed by fortune, my perpetual enemy, that so great a felicity should not fall to my share. However, it is now some comfort to reflect that in what I said of my countrymen I extenuated their faults as much as I durst before so strict an examiner, and upon every article gave as favourable a turn as the matter would bear. For, indeed, who is there alive that will not be swayed by his bias and partiality to the place of his birth? I have related the substance of several conversations I had with my master during the greatest part of the time I had the honour to be in his service; but have, for brevity sake, omitted much more than is here set down.

When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be fully satisfied, he sent for me one morning early, and commanded me to sit down at some distance, an honour which he had never before conferred upon me. The distance was four yards, which I measured, as I measured everything in that country, and it is the length at which a hoof cannot reach a wrist. I do not say it was meant. He did not take my wrist that morning, which was the first morning he had not, and I took the omission for a courtesy, and understood by evening that it was also an answer. He said he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use than by its assistance to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions. As to myself, it was manifest I had neither the strength nor agility of a common Yahoo; that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet; had found out a contrivance to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the hair from my chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather; lastly, that I could neither run with speed nor climb trees like my brethren, as he called them, the Yahoos in his country.

That our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our gross defects in reason, and by consequence in virtue; because reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature; which was therefore a character we had no pretence to challenge, even from the account I had given of my own people; although he manifestly perceived that, in order to favour them, I had concealed many particulars, and often said the thing which was not. By reason alone he meant a count held in common, which the law is what a people has instead of. He had it, he said, in the yard, in the morning, with the others, and did not think of it, as one does not think of the ground; and he saw that I had had to be taught to walk on it. He added that a count held in common needs no overseer, and that it was the one thing in his country with no servant standing by.

He was the more confirmed in this opinion, because he observed that as I agreed in every feature of my body with other Yahoos, except where it was to my real disadvantage in point of strength, speed and activity, the shortness of my claws, and some other particulars where nature had no part; so from the representation I had given him of our lives, our manners and our actions, he found as near a resemblance in the disposition of our minds. He said the Yahoos were known to hate one another more than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually assigned was the odiousness of their own shapes, which all could see in the rest but not in themselves. He had therefore begun to think it not unwise in us to cover our bodies, and by that invention conceal many of our deformities from each other, which would else be hardly supportable. But he now found he had been mistaken, and that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were owing to the same cause with ours, as I had described them. For if, said he, you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself; and therefore a servant was usually employed to stand by while they were feeding abroad, and those kept at home were tied at a distance from each other. If a cow died of age or accident before a Houyhnhnm could secure it for his own Yahoos, those in the neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue such a battle as I had described, with terrible wounds made by their claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one another for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had invented. At other times the like battles have been fought between the Yahoos of several neighbourhoods without any visible cause; those of one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next before they are prepared. But if they find their project has miscarried, they return home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil war among themselves.

That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of several colours, whereof the Yahoos are violently fond; and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happens, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out; then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure. My master said he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a Yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice which I had ascribed to mankind. That he had once, by way of experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place where one of his Yahoos had buried it; whereupon the sordid animal, missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest, began to pine away, would neither eat nor sleep nor work, till he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole, and hide them as before; which, when his Yahoo had found, he presently recovered his spirits and good humour, but took good care to remove them to a better hiding place, and has ever since been a very serviceable brute. The master had taken its count that morning, and again at evening: a hundred and fifty, and ninety. He said that he did not know what the stones were, but that they seemed to be the only thing in the country that could hold a Yahoo's count still. I had still in my pockets the money I had conveyed there when I was set ashore, and had not taken it out in that country; and that night I found that I had put my hand into it, as one touches a hole one has dug.

My master further assured me, which I also observed myself, that in the fields where the shining stones abound the fiercest and most frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the neighbouring Yahoos. He said it was common, when two Yahoos discovered such a stone in a field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, for a third to take the advantage, and carry it away from them both; which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance with our suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to undeceive him, since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable than many decrees among us, because the plaintiff and defendant there lost nothing beside the stone they contended for, whereas our courts of equity would never have dismissed the cause while either of them had any thing left.

He said that there was a sort of ruling Yahoo in most herds, as among us there is generally some leading or principal stag in a park, who was always more deformed in body and mischievous in disposition than any of the rest; that this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master's feet and posteriors, and drive the female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass's flesh. This favourite is hated by the whole herd, and therefore, to protect himself, keeps always near the person of his leader. He usually continues in office till a worse can be found; but the very moment he is discarded, his successor, at the head of all the Yahoos in that district, young and old, male and female, come in a body and discharge their excrements upon him from head to foot. But how far this might be applicable to our courts, and favourites, and ministers of state, my master said I could best determine. I durst make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased human understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has judgment enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in the pack, without being ever mistaken.

He told me also of a fancy that would sometimes take a Yahoo to retire into a corner, to lie down, and howl and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water, nor did the servant imagine what could possibly ail him; and the only remedy they found was to set him to hard work, after which he would infallibly come to himself. I was silent out of partiality to my own kind; yet here I could plainly discover the true seeds of spleen, which only seizes on the lazy, the luxurious and the rich; who, if they were forced to undergo the same regimen, I would undertake for the cure. I thought also of a bladder of peas, and of the hard work being a count given from outside to a creature that has none, which serves for a while; and that the Yahoo in the corner was set to dig, and the digging was at a hundred and ten, and I had seen it before in a country with a drum; and I said nothing of that either.

I expected every moment that my master would accuse the Yahoos of those unnatural appetites in both sexes so common among us. But nature, it seems, has not been so expert a school-mistress; and these politer pleasures are entirely the productions of art and reason on our side of the globe. That night in the straw I took my wrist. It was forty-nine. I had not wished it lower. I noticed that I had not had the bladder out of my pocket since the autumn, and I felt for it, and it was where it had been, and I did not take it out.

## Chapter 37 · The author relates several particulars of the Yahoos, and of a cub he takes by the wrist. A bathing in a river, and a count that is not what the nag supposed. The great virtues of the Houyhnhnms, which are addressed to no one in particular. The education and exercise of their youth. Their general assembly. A festival, and two fingers.

As I ought to have understood human nature much better than my master could, it was easy to lay what he had told me of the Yahoos beside myself and my countrymen; and I believed I might make further discoveries from my own observation. I therefore often begged his honour to let me go among the herds in the neighbourhood, and he as often consented, being perfectly convinced that the hatred I bore those brutes would never suffer me to be corrupted by them. He had taken my wrist again on the morning after the four yards, from the old distance and with the old hoof, and I was more glad of it than I could account for. It was fifty. He ordered one of his servants, a strong sorrel nag, very honest and good-natured, to be my guard; for I durst not undertake these excursions without his protection, having failed narrowly three or four times, in my first months, of falling into their clutches when I strayed at any distance without my hanger. The nag walked a little behind me, on the side the Yahoos would come from, which nobody had told him to do; and at the pace they all keep, so that for the first hour I thought about my feet, and after that did not.

We went out in the mornings to a slope below the oat-fields, where a herd of some forty lay about in the grass; and at a distance the nag judged proper I would strip up my sleeves and show my naked arms and breast, which I found they came to look at, and took, I believe, for a kind of introduction. They approached as near as they durst. Then they did as I did. I laid two fingers on the inside of my wrist, as I find I do whenever the ground is not what I took it for, and in a moment there were forty hands at forty wrists, at the elbow, at the neck, at the other hand, wrongly, eagerly, and with every sign of hatred; as a tame jackdaw in a cap and stockings is always persecuted by the wild ones when he happens to be got among them. I left off. They went on for some time without me.

I once caught a young male of three years old, or thereabouts, that had strayed from the rest while the nag was down at the brook, thirty yards off. I did what one does for any child that is frightened, and which I had not meant to do: I took it by the wrist, and held it, and said the number into its ear. It had been a hundred and seventy, and I lost the units. I said sixty, as a girl of nine had said it to me in a voice forty feet high, except that I was, on this occasion, the larger. By the fifth saying it was a hundred and ten, and the cub had stopped scratching, to listen. By the ninth it was a hundred, and it looked up at me. Then I think it smelt me. The little imp fell a-squalling, scratching and biting with such violence that I was forced to let it go; and it was high time, for a whole troop of old ones had come about us at the noise, and, finding the cub safe (for away it ran), and the nag by now at my elbow, they durst not venture near. I observed that its flesh smelt very rank, between a weasel and a fox but much more disagreeable; and I forgot to mention, and the reader will pardon me if I leave it out, that while I held it, it voided a yellow liquid all over my clothes. There was a small brook hard by, where I washed myself as clean as I could, and found that the bite had come through the cuff and stopped at the cord: the teeth stood in the black hair, in two small rows, and not in me. I durst not come into my master's presence until I had been sufficiently aired. When I did, I told him about the smell. I did not tell him what I had said into its ear. He would have asked what it was for; and I did not have it in his language.

By all I could discover, the Yahoos are the most unteachable of animals, their capacity never reaching higher than to draw or carry a burden; yet I am of opinion that the defect arises chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition, for they are cunning, malicious, treacherous and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and by consequence insolent, abject and cruel. It is observed that the red-haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom they yet much exceed in strength and activity. I took nine wrists among the herds, which is not enough to say it of; I set it down as it is observed.

The Houyhnhnms keep some Yahoos in huts near the house, for present use; the rest are sent abroad to certain fields, where they dig up roots, eat several kinds of herbs, and search about for carrion, or catch weasels and luhimuhs, a sort of wild rat, which they devour greedily. Nature has taught them to dig deep holes with their nails in the side of a rising ground, and in these they lie, each by itself; only the females' are larger, to hold two or three cubs. I looked into some by day. They were warm, and held what each had kept, a bone, a stone, a rag; and in the larger ones there was a smell of milk, which I had not expected, and did not mention. They swim from their infancy like frogs, and can continue long under water, where they often take fish, which the females carry home to their young. And on this occasion I hope the reader will pardon my relating an odd adventure.

Being abroad one day with my protector the sorrel nag, and the weather exceeding hot, I entreated him to let me bathe in a river that was near. He consented, and I stripped myself stark naked and went down softly into the stream. A young female Yahoo, who had been standing behind a bank, saw the whole proceeding, and came running with all speed, for the reason, as the nag and I both supposed, for which such creatures run at a naked man, and leaped into the water within five yards of the place where I bathed. I measured it afterwards. It is one yard more than my master sat me from his hoof. I was never in my life so terribly frightened. The nag was grazing at some distance, not suspecting any harm. She embraced me. I roared as loud as I could, and the nag came galloping, four to the measure, the fourth foot down on the beat, so that even then he could not be out of time; whereupon she quitted her grasp with the utmost reluctancy and leaped upon the opposite bank, where she stood gazing and howling all the while I was putting on my clothes, with one hand at her neck, as if she were looking for something there.

I took her count, in so far as I took anything. It was between my ribs and hers, which is a bad place, and I had not meant to. As a surgeon I have taken the wrists of men and women in most conditions, and what the nag and I supposed has a count of its own, which I know; and this was not it. This was the count of a child who has run a long way to a door. I said nothing of that to the nag, who had his own supposition and was entitled to it; and I supposed it myself for some time. It was a matter of diversion to my master and his family, as well as of mortification to myself. The Houyhnhnms laugh all on one count, so that it comes through a room like a floor giving way; I laughed with my face, a half-beat after. For now I could no longer deny that I was a real Yahoo in every limb and feature, since the females had a natural propensity to me, as to one of their own species. Neither was the hair of this brute red, which might have been some excuse for an appetite a little irregular: it was black as a sloe, as black as the cord on my wrist, which I observed while I was dressing, and put my sleeve down over. Nor did her countenance appear altogether so hideous as the rest of her kind. I put her at eleven years old, having a surgeon's eye for teeth.

Having lived three years in this country, the reader will expect, as of other travellers, some account of the manners and customs of its inhabitants, which it was my principal study to learn. The noble Houyhnhnms, being endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and having no conception of what is evil in a rational creature, hold it their grand maxim to cultivate reason and be wholly governed by it. Nor is reason among them a point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides; it strikes you with immediate conviction, as it must where it is not mingled, obscured or discoloured by passion and interest. I remember with what difficulty I brought my master to the meaning of the word "opinion." I told him that two surgeons, taking the same man at the same wrist, will find two numbers a beat apart, and each be believed by those who like him. He asked which of them had counted wrongly. I said perhaps neither. He waited, as he does when a sentence of mine has gone wrong and he expects the second half to mend it. It did not. He said that where two have counted and there are two numbers, one of the two has not been counting, and that this should be said to him, and not given a name. So that controversies, wranglings and positiveness in false or dubious propositions are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms. When I explained our several systems of natural philosophy he would laugh that a creature who pretended to reason should value itself upon the knowledge of other people's conjectures, in things where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use; wherein he agreed entirely with Socrates, as Plato delivers him, which I mention as the highest honour I can do that prince of philosophers. I have often since reflected what destruction such a doctrine would make in the libraries of Europe, and how many paths of fame would be shut up in the learned world.

Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms, and these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race. A stranger from the remotest part is treated like the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes looks upon himself as at home. One came while I was there, a grey I had not seen, from the other side of the mountains, five days on the road, and was met in the yard with the same hoof on the same hoof, four, and the same silence after, and was inside the house by the end of the measure; I think he had been in it before he arrived. They keep decency and civility in the highest degree, and are altogether ignorant of ceremony. They have no fondness for their colts and foals, but the care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason; and I watched my master at the gate with a neighbour's colt, and again with his own, and could not have said from his shoulders, or from his count, which was which. He said that nature teaches them to love the whole species, and that it is reason only that makes a distinction of persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue. I told him that I carried two figures for two children, seventy and fifty-four, taken at a door in Redriff, and that I had turned them over in several countries as another man turns a coin. He asked what for. I said, so that I should know them. He said that they were in the yard, he supposed, with all the others, and that I should know them there. I could not tell him that it was not the same; for I found I had not the word for the difference, in his language or in mine.

When the matron Houyhnhnms have produced one of each sex they no longer lie with their consorts, unless they lose one of their issue by some casualty, which very seldom happens; and then they meet again; or when such an accident befalls a person whose wife is past bearing, some other couple bestows a colt on him, and they go together again until the mother is with foal. This caution is necessary, to prevent the country from being overburdened with numbers. The inferior race, bred up to be servants, is not so strictly limited: these may produce three of each sex, to be domestics in the noble families. In their marriages they are exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make a disagreeable mixture in the breed. Strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female, not upon account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating. Courtship, love, presents, jointures and settlements have no place in their thoughts, nor terms in their language to express them. The young couple meet and are joined merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends. The violation of marriage, or any other unchastity, was never heard of; and the pair pass their lives with the same friendship and mutual benevolence they bear to all others, without jealousy, fondness, quarrelling or discontent. I asked how a couple settled their number between them, as Mary and I had settled ours, at fifty-two, in the doorway. The master did not understand the question, and I did not put it again, having understood the answer.

In educating the youth of both sexes their method is admirable, and highly deserves our imitation. They are not suffered to taste a grain of oats, except upon certain days, till eighteen years old, nor milk but very rarely; and in summer they graze two hours in the morning and as many in the evening, as their parents likewise do; but the servants are not allowed above half that time. The count was the same in all of them. I noted that the servants had half the time to keep it in. Temperance, industry, exercise and cleanliness are the lessons equally enjoined on the young of both sexes; and my master thought it monstrous in us to give the females a different education from the males, except in some articles of domestic management, whereby, as he truly observed, one half of our natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world; and to trust the care of our children to such useless animals, he said, was a greater instance of brutality. I thought of five almanacs in a drawer in Redriff, in a woman's hand, of noons that nobody had taught her to take; and I did not tell him that either. I was keeping a good deal from him by then, and finding it easy.

Every fourth year, at the vernal equinox, there is a representative council of the whole nation, which meets in a plain about twenty miles from our house, and continues five or six days. Here they inquire into the state and condition of the several districts, whether they abound or are deficient in hay, or oats, or cows, or Yahoos (the master told me the Yahoos are read out in the same column as the cows); and wherever there is any want, which is but seldom, it is immediately supplied by unanimous consent and contribution. Here likewise the regulation of children is settled: if a Houyhnhnm has two males, he exchanges one of them with another who has two females; and when a child has been lost by any casualty, where the mother is past breeding, it is determined what family in the district shall breed another to supply the loss. I thought of a third child in Redriff, born after I sailed, whose count I had not taken and of whose sex I had not been told; and that there was no district in which anyone had been asked to supply it, if it was lost, or to keep it, if it was not; and I put the thought where I had been putting the others.

But the Houyhnhnms train up their youth to strength, speed and hardiness by exercising them in running races up and down steep hills and over hard stony ground; and when they are all in a sweat they are ordered to leap over head and ears into a pond or a river. I stood at the pond with the sorrel nag and had it from him, after, what their count had been. It was forty-four, in the time it takes to say it. Four times a year the youth of a certain district meet to show their proficiency in running and leaping and other feats of strength and agility, and the victor is rewarded with a song in his or her praise, which they sing together, on the count, so that I could not tell who had won until they began. On the day the servants drive a herd of Yahoos into the field, laden with hay and oats and milk for the Houyhnhnms' repast; after which the brutes are immediately driven back, for fear of being noisome to the assembly. I was permitted to stand at the edge, at the nag's shoulder, and was not driven back, which I noticed, and the nag did not remark on. At the next festival she was among them. I knew her by the hair. She stood in the line with a load of hay on her back and looked across the field; and I looked at the nag's shoulder, which was at that moment the only place in the field I could look. She laid two fingers on the inside of her wrist. She had it right. At the river she had looked for it at her neck, and the others did it at the elbow; and nobody had taught her. It is easy to find. Nature meant it. I did not do it back. That night in the straw I took my wrist. It was fifty-three, and I wished it lower, which I had not done before; and it did not go.

## Chapter 38 · A grand debate at the general assembly of the Houyhnhnms, and how it was determined; the master's account of it, at forty-four, with one place at forty-six. The learning of the Houyhnhnms. Their buildings, and their hands. Their manner of burials: a mare who is late for nothing. The defectiveness of their language, and a word used of a cord.

One of these grand assemblies was held in my time, about three months before my departure, whither my master went as the representative of our district. He was away seven days, the plain being twenty miles off and the council five or six days in session, and the house kept the count with four. It kept it. But I heard where he was not, as the tongue goes to where a tooth has been; and the sorrel nag, who is not given to remarks, stood for some time on the second evening at the place in the yard where my master stood.

In this council was resumed their old debate, and indeed the only debate that ever happened in their country, the same that they had held before and would hold again; the question being whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the face of the earth. My master, after his return, gave me a very particular account of it. He gave it at forty-four, as he says everything; and in one place he was forty-six, which I saw without seeing, being taken up with the words, and went back for only afterwards. One of the members for the affirmative offered several arguments of great strength and weight: that as the Yahoos were the most filthy, noisome and deformed animals which nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious; that they would privately suck the teats of the Houyhnhnms' cows, kill and devour their cats, trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually watched, and commit a thousand other extravagancies.

He took notice of a general tradition, that Yahoos had not been always in their country; but that many ages ago two of these brutes appeared together upon a mountain, whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime, or from the ooze and froth of the sea, was never known; that these engendered, and their brood in a short time grew so numerous as to overrun and infest the whole nation; that the Houyhnhnms, to get rid of the evil, made a general hunting, and at last enclosed the whole herd; and, destroying the elder, every Houyhnhnm kept two of the young in a kennel, and brought them to such a degree of tameness as an animal so savage by nature can be capable of, using them for draught and carriage. I thought of two creatures on a mountain with nobody to take their wrists, and of what a governor does that has nobody to keep it, and for how many generations; and I said nothing, not being asked.

The member added that there seemed to be much truth in this tradition, and that these creatures could not be yinhniamshy, the aborigines of the land, because of the violent hatred which the Houyhnhnms, as well as all other animals, bore them; which, although their evil disposition sufficiently deserved, could never have arrived at so high a degree if they had been aborigines, or they would have been rooted out long since. The inhabitants, taking a fancy to use the service of the Yahoos, had very imprudently neglected to cultivate the breed of asses, which are a comely animal, easily kept, more tame and orderly, without any offensive smell, and strong enough for labour, though they yield to the other in agility; and if their braying be no agreeable sound, it is far preferable to the horrible howlings of the Yahoos. An ass has one pace, and keeps it all day, and the Houyhnhnms, who have one pace, found this a recommendation.

Several others declared their sentiments to the same purpose, when my master proposed an expedient to the assembly, whereof he had indeed borrowed the hint from me. He approved of the tradition, and affirmed that the two Yahoos said to have been seen first among them had been driven thither over the sea; that, coming to land and being forsaken by their companions, they retired to the mountains, and degenerating by degrees became in process of time much more savage than those of their own species in the country whence the two originals came. The reason of this assertion, he said, was that he had now in his possession a certain wonderful Yahoo (meaning myself) which most of them had heard of, and many of them had seen. He then related how he first found me; that my body was all covered with an artificial composure of the skins and hairs of other animals; that I spoke in a language of my own, and had thoroughly learned theirs; that when he saw me without my covering I was an exact Yahoo in every part, only of a whiter colour, less hairy, and with shorter claws; and that he observed in me all the qualities of a Yahoo, only a little more civilized by some tincture of reason, which, however, was in a degree as far inferior to the Houyhnhnm race as the Yahoos of their country were to me. I think, from what he told me, that he gave them the tincture as a count that would hold: he had taken it a thousand mornings, and it had gone down in that time as water finds its level. He did not offer this as a recommendation, and I do not know how they took it.

He added how I had endeavoured to persuade him that in my own and other countries the Yahoos acted as the governing, rational animal, and held the Houyhnhnms in servitude; and that, among other things, I mentioned a custom we had of castrating Houyhnhnms when they were young, in order to render them tame, to take the count down; that the operation was easy and safe; that it was no shame to learn wisdom from brutes, as industry is taught by the ant and building by the swallow (for so I translate the word lyhannh, although it be a much larger fowl); that this invention might be practised upon the younger Yahoos here, which, besides rendering them tractable and fitter for use, would in an age put an end to the whole species without destroying life; and that in the mean time the Houyhnhnms should be exhorted to cultivate the breed of asses, which, as they are in all respects more valuable brutes, so they have this advantage, to be fit for service at five years old, which the others are not till twelve.

I had said it to show him why I was angry on behalf of his kind. I had said it with my hand open on the table, as a man speaks against his own people, and I had meant it as an indictment; and it had been received as a proposal. I did not say this. He had not asked, and he told me of the borrowing because he thought it fair that I should know it, and I knew it. This was all my master thought fit to tell me, at that time, of what passed in the grand council. But he was pleased to conceal one particular, which related personally to myself, whereof I soon felt the unhappy effect, as the reader will know in its proper place, and whence I date all the succeeding misfortunes of my life. I have gone over the account since, as one goes over a ledger, to find the place where he was forty-six; and I think it was at the end, where he said that was all, and I took it, as I took everything said in that country, to mean that it was.

The Houyhnhnms have no letters, and consequently their knowledge is all traditional; but there happening few events of any moment among a people so well united, naturally disposed to every virtue, wholly governed by reason, and cut off from all commerce with other nations, the historical part is easily preserved without burdening their memories. A thing said in that country is said once, to all, and is then in the yard; I carried the only book in it, in my pocket, and it was of no use to anyone there. They are subject to no diseases, and have therefore no need of physicians; they have excellent medicines, composed of herbs, to cure accidental bruises and cuts in the pastern or frog of the foot by sharp stones, as well as other maims and hurts. They calculate the year by the revolution of the sun and moon, but use no subdivision into weeks, there being in that country nothing that comes round every seven; and they understand the nature of eclipses, which is the utmost progress of their astronomy.

In poetry they must be allowed to excel all other mortals, wherein the justness of their similes and the minuteness as well as exactness of their descriptions are indeed inimitable. Their verses are made in measures of four, with the rests where they agree, and contain usually either some exalted notions of friendship and benevolence, or the praises of those who were victors in races and other bodily exercises. I learned one by ear, about a hill, forty-four lines in length, and said it in the straw at night as other men say a prayer. Their buildings, although very rude and simple, are not inconvenient, but well contrived to defend them from all injuries of cold and heat. They have a kind of tree which at forty years old loosens in the root, and falls with the first storm; it grows very straight, and, being pointed like stakes with a sharp stone (for the Houyhnhnms know not the use of iron), they stick them erect in the ground, about ten inches asunder, and weave oat straw, or sometimes wattles, between them. I paced the wall of my master's house, and the stakes were at ten inches to the inch, as if it had been built to a beat; I suppose it was. The roof is made after the same manner, and so are the doors.

The Houyhnhnms use the hollow part between the pastern and the hoof of their fore-foot as we do our hands, and with greater dexterity than I could at first imagine. It is the same hollow in which my master took my wrist, and I had not once thought what else it did. I have seen a white mare of our family thread a needle (which I lent her on purpose) with that joint; she did it at the first attempt, in the time of one measure, and gave it back, and asked what it was for. I said, to join cloth. She asked why it was parted. I had no answer that she could have used. They milk their cows, reap their oats, and do all the work that requires hands in the same manner; they have a kind of hard flints which, by grinding against other stones, they form into instruments that serve instead of wedges, axes and hammers; the Yahoos draw home the sheaves in carriages, and the servants tread them in covered huts to get out the grain; and they make a rude kind of earthen and wooden vessels, and bake the former in the sun.

If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his neighbours. I remember my master having once made an appointment with a friend and his family to come to his house upon some affair of importance. On the day fixed the mistress and her two children came very late, and I, who had laid the table by habit at noon, took them for late; nobody else did, there being no such word. She made two excuses: first, for her husband, who, as she said, had happened that very morning to shnuwnh. The word is strongly expressive in their language, but not easily rendered into English; it signifies, to retire to his first mother. Her excuse for not coming sooner was that, her husband dying late in the morning, she was a good while consulting her servants about a convenient place where his body should be laid. She struck the hoof in the yard half a beat behind my master's, and nobody referred to it. I observed that she behaved herself in our house as cheerfully as the rest. She died about three months after.

They live generally to seventy or seventy-five years, very seldom to fourscore. Some weeks before their death they feel a gradual decay, but without pain; and about ten days before it, which they seldom fail in computing, from the way the count goes down, they return the visits that have been made them by those who are nearest in the neighbourhood, being carried in a convenient sledge drawn by Yahoos, which vehicle they use not only upon this occasion, but when they grow old, upon long journeys, or when they are lamed by any accident. The mistress came so, ten days before, and took a solemn leave of every one in the house, as if she were going to some remote part of the country where she designed to pass the rest of her life; the colts last. I asked the sorrel nag afterwards where the husband had been put. He said he did not know; that it was the obscurest place that could be found, and that the servants who had found it had not been told to remember it, and had not. I asked whether anyone went there. He said, to what end. I could not say, in his language, to what end. I stood in the yard with my hand on my wrist, on the cord, and understood that I had put to him a question with nothing under it, and that he had gone round it, as one goes round a soft place in a road, courteously, without looking down.

I know not whether it may be worth observing that the Houyhnhnms have no word in their language to express any thing that is evil, except what they borrow from the deformities or ill qualities of the Yahoos. Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of Yahoo; as hhnm Yahoo, whnaholm Yahoo, ynlhmndwihlma Yahoo, and an ill-contrived house ynholmhnmrohlnw Yahoo. I found in the third year that I used it. Of a stone in the path; of the rain; and of the cord, once, on the slope, when my sleeve rode up and it caught on a thorn, so that I said the word aloud, and the nag turned his head. I looked at the cord. It had not minded.

I could, with great pleasure, enlarge further upon the manners and virtues of this excellent people; but, intending in a short time to publish a volume by itself, expressly upon that subject, I refer the reader thither, and, in the mean time, proceed to relate my own sad catastrophe.

## Chapter 39 · The author's economy, and happy life among the Houyhnhnms; his great improvement in virtue, and in time. Their conversations. The author has notice from his master that he must depart, for a reason that was kept from him: that he might keep a count for the Yahoos. The word hnhloayn. He falls into a swoon in which there is nothing under the hoof, and submits. He contrives and finishes a canoe by the help of a fellow-servant, and puts to sea, paddling at forty-four.

I had settled my little economy to my own heart's content. My master had ordered a room to be made for me, after their manner, about six yards from the house, the sides and floors of which I plastered with clay, and covered with rush-mats of my own contriving. It was the farthest I had slept from a count since the long-boat, and I slept. I had beaten hemp, which there grows wild, and made of it a sort of ticking, which I filled with the feathers of several birds I had taken with springes made of Yahoos' hairs, and which were excellent food. The hair of a Yahoo I found to be very strong, much as the other kind is; it held. I had worked two chairs with my knife, the sorrel nag helping me in the grosser and more laborious part. When my clothes were worn to rags I made myself others with the skins of rabbits, and of a certain beautiful animal about the same size called nnuhnoh, the skin of which is covered with a fine down; of these I made very tolerable stockings. I soled my shoes with wood, which I cut from a tree and fitted to the upper-leather; and when this was worn out I supplied it with the skins of Yahoos dried in the sun. I often got honey out of hollow trees, which I mingled with water, or ate with my bread.

No man could more verify the truth of these two maxims: that nature is very easily satisfied, and that necessity is the mother of invention. I enjoyed perfect health of body and tranquillity of mind; I did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or open enemy. I had no occasion of bribing, flattering or pimping to procure the favour of any great man or of his minion; I wanted no fence against fraud or oppression. Here was neither physician to read my wrist and send in his bill, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to take my noon and put it in a book for a Treasurer, or forge accusations against me for hire; no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; no leaders or followers of party and faction; no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores or poxes; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no lords, fiddlers, judges or dancing-masters; and no one who went up when I came into the room.

I had the favour of being admitted to several Houyhnhnms who came to visit or dine with my master, where his honour graciously suffered me to wait in the room and listen to their discourse. Both he and his company would often descend to ask me questions, and receive my answers. I never presumed to speak except in answer to a question, and then I did it with inward regret, because it was a loss of so much time for improving myself; but I was infinitely delighted with the station of an humble auditor in such conversations, where nothing passed but what was useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant words; where the greatest decency was observed without the least degree of ceremony; where no person spoke without being pleased himself and pleasing his companions; where there was no interruption, tediousness, heat or difference of sentiments. They have a notion that when people are met together a short silence does much improve conversation; this I found to be true, for during those little intermissions of talk new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse. The silences were the rests, the places where all of them were at the same count and said nothing, and I sat in them as in a warm room. My presence often gave them sufficient matter for discourse, because it afforded my master an occasion of letting his friends into the history of me and my country, upon which they were all pleased to descant in a manner not very advantageous to humankind, and for that reason I shall not repeat what they said; only I may be allowed to observe that his honour, to my great admiration, appeared to understand the nature of Yahoos much better than myself. He went through all our vices and follies, and discovered many which I had never mentioned to him, by only supposing what qualities a Yahoo of their country, with a small proportion of reason, might be capable of exerting; and concluded, with too much probability, how vile, as well as miserable, such a creature must be.

I freely confess that all the little knowledge I have of any value was acquired by the lectures I received from my master, and from hearing the discourses of him and his friends, to which I should be prouder to listen than to dictate to the greatest and wisest assembly in Europe. I admired the strength, comeliness and speed of the inhabitants; and such a constellation of virtues in such amiable persons produced in me the highest veneration. At first, indeed, I did not feel that natural awe which the Yahoos and all other animals bear towards them; but it grew upon me by degrees, much sooner than I imagined, and was mingled with a respectful love and gratitude that they would condescend to distinguish me from the rest of my species. When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human race in general, I considered them as they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech; but making no other use of reason than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them. When I happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo than of my own person. By conversing with the Houyhnhnms, and looking upon them with delight, I fell to imitate their gait and gesture, which is now grown into a habit; and my friends often tell me, in a blunt way, that I trot like a horse; which, however, I take for a great compliment. Neither shall I disown that in speaking I am apt to fall into the voice and manner of the Houyhnhnms, and hear myself ridiculed on that account without the least mortification.

In the midst of all this happiness, and when I looked upon myself to be fully settled for life, my master sent for me one morning a little earlier than his usual hour. I observed by his countenance that he was in some perplexity, and at a loss how to begin what he had to speak. He took my wrist before he spoke, and held it longer than he had in three years, as a surgeon takes the wrist before he gives the news. It was forty-seven. He was forty-six. I saw now that he had been so for a month, and that I had not looked, having been for a month at the words. After a short silence he told me he did not know how I would take what he was going to say.

That in the last general assembly, when the affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family more like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged that, because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms' cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind and averse from labour. His hoof was still on my wrist. At the words swim back I was a hundred and four. I thought of forty hands at forty wrists; of a cub that had looked up at the ninth saying; of a girl on a far bank with a hand at her neck. I did not say it was a groundless fear. They had seen, I suppose, what I had not been looking at.

My master added that he was daily pressed by the Houyhnhnms of the neighbourhood to have the assembly's exhortation executed, which he could not put off much longer. He doubted it would be impossible for me to swim to another country, and therefore wished I would contrive some sort of vehicle, resembling those I had described to him, that might carry me on the sea; in which work I should have the assistance of his own servants, as well as those of his neighbours. He concluded that for his own part he could have been content to keep me in his service as long as I lived, because he found I had cured myself of some bad habits and dispositions by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature was capable, to imitate the Houyhnhnms. He meant my count. He had had it under his hoof a thousand mornings.

I should here observe to the reader that a decree of the general assembly in this country is expressed by the word hnhloayn, which signifies an exhortation, as near as I can render it; for they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised, or exhorted; because no person can disobey reason without giving up his claim to be a rational creature. I have thought since that it is not a word for an order but for the place of the count, told as one tells another the time: a Houyhnhnm who is not on it has not been commanded off it; he is simply not on it, and no more need be said, or can be. My master was not compelled. He was told where the count was. I was not banished. I was advised.

I was struck with the utmost grief and despair at my master's discourse; and, being unable to support the agonies I was under, I fell into a swoon at his feet. When I came to myself he told me that he concluded I had been dead; for these people are subject to no such imbecilities of nature. His hoof was where it had been. There had been nothing under it for the length of two measures; it was the first time in his life, I think, that he had held a wrist and found it not there.

I answered in a faint voice that death would have been too great a happiness; that although I could not blame the assembly's exhortation, or the urgency of his friends, yet in my weak and corrupt judgment I thought it might consist with reason to have been less rigorous; that I could not swim a league, and probably the nearest land to theirs might be distant above a hundred; that many materials necessary for making a small vessel to carry me off were wholly wanting in this country, which, however, I would attempt, in obedience and gratitude to his honour, although I concluded the thing to be impossible, and therefore looked on myself as already devoted to destruction; that the certain prospect of an unnatural death was the least of my evils; for, supposing I should escape with life by some strange adventure, how could I think with temper of passing my days among Yahoos, and going up again, as I knew I should, the day the hoof was off me, for want of a count to keep me within the paths of virtue? That I knew too well upon what solid reasons all the determinations of the wise Houyhnhnms were founded not to be shaken by arguments of mine, a miserable Yahoo; and therefore, after presenting him with my humble thanks for the offer of his servants' assistance in making a vessel, and desiring a reasonable time for so difficult a work, I told him I would endeavour to preserve a wretched being; and that if ever I returned to England I was not without hopes of being useful to my own species, by celebrating the praises of the renowned Houyhnhnms and proposing their virtues to the imitation of mankind.

My master, in a few words, made me a very gracious reply; allowed me the space of two months to finish my boat; and ordered the sorrel nag, my fellow-servant (for so, at this distance, I may presume to call him), to follow my instruction; because I told my master that his help would be sufficient, and I knew he had a tenderness for me. I had seen it in the way he walked, on the side the Yahoos would come from. I did not tell my master that. He would have asked what it was for.

In his company my first business was to go to that part of the coast where my rebellious crew had ordered me to be set on shore. I got upon a height, and looking on every side into the sea, fancied I saw a small island toward the north-east. I took out my pocket glass, and could then clearly distinguish it above five leagues off, as I computed; but it appeared to the sorrel nag to be only a blue cloud; for as he had no conception of any country beside his own, so he could not be as expert in distinguishing remote objects at sea as we who so much converse in that element. He looks at what is near enough to be in time with; nobody in that country had ever had to look at anything that could not be waited for. After I had discovered this island I considered no further, but resolved it should, if possible, be the first place of my banishment, leaving the consequence to fortune.

I returned home, and consulting with the sorrel nag, we went into a copse at some distance, where I with my knife, and he with a sharp flint, fastened very artificially after their manner to a wooden handle, cut down several oak wattles about the thickness of a walking-staff, and some larger pieces. But I shall not trouble the reader with a particular description of my own mechanics; let it suffice to say that in six weeks' time, with the help of the sorrel nag, who performed the parts that required most labour, I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of Yahoos, well stitched together with hempen threads of my own making. My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal, but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick. I turned the hair side in. I likewise provided myself with four paddles. I laid in a stock of boiled flesh of rabbits and fowls, and took with me two vessels, one filled with milk and the other with water.

I tried my canoe in a large pond near my master's house, and then corrected in it what was amiss, stopping all the chinks with Yahoos' tallow, till I found it staunch, and able to bear me and my freight; and when it was as complete as I could possibly make it, I had it drawn on a carriage very gently by Yahoos to the sea-side, under the conduct of the sorrel nag and another servant. The nag walked at the head at the pace of the house, and the Yahoos in the traces, who have no pace, went at his; it was the only time I saw them do a thing gently, and I do not say they liked it. One of them had black hair.

When all was ready, and the day came for my departure, I took leave of my master and lady and the whole family, my eyes flowing with tears and my heart quite sunk with grief. No one else's ran. The white mare looked at my face as at a thing she had been told of. But his honour, out of curiosity, and perhaps (if I may speak without vanity) partly out of kindness, was determined to see me in my canoe, and got several of his neighbouring friends to accompany him. I was forced to wait above an hour for the tide (by my pulse, I mean, which is how I have reckoned hours since I first went to sea, sixty to the minute; at the pace I had come to it was an hour and a quarter by the sun, and I did not correct it); and then, observing the wind very fortunately bearing toward the island to which I intended to steer my course, I took a second leave of my master; but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. It was at the hollow. It was forty-six. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractors are pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I forgotten how apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received. But if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms, they would soon change their opinion.

I paid my respects to the rest of the Houyhnhnms in his honour's company; then, getting into my canoe, I pushed off from shore. When I had cleared the rocks I looked back, and the Yahoos had been driven up the shingle, all but one, who stood by herself at the top of it, a small dark thing, and I could see that she had two fingers at her wrist. I laid two fingers on mine. It was too far for her to see it, and I have never been sure that this was why I did it then. I did not read it. I found after a while that I was paddling at forty-four, and that I could not stop it; and for some time I did not want to.

## Chapter 40 · The author's dangerous voyage; the nag's cry has one beat over. He arrives at New Holland, hoping to settle there. Is wounded with an arrow by one of the natives. Is seized and carried by force into a Portuguese ship. The great civilities of the captain, who takes his wrist and finds a count that comes down in the telling. The author arrives at England, and is held at fifty-two for an hour by a hand he does not know.

I began this desperate voyage on February 15, 1714-15, at nine o'clock in the morning. The wind was very favourable; however, I made use at first only of my paddles; but considering I should soon be weary, and that the wind might chop about, I ventured to set up my little sail; and thus, with the help of the tide, I went at the rate of a league and a half an hour, as near as I could guess. My master and his friends continued on the shore till I was almost out of sight; and I often heard the sorrel nag (who always loved me) crying out, "Hnuy illa nyha, majah Yahoo": take care of thyself, gentle Yahoo. It came over the water in a measure of four, and there was one over. He had put me in as a fifth. I paddled to it as one paddles to a bell, till I could not hear it, and then to where it had been.

My design was, if possible, to discover some small island uninhabited, yet sufficient, by my labour, to furnish me with the necessaries of life, which I would have thought a greater happiness than to be first minister in the politest court of Europe; so horrible was the idea I conceived of returning to live in the society, and under the government, of Yahoos. For in such a solitude as I desired I could at least enjoy my own thoughts, and reflect with delight on the virtues of those inimitable Houyhnhnms, without an opportunity of degenerating into the vices and corruptions of my own species. I was to have nobody to go up for, and nobody to be read by. I did not think, on the water, of two creatures on a mountain.

The reader may remember what I related, when my crew conspired against me, and confined me to my cabin; how I continued there several weeks without knowing what course we took; and when I was put ashore in the long-boat, how the sailors told me, with oaths, whether true or false, that they knew not in what part of the world we were. However, I did then believe us to be about ten degrees southward of the Cape of Good Hope, or about forty-five degrees southern latitude, as I gathered from some general words I overheard among them, being, I supposed, to the south-east in their intended voyage to Madagascar. And although this were little better than conjecture, yet I resolved to steer my course eastward, hoping to reach the south-west coast of New Holland, and perhaps some such island as I desired lying westward of it. The wind was full west, and by six in the evening I computed I had gone eastward at least eighteen leagues, when I spied a very small island about half a league off, which I soon reached. It was nothing but a rock, with one creek naturally arched by the force of tempests. Here I put in my canoe, and, climbing a part of the rock, I could plainly discover land to the east, extending from south to north. I lay all night in my canoe, and at dawn I took my wrist, which I had not done since the shingle. It was fifty-eight. Repeating my voyage early in the morning, I arrived in seven hours to the south-east point of New Holland. This confirmed me in the opinion I have long entertained, that the maps and charts place this country at least three degrees more to the east than it really is; which thought I communicated many years ago to my worthy friend Mr. Herman Moll, who has rather chosen to follow other authors.

I saw no inhabitants in the place where I landed, and, being unarmed, I was afraid of venturing far into the country. I found some shellfish on the shore, and ate them raw, not daring to kindle a fire for fear of being discovered by the natives. I continued three days feeding on oysters and limpets, to save my own provisions, and I fortunately found a brook of excellent water, which gave me great relief. I was seventy-one on the second day, which is about what a man is among men; and I did not like how little it troubled me.

On the fourth day, venturing out early a little too far, I saw twenty or thirty natives upon a height not above five hundred yards from me. They were stark naked, men, women and children, round a fire, as I could discover by the smoke. I had not seen so many persons in one place for five years, and at that distance I could tell that no two of them were at the same count: they moved about the fire like the pieces of a thing that has come apart. One of them spied me and gave notice to the rest, and it went through them as wind goes through grass, not all at once, but in thirty ways; and five of them advanced toward me, leaving the women and children at the fire. I made what haste I could to the shore, and, getting into my canoe, shoved off: the savages, observing me retreat, ran after me; and before I could get far enough into the sea they discharged an arrow which wounded me deeply on the inside of my left knee. I shall carry the mark to my grave. I was a hundred and twenty-six. I apprehended the arrow might be poisoned, and, paddling out of the reach of their darts (being a calm day), I made a shift to suck the wound, and dress it as well as I could.

I was at a loss what to do, for I durst not return to the same landing-place, but stood to the north, and was forced to paddle, for the wind, though very gentle, was against me, blowing north-west. As I was looking about for a secure landing-place, I saw a sail to the north-north-east, which, appearing every minute more visible, I was in some doubt whether I should wait for them or not; but at last my detestation of the Yahoo race prevailed: and, turning my canoe, I sailed and paddled together to the south, and got into the same creek whence I set out in the morning, choosing rather to trust myself among these barbarians than live with European Yahoos. I drew up my canoe as close as I could to the shore, and hid myself behind a stone by the little brook, which, as I have already said, was excellent water. I lay with my wrist under me, so that it should not be taken. I think it was the first time in my life that I hid it.

The ship came within half a league of this creek, and sent her long-boat with vessels to take in fresh water (for the place, it seems, was very well known); but I did not observe it till the boat was almost on shore, and it was too late to seek another hiding-place. The seamen at their landing observed my canoe, and, rummaging it all over, easily conjectured that the owner could not be far off. Four of them, well armed, searched every cranny and lurking-hole, till at last they found me flat on my face behind the stone. They gazed awhile in admiration at my strange uncouth dress: my coat made of skins, my wooden-soled shoes, and my furred stockings; whence, however, they concluded I was not a native of the place, who all go naked. One of the seamen, in Portuguese, bid me rise, and asked who I was; and, as is done to a stranger before a question, he put two fingers to my wrist, courteously. I had it out of his hand before I knew. He looked at his fingers. It is a thing that is not done, and nobody among them had seen it done. I was a hundred and thirty-one.

I understood that language very well, and, getting upon my feet, I said I was a poor Yahoo banished from the Houyhnhnms, and desired they would please to let me depart. They admired to hear me answer them in their own tongue, and saw by my complexion I must be a European; but were at a loss to know what I meant by Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, and at the same time fell a-laughing at my strange tone in speaking, which resembled the neighing of a horse. It went round them one at a time, each when he had understood it, so that it lasted the length of a long sentence, and I stood at the end of it as at the end of a quay. I trembled all the while betwixt fear and hatred. I again desired leave to depart, and was gently moving to my canoe; but they laid hold of me, desiring to know what country I was of, whence I came, with many other questions. I told them I was born in England, whence I came about five years ago, and then their country and ours were at peace. I therefore hoped they would not treat me as an enemy, since I meant them no harm, but was a poor Yahoo seeking some desolate place where to pass the remainder of his unfortunate life.

When they began to talk, I thought I never heard or saw any thing more unnatural; for it appeared to me as monstrous as if a dog or a cow should speak in England, or a Yahoo in Houyhnhnmland. They spoke, each of them, at his own pace, and none at anybody's, ninety and sixty and a slow forty, over one another, like a street of clocks all wrong; and I had not heard it in five years. The honest Portuguese were equally amazed at my strange dress, and the odd manner of delivering my words, which, however, they understood very well. They spoke to me with great humanity, and said they were sure the captain would carry me gratis to Lisbon, whence I might return to my own country; that two of the seamen would go back to the ship, inform the captain of what they had seen, and receive his orders; in the mean time, unless I would give my solemn oath not to fly, they would secure me by force. I thought it best to comply with their proposal. They were very curious to know my story, but I gave them very little satisfaction, and they all conjectured that my misfortunes had impaired my reason. In two hours the boat, which went laden with vessels of water, returned, with the captain's command to fetch me on board. I fell on my knees to preserve my liberty; but all was in vain; and the men, having tied me with cords, heaved me into the boat, whence I was taken into the ship, and thence into the captain's cabin.

His name was Pedro de Mendez; he was a very courteous and generous person. He entreated me to give some account of myself, and desired to know what I would eat or drink; said I should be used as well as himself; and spoke so many obliging things that I wondered to find such civilities from a Yahoo. However, I remained silent and sullen; I was ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men. At last I desired something to eat out of my own canoe; but he ordered me a chicken and some excellent wine, and then directed that I should be put to bed in a very clean cabin. I would not undress myself, but lay on the bed-clothes, and in half an hour stole out, when I thought the crew was at dinner, and, getting to the side of the ship, was going to leap into the sea and swim for my life rather than continue among Yahoos. But one of the seamen prevented me, and, having informed the captain, I was chained to my cabin.

After dinner Don Pedro came to me, and desired to know my reason for so desperate an attempt; assured me he only meant to do me all the service he was able; and spoke so very movingly that at last I descended to treat him like an animal which had some little portion of reason. He took my wrist before I began, as a matter of course, and held it throughout, quite lightly, with the face of a man listening for a clock in the next room. It was a hundred and twelve, from the chain and the smell. I gave him a very short relation of my voyage; of the conspiracy against me by my own men; of the country where they set me on shore, and of my five years' residence there. All which he looked upon as if it were a dream or a vision; whereat I took great offence; for I had quite forgot the faculty of lying, so peculiar to Yahoos in all countries where they preside, and, consequently, their disposition of suspecting truth in others of their own species. I asked him whether it were the custom in his country to say the thing which was not. I assured him I had almost forgot what he meant by falsehood, and that if I had lived a thousand years in Houyhnhnmland I should never have heard a lie from the meanest servant; that I was altogether indifferent whether he believed me or not; but, however, in return for his favours, I would give so much allowance to the corruption of his nature as to answer any objection he would please to make, and then he might easily discover the truth.

The captain, a wise man, after many endeavours to catch me tripping in some part of my story, at last began to have a better opinion of my veracity. He told me why. A lie goes up, he said; a good lie stays; he had taken the wrist of a minister at Lisbon once, who was to tell the king a thing, and it had told him nothing at all. Mine had come down. It had come down as I told it, from the chain to fifty-one by the time I reached my master's name, and he had not seen that before in a man; he did not know what it meant, and he preferred it. But he added that since I professed so inviolable an attachment to truth, I must give him my word and honour to bear him company in this voyage without attempting any thing against my life, or else he would continue me a prisoner till we arrived at Lisbon. I gave him the promise he required; but at the same time protested that I would suffer the greatest hardships rather than return to live among Yahoos.

Our voyage passed without any considerable accident. In gratitude to the captain, I sometimes sat with him, at his earnest request, and strove to conceal my antipathy against humankind, although it often broke out; which he suffered to pass without observation. But the greatest part of the day I confined myself to my cabin, to avoid seeing any of the crew. The captain had often entreated me to strip myself of my savage dress, and offered to lend me the best suit of clothes he had. This I would not be prevailed on to accept, abhorring to cover myself with any thing that had been on the back of a Yahoo. I only desired he would lend me two clean shirts, which, having been washed since he wore them, I believed would not so much defile me. These I changed every second day, and washed them myself. He had seen the cord, when he took my wrist, and asked nothing. I would have given him credit for that if I had been giving credit to Yahoos.

We arrived at Lisbon, November 5, 1715. At our landing, the captain forced me to cover myself with his cloak, to prevent the rabble from crowding about me. I was conveyed to his own house; and at my earnest request he led me up to the highest room backwards. I conjured him to conceal from all persons what I had told him of the Houyhnhnms, because the least hint of such a story would not only draw numbers of people to see me, but probably put me in danger of being imprisoned, or burnt by the Inquisition. The captain persuaded me to accept a suit of clothes newly made; but I would not suffer the tailor to take my measure, who had begun, as they do, at the wrist; however, Don Pedro being almost of my size, they fitted me well enough. He accoutred me with other necessaries, all new, which I aired for twenty-four hours before I would use them.

The captain had no wife, nor above three servants, none of which were suffered to attend at meals; and his whole deportment was so obliging, added to very good human understanding, that I really began to tolerate his company. He gained so far upon me that I ventured to look out of the back window. By degrees I was brought into another room, whence I peeped into the street, but drew my head back in a fright. In a week's time he seduced me down to the door. I found my terror gradually lessened, but my hatred and contempt seemed to increase. I was at last bold enough to walk the street in his company, but kept my nose well stopped with rue, or sometimes with tobacco. I did not look at the faces. I looked at the way they walked, which was thirty ways at once; and I put my own foot down at the pace of the house, against the stream, and was taken twice for drunk and once for a priest.

In ten days Don Pedro, to whom I had given some account of my domestic affairs, put it upon me, as a matter of honour and conscience, that I ought to return to my native country, and live at home with my wife and children. He told me there was an English ship in the port just ready to sail, and he would furnish me with all things necessary. It would be tedious to repeat his arguments, and my contradictions. He said it was altogether impossible to find such a solitary island as I desired to live in; but I might command in my own house, and pass my time in a manner as recluse as I pleased.

I complied at last, finding I could not do better. I left Lisbon the 24th day of November, in an English merchantman, but who was the master I never inquired. Don Pedro accompanied me to the ship, and lent me twenty credits. I had money in my pocket, and did not take it out; it was easier, I do not know why, to owe a Yahoo than to spend what I had kept. He took kind leave of me, and embraced me at parting, which I bore as well as I could. He was seventy-four against my chest, and I was a hundred and eight, and I stood it for nine of his, and counted them. During this last voyage I had no commerce with the master or any of his men; but, pretending I was sick, kept close in my cabin. On the fifth of December, 1715, we cast anchor in the Downs, about nine in the morning, and at three in the afternoon I got safe to my house at Redriff.

My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust and contempt; and the more by reflecting on the near alliance I had to them. For although, since my unfortunate exile from the Houyhnhnm country, I had compelled myself to tolerate the sight of Yahoos, and to converse with Don Pedro de Mendez, yet my memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted Houyhnhnms. And when I began to consider that, by copulating with one of the Yahoo species, I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion and horror.

As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. She had not taken my wrist, as she had at every door; she had put her arms round me instead, which she had never done at a door, and I stood it for the length of a breath. When I came to myself there was a hand at my wrist and a voice, low, saying a number over and over, as one says a name down a well to someone who has gone out of hearing. It was fifty-two. It went down at the end of each, in a way that nothing in that country had. I did not know whose it was. I was told after that it had been an hour, and that she had not stopped, and that for the first part there had been nothing for her to find. I took my wrist out of her hand. The hand let go at once. It had been expecting that.

At the time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England. During the first year I could not endure my wife or children in my presence; the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them take me by the wrist. The first money I laid out was to buy two young stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them the groom is my greatest favourite, for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me and friendship to each other. I took their pasterns every morning for the first year. The bay is thirty-eight and the grey forty-one; they stand side by side, each at his own, and neither seems to mind. I say my words to them at forty-four, and they put their ears forward at the end of each measure, which I take for an answer.

## Chapter 41 · The author's veracity, and the wrist laid in the Chancellor's hand. His design in publishing this work. His censure of those travellers who swerve from the truth. The author clears himself from any sinister ends in writing, and from a paragraph that was not his. An objection answered. The method of planting colonies, in which a stranger's number is read aloud to him and written in a book. His native country commended. The right of the crown to those countries described by the author is justified, and the difficulty of conquering them on one count. The author takes his last leave of the reader; proposes his manner of living for the future; gives good advice, and concludes at a long table, with two fingers.

Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months: wherein I have not been so studious of ornament as of truth. I could, perhaps, like others, have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact, in the simplest manner and style, because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee. I have set down every figure as I took it. A traveller who gives you the country and leaves out the beat has given you the country as a man gives you a coat, with the wearer taken out; and this is the sense in which I have not been studious of ornament.

It is easy for us who travel into remote countries, which are seldom visited by Englishmen or other Europeans, to form descriptions of wonderful animals both at sea and land. Whereas a traveller's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning foreign places. I could heartily wish a law was enacted that every traveller, before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the Lord High Chancellor that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; and I would have him lay his wrist in the Chancellor's hand while he swore it, though I am told that the best of the profession would give the Chancellor nothing to read. For then the world would no longer be deceived, as it usually is, while some writers, to make their works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest falsities on the unwary reader.

I have perused several books of travels with great delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most parts of the globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts from my own observation, it has given me a great disgust against this part of reading, and some indignation to see the credulity of mankind so impudently abused. Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I imposed on myself, as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master and the other illustrious Houyhnhnms of whom I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer. I say in my mind; I do not say in my wrist. I did not bring the number home. I am fifty-one at the table, and over sixty on the bad days. The lectures I have. A man may keep the one without the other, and I think it is the lectures that are meant.

—Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem / Finxit, vanum etiam, mendacemque improba finget.

I know very well how little reputation is to be got by writings which require neither genius nor learning, nor indeed any other talent, except a good memory, or an exact journal; and I had the second, which has four columns. I know likewise that writers of travels, like dictionary-makers, are sunk into oblivion by the weight and bulk of those who come last, and therefore lie uppermost. And it is highly probable that such travellers who shall hereafter visit the countries described in this work of mine may, by detecting my errors (if there be any), and adding many new discoveries of their own, jostle me out of vogue, and stand in my place, making the world forget that ever I was an author. This indeed would be too great a mortification if I wrote for fame; but as my sole intention was the public good, I cannot be altogether disappointed. For who can read of the virtues I have mentioned in the glorious Houyhnhnms, without being ashamed of his own vices, when he considers himself as the reasoning, governing animal of his country? I shall say nothing of those remote nations where Yahoos preside; among which the least corrupted are the Brobdingnagians, whose wise maxims in morality and government it would be our happiness to observe, if a reader had the time to hear them said at five. But I forbear descanting further, and rather leave the judicious reader to his own remarks and application.

I am not a little pleased that this work of mine can possibly meet with no censurers; for what objections can be made against a writer who relates only plain facts that happened in such distant countries, where we have not the least interest with respect either to trade or negotiations? I have carefully avoided every fault with which common writers of travels are often too justly charged. Besides, I meddle not the least with any party, but write without passion, prejudice or ill-will against any man, or number of men, whatsoever. I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind, over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority from the advantages I received by conversing so long among the most accomplished Houyhnhnms. I write without any view to profit or praise. I never suffer a word to pass that may look like reflection, or possibly give the least offence, even to those who are most ready to take it. So that I hope I may with justice pronounce myself an author perfectly blameless, against whom the tribes of Answerers, Considerers, Observers, Reflectors, Detectors, Remarkers, will never be able to find matter for exercising their talents. There was a paragraph, in the first edition, in praise of her Serenity the Regent. It was not mine, and it was not true. I have said so in my letter, and I say it again here at the end, because it is the only thing in that book that I did not take at the wrist.

I confess it was whispered to me that I was bound in duty, as a subject of England, to have given in a memorial to a secretary of state at my first coming over; because whatever lands are discovered by a subject belong to the crown. But I doubt whether our conquests in the countries I treat of would be as easy as those of Ferdinando Cortez over the naked Americans. The Lilliputians, I think, are hardly worth the charge of a fleet and army to reduce them, the fleet arriving in the reign after the one it was sent against; and I question whether it might be prudent or safe to attempt the Brobdingnagians, who would be a quarter of an hour in understanding that they had been attacked, and the army another quarter in understanding that they had not minded; or whether an English army would be much at their ease with the Flying Island over their heads. The Houyhnhnms indeed appear not to be so well prepared for war, a science to which they are perfect strangers, and especially against missive weapons. However, supposing myself to be a minister of state, I could never give my advice for invading them. Their prudence, unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love of their country would amply supply all defects in the military art. Imagine twenty thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European army, confounding the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the warriors' faces into mummy by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs; and on one count, so that the twenty thousand hoofs would come down in the same instant, and it would be not an army broken but one blow. For they would well deserve the character given to Augustus, Recalcitrat undique tutus. But, instead of proposals for conquering that magnanimous nation, I rather wish they were in a capacity or disposition to send a sufficient number of their inhabitants for civilizing Europe, by teaching us the first principles of honour, justice, truth, temperance, public spirit, fortitude, chastity, friendship, benevolence and fidelity. The names of all which virtues are still retained among us in most languages, and are to be met with in modern as well as ancient authors; which I am able to assert from my own small reading. I have looked in it for the name of the thing my master said was the whole of reason, and have not found it; there are a great many names near.

But I had another reason which made me less forward to enlarge his majesty's dominions by my discoveries. To say the truth, I had conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon those occasions. For instance: a crew of pirates are driven by a storm they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the topmast; they go on shore to rob and plunder; they see a harmless people, are entertained with kindness; they give the country a new name; they take the wrist of the first man who comes down to the shore, and read his number aloud to him in a language he has not got, and write it in a book; they take formal possession of it for their king; they set up a rotten plank, or a stone, for a memorial; they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more, by force, for a sample; return home, and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free licence given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people!

But this description, I confess, does by no means affect the British nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom, care and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for the advancement of religion and learning; their choice of devout and able pastors to propagate Christianity; their caution in stocking their provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice, in supplying the civil administration through all their colonies with officers of the greatest abilities, utter strangers to corruption; and, to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous governors, who have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they preside, and the honour of the king their master.

But as those countries which I have described do not appear to have any desire of being conquered and enslaved, murdered or driven out by colonies, nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar or tobacco, I did humbly conceive they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our valour or our interest. However, if those whom it more concerns think fit to be of another opinion, I am ready to depose, when I shall be lawfully called, that no European did ever visit those countries before me. I mean, if the inhabitants ought to be believed; unless a dispute may arise concerning the two Yahoos, said to have been seen many years ago upon a mountain in Houyhnhnmland, from whence the opinion is that the race of those brutes hath descended; and these, for anything I know, may have been English, which indeed I was apt to suspect from the lineaments of their posterity's countenances, although very much defaced. I took nine of those wrists, and the build is ours; the count was nobody's. But how far that will go to make out a title, I leave to the learned in colony-law. As to the formality of taking possession in my sovereign's name, it never came once into my thoughts; and if it had, yet, as my affairs then stood, I should perhaps, in point of prudence and self-preservation, have put it off to a better opportunity.

Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be raised against me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my courteous readers, and return to enjoy my own speculations in my little garden at Redriff; to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which I learned among the Houyhnhnms; to instruct the Yahoos of my own family, as far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature; to lament the brutality to Houyhnhnms in my own country, but always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom these of ours have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their intellectuals came to degenerate. I do it with my sleeve rolled back, so as to see the cord, which is the only part of my figure that I can look at for long.

My reconcilement to the Yahoo-kind in general might not be so difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to the due course of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity and diseases, both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither shall I be ever able to comprehend how such an animal, and such a vice, could tally together. The wise and virtuous Houyhnhnms, who abound in all excellences that can adorn a rational creature, have no name for this vice in their language, which has no terms to express any thing that is evil, except those whereby they describe the detestable qualities of their Yahoos, among which they were not able to distinguish this of pride, for want of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it shows itself in other countries where that animal presides. But I, who had more experience, could plainly observe some rudiments of it among the wild Yahoos. It is a count that goes up when it is looked at, and stays up as long as the look; I saw it in the Yahoo that had the best stone, when the herd turned its heads. The Houyhnhnms have no name for it, there being nobody in their country who is looked at.

But the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they possess than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm; which no man in his wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them. I dwell the longer upon this subject from the desire I have to make the society of an English Yahoo by any means not insupportable; and therefore I here entreat those who have any tincture of this absurd vice that they will not presume to come in my sight.

I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table, and to answer, but with the utmost brevity, the few questions I asked her. The table is eleven feet. I measured it, as I measure everything, and it is a foot short of four yards, which I did not intend and find I have been looking at. Yet, the smell of a Yahoo continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose well stopped with rue, lavender or tobacco leaves; and although it be hard for a man late in life to remove old habits, I am not altogether out of hopes, in some time, to suffer a neighbour Yahoo in my company, without the apprehensions I am yet under of his teeth or his claws. She answers in numbers when she can. I asked how the children did, and she said sixty-three, and fifty-eight, and ninety-four. Last Sunday I took out of my pocket, where it had been since Laputa, a bladder of eleven peas, and sent it down the table. It went the whole eleven feet on the cloth, and stopped against the boy's plate. He is five. He looked at it. His mother showed him, from where she sat; she shook it. It makes sixty in every language. He shook it himself, a good deal faster. I took my wrist, which I have not been doing in the house. I was fifty-one.

Last night, when the cloth was drawn, my wife, at the far end, with her hand lying on the board, put two fingers to the inside of her wrist. She did not look up. It was the right place. I do not think she knew I was looking. I have put two fingers on the table beside my wrist, on the side where the cord is. They are there now, as I write this. I have not yet laid them on it.

[Margin: At the foot of the last leaf of Mrs. Gulliver's copy, in pencil, in her hand, there is a number which is not in the text. It is fifty-two. R.S.]

---

# 每分鐘六十下
*改編自《格列佛遊記》 — Colophon · A1，人類策劃*

## 第00章 · 出版人致讀者，以及格列佛船長寫給堂弟辛普森的一封信

這些航行紀事的作者，萊繆爾・格列佛先生，是我古老而親密的朋友；我們之間，母系那一邊還有一點親戚關係。大約三年前，格列佛先生厭倦了那些好奇的人潮，他們擠到他在雷德里夫的家裡，來請他測自己的拍，就像別人去請人算命一樣，於是他在中地，也就是他的故鄉，靠近新馬克的地方，買了一小塊地，和一棟方便的房子，現在就隱居在那裡，在鄰居之間頗有聲望。

雖然格列佛先生生在中地，他父親也住在那裡，我卻聽他說過，他的家族來自上郡；為了印證這一點，我在那個郡的班伯里教堂墓地裡，看到十一座格列佛家的墳墓和紀念碑，其中最早的一座磨損得很厲害，我只讀得出日期。

他離開雷德里夫以前，把下面這些文稿交給我保管，並准我認為合適就怎麼處置。我很仔細地讀了三遍，用的是我自己的拍，那是慢的。文風非常樸素簡單，我唯一挑得出的毛病，是作者照旅行者的習慣，寫得稍微太詳細了一點。全書透著一股真實的氣息；事實上作者以誠實出名，在雷德里夫的鄰居之間，成了一句俗話：要是有人斷言一件事，別人就說，那跟格列佛先生親自在腕上測過的一樣真。

承幾位可敬的人士勸告，我曾在得到作者允許以後，把這些文稿給他們看過，不久以前，我冒昧把它們送到世上，希望它們至少有一陣子，能讓我們的年輕貴人們得到比政治與黨派那些尋常的塗鴉更好一點的消遣。它們賣出去了。我提這個，只是要說明我並非沒有人鼓勵就行事。

那第一版是短的。它本來至少會大一倍，要不是我冒昧刪去了無數段落，那些段落講的是各個境的拍，是格列佛先生在遇到的每一個人的腕上，極其用心測來的；還有比值、時間表，和一些詳細的記述：一場風暴，在每分鐘七百二十拍時是怎麼感覺的，一句話，在每分鐘五拍時是怎麼等的；也有他在各地管理自己脈搏的紀錄，用的是外科醫生的文體；在這些地方，我有理由擔心格列佛先生可能有一點不滿。但我決心盡可能讓這部作品適合一般讀者的承受，所以我把書裡每一個人都調到通用的拍，也就是六十，這樣沒有人需要被催，也沒有人需要被等。我當時認為這個原則是對的。我信得過的人告訴我，那是一個原則正確的、很差的版本。

當時，那位學院裡的年輕先生，是格列佛先生要我雇來修潤文風的，他向我保證，修潤過的文風比較容易讀，而且除了語意需要的，什麼也沒有添。我當時沒有辦法驗證這一點。後來我有了辦法。我把格列佛先生在那本書出版後的春天寫給我的信，一字不改印在下面，對那封信，我當時認為不適合回覆。

我還有一點要補充。格列佛先生讓我以為原稿已經毀了，我信了，就像我相信他對我說的大部分事一樣，那並不多。我現在可以說，原稿沒有毀。他的妻子，瑪麗・格列佛太太，不會讀他的字，卻說她看不得他的任何東西被燒掉，在他離家的幾個冬天裡，用她自己的字，把全部抄了一份清稿，一行一行，連數字也抄，抄她看不懂的，和抄她看得懂的一樣仔細，說是「為了有一樣他的東西可以握著」。那份抄本放在一只亞麻衣箱裡。我印的就是這份抄本。缺的地方，我在頁邊說明了。讀者因此終於有了全本，也就是我在第一版裡向任何要的旅人答應過的那一種，而且它用的字，比作者的更好看。

關於作者的其餘細節，讀者在書的最初幾頁裡就會得到滿意的交代。理查・辛普森，於雷德里夫印書所。

格列佛船長寫給他堂弟辛普森的一封信，四月二日，寫於書出版後的春天。

我希望你願意公開承認，在你被叫去作證的時候，是你一再地、極力地催促，我才答應把一份很鬆散、很不工整的航行紀事交出去發表，並且囑咐你雇一位學院裡的年輕先生，替我把它整理好、把文風修潤一下，就像我堂兄丹皮爾，聽了我的建議，在他那本叫《環灣航行記》的書裡做的那樣。可是我不記得我給過你權力，同意刪掉任何東西，更不用說添進任何東西；所以說到添進的部分，我在這裡聲明否認一切這類東西；特別是那一段關於攝政殿下的話，她是最虔誠、最光榮的紀念，儘管我敬重愛戴她，勝過我們這一型裡的任何人。你，或者你的竄入者，應該想到，那既不合我的心意，在我的主人慧駰面前稱讚我們這一型的任何人，也不合體統；此外，那件事實完全是假的；因為據我所知，我在家的那幾年裡，殿下攝政的一部分時間，她是靠一位首席大臣治理的，甚至接連兩位；所以你讓我說了那不是的事。

同樣地，在那座投機者學院的記述裡，和我對我的主人慧駰說的好幾段話裡，你不是略掉了一些重要的情節，就是把它們削弱、改動成那個樣子，以致我幾乎認不出自己的作品。最要緊的是，你把我記述裡的每一個人，都調成了我自己的拍。整本書裡，除了我，沒有一個人的拍是六十；你把他們全做得跟我一樣，於是利立浦特人變慢了，巨人變快了，一位慧駰趕著去吃飯，像個辦事員。我以前在信裡向你暗示過這件事，你回答說你怕得罪人；說有權勢的人很留意出版，不但愛解釋，而且愛懲罰任何看起來像影射（你好像是這麼叫的）的東西。可是請問，我在這麼多年以前，在大約五千里格之外、另一個攝政時代說的話，怎麼可能被套到任何如今據說在治理那一群的耶胡身上；尤其是在我當時根本沒想過，也不怕自己會有被牠們統治的不幸的時候？我不是最有理由抱怨嗎，當我看見這些耶胡正被慧駰用車載著，好像牠們是畜牲，而那些慧駰才是有理性的生物？而且事實上，為了避開這麼可怕、這麼可憎的景象，正是我退隱到這裡的一個主要動機。

這些我認為該對你說的，說的是你自己，和我對你的託付。其次，我要抱怨我自己的判斷太差，竟被你和另外一些人的懇求和謬論說動，非常違反我自己的意見，答應讓我的航行紀事被發表。請你回想，我多少次請你考慮過，當你堅持要用公共利益當理由的時候，耶胡是一種完全無法被教導或榜樣改過的族類：事實證明了這一點；因為我本來有理由期待，至少在這個小小的境裡，一切弊端與腐敗會被畫上句點，可是你看，在超過六個月的警告之後，我打聽不到我的書產生了哪怕一個合乎我意圖的效果。

我曾請你寫信告訴我，什麼時候黨派與派系已被消滅；配額法庭有學問又正直；訴訟代理人誠實謙虛，帶一點常識；檔案院裡燒起一座座法典堆成的金字塔；年輕貴人的教育完全改變；內科醫生被放逐；各大府邸被徹底清掃；才智、品德與學問得到獎賞；所有玷污出版的人，不論散文或詩，被判只准吃他們自己的紙，並用他們自己的墨水解渴。這些，和上千種別的改革，我都是因為你的鼓勵，堅信不疑地期待的；因為它們很明顯是可以從我書裡的訓誡推出來的。必須承認，七個月已足以矯正耶胡所有的惡行與愚蠢，只要牠們的天性有一絲向善或智慧的傾向。

然而，你完全沒有回應我在你任何一封信裡的期望，相反地，你每個星期都用誹謗文字、解碼本、感想、回憶錄，和續集，把我們的郵差壓得滿滿的；在這些東西裡，我看見自己被指責影射了大人物；貶低我們這一型（牠們至今還有臉這麼稱呼）；侮辱了另一種性別。我還發現這些捆文稿的作者們彼此意見不一；因為有些人不承認我是自己航行紀事的作者，另一些人又把我寫成一些我完全不認得的書的作者。我還發現你的印刷工人粗心到把我幾次航行與歸來的拍弄混了，把日期搞錯了，沒有給出真正的年、真正的月、真正的日；而且我聽說原稿在書出版之後全毀了，我手上也沒有留下任何抄本；不過，我已經寄給你一些更正，要是以後有再版，你可以插進去；可是我也不能保證它們，只得把那件事留給明智而坦率的讀者，由他們隨意調整。

我聽說我們的一些海上的耶胡，挑我的航海用語的毛病，說它在好多地方不得體，現在也已不用了。我也沒辦法。我最初幾次航行，年輕的時候，是最老的水手教我的，我學他們那樣說話。可是我後來發現，海上的耶胡和陸地上的耶胡一樣，愛趕新的說法，而陸上那些，每年換一次；以致每次回到我自己的國家，我都記得，牠們原來的方言變得那麼厲害，我幾乎聽不懂新的。而且我發現，每當有哪個耶胡出於好奇，從雷德里夫來我家拜訪，我們兩個都沒有辦法把自己的想法，用對方聽得懂的方式說出來。

要是耶胡的指責能夠以任何方式影響我，我就有很大的理由抱怨，因為牠們當中有些大膽到以為我的航行紀事，純屬我自己腦袋裡編出來的小說，甚至進一步暗示，慧駰和耶胡的存在，不比烏托邦的居民多多少。說實話，我必須承認，說到利立浦特的人，布羅丁奈格人（那個字應該拼成布羅丁拉格，而不是被錯拼成布羅丁奈格），和勒皮他人，我還從來沒聽說過哪個耶胡竟冒昧到去質疑他們的存在，或我敘述的有關他們的事實；因為真相立刻就會以確信打動每個讀者。

而我對慧駰或耶胡的敘述，難道就比較不可信嗎？既然就後者而言，即使在這個境裡也有成千上萬，牠們與慧駰國裡的畜牲同類，不同之處只在於牠們說一種嘰嘰喳喳的話，而且不光著身子。我寫是為了牠們的改正，不是為了牠們的贊許。全種族的一致讚美，對我的意義，還不如我馬廄裡那兩匹墮落的慧駰的嘶鳴；因為從這兩位身上，雖然牠們墮落了，我仍然在若干德行上有所進步，而且不摻一點惡。這些可憐的生物竟敢以為，我墮落到要替自己的誠實辯護嗎？我雖然是個耶胡，可是整個慧駰國都知道，靠著我那位傑出的主人的教導和榜樣，我在兩年裡（雖然我承認極其困難）就戒掉了那種可憎的習慣：說謊、含糊、欺騙、模稜兩可，它們在我整個種族的靈魂裡，扎根那麼深；尤其是水手們。

我還有別的抱怨要在這令人煩惱的場合提出，但我忍住了，不再煩擾我自己，也不再煩擾你。我必須坦白承認，自從我上次歸來，我天性裡的一些耶胡的腐敗又復活了，因為我不得不和你們這一類的幾個人，特別是我自己家裡的人，來往；否則我絕不會企圖做那麼荒謬的一件事，要在這個境裡改造耶胡這個族類；不過我現在已經永遠放棄這類空想的計畫了。

格列佛測於腕上的拍速表，他堂弟沒有印，現在依瑪麗・格列佛太太的抄本補回。雷德里夫，以及常型各境的一般：每分鐘六十（作者自己的）。小境，利立浦特與不來夫斯古：七百二十。大境，布羅丁奈格：五。勒皮他浮島：測不到；靠拍打的人把它拍回時間裡。下方的陸地，巴爾尼巴比：四十，而且在下降。拉格奈格，在宮廷裡：六十；別處不定。慧駰國，牧境：四十四，每一個人都一樣。

## 第01章 · 作者略述自己與家世，以及他所保持的拍。他遇難，拚命游泳，醒來時身在一處岸上，身邊是拍得比他快十二倍的人。

我是萊繆爾・格列佛，是一個在中地擁有一小塊地的人的五個兒子裡的第三個，那塊地不夠養活我們所有人。十四歲時我被送進學院，在那裡待了三年，學到不少東西；可是我父親的田負擔不起那筆費用，我就被送去給下城一位有名的外科醫生詹姆斯・貝茨先生當學徒，跟他待了四年。我去見他的那天早上，他在樓梯上就抓住我的手腕，還沒問我叫什麼名字，就把它拿去對他另一隻手臂上戴著的錶，說：「六十。」我的拍從來沒有不是這個數。他告訴我，這是一件該感謝、卻不該驕傲的事，而我發現這兩樣很難分開。

一個身體有它的拍，每個孩子都知道；而對身體做的許多事，都是由那些知道拍該是多少、卻聽不出差二的人做的。貝茨先生在一屋子咳嗽聲裡也聽得出差二。他教我把手指放在每一個常型的人腕內側的那片腕片上，那是調速器的跳動最靠近表皮的地方，並且對著錶面數整整一分鐘，絕不數半分鐘，因為數半分鐘是外科醫生騙自己的辦法。從那天起，我替每一隻碰過的手腕記了一本簿子。那是一本很長的簿子，我至今還留著。

我父親偶爾寄給我一點小錢，我拿它去學航海，和數學裡對一個打算旅行的人有用的那些部分，我一直相信有一天我會旅行。離開貝茨先生以後，他和我叔叔約翰湊了四十信用點，並答應每年給我三十，我就到萊頓去，在那裡學了兩年七個月的醫理，我推想它在長途航行中會有用，後來果然有用。回來後，我的老師推薦我去給燕子號當外科醫生，船長是亞伯拉罕・帕內爾，我跟了他三年半，到過黎凡特和別處。然後我在布巷租了房間，經人勸告改變我的處境，娶了瑪麗・伯頓太太，她是襪商埃德蒙・伯頓先生的二女兒，嫁妝四百信用點；兩年以後，貝茨先生死了。

他把他的錶留給了我。那是一只密封的錶，為必須在潮濕的艙房裡工作的外科醫生做的，他親手把它調到標準，這樣一個人把它貼在任何一隻手腕上，就馬上知道兩者哪一個不對。最後那天晚上，我照學來的那樣測了他自己的拍，當著他遺孀的面，她請我什麼也別說。是三十一。我什麼也沒說。那以後我每個晚上給錶上發條，一次也沒讓它停過。

貝茨先生走了，頂替他的朋友很少，我的診所漸漸冷清；因為我不肯像我的同行裡太多人那樣，一個手腕只要休息，卻開出重新上發條的處方。和妻子以及我認識的人商量過以後，我又出海，先後在兩艘船上當外科醫生，在東水與西水上走了六年，回家時略為富了一點。我的閒暇花在讀古今最好的作者上，我總是帶著不少書；上了岸，我就觀察當地人的風俗，學他們的語言，在這方面我很有天賦，靠的是我記性好。最後那次航行不太幸運，我對海厭倦了，想在家陪著妻子和孩子。我從布巷搬到燈籠巷，再搬到水濱，希望從水手那裡找到生意；可是它就是不划算。期待它好轉三年以後，我接受了羚羊號船長威廉・普里查德的邀請，他要去一趟南海。我們五月四日從布里斯托碼頭啟航。

航程的前一段很順利。基於某些理由，不適合拿那些細節來煩讀者。［頁邊：格列佛太太的抄本在這裡，用她的字，只有一個詞，「略」，劃了兩道底線。作者不願意讀者被第一段航程的細節煩擾，她把他的願望遵守到了每一個字。辛普森按。］我只說，往東走的路上，一場猛烈的風暴把我們吹到寒岸的西北，經過一次觀測，我們發現自己在南緯三十度二分。船員有十二個因為勞累過度、食物太差死了，其餘的都很虛弱。我在每一個死者的最後一個小時測了他們的拍，這是我的職責，並且記下來。九個在四十以下。另外三個我沒來得及趕到。

十一月五日，那在那個緯度是夏天的開頭，天氣很濃，瞭望的人在不到半鏈遠的地方看見一塊礁石；風太大，我們轉不開船。羚羊號撞了上去，從船頭到船腰劈開，快得只夠說這一句話。我們六個人，我也在其中，把小艇放下去，拉開了；我估計划了三里格，直到再也划不動為止，因為我們早已被船耗盡了。大約半個鐘頭後，一陣從北邊來的突風把我們掀翻。和我一起的那五個人後來怎樣了，礁石上或船殼裡剩下的人怎樣了，我說不上來；我推斷他們都死了。

我自己游，照命運指的方向，被風與潮往前推，我數著自己耳朵裡的拍，因為沒有別的可數：開頭是一百六，往下降。我好幾次把腿放下去，下面什麼也沒有；快要不行了的時候，我找到了底，那時風暴已經減弱。坡很緩，我在淺水裡走了將近一哩才到岸上，我估計那時是晚上八點左右。我又往前走了大約半哩，沒有看見房子、路、煙，或者是我太虛弱，沒有注意到。熱氣，和離船時喝下的半品脫白蘭地，讓我昏昏欲睡。我躺在一片又短又軟的草上，睡以前，我把手腕貼著錶測了一下，那只錶像它被做成的那樣，撐過了海，還在走。是五十二。我想，一個還數得出自己的拍的人還沒死，就睡著了，睡得比我這輩子任何一次都沉，我估計睡了大約九個鐘頭；因為我醒來時，天剛亮。

我是因為光不對才醒的。我躺在背上，抬不起手臂；它們被釘在兩側的地上，腿也是，我的頭髮又密又長，也被往下拉緊，所以我連頭都轉不動。許多細細的繩子，從腋下一直橫過我的身體，到大腿。我只能看天；太陽開始熱了，刺著我的眼睛。而我聽得見，在身邊很近的地方，有一種聲音，我先以為是蜜蜂，後來以為是耳朵裡的海：一種很高的嗡嗡聲，像隔著牆聽一個蜂巢，裡頭有一種顆粒，我分不出是什麼。我測了自己的拍，因為我別的什麼也做不了。是一百一十。

過了一會兒，我感覺到我的左腿上有一個活的東西，它很輕柔地沿著我的肚子和胸口往上爬，直到站在我下巴的近旁；我把眼睛盡量往下轉，看見那是一個人，不到六吋高，手裡拿著弓，背上背著箭袋。他穿一件鏽色的外衣，臉上有皺紋，握弓的樣子，我注意到，像一個被叫去握一樣東西、卻不想用它的人。我看不見他的手腕。可是他的腳跟踩在我的胸骨上，我在那裡感覺到了，並且做了一件我做過上萬次、卻沒有決定要做的事：我數了。我立刻數亂了，太多了。我再試一次，數了十秒。是七百，或者八百；像一根被敲響的弦。那不是動物的拍，動物走自己的路。那是一個人的拍，被壓住的，一個很快的人，他很害怕，正盡力不讓人看出來。我當時還不知道這個數字的意思。我只知道，我從來沒測過像這樣的。

在他後面，照我的判斷，又來了四十個。我做了我所能做的最糟的一件事：我吼了一聲。他們全跑開了，像一群椋鳥從田裡飛起來，我後來聽說有幾個因為從我身側跳到地上，摔傷了；我立刻就後悔，像後悔嚇到任何一位病人那樣。可是他們又回來了，其中一個冒險走近，足以看清我整張臉，他舉起手和眼睛，用一種尖銳、有調子的聲音喊：赫基納・德古；其餘的跟著喊，喊了很多次；我把它當成禱詞，或是對我的一次點數，分不出是哪一個。

我掙扎，湊巧弄斷了繩子，把固定左臂的樁子拔了出來，這讓我看見他們是怎麼把我綁住的；我用力一扯，很痛，把左邊太陽穴的繩子扯鬆了一點，這樣我能把頭轉兩吋。小人們又在我抓住任何一個之前跑開，發出一聲很尖的大喊；寂靜以後，我聽見有個聲音喊出一句聽起來像托爾戈・佛納克的話，頓時我的左手感覺有一百多支箭扎進來，像針；第二波，他們朝天空射，像我們在圍城時做的那樣，落在我的身體和臉上。我有一盒柳葉刀，比下城任何人做的都細，我認得一個細的尖；他們的更細。我呻吟了，又試著掙開，他們放了更大的一波；有些人拿矛從側面來戳我，被我的牛皮背心擋住。我想最審慎的辦法是躺著不動，等夜裡，那時我可以自己掙開。

我躺著不動，像對一個躺在桌上的孩子那樣躺著，理由也一樣。而我在這裡必須記下一件事，因為它後來對我有用，而當時我並不知道。我睡了，照我計算，九個鐘頭。綁住我的那些人，照我已經記下的，拍是我的十二倍；所以在我的九個鐘頭裡，他們有了他們自己的一百零八個，那是四天半；他們用掉了它。繩子、樁子、橫過我身上的繩索，和那時開始在我左耳邊豎起的台子，伴著上萬把小槌的聲音，不是我看起來的一個鐘頭的事，而是一個星期的事，是一些有充分理由認為自己很快的人，深思熟慮、並且完成的。我提這一點，是因為我聽說他們為那些箭感到羞愧，而我想讓人知道，我並沒有因為他們害怕就看輕他們。我是他們任何一個人見過的最大的東西；我也是，在他們看來，一定慢得出奇。

他們不再射了。可是我周圍的聲音越來越大，這告訴我有更多人來了，在我右耳邊約四碼的地方，開始有敲打聲，持續了一個多鐘頭，像人在蓋東西；等我能把頭轉得夠遠時，我看見他們搭了一座一呎半高的台子，帶著梯子，一位有身分的人帶著三個隨從爬上台，其中一個托著他的裙擺，不比我的中指長。他對我講了很長的一段話。我什麼也沒聽懂，我想說得精確。它傳到我這邊，是一個又高又顆粒的單音，一直持續下去，像遠處一座磨坊裡的鋸子；我毫不懷疑，我的回答，也就是我是個陌生人、並無惡意，傳到他那邊，是從很遠的地方來的一聲低吼，他聽到第一個音節，還沒等第二個說完就放棄了。我舉起我自由的那隻手和雙眼向著太陽，像叫一個證人那樣。然後，因為一個人在空著肚子的時候，禮貌是有限度的，我把手指放在嘴上。

他完全明白了。我本來不會想到，會被還沒介紹過的人這麼迅速地餵飽。梯子靠在我的身側，一支隊伍沿著梯子上來，超過一百人，沿著我的手臂朝我的臉走，提著籃子：我現在相信，那個國家的廚師從我睡著起就一直在忙，因為對他們來說，我睡了差不多一個星期。肉塊的形狀像羊肉，烹得很好，比雲雀的翅膀還小。我一打一打地吃，一次拿三個麵包，每個大概一顆火繩槍子彈那麼大，他們不斷往上運，帶著對我胃口的驚奇，梯子腳邊有一個人用粉筆在木板上，五個一組地數我。我做了要喝的手勢，他們吊起一個大酒桶，滾到我手邊，把頂敲掉。它裝不到半品脫。那酒像南岸的一種淡酒，但是更甜。我一口喝乾，又喝了第二桶，還要，這時發現沒有了；我略帶滿意地，把這當成我已經喝光了一個國家的酒窖的標誌。

我承認，他們在我胸口上走來走去時，我曾經很想抓四五十個最近的，摔在地上。可是我想起那些箭，它們也許還不是他們能做的最糟的，並且我覺得自己受款待之道所約束，因為這些人花了那麼大的代價；後來我才明白，他們來這一趟付出了什麼。對活在每分鐘七百二十拍的人來說，我的手從草地上抬起來，是頭頂一朵慢慢移動的雲，而沒有人為了好玩爬上一朵慢雲。他們成百地在我胸口走動，而他們沒有一個會不清楚，像那樣一隻手，在他想到它的時間裡，能做什麼。

下午，一位高階的人，由皇帝派來，帶著十二個隨從爬上我的右腿，把一張蓋著印的紙舉到我眼前，講了大約十分鐘，語氣像一個被告知該說什麼、並在沒有怒意地說出來的人。他一次又一次指向北方，我後來才知道，那是首都的方向，半哩遠；朝議決定我要被運到那裡。我把我自由的那隻手放到另一隻手上，越過他的頭頂，怕傷到他，然後放到我的身體上，請求我的自由。他搖頭，並用手向我表示，我必須作為囚犯去；然後，用許多手勢，表示我會有足夠的吃，並且受到很好的對待。我又想到那些繩子。然後我感到箭留在我臉上和手上，起了水泡，有些箭頭還插在裡面，我看見現在圍著我的人有多少；我就讓他們明白，他們可以隨意處置我。

我必須在這裡請讀者原諒，因為一件我當時不覺得值得記下的生理需要。我左邊的繩子一鬆開，能側過身，我就小便了，而且很多，我周圍的人，從我的動作就知道要發生什麼，很快地往左右散開。我沒有多想。他們把一種氣味很好聞的藥膏抹在我的臉和手上，幾分鐘就讓箭傷的疼痛消了；那，加上肉和酒，讓我發睏，據後來有人告訴我，我睡了大約八個鐘頭。這不奇怪。照皇帝的命令，醫生們在酒桶裡摻了安眠藥水。

我後來被告知那劑量是多少。它是照一個他們自己身體的大小算的，對我的身體，是需要喝上一個月才會有感覺的東西；我是因為累才睡的，而我一向認為醫生們有點得意，我從來不想說破。我醒來時，我明白，是在路上。我當時不知道，而且花了好一陣子才弄明白，是一千五百匹皇帝最大的馬，每匹大約四吋半高，在拉著我，我躺在一個離地一掌寬的木架上，走過中間那半哩路；也不知道那個木架，照他們的拍，是在我做夢的那段時間裡做好的。我只知道，我背下有東西在動，太陽在錯的位置。我做的第一件事，仰面躺在露天地裡、身邊走著上萬個小小的人，是對著錶測了我自己的拍，錶在口袋裡嘀嗒響。是六十。我記得，我很高興。

## 第02章 · 利立浦特皇帝帶著幾位貴族，來探視被拘禁的作者。有人被指派放慢自己，來教作者他們的語言。作者的口袋被搜查，那只錶被當成他的心。

木架停了，我醒著，我看見的第一樣東西是一個屋頂。那是一座古老神廟的屋頂，是那一境最大的建築，立在城邊靠這一側，從有人記得的時候起就一直空著，因為那裡面發生過一樁謀殺，而那個國家的人，在這類事上很嚴格，早把裡面能搬的東西全搬走了，連神也搬走了。它有一道門，我可以手腳並用地爬進去，雙腳留在外面；我從一千五百匹馬被有條不紊地牽走的樣子，明白了我要被關在這裡。有人帶來一條鏈子，九十一環，每環像一位小姐的項鍊那麼粗，用三十六把掛鎖扣在我的左腳踝上；它從腳踝一直拉到神廟門口，攤開來，給我的活動範圍大約像一條狗在院子裡的，夠我進出，並且伸直了躺在太陽底下。我沒有反抗。一個被比自己的柳葉刀還細的箭射過的人，對反抗這件事會學到一點東西。

那座城的人成萬地擁出來看我。我知道，因為我數了，我數是因為在他們盯著我看的時候，那是我唯一能做的事；那個早上很長。幾位長官派了衛兵把他們擋在外面，還宣布了一道命令，過了幾天，我聽人用很好的翻譯念給我聽：任何人，無論如何，都不得走進離我的身體一矛長以內，不得爬上它，不得碰它，違者處死。這道命令是需要的。到了中午，我發現我的胸口上有三個小男孩，肩膀上一個，還有一位女士，她安坐在我左耳垂上，裙子整理得很好，我想是為了能說她做過這件事。他們被抱了下去，受到了責備。我聽說那位女士沒有被責備，只是被送回家了。

第二天皇帝來了。我先察覺到人群騷動，和許多小鈴鐺的聲音，我盡鏈子許可地轉過身，看見他帶著朝臣沿著路過來：幾百個人，騎在不比我的手大的馬上，穿著各種顏色的外衣，打著許多旗子，我看不懂。他是其中最高的，高出大約我一片指甲的寬度，在那個國家，這被認為足以讓看的人敬畏。他有一張嚴厲、聰明的臉，坐得很直，我注意到他騎馬的樣子，不像一個要去哪裡的人，而像一個正被人看著的人；這兩種比較累，而他做得很好。他在大約二十步外勒住韁繩。那匹馬從沒見過我這類東西，立了起來；皇帝沒掉下來，穩穩坐著，對牠說話；牠安靜下來之後，他下了馬，一隻手放在牠的脖子上，站在我面前，他的官員們在他兩邊站定，我側躺著看他，一動也不動。

我想說說我看到的，因為我這部分的記述，在第一版裡受的損傷最大，那一版把皇帝的腕寫成六十，跟別人的一樣。它不是。我當時離得有幾步，測不到，可是我後來測過，我知道。他的是那個境裡最穩的。那個國家的人，興奮的時候，拍會上升三四十；害怕的時候，上升一百；而路上那些衛兵，已經看了我一天一夜，拍在九百左右，我看得見他們的手在抖。皇帝的是七百一十，一點也沒有抖。他握著它，像別人守著一個祕密。我當時並沒有據此對他的性格形成任何判斷，現在也沒有；我只說，我沒有見過比他更穩的手腕，也沒有見過，在我手下測過的所有人裡，哪一個是我這麼遲於相信的。

他對我說話，我什麼也沒聽懂，他知道我沒聽懂，也沒有不高興。那是語言這件事的開頭。

我說過，對那些人來說，我的話是從很遠的地方來的一聲低吼，而他們自己的話是帶顆粒的一個高音。對沒有在兩種不同的拍裡生活過的人，這種情形的困難是很難說清楚的。他們聽得懂我，儘管那一定需要聽草生長那樣的耐心；他們當中聰明的，可以替我把句子說完，也這麼做，而且通常是對的。可是我對他們一點也理解不了。在一個以十二比一奔跑的聲音，和一個以一的速度走的耳朵之間，除非有一方讓步，是不會相遇的；而在那個國家，慢被認為是別人的缺點，快則不算什麼大事，所以除了放慢者，沒有人願意讓步。

放慢者是一種被訓練成把自己的話保持在自己拍的十二分之一的人。靠意志是做不到的。他坐在一把椅子上，椅子有靠背和托下巴的架子；一條帶子繞過他的胸口，他呼氣時把它拉緊，來撐住那口氣；旁邊坐著一位鼓手，一個八、九歲的男孩，拿著一面小鼓，一個鐘頭又一個鐘頭，每分鐘六十下地敲，那是我自己的拍，為此從我的腕上取來的；放慢者說的每一個音節，都得等鼓。他們管這叫沉下去。那些音節從那樣的一張嘴傳到我這裡，很慢，像一個手裡拿著石頭、打算把它輕輕放下的人說話，每一個都略長了一點，到末尾開裂；在它們之間，有一種很大的疲憊，我聽得出來。我第三天第一次聽出來。大約四十分鐘後，照我的錶，放慢者的手開始發抖，被另外兩個人從椅子上抬下來，放到地上搓揉，然後，用他們的話說，浮了上來，回到自己的拍，坐上一刻鐘，臉上蓋著一塊布，什麼也不說，以一種令他大大鬆一口氣的速度。

皇帝指派了六位學者做這件事；六位之中，做得最好、也最快做到的，是一位最低等級的年輕書記，名叫雷爾德雷薩。我要說說我知道的關於他的事，因為我後來欠他很多。我判斷，他照他們的算法，和我年紀差不多，雖然他看起來更年輕；一個窄肩膀、近視的人，衣著比別人落後一點，右手中指上有墨水，聽人說話時習慣把頭偏向一邊，那是我在某一類有耐心的人身上很熟悉的樣子。他做這件事，我是慢慢才明白的，是因為他想做。那個國家，在那個時候，沒有人像雷爾德雷薩那樣好奇。他們很快，認為別人慢是一種可惜。他有個念頭，想知道那是什麼感覺。

第一天，他坐在我臉前的一張被搬來的桌子上，鼓手坐在他的手肘旁，他抬頭看我，把手放在自己胸口上，說得那麼慢，我起初以為他病了：雷爾德雷薩。然後他指著我，我聽見一個大約一句短禱詞那麼長的詞，那個詞，我後來才知道，是昆布斯・弗萊斯特林，意思，照我能給的最接近的，是人山；然後他又指著自己，說出另一個詞，更長，我當時以為是朋友，或書記，或小飛蟲，我花了三個星期才被告知。它的意思，我想，是一個有用的人。這在那種語言裡是個很常用的詞，有一些很不幸的用法。

我學語言很有天賦，靠的是我的記性，那一種我學了三個星期，我估計，照他們的拍，是九個月。它不難。它沒有未來式，因為那裡沒有人有閒暇身在其中，最接近的是一種緊迫的語氣；它有十一個詞，表示不同程度的匆忙。它是從頁面頂端寫到底端的，字很快，像蟋蟀的足跡。我不會說放慢者們在三個星期結束時被解脫，不是感激的；可是我要補充，雷爾德雷薩第二天來了，第三天也來了，坐在桌上，沒有鼓手，整整一個鐘頭一句話也沒對我說，然後用一種他費了極大的力氣、放慢到普通人音高的聲音，把一個完整的句子保持到底：我想看看我做不做得到。

同時，皇帝希望搜我的身；因為他身邊有些人，害怕我身上帶著什麼，並且說了出來；兩位官員被指派，帶一位書記記下他們找到的東西，我用自己的手把他們一個接一個地拿起來，放進我的外套、短褲和背心的口袋裡，順序來，因為他們不這樣就夠不到。我想把他們的清單裡的一部分寫在這裡，照著念給我聽的樣子，因為那是我所擁有的、關於我當時看起來是什麼樣子的唯一記述。我不會全寫。它是一份很長的文件；照我估計，他們花了他們的一天半，而且非常精確。

他們說，他們在大衣的右口袋裡，發現一塊粗布，大得足以蓋住皇帝的正殿的地板。左邊，一個銀盒，很長，有蓋子，他們打不開；其中一位用肩膀去頂，盒子一開，他就打了一刻鐘的噴嚏；那是我的菸草。他們發現一盒器械，比他們國家裡任何東西都細，他們以為是某種殘酷的工具，後來很高興地得知是相反的用途；一個粗皮革的大袋，裡面有，除其他東西外，一把剃刀、一把梳子和一根探針；一瓶白蘭地、一把手槍，和一壺火藥，他們把手槍描述為一根中空的鐵柱，固定在一塊強壯的木頭上，比一個人還大，把火藥描述為一袋會發出響聲的黑色粉末；還有，在外衣內側的一個口袋裡，一個扁平、深色、裝訂過的東西，我拒絕讓他們打開，說那關乎人的隱私；官員們說，他們沒有逼，因為不願得罪。

他們又說，在短褲左邊的小口袋裡，他們發現一件很奇特的機器。那是一只黃銅殼，有一面玻璃，他們透過玻璃往裡看，看見一個在動的東西。它發出一種他們沒有詞可以形容的聲音。他們把它描述為一種巨大而緩慢的悶響，用腳底就感覺得到，像一個極大的人，在很遠的地方走路的腳步聲；書記在頁邊寫著，它每敲一下，是他們的十二下。他們說，它保持著我所保持的拍。他們說，他們曾在好幾個場合看見我把它拿出來，貼在我的腕上，看著它，然後放回去；他們問它是什麼時，我說，我很少不先向它請教就做事。

我不記得我這麼說過。我相信我是對雷爾德雷薩說的，他問過那只錶是做什麼用的，我就像對任何人那樣回答：那是一樣我在做任何事之前都要看的東西。我解釋說，它是一個計時器；我想我解釋得很好。可是那些書記沒有表示時間的詞，除了那個國家的人自己所有的那一種，所以沒有用；而他們得出的結論，寫在清單最後的頁邊，在「我們傾向於後一種看法」這句話底下，我後來自己讀到了。他們結論說，那是我的心。他們認為我把它戴在外面，裝在一個密封的殼裡，像一個謹慎的人對待一樣他不能失去的東西，並且我像一個人查自己的脈搏那樣向它請教；而從我這裡把它拿走，會是一種殘忍，所以他們不建議。他們還補充說，這件事是不能對我說的，他們也沒有說。

我沒有告訴他們他們錯了。我不知道他們是不是錯了。我讓他們拿走我的剃刀，我的手槍和火藥，我的袋子，和我的那盒柳葉刀，它們被封了起來；我留下了錶，他們也從沒要過；而那本腕簿在外衣裡，在他們不敢看的地方。那是一個外科醫生不會交出去的東西。裡面有四千多個人，許多已經死了，每一個，都是某個信任我的人，把一隻手腕放進我的手裡；我不認為利立浦特的皇帝對他們有任何權利。後來我對雷爾德雷薩這麼說，他說他已經告訴他們那是一本死人的書，他們印象很深。然後他說，他想最好是我不要向財政大臣提起它。

## 第03章 · 作者以很不尋常的方式娛樂皇帝與他的宮廷。利立浦特宮廷的消遣。作者在某些條件下得到自由，並單腳站著宣了誓。

頭幾個星期我有東西吃，我要說說我吃的是什麼、又是怎麼定下來的，因為它能解釋後來的許多事。朝議曾經決定，我每天領的肉和飲料，要夠養活一千七百二十八個皇帝的臣民；那是你把他們的身高去除我的身高再立方得到的數字，非常精確。可是雷爾德雷薩，那時他還是個書記，是被某個人派去講這件事的，他在財庫的文件邊上注說，那個國家的人是按他們自己的拍吃東西的，也就是說，比我多十二倍的頻率；所以一千七百二十八個他們，在我的一天裡，會是兩萬零七百三十六個；我會餓死。文件送到了財政大臣那裡，我聽說，他讀了兩遍，說這是一種財庫負擔不起的精細。津貼維持原樣。我在那個國家從第一個星期餓到最後一個星期，從來沒有抱怨過，因為有人告訴我那件事是用什麼代價定下來的。

財政大臣名叫弗利姆納普。我該說說他，因為我還得說他很多。大家一致認為他是整個小境裡最會在繩上跳舞的人，因此，在皇帝之後，是那裡最有分量的人物；因為在那個國家，國家的官職，是在繩上授予、並且逐年確認的。有一根線，比一般的線略粗，拉在離地大約兩呎的地方，要得到一個官職、或保住一個官職的候選人，在皇帝和朝臣面前在上面跳舞，跳得最高而不掉下來的人，就得到那個位子。他們告訴我，連首相也得每年跳舞，以表示他沒有失去活力；照我自己的算法，那大約是一個月一次。

第三個星期，他們給我看了。他們把線架在神廟前的路上，讓我側躺著看；我看了，什麼也沒看見。也就是說，我看見一個很小的人踏上一根線，然後我看見他已在線另一端的地上鞠躬，我明白，在這兩者之間發生了什麼，我的眼睛不夠快，沒有抓到。他們好意重演給我看。一個準備好的人，被允許把臉頰貼在地上，大約到第五次重演，可以看出，舞者躍起、轉身、落下、又躍起，也許九次，在一根從第一次躍起就晃動的線上；而他做這一切，在他是極其從容的，花的時間是我吸一口氣的時間。舞蹈結束後，我用我的小指尖，在他坐著的地方放到他的腕上，測了財政大臣的拍；是九百，還在下降；我從下降的速度判斷，剛才它超過一千一百。我想我從來沒有這樣替一個正在微笑的人害怕過。

還有第二種比賽，也在皇帝面前，爭的是三種絲線，那是被當成榮譽賜的：藍、紅、綠。皇帝在兩個侍童之間，把一根棍子舉在離地一掌高的地方，候選人一個一個跑上來，棍子升降時，不是跳過去，就是從下面爬過；表現最好的三位得到絲線，繞在腰上兩圈。我注意到宮廷裡幾乎每一位大人物都有一條。我問雷爾德雷薩，他這時候每天下午坐在我的手上一個鐘頭，換著跟我學我的語言，我問他沒有絲線的人，人家怎麼說；他說，人家說這種人是在等。我還注意到，聰明的人發現爬比跳划算，因為棍子既由侍童舉著，到了最後很少像一開始那麼高；我想，真正被測試的，正是這件事。

不久我也被要求輪到我來娛樂宮廷；我要把他們要我做的事記下來，因為那是我在那個國家做的第一件差事。陛下希望我像一座巨像那樣站著，兩腿盡我方便能分開的程度分開；然後他命令他的將軍把部隊列成密集隊形，三千步兵和一千騎兵，在我下面行進，鼓聲響著，旗幟飄著，長矛舉起。我做了。我兩腳分開站在神廟前的路上，如我被告知的，直視前方的一座山，沒有往下看；軍隊穿過去了。我在兩膝之間感覺到它，像感覺水。很有秩序，照我的錶，花了四十一分鐘。

我提那個四十一。我當時沒有覺得那是很長的時間；站著，那不算長。是雷爾德雷薩，後來我開始被告知事情的時候，告訴我，對軍隊來說，那是一天的大部分：他們從黎明和第一聲鼓，依檢閱的順序行進，到傍晚，中間停下來吃了兩次飯。他們本來以為我會撐不住；偉大的人，依他們所知，擺一個姿勢撐不過十分鐘；而我在他們整整一天裡，像一座山那樣站著，眼睛看著一座丘。那是皇帝想看的。那是我這輩子第一次因為一種自己沒辦法不具有的特質被人欣賞；我要說，我覺得那種感覺很奇怪，也有點愉快，到了晚上，又覺得很不自在。

一個月內，首都的孩子們認定我是一座山丘。命令禁止這樣，每天向他們宣讀；可是一個那個拍的孩子，不受一道需要十分鐘才說完的命令約束，他們在衛兵換崗的時候，兩三個一組，爬上我的手臂。我讓他們爬。我一動不動地躺著，數他們，並且遺憾我沒法測他們的腕，那需要一根比我所有的更細的手指。他們當中有一個女孩，照他們的算法不會超過三歲，每天下午，站在我拇指的第一關節上，非常小心地用我自己的語言對我說，她是從雷爾德雷薩上課時，隔著牆上的一個洞學來的：「早安，人山。」她說得很清楚。照他們的算法，我來的時候她三歲，我走的時候她十二歲；我後來想過，她是那個小境裡唯一一個，用我自己的步調向我問好的人。

我也該說說我是怎麼睡的。夜裡我躺在神廟裡，雙腳留在門外，守夜的人提著燈，從路上，從我腳趾上走過；我睡，像我一向做的那樣，大約四個鐘頭，那對他們是兩天。我後來被告知，我打鼾。我並不知道。看起來，一種鼾聲，照我呼吸的速度，傳到他們那裡，是我發出的唯一一種他們聽得清楚的聲音，因為它慢；城西離神廟聽得見的人，開始照它來安排自己的一天。他們說，那像隔壁房間裡有一座很大、很有耐心的鐘。老年人說，他們睡得更好。我被我信得過的人告知，我走了以後，城西過了很長一段時間，才習慣那種安靜。

我現在說到我的自由，那是在第二個月定下來的。我在所有場合都懇求過，謙卑地，跪著，每次都被告知辦不到，不過我會受到善待；我已開始想它永遠也辦不成了。可是皇帝，他有許多個鐘頭想這件事，也有許多個鐘頭被告知我的花費，讓朝議討論，朝議擬了一份文件，由雷爾德雷薩帶來給我。我相信他為此升了官，因為他現在戴著一條絲線。我可以得到自由，附帶若干條件；它們寫在一份很長的文件裡，我只給大意。

我不得離開小境，除非陛下蓋了大印准許。我不得進入首都，除非有明確的命令；那時居民會有兩個鐘頭的預告，躲在門裡，那是我的十分鐘，我覺得整體上，算長了。我走路只限主要道路，不得在草地或麥田裡躺下；走路時，我要極其小心，不踩到陛下任何一個可愛臣民的身體，也不踩到他們的馬或車，沒有他們本人的同意，不得把任何臣民拿在手裡。如有急件需要特別迅速，我要把信差和他的馬放在口袋裡，帶一趟六天的路程，每個月一次，並且，如有要求，安全把這位信差送回御前。我要做皇帝對布萊夫斯古島上敵人的盟友。我空閒的時候，要協助他的工人，搬運某些大石頭；我並且要在兩個月內，用我自己走的步數，交出陛下領土周長的一份準確的測量。

而我永遠不得把我的拍提高到一百以上。那一條出現在文件快結束的地方。在聽到它被念出來以前，我以為這是一條奇怪的規定；然後我看出它是什麼。它規定，這位人山，在任何時候都不得加快自己，也不得把拍降到四十以下，違者視為小境的敵人；並且為此作證，他每天要伸出手腕一次，讓財庫的一名官員來測。他們想過，我若是追上他們自己的拍，會是什麼。一個我這個身量的人，要是升到七百二十，對他們來說，會是一種還沒被看見就已經移動的東西；他們害怕它是對的，並且盡量清楚地把這件事寫進了文件。我說我同意。我心裡想到，就在雷爾德雷薩念其餘部分的時候，已經很久沒有人測過我的腕了，我並不介意。

最後一條是津貼，就是第一個星期定下的，一千七百二十八；我很大方地簽了。那個國家的宣誓形式，要求宣誓的人用右手握著左腳，把右手中指放在頭頂，大拇指放在右耳尖。那是一個人在握著它的時候沒法做任何別的事的姿勢，我相信這就是它的目的。我擺出了這姿勢，宮廷在地上看著，我宣了誓；它比我預期的長。我在中間發現，我感覺不到自己的腕。我到那時才知道，我一天裡多麼常碰它，不碰它的時候我又在做什麼；整個那一段誓詞，我都不知道我自己的拍。我發現我很介意，比我想的介意得多。

做完以後，鏈子被打掉了。他們用了大半個鐘頭，照我的錶，才打開三十六把掛鎖，帶著梯子，從一把走到下一把，每個相關的人到最後都下來鞠躬，好像這裡面不過是一個恩惠。鏈子從我的腳踝掉下去時，我聽見人們發出的一種聲音。那是一聲歡呼；可是它在他們自己的音域，傳到我這裡，是我在牙齒裡感覺到的東西。我站了起來。我想，那是從上路以後，我頭一次站著而胸口上沒有東西；我伸出手，試了試空氣，像人那樣；而最前排的人，個個穿著最好的衣服，個個比我看得清的快，在我的手伸出一呎以前，已經全部臉朝下趴在塵土裡了。我沒有再把它伸遠。

那天下午我走出神廟，走在路上，那是一條主要道路。能隨自己想去的地方去，那感覺很陌生。我走了大約一哩，有十萬人走在我前後，保持著敬意的距離，跑著；我在一片田邊的一個土坡上坐下，那裡我被准許坐，所有的人都停了，離得很遠，排成一線，像潮水。直到晚上，回神廟過夜的時候，我才發現我忘了一樣東西。自從宣誓以後，我沒有測過我自己的拍。這是我這輩子第一次這麼久沒有測，我竟沒有注意到。我把腕貼在錶上，是六十，我在路上站了好一會兒，說不出那算不算一個好消息。

## 第04章 · 作者遊覽米爾登多，並踩著兩張凳子向宮裡張望。財庫的一名官員每天替他量腕。內務首席秘書以他的拍子，向他說明高跟與雞蛋，以及不來夫斯古的艦隊；作者表示願意效力。

我得到自由以後第一件求的事，是准我去看米爾登多；皇帝爽快地准了，附帶一道命令：不得傷害居民，也不得傷害他們的房子。百姓是靠一份公告知道我的打算的。依條款，他們得到兩個鐘頭的預告；而我一直走到西門口，外套拿在手裡，才明白兩個鐘頭對一座要被人走過去的城是什麼。那是一天：夠被通知，夠更衣，夠把臉整理好。這座城把它用掉了。

米爾登多的城牆高兩呎半，寬至少十一吋，一輛四匹馬拉的馬車可以放心地沿著牆頂走，牆上每隔十呎有一座塔樓加固。城內是個方形，每邊五百呎，由兩條交叉於中央的大街分成四區，每條街寬五呎。我從城門上跨了過去。我先把外套脫了，因為衣襬會把街上每一間房子的屋簷都帶掉；體面地把它脫下來，我花了四分鐘，這對那些守在門口等的人，是將近一個鐘頭；然後我走了進去，像我在那個國家走到任何地方一樣，側著身，只穿背心，手肘緊貼著肋骨，帽子拿在手裡。

我原以為，照那道命令，我要走過的是一座關起門來的城。它沒有關起門來。它是一座預先得知要被人看、並且已經打扮好了的城。每個門口都站著一個人，穿著最好的衣服，神情從容，兩手放在身前；五層樓的每一扇窗裡都有一張臉，我看得出那張臉是安排過的。第二條街的拐角有個男人，肩上扛著一個孩子，那孩子大概被叮囑過要乖，也真的很乖。一扇窗裡有個婦人，把她所有的東西，照我的判斷，都穿戴上了，而且有時間穿戴了兩遍。我這輩子被許多人看過，卻從來沒被一座預演過的城看過。我一路走一路明白，我花的那十分鐘，要他們每個人一動不動地站著，是兩個鐘頭；他們是為我這麼做的，秩序井然，我沒有要求過，也沒法拒絕；我落腳的小心，我發現自己沒法形容，就像人走進一間有人在生病的屋子。

巷子和弄堂我只能從上面看進去，像人往井裡看；我看見裡面也是滿的，那裡的人也是那樣站著。而這時候，從門後面、從百葉窗後面，那座城的工作照例還在進行，它的聲音一路升到我這裡來，我沒有料到，也沒有立刻認出。那是一種很細、很均勻的嘶嘶聲，裡面有一種格格的響動。我終於認出來了：那是雨從船頭一路掃過甲板的聲音。那是五十萬個人，每分鐘七百二十下地在說話；而它是我這趟參觀米爾登多裡，唯一一件不是為我安排的事。

皇帝的宮殿在城的正中，兩條街交叉的地方，外面圍著一道兩呎高的牆，牆離周圍的建築有二十呎，所以我很容易就能跨過這道牆。可是外院的屋頂有五呎高，牆雖是整塊的鑿石，厚四吋，也承不住我；我要是過去，就免不了帶走它的一部分。陛下很想讓我看看他宮殿的壯麗；我告訴他我可以，只要給我三天，我在他的御苑裡用我的刀子幹活。我有刀子：在我獲得自由的那天，它連同我的剃刀、我的那盒柳葉刀一起還給了我，封條是當著我的面拆的；手槍和火藥他們留下了。我不認為有人告訴過皇帝，三天是多少。那是他的三十六天，也就是五個星期又一天；他把這整段都等完了，沒有派人來問活幹得怎麼樣；我後來想，這是我見過一位國家元首做得最好的一件事。

我用它砍倒了御苑裡幾棵最大的樹，御苑離城一百碼，做了兩張凳子，每張三呎高，結實得夠承我的重量。百姓第二次得到預告以後，我兩手各提一張凳子，走過那座城。到了外院邊上，我站上一張凳子，把另一張提過屋頂，放在第一道院子與第二道院子之間的空地上，那空地寬八呎；我跨過去站到它上面，再用一根帶鉤的棍子把第一張拉過來；就這樣，像人拿圓規在海圖上一步一步走，我越過了那些建築，來到最裡面的院子。在那裡我側身躺下，把臉貼到中層樓的窗口，那些窗是特意開著的。

我看見了我這輩子往裡看過的最華麗的房間；我要說說，在那個尺寸上，華麗是什麼。是一塊你用拇指就能蓋住的地板；是你看不出經緯的帷幔；是一盞我起初當成一根帶頭的別針的燈。我看見皇后和年輕的王子們，各在各的寢室，身邊圍著他們的近侍。皇后看見我的臉出現在她的窗口，做了一件別人告訴過我她不會做的事：她把手伸出來，給我吻。

我得想想怎麼吻。我的一聲嘆息，在那個距離上，會把她另一隻手裡的扇子吹掉，我相信還會吹掉她頭上相當一部分頭髮；而我的嘴和她的手之間，只隔了幾吋。我屏住呼吸，把嘴唇湊過去，像人把探針湊近一隻眼睛那樣，吻了；我在下唇上覺得有一樣東西，我只能比作飛蛾撞在燈籠的玻璃上。這花了我，我想，十二秒。直到往回縮的時候，我才明白那十二秒對她是什麼：是她的兩分鐘多，手臂一直伸著，在窗口全亮的光裡，臉上還掛著那個微笑。她整個過程沒有顫過一下。我見過有人在颶風裡掛在帆桁上，連兩分鐘的臉也保持不住；我盡窗口許可的限度鞠躬，那限度並不大。

房間的事我不再說下去了。我把在那個帝國看到的其餘部分，留給一部更大的著作，它現在差不多準備好交付付印了，裡面會有歷史、法律、學問、樹木和動物，總之凡是我的拍子看不到的一切。［頁邊：格列佛太太的抄本在這裡，用鉛筆寫了兩個字：「沒寄」。這樣一部著作從未到過印書館，據編者所能查知，也沒到過任何別的地方。辛普森按。］

從我獲得自由的那天起，每天正午，財庫的一名官員來神廟替我量腕。這在條款裡，而且嚴格照辦。他是個年輕人，繫著那個衙門的灰色腰帶；帶著兩個人和一架梯子，還有一個放在盒子裡的黃銅儀器，盒子不比一個鼻煙盒大，儀器有一隻腳，要放在腕片上，另有一根細絲，在刻度上顫動。我躺在神廟的臺階上，手掌攤開；他爬上梯子，把儀器的腳放在我的腕上，眼睛離刻度只有一吋地讀。他量五次，把平均數寫進一本帳冊。那是比我擁有過的任何儀器都好的儀器，我願意付出很多，換一個放在我的盒子裡。他沒有抬過頭。在我待在那個國家的整個期間，我想他沒有一次看過我的臉。

我一輩子都以為我的拍是六十，就像人以為自己姓格列佛一樣。那個年輕人在頭兩個星期裡寫下的是：五十九、六十一、六十、五十八、六十二、六十一、六十；我很驚訝自己變化這麼大。每天晚上，我照老習慣對著錶量自己，是六十；第六天正午，我量自己，手臂邊靠著梯子，腕上壓著一隻腳，帳冊攤開，旁邊有個人不看我，我是六十一。我見過病人的拍，在說一聲早安的工夫裡，就上去十一下。我先前不知道我是一個病人。在每個數字旁邊，那年輕人用很小的字，寫下我當時在做什麼，是坐著，或走著，或吃著，或睡著；我倒著讀它，這是我的職業教我的本事：讀身邊那位醫生在寫什麼。我問他為什麼。他對著帳冊說，一個數字單獨拿出來，不算什麼。這是他對我說的頭幾個字，也是唯一幾個字；我發現我同意他。

他做完後，把帳冊鎖進一個小匣子，走下梯子，那兩個人把梯子搬走。我聽說這本帳冊每逢月初送到財政大臣面前，他讀它，如同讀一切東西，讀兩遍。

大約兩個星期後，雷爾德雷薩在黃昏來到神廟。這時他已是內務首席秘書，在我繞著那些院子轉的期間升了三級；他戴著兩條絲線，藍的和紅的；身邊只帶一個僕人，就是那個敲鼓的男孩。男孩長大了。我沒看見他怎麼長的。我來的第一個星期，他在放慢者的手肘邊，小得鼓幾乎和他一樣大；現在他比鼓高出一個頭，拿著它，像人拿著一件託付給他的東西。雷爾德雷薩吩咐他的馬車在路的盡頭等候，向我要一個鐘頭的接見，我欣然應允，因為他的身分，也因為他在宮廷裡替我做過許多好事。我提出躺下，好讓他夠得著我的耳朵；他卻寧願讓我拿在手裡。我把他拿起來。他在我手掌上盤腿坐下，一隻手扶著我的拇指，對男孩說了一個字，我聽來是一陣細細的、快快的刮擦聲，像一支趕時間的筆；男孩便在臺階上坐下，把鼓夾在兩膝之間，開始以六十的拍子敲起來。

他沒有立刻開口。他在沉下去，我看著他做。他沒有椅子，胸前沒有繩子；他有我的拇指可靠；我透過拇指肚感覺到他，一手接一手地把自己放下去，像一個人用繩子往下放一件重物，直到它和鼓平齊。這花了大約四分鐘。他開口的時候，是一個手裡拿著石頭、打算輕輕放下的人的聲音；他在第一句話裡說，他受命來說他要說的事，而他只說一遍，因為他不認為自己能說第二遍。

他照他做一切事的習慣，從災禍的次序說起。小境，他說，在外人眼裡看來很興旺，他不懷疑在我眼裡也是如此；可是它害著兩種病，一種在國內，是黨爭，一種在國外，是敵人，他先說第一種。約莫七十個他們的月以來，小境一直分成兩個黨，特拉姆克桑和斯拉姆克桑，他們靠鞋跟互相辨認，一個高，一個低。七十個他們的月，換成我的算法，不到六個月；這兩個黨，照我的推算，是在我啟航前後創立的。高跟派主張，他們的鞋跟才是古老憲法的鞋跟。低跟派握著官職。皇帝已決定在政府裡只用低跟派，如我想必注意到的，他自己的鞋跟，比朝中最低的還低一德魯爾；一德魯爾是十四分之一吋，有人向我解釋，那是那個國家的人到一個下午結束時，在腳跟上所能感覺到的最小的量。兩黨不一起吃，不一起喝，不一起說話。對一個吃飯的頻率是我的十二倍的人來說，那是很多頓沒有一起吃的飯，我聽說在某些區裡，小境已變得很安靜。高跟派人數較多；可是權力，他說，完全在我們這一邊；我注意到那個我們。沒有人問過我。

他壓低聲音又補了一句，這句話花了他不少力氣：皇儲殿下，據擔心，對高跟派有些傾向；至少可以清楚地看到，他有一隻鞋跟比另一隻高，使他走路一拐一拐的。我從第二張凳子上見過那位王子。我當時把那一拐，認作大腿骨沒接好的骨折，就是水手從索具上摔下來以後，在水手艙裡常見的那種，左腿比右腿短，我估計，短一德魯爾，外加另一個德魯爾的一部分。我什麼也沒說。這沒有被當作症狀向我提出。

說到這裡他歇了。鼓繼續敲。他開口時還落在財庫屋頂上的太陽，已經落到它的煙囪上，男孩沒有去看它。雷爾德雷薩重新開口的時候，扶著我拇指的那隻手已經開始發抖，他說的是第二種災禍：小境受到不來夫斯古入侵的威脅，那是宇宙中另一個大帝國，幾乎和陛下的帝國一樣大、一樣強。至於我，哲學家們仍然意見分歧。他們不相信別的國家住著我這個尺寸的生物；他們算過，一百個我，一個季節就能把小境吃到根；於是斷定我一定是從月亮上掉下來的，或者從某顆小一點的星上；而他們的史書，往回追六千個月，除了這兩個國家，不知道有別的國家。六千個他們的月，是我的四十一年多一點。我，相差不過幾年，和他們的世界同歲，我沒有說。

戰爭，他說，已經打了三十六個月，是為了雞蛋。我照他講的講給你聽，連同他每一句背後的全部疲倦，我不敢說自己到最後比一開始懂得更多。從前，一個蛋在吃之前，是從大的那一頭敲開的；這一點大家都同意。後來，現任皇帝的祖父，那時還是個男孩，端上來的蛋是這樣敲的，他的手指被蛋殼割破了；那時當皇帝的男孩的父親，為了免得小境再出這種事，命令全國的每一個蛋都要從小的那一頭敲開，違者重罰。我事後算過，那根手指是在我啟航前大約六年割破的。我本來可以替他包紮。百姓不接受這條法律。為了它發生過六次叛亂，一次死了一位皇帝，一次丟了另一位的王位；每次叛亂被鎮壓，流亡者就渡海逃到不來夫斯古，那裡的皇帝們替其中大多數出過錢。有一萬一千人寧願被處死，也不肯從小的那一頭敲蛋。我問他，那是為了蛋嗎。他說，是為了那一頭。

關於這個問題，他說，已經有幾百大本書在爭論，其中大端派的書，早就被禁；所謂大端派，是主張從大的那一頭敲的黨，大端派依法不得任官。不來夫斯古的皇帝們，他們的人民全屬那一派，不止一次來信抱怨，說這是宗教上的分裂，違反了他們經典《布倫德克拉爾》的第五十四章，那裡面先知魯斯特羅格命令所有真信徒從方便的那一頭敲他們的蛋。雷爾德雷薩認為這是曲解經文，因為經文並沒有說哪一頭才是方便的那一頭；他帶著我開始和他的第二條絲線聯想在一起的那一點冷幽默說，他想那是留給每個人的良心，或留給首席官員來定的，整個困難就在於看出是哪一頭。

三十六個月的戰爭裡，小境損失了四十艘大型戰艦，和很多較小的船隻，連同三萬名最好的水手和士兵；敵方的損失據信比這還大一點。照我的曆法，它在我上岸前大約兩個星期就開始了。我是在它的中間到來的，像人在一句話的中間走進來。三萬是我說得出口的數字。我只見過十二個人；我在他們最後一小時量過他們的拍，我記得握著一隻腕、感覺它往下掉是什麼滋味。我沒有去想三萬。

他們現在，他說，已經裝備了一支龐大的艦隊，正準備登陸小境；而皇帝陛下，對我的勇氣和力量抱有極大信心，命令他把全部情況向我陳述。就是這些。他說這些，照我的錶，用了一個鐘頭又十分鐘，中間歇了兩次；他坐在我手裡，戴著兩條絲線，太陽已從煙囪上沉下去，路邊亮起了第一批燈，鼓還在敲，他沒有再說什麼。

我盡我所能地說，並且慢慢地說，隨著鼓，因為我不想讓他多付出超過必要的代價。我說，一個外鄉人插手黨派之爭是不合適的；這個問題我不懂；若有人問我，雞蛋哪一頭是方便的那一頭，我就會在桌子對面的那個人敲哪一頭的時候，跟著敲哪一頭，免得開始一場談話。但是我看得見一支艦隊。我說，我願意盡我所能，對付那些來殺害我被放下來待在他們中間的人的人，並且冒著生命危險去做。我指的是那條路，和我拇指上的那個女孩；可是我是當作國事向首席秘書說的，他也當作國事接受，在我手掌上彎下身，像一個坐在手掌上的人所能彎的那麼低。

他請我把他放下。我把他放在臺階上，他站了一會兒，像放慢者浮上來的時候那樣，兩手攤開垂在身側，發著抖；然後他用我的聲音、我的速度，說了他要說的最後一句話：我從來沒有一次說過這麼多。這是那個晚上第一句聽起來像他自己的話。然後他用他自己的聲音對男孩說了一句什麼，我沒聽清；便沿著路走向馬車，那速度我追不上，我還在看他剛才待過的地方，他已經不見了。

男孩留了下來。我想，他只是被吩咐把鼓帶來，沒有人說之後怎麼處置它。他坐在臺階上，鼓夾在兩膝之間，輕輕地敲著六十，敲給沒有人聽；我沒有叫他停。照我的錶是一刻鐘，對他是三個鐘頭，他一次也沒有失掉那個拍子。我坐在神廟外面的暮色裡，聽著。自從那條路以後，這是第一回有人替我守著拍子，我就讓他守。

## 第05章 · 作者用一個不尋常的計策阻止了一次入侵。他被封為納達克，在朝廷面前被量了腕。他不肯把不來夫斯古變成一個省。使節到來，他受到邀請前去訪問。

我還沒見過不來夫斯古，而且我打算不讓它看見我。它是小境東北邊的一座島，隔著一道八百碼寬的海峽；自從戰爭開始，兩個帝國之間的一切往來都被禁止，違者處死，我們的皇帝並且對每一條漂在水上的船下了禁運令。我避開那一側的海岸，因為我不願讓敵人的船把另一邊上了岸什麼東西的消息帶回家。這期間我在心裡反覆想著別人告訴我的那些事，想出了一個計畫，把它呈給陛下：就是奪下那支艦隊。偵察兵報告，它停泊在港裡，等著第一陣順風開出。我向最老的水手們打聽那道海峽，他們常測它的深度，告訴我說，中間漲潮時，大約是我的六呎，別處則淺得多。

我走到東北邊的海岸，在一座小丘後面躺下，取出我的袖珍望遠鏡。這鏡子和一副眼鏡一起，放在外衣的一只暗袋裡，挨著那本腕簿，就是如我說過的，搜查的人不敢看的地方。我看見了不來夫斯古的港口，港裡大約有五十艘戰艦和一大批運輸船；而我是像看一盆被敲過的水那樣看見它的，也就是說，我看見它在顫。每艘船的甲板上都有船員，那地方正忙著；可是那忙是每分鐘七百二十下的忙，鏡子抓不住它。我能辨出桅桿，像一叢蘆葦，和它們上面的一陣晃動，其餘什麼也沒有。我離開的時候，那陣顫還留在我眼睛裡。

我持有手諭，下令要小境所能造的最結實的纜繩，和大批鐵條。我是正午在神廟的臺階上對一個書記說的，他記了下來，我就不再想它，直到第二天早上走出神廟，看到了那一堆。它堆得有我的膝蓋那麼高。纜繩約有細麻線那麼粗，鐵條有編織針那麼長、那麼粗，兩樣的量都比我要的多；我後來才知道，小境的繩坊一直開工，對他們是一個月，鐵匠沒睡。我一句話下了一道令。我沒有明白，人山一開口要繩子，是一整個國家跑起來。我從此在要什麼東西的時候都很小心，雖然在我自己的國家，從來沒有人為我跑過。

我把纜繩三股合成一股，使它更結實，同樣為此，我把三根鐵條絞在一起，把末端彎成鉤；這樣做了五十個鉤、五十條纜，我把它們扛在肩上，帶到東北邊的海岸。我的手指對這活兒太大，我是憑手感做的，像在黑暗裡打結，舌頭咬在牙齒之間，整整花了那天剩下的時間。

第二天，我在漲潮前大約半個鐘頭下了水，脫掉外套、鞋子和襪子，只穿著我的皮外衣走進海裡。我盡快涉水，到中間游了大約三十碼，直到再次踩到地。這花了我不到半個鐘頭。我要說說，這對前面的那片海岸是什麼。那是六個鐘頭。足夠讓一支駐軍被叫醒、吃飽飯、列好隊；不來夫斯古人有這六個鐘頭。他們有六個鐘頭，看一座山走進他們的海峽，以一個涉水的人的速度，而他們對此表現得非常明智。

我從水裡走進港口的時候，船是空的。船員們在第一個鐘頭就翻過船舷上了岸，連同他們的軍官；他們從那時起一直站在海灘上，排得整整齊齊，看著我：大約三萬人，我想。這個數字是在神廟裡別人交給我的，我當時沒有去想它。它現在站在一片海灘上，活著，看著我。他們從容得很。我在桅桿之間站著，水到腰，我看見每艘船上留了一個人守錨，每一個都站在船頭，手按著纜繩，像一個守著已經失去的東西的人。我沒有看他們太久。

我拿出我的工具，在每艘船船頭的孔裡鉤上一個鉤子，把所有的繩子在末端綁在一起。我正做著，敵人從海灘上朝我射箭。他們射了幾千支箭，而且是以十二比我一的速度射的，所以我每呼吸一口氣，空中就有一陣箭雨；許多支扎在我的手上和臉上。不是它們痛，雖然它們刺痛。是我看不見它們來。它們像天氣的變化那樣到來。我最大的恐懼是眼睛，要不是我想到了一個辦法，我肯定會瞎。我把眼鏡拿出來，盡力緊緊地架在鼻子上；就這樣武裝起來，我繼續幹我的活，朝我臉來的箭打在鏡片上，聲音像冰雹打在窗上，除了把它們撞歪一點，沒有造成別的傷害。

所有的鉤子都鉤牢以後，我把繩結抓在手裡開始拉，沒有一艘船動；它們都被錨拉住了。這是我這次冒險裡最大膽的一部分，而我先前不知道它在那裡。我放開繩子，把鉤子留在原處，拿刀子去割那些錨的纜繩，一條接一條。我要說，每割一條之前，我都等船頭那個人先翻過船舷，他沒等我開口，看到刀子就下去了，我數到水裡有五十個腦袋。我這樣做的時候，臉上和手上挨了約兩百支箭。然後我拿起我自己那些纜繩打了結的那一端，毫不費力地拖著不來夫斯古帝國五十艘最大的戰艦跟在我後面。

他們看見這一切發生。起初他們不明白：他們看見我割斷了纜繩，以為我只是想讓船漂走，彼此相撞；然後他們看見整支艦隊有秩序地動了，而我走在最前面。於是他們發出了一種聲音。它從海灘上傳來，是單獨一個音，很高，很長，我在牙齒裡感覺到了它。我以前感覺過一次，在我的鏈子被打掉那一天；我要說，我分不清這兩者。若不是我自己就是原因，我不會知道它是哪一個。

脫離危險以後，我停下來，把手上和臉上的箭拔出來。我拔出了兩百零六支，因為我忍不住要數；我在海裡把傷口洗了，刺痛，我也只好忍著。然後我等了一個鐘頭，讓潮水退下去一點，拖著我的貨物涉過中間，這樣回到了小境的皇家港口。

皇帝和他整個朝廷都在岸上。我後來才知道，他們從我下水那時就在那裡，依他們的算法超過一天。椅子搬來了，食物也搬來了，他們輪流睡；皇帝沒有坐下。最後那六個鐘頭，他們是看著船隊排成一個大半圓開過來，卻看不見我，認為我淹死了，眼前是敵人朝他們來了。我走到聽得見的淺水處，舉起纜繩的末端，大聲喊：最強大的利立浦特皇帝萬歲。這一句我要說大約四秒。他們聽了，我想，是四十八秒；我聽說，在那四十八秒裡，皇帝的臉做了一個宮裡沒有人事後說得出的表情。

他在登陸處以種種讚詞接見我，當場封我為納達克，這是那個國家最高的榮銜。封的形式是：受封的人要當著朝廷被量腕，數字大聲唸出來，好讓所有人知道他受封時是什麼拍。那個帶梯子的年輕人被叫來了，他已經等了超過一天，從不知哪裡被叫過來，爬上梯子，把儀器的腳放在我的腕上，大聲唸出刻度。是七十九。這是帳冊至今從我這裡得到的最高數字。他沒有抬頭；皇帝說：記下來。然後，我獲准，這是我沒料到的，用我最小的手指的指尖，放在皇帝坐著的地方他的腕上，把我所發現的告訴朝廷。是七百一十。我以前沒碰過。它平穩得完全像一塊在手心裡焐熱的石頭那樣平穩；我說出那個數字，朝廷也把它記下來了。

兩天後，陛下希望我再找機會，把敵人其餘的船也帶進他的港口。是他自己提出的。他用我的速度對我說話，我先前聽說他做不到；我相信他在宮裡某個沒人看見的房間練習過；那花了他一些代價，而他不讓它顯出來，但我注意到他用的字很少，每一個字都是一塊石頭。他說五十艘很好。他要其餘的，連同不來夫斯古：他要把它變成一個省，派一位總督去治理；他要把逃到那裡的大端派流亡者交出來；他要強迫那裡的人民從小的那一頭敲蛋。那時，他說，小境就有了一位皇帝、一個端，他將是整個世界唯一的君主。我把最後這句當成一種修辭。我輕輕笑了一下，像人那樣；皇帝沒笑；我明白了它不是修辭。

我說我不能。我試著說明為什麼，而我說的方式如同我說一切的方式，用我自己的速度，所以它花的時間和他的耐心差不多長。我說，我奪下艦隊，是因為它要來殺害我被放下來待在他們中間的人；我很樂意這麼做；可是我絕不做把一個自由而勇敢的民族帶進奴役的工具。我聽說這話說得很好。我後來想，這是我在那個國家說過的最短的一篇話，也是唯一讓我付出了代價的一篇。他什麼也沒說。我想起他的腕，如同我在岸上把它放在手指下的那樣，我相信它仍是七百一十。

他以他慣用的巧妙方式，在朝議裡提起這件事；我聽說，一些最有智慧的人，至少從沉默看來，是同意我的；而在那個國家，沉默是了不得的事，因為他們吃、睡、說話都那麼快，一個人在我吸一口氣的時間裡什麼也不說，就是十二次什麼也沒說。另一些暗中是我的敵人的人，忍不住說了些旁敲側擊到我的話。這就是皇帝和一小撮惡意對付我的大臣之間一場陰謀的開端，它在不到兩個月裡爆發，差點把我毀了。我當時不知道。

這次壯舉過後大約三個星期，不來夫斯古派來一個隆重的使團，帶著謙卑的求和條件，和約很快就訂成了，條件對我們的皇帝極為有利，我不拿它煩讀者。我的三個星期是他們的八個月，那足夠學會開口求人。使節六位，隨員約五百人，進城很是壯觀，配得上他們君主的威嚴和任務的重要。他們帶來了三位放慢者，是在路上訓練出來的，我對他們懷著一種特別的敬意，就是人對做了一件不是為此而生的事的人所懷的那種。

條約訂完之後，我借著我在朝廷裡擁有的、或看起來擁有的威信，替他們幫了幾次忙；各位閣下被私下告知我是多麼友好，便正式來拜訪我。他們先是稱讚我的勇敢與慷慨，以他們君主的名義邀請我去他們的王國，並希望我讓他們看看我那驚人的力氣的證明，他們聽說過那麼多奇事。我很樂意滿足他們。我把六個人連同他們的馬車一起，用一隻手拿起來，舉到與我的臉齊平，繞廣場走了一圈；然後把馬車放回原處，馬在旁邊，位置分毫不差。其餘的我不拿來煩讀者了。

他們當中年紀最長的一位，等一切結束後，非常客氣地，透過一位感冒的放慢者，問我，是不是真的我身上有一百的拍。我說，條款上規定我不得超過它。他說，在不來夫斯古，客人除了自己的條款，不受任何條款約束。我說我會記住的。他似乎以為我說的是別的意思，我就由他去了。

我向皇帝請求准許接受邀請，他很客氣地准了，但帶著一種我說不上來的冷淡。我不認為那與准許有關。我當它是天氣。就在那天正午，我注意到，來量我腕的官員不是那個年輕人；我想已經有好幾天是這樣了。他是個年紀較大的人，繫著一條更重的腰帶，儀器的腳放在腕片上的整個過程，他一直看著我的臉，像人看一樣別人跟他說起過的東西。我沒問那個年輕的怎麼了。

## 第06章 · 皇后的寢宮失火，作者出力保住了宮殿的其餘部分，用的是一種不被原諒的方法。他的生活方式，以及小境人民的幾句話：他們的法律，和教養孩子的方式。

第二天正午，年長的官員寫下了數字，然後，眼睛沒有離開帳冊，開口說話了。他的聲音，像一個把一句話在樓梯間裡慢慢練習過的人，每個字的末尾都裂開。財政大臣和海軍大將，他說，說你和使節們談得太久。這是他對我說的頭幾個字。我問他，多久算太久。他說，對一個說話慢的人，比你想的要久。然後他把儀器放進盒子，盒子放進匣子，走下梯子；我從他走的時候小心翼翼不看我的樣子明白，他做了一件事，並且不打算讓我知道。

我該說說他們是誰。財政大臣我已描述過；他替我付錢，沒有原諒那份津貼，我相信也沒有原諒那五十個鉤子。海軍大將名叫波爾戈拉姆，是個瘦黑的人，以謹慎著稱，在我的三個月裡輸給不來夫斯古四十艘船，然後被一個不是水手的陌生人，在半個鐘頭裡替他把敵人的五十艘帶進了港。我不說他不該討厭我。我只是說，我做那件事的時候，沒有想過當這位海軍大將是什麼滋味。

這事之後不久，我為皇帝做了一件我當時以為非常卓越的事。午夜，我被神廟門口的一陣聲音吵醒，那聲音我在那裡從沒聽過：一個尖細的長音，像許多把水壺，持續不斷，不升也不降。我躺了一陣沒弄明白。那是好幾百人的喊聲，他們都在喊同一個字。那個字是布格倫。它是那種語言裡表示匆忙的詞當中的第十一個，也是最後一個；意思是帶著火的匆忙；它幾乎不能算一個字，因為用它的人沒有時間把它說完，所以我以我的速度聽到的，是它的前三分之一，被說了幾千遍。我後來被告知，他們花了我的十一分鐘才把我叫醒，那是他們的兩個多鐘頭；到我趕去的時候，這場火對朝廷已經是一個漫長夜晚的工作。

四個從人群裡擠到我耳邊的朝臣，在黑暗中一個接一個告訴我，每一個都比前一個說得更短：我必須立刻去宮裡；皇后陛下的寢宮著火了；一位女官讀傳奇小說時睡著了。第四個還沒說完，我已經站起來了。命令下去清路，月亮已經升起；我穿過沉睡的城走到宮裡，沒踩到任何人，辦法是把每隻腳先懸在空中，直到看清它要落在哪裡。他們已經把梯子靠在寢宮的牆上，一列水桶排進黑暗中通向水源；水桶的大小，像大頂針。我站著看它們沿梯子一個傳一個地升上去，在火光裡閃著亮，非常多，非常快，那像是看一個人對著一塊煤炭吹氣。我本來輕易就能用外套把火蓋滅。我匆忙中把外套留在了後面，只穿著皮外衣來了。

前一晚，在為使節們設的晚宴上，我喝了不少一種叫格利米格里姆的酒（不來夫斯古人叫它弗盧內克，但我們的才是上等貨）；我為同行記一筆：它很利尿。憑一個我自己絕不可能安排的運氣，我一點也沒排出去。我靠近火焰時受的熱，和搬弄水桶時使的勁，把它催動了。

我不細說方式。我是在情況允許的範圍內，盡最大的體面做的。我盡可能大聲地向梯子上的人發出警告，並且等他們都下來了：對我只是幾秒，雖然我明白對他們是幾分鐘。然後我把我有的，用在該用的地方；三分鐘後，火被完全撲滅，那座花了這麼多世代才蓋成的壯麗的宮殿，其餘部分得救了。我後來聽說，對那些站在下面庭院裡、關著百葉窗、帽子壓低的人，那是一場三十六分鐘的雨；他們像人對待一場長雨那樣承受了它，沒有人抱怨。

我做完時天已經亮了，我沒有等人道謝就回到了神廟，因為我不知道陛下會怎麼看待這項服務的方式。依這個國家的根本法，任何人，不論身分，在宮禁範圍內小便都是死罪。快到正午時，皇帝傳來一個口信，說他會下令大法官，依程序為我簽發赦免，這讓我稍感安慰。赦免始終沒有簽發。我私下被告知，皇后對我所做的事感到最深的厭惡，已搬到了朝廷最遠的那一側，決心那一翼燒毀的建築永遠不要為她修復；並且在她的親信面前，有人聽到她發誓要報復。我想起那扇窗，和她伸出來、她的兩分鐘的手，和她沒有讓它掉下來的微笑。我當時不會這麼說；現在我說：她是個把東西握在手裡不放的人。

那天正午，年長的官員把儀器的腳放在我的腕上時，把數字大聲說了出來，這是那個年輕人只在岸上做過一次的。七十四，他說。他寫下來；數字旁邊，在第二欄，他寫了幾個詞，那不是關於正午的：宮中。夜間。小便。我不用倒著讀。他把那一頁拿著，讓我看得見。

接下來的幾個星期，我照我以前的樣子過日子；我該說說是怎麼過的，因為讀者聽到了太多小境的事，太少他的客人的事。三百個裁縫被派來給我做一套這個國家的衣服。他們從星期一開始，到星期五送到我手上，有人帶著歉意告訴我，它做了五個月。它是照他們動工時流行的袖子剪裁的；等它到我手上，那種袖子已經過時、又流行起來、又過時了。我穿上了。有人告訴我，總的來說很好看，是對一個在海上待了很久的人說話的那種語氣。

我的飯由三百個廚子做，他們和家人住在為此在神廟周圍搭起的小屋裡，我理解他們是輪班做的，所以我坐下來吃的那頓飯，依他們的算法，是上一季開始做的。我用手拿起二十個侍者，放在桌上；另有一百個在地上伺候，有的端著肉，有的肩上扛著酒桶；上面的人用繩子和滑輪把我要的東西吊上來，就像我們從井裡打水。他們的一盤是一口，一桶是一大口；我兩口吃掉一塊羊肉。飯菜很好。我坐下吃的每一頓，對做它的人都是幾個月的事；我吃它們的時候，我想，帶著一種他們感覺得到的莊重。

我說過，我打算把對那個帝國的描述留給那部更大的著作，我也確實打算那樣；但在這期間，我願意給好奇的讀者幾個大致的印象。小境的人看東西非常準確，卻看不遠，而且在一瞬間看到很多。我看過一個廚娘拔一隻還沒有普通蒼蠅大的雲雀的毛。我數著她拔。她在說一聲早安的工夫裡拔了四十隻。我看過一個年輕姑娘用一根我看不見的針穿一根我看不見的絲線；我看見的是那個姑娘，她低頭對著自己的手大約一口氣的工夫，然後抬起頭，臉上是一個私下做完一件事的人的神情。

他們把死人頭朝下埋，因為他們相信，再過一萬一千個月，所有人都要復活，到那時大地，他們以為是平的，會翻個面，他們就會發現自己腳朝下站著。學者承認這是荒謬的，但這做法為了遷就俗人還在繼續。一萬一千個月是我的七十六年。那天下午雷爾德雷薩坐在我的膝蓋上，我對他說，在我的國家，沒有人被告知是什麼時候。他說，他一直覺得我們是個有耐心的民族。

那個國家有些法律，我希望在我自己的國家也能看到，只要它們在那裡也像我聽說的它們在小境那樣被遵守。第一條關於告發者。一個人告發另一個人犯了危害國家的罪，是自己擔風險的。如果被告在審判中洗清了自己，告發者立即被處以屈辱的死刑；無辜者從告發者的財產和田地裡得到四倍的賠償，如果不夠，由國庫補足，補償他的時間、他的危險、他的囚禁和辯護的費用；皇帝再給他某種公開的恩寵標誌，他的清白通告全城。我覺得這是一條很好的法律。我當時對坐在我膝蓋上的雷爾德雷薩這麼說了。他說它很好。他說了兩遍，第二遍更慢，好像第一遍沒被聽見；然後說，它不常需要用到，因為在小境，告發很少是由沒有把握的人提出的。

他們認為欺詐比竊盜罪更重，並且處死；因為他們說，一個有普通見識的人，小心的話，可以保住自己的財物不被小偷拿走，但誠實對更高明的狡詐是沒有防禦的。他們賞也像罰一樣。誰能證明自己遵守法律滿七十三個月，就可以向國家要求一個頭銜，叫斯尼爾帕爾，意思是守法者，並分得一份歲入。我被告知這是一項最慷慨的規定，從來沒有人申請過，因為七十三個月是我的六個月，而小境沒有人這麼長時間沒有過某種過失。還有，忘恩負義是死罪。他們的道理是，凡是以惡報他的恩人的人，一定是全人類的公敵，因為人類其餘的人並沒有給過他什麼恩，所以他不配活著。我當時沒有就這一條說什麼。

在兒童的教育上，他們和我所聽說過的每個國家都不同。他們認為，父母是最不該被託付這件事的人。每個孩子，除了農人和勞工的孩子（他們把孩子留在家裡，因為他們的事只是耕地），到二十個月大，也就是我的七週左右，就被送到與它的性別和身分相配的公立育兒院，在那裡被養育，直到成年；他們把成年算在他們的十三歲，也就是我的一年多一點。一個孩子，在那個拍子下，是在我們的一個季節裡造成的；人們說，一個有自己的事要照管的父親，沒有一個季節可以給；勞工把孩子留在身邊，因為犁裡沒有什麼是田裡學不到的。

父母每年只准看孩子兩次，每次一個鐘頭。他們的一年兩次，是我的一個月兩次，他們的一個鐘頭，是我的五分鐘。我看過一次這樣的探望，是在一個下午，我獲准往裡看的時候，從第二育兒院上方的平臺。一男一女，穿著人在重要事情時穿的衣服，被一位拿著一串鑰匙的女舍監從門口放進來，一個大約六歲的男孩被領到他們面前；他們說的話，我一句也沒聽到。母親握住他的一隻腕，父親握住另一隻；他們就這樣站著，三個人，頭微微低著，站了整整一個鐘頭，照我的錶是五分鐘多幾秒；結束時，女舍監碰了碰那位婦人的袖子。

我沒見過有人拿住一隻腕卻沒有任何目的。我想到我自己的兒子，我啟航時他六歲，我在布里斯托碼頭量過他的腕，船員們的行李放在我腳邊，瑪麗假裝不看。是六十八。我沒覺得值得記下來。我沒有再去育兒院。我回到神廟，正午時，一個帶著梯子和帳冊的人在那裡等著量我的腕，並寫下我在做什麼。

## 第07章 · 財政大臣抱怨作者耗費太大，一位貴婦人得到辯白。作者得知他將以財庫的帳冊為證被控叛國，逃往不來夫斯古。他在那裡受到的接待。

我該在講那場火之前就說的：皇帝和我一起吃過一頓飯。是他自己提出的，帶著皇后和年輕的王子們，我把他們安置在桌上的御座上，與我相對，衛兵圍在周圍；財政大臣也來了，拿著他的白色權杖，站在他主子的椅子後面。他們按自己的拍子吃。我把我的肉切好的時候，我想他們已經吃了六道菜，其餘的時間他們就坐著看我，帶著那種吃完了、又教養好得不肯說出口的人的絕妙禮貌。我注意到弗利姆納普用一種酸澀的神色看著我，我不願顯得在意；我吃得比平常多，為了我的國家的榮譽，也為了使朝廷驚嘆。

我有理由相信，這次拜訪給了他一個向他主子說我壞話的機會。他一直是我暗中的敵人，雖然表面上他對我的殷勤，超過了他那陰鬱的性子通常的程度。他向皇帝陳述國庫的窘境：他不得不以很大的折扣借錢；我已花了陛下一百五十多萬斯普魯格，那是他們最大的金幣，大約一片亮片那麼大；並說，最好抓住第一個合適的機會把我打發走。他是按天算出來的。我不懷疑那是一大筆。

我在這裡不得不替一位出色的夫人辯白，她是個因我而無辜受累的人。財政大臣聽了一些惡舌的話，生出了嫉妒他妻子的念頭，那些話說她對我這個人起了強烈的愛慕，並且曾私下到我的住處來過。我聲明這是最無恥的謊言。她常到神廟來，但總是公開地，而且車裡從不少於另外三個人，是她的姊妹、她的小女兒和一些特別的熟人；而且沒有所謂探望人山一小會兒這回事，因為一位夫人陪我坐一個鐘頭，就是坐了十二個鐘頭，沒到第二個鐘頭家裡就會想念她。門口的衛兵通報以後，我出去，行過禮，小心地用手把馬車連同它的兩匹馬拿起來（因為要是有六匹馬，車夫總會先卸下四匹），放在一張桌子上，桌邊我釘了一道五吋高的活動圍欄，以防意外。我曾在那張桌子上同時放過四輛馬車，全是客人，我臉朝他們偏著坐著，車夫們輕輕地在周圍駕車。我度過了許多這樣很愉快的下午；而對他們，我相信，那是很大一個季節的事。

但我要向財政大臣，或他那兩個告發者（我要說出他們的名字，讓他們隨便怎麼辯），克拉斯特里爾和德倫洛挑戰，看他們能不能證明任何一位夫人曾經不在光天化日之下來找過我。我本不該在這件事上說這麼久，若不是一位貴婦人的名聲與此事如此密切相關，更不用說我自己的名聲；雖然當時我是納達克，而財政大臣本人不是；他只是個格倫格倫，比納達克低一級，就像英格蘭的侯爵比公爵低一級。我承認，憑他的職位，他走過每一道門都在我前面。這些假消息使他有一段時間對他的夫人臉色難看，對我更難看；他雖然終於醒悟並與她和好，我卻失去了他的全部信任，並且發現我在皇帝那裡的恩寵很快衰落，皇帝確實太受那位寵臣支配了。

在說我離開那個國家的事之前，我必須告訴讀者，有一場陰謀已經針對我形成了兩個月，我後來被告知，這在小境是一場很長的陰謀，等於兩年。我一生都是朝廷的外人，我的出身卑微，不夠格。我讀過這類事。我沒料到在這麼遙遠的地方會碰到一個，而且我以為那裡所奉行的準則跟我們的大不相同；可是我早該記得，那個國家的官職是給那些最善於不從一根線上掉下來的人的。

我正準備去拜見不來夫斯古的皇帝，一天夜裡，一頂有帷的轎子停在神廟門口，轎裡的人沒有報上名字就要見我。轎夫被打發走了。那是雷爾德雷薩。他把那個敲鼓的男孩也帶來了；他下了轎，站在黑暗中的臺階上，帶著男孩，抬頭看著我，沒有沉下去。他完全沒說話。我後來才明白：一個以我的速度說話的人，在夜晚神廟的寂靜中，可以被很遠的地方聽見，聽見很久，而他不是來被人聽見的。我把他連同轎子一起拿在手裡，照我的習慣放到桌上，點起一支蠟燭；男孩坐在地上，鼓夾在膝蓋之間，沒有敲；雷爾德雷薩遞給我一張紙。

那是從頁首寫到頁尾的，字跡像蟋蟀的足跡，是一份抄本。我就著蠟燭，戴著那副擋過箭的眼鏡，把我的袖珍望遠鏡拿在那一行字上，一欄一欄地讀，像人讀一份遺囑。標題是：對人山昆布斯・弗萊斯特林的彈劾條款。

第一條。鑑於在皇帝陛下卡林・德法爾・普盧恩在位時制定的一項法令規定，凡在皇宮範圍內小便者，應受叛國罪的刑罰；然而上述昆布斯・弗萊斯特林，公然違反上述法律，借撲滅陛下最親愛的皇后寢宮的火之名，惡意地、叛逆地、魔鬼般地，以排放其尿的方式，撲滅了上述的火；其次日正午的拍，據財庫的帳冊所示，為七十四。

第二條。上述弗萊斯特林，將不來夫斯古的艦隊帶入皇家港口之後，又奉皇帝陛下之命去奪取該帝國其餘全部船隻，將其降為一個省，並處死所有大端派流亡者及一切不肯放棄大端異端的人民，卻像一個虛偽的叛徒，以不願強迫一個無辜民族的良心、毀滅其自由與生命為藉口，請求免去此項任務；其後四個正午的拍，據上述帳冊所示，為五十一，由此可見他是在冷血中做這件事的。

第三條。鑑於不來夫斯古宮廷的若干使節前來求和，上述弗萊斯特林協助、教唆、安慰並款待上述使節，雖然他知道他們是不久前公開與皇帝陛下交戰的一位君主的臣僕；並且在他們的陪伴下，他的拍為九十七，距離其自由條款對他規定的限度只差三。

第四條。上述弗萊斯特林，違背一個忠順臣民的責任，現正準備前往不來夫斯古的宮廷，為此他只得到口頭許可；並借上述許可之名，虛偽而叛逆地打算進行上述航行，從而協助、安慰並教唆不來夫斯古的皇帝，那位不久前的敵人。

第五條。依財庫的帳冊——由宣過誓的官員記錄，不容爭辯——上述弗萊斯特林是個能隨意變動自己的拍的人，在一個月之內從五十一變到九十七，在一天之內從五十八變到七十九；而一個被人看到能變動四十六拍的人，就已顯示他能變動四十一拍，而這正是把他從他平常的六十帶過他以誓言禁止越過的一百所需要的全部。

我讀了兩遍。讓我停下來的是那個五十一。拒絕之後的那些天，我自以為焦慮；我的身體，我以為，用平常的方式這麼告訴我，我本會說九十；而帳冊說五十一。我至今不知道我們兩個誰是對的。我以前從沒有把我對自己的說法，與另一份被寫下來的並排放在一起。

條款後附了一份朝議的紀錄，是另一人的筆跡；雷爾德雷薩冒著腦袋抄下來的就是這個。我說個大意。財政大臣和海軍大將要求用能安排的最痛苦的死法：夜裡放火燒神廟，由大將率二萬人在旁，用毒箭射我的臉和手；再給我的幾個僕人私下的命令，把我的襯衫和床單用一種汁液浸過，那會讓我撕自己的肉。事後我算過，二萬名射手按他們的拍子，可以在我抬手到臉之前就射空箭袋，我發現知道這方法是精心選擇的，並沒有讓我寬慰。贊成的人有很長一段時間佔多數。皇帝決心盡可能保住我的命，最後說服了侍從長改變立場。

然後雷爾德雷薩奉命發表意見，他說了。他說我的罪很大，但仍有寬恕的餘地，那是君主最值得稱道的美德；他和我的交情天下皆知，議會諸位可能認為他有偏心；如果陛下肯饒我的命，只下令挖掉我的雙眼，正義就在某種程度上得到了滿足，全世界都會讚揚皇帝的寬大和他的大臣們的公正程序。我的力氣不會因此減少。失明對勇氣是個增添，因為它向我們隱藏危險；我對自己眼睛的擔心，是奪取艦隊時最大的困難；而用大臣們的眼睛看東西，對我就夠了，最偉大的君主也是這樣。我讀這段的時候，寫它的人就坐在離我兩呎的桌上，兩手放在膝蓋上。我沒有看他。

議會一點也不接受。海軍大將說，我所立的功勞，按一切真正的國家理由，是我的罪的加重：一個能以那種方式撲滅皇后寢宮的火的人（他說到這裡帶著恐懼），可以在另一次以同樣的方式引來洪水，淹沒宮殿；能把艦隊帶過來的力量，能在第一次不滿時把它帶回去；他有充分理由認為我心裡是個大端派；而叛國是在心裡先於行動開始的。財政大臣說，養著我的費用很快就會難以承受，挖眼睛並不能彌補這點，因為被弄瞎的家禽吃得更快、長胖得更早；說議會是我的法官，在良心上已經相信我有罪，這就夠了，不需要法律的字面所要求的形式上的證據。

皇帝已決意不判死刑，他說既然議會認為挖眼太輕，以後可以再加別的方法。雷爾德雷薩懇請再次發言，就財政大臣關於費用的反對作了答覆。獨掌歲入的閣下，可以輕易防備這個禍害，只要逐漸減少我的供應；這樣我會因缺乏食物而衰弱、無力，喪失胃口，衰竭，在幾個月內消耗殆盡，那是我的五個星期；到那時，屍體縮小一半以上，臭味就不危險了，陛下的五六千名臣民可以在兩三天內，把肉從骨頭上割下來，用車運走，埋到遠處，只留骨架作為給後世的紀念。

這樣，靠秘書的友誼，這件事就折衷解決了。逐漸餓死我的計畫被嚴令保密；挖眼睛的判決記入了案卷，除了海軍大將，沒有人反對，他是皇后的人，被陛下不斷鼓動著堅持要我死。紙上說，三天後，首席秘書將被指派到神廟，當著我的面唸這些條款，然後宣告陛下和議會的極大寬大與恩惠，據此我只被判失去眼睛，陛下不懷疑我會感激並謙卑地接受；二十位陛下的外科醫生將在場，確保手術順利進行，辦法是在我躺在地上的時候，把非常尖的箭射進我的眼球。我自己是個外科醫生。我注意到那是一次稱職的手術。我注意到寬大這個詞。

我讀完後，把紙放在桌上，坐著看了蠟燭好一會兒。然後雷爾德雷薩把手放在我的拇指上，沉了下去。沒有鼓，他花了四分鐘，我透過拇指肚感覺了每一分鐘。他開口時是三句話，每一句都是一塊石頭。我說了兩遍，他說。你記得嗎。然後：他們已經在上面簽了名。你知道那條法律。我說我知道那條法律。他說，那你就知道他們不能容許什麼。然後他把手拿開了，那隻手抖得他用另一隻手握住它；我明白了我被告知的是什麼。

這位君主和他的朝廷養成了一種習慣（我聽說與以前的做法大不相同）：朝廷判了任何殘酷的處決之後，不管是為了滿足君主的怨恨還是寵臣的惡意，皇帝總要向整個議會發表一篇講話，講他自己的寬大與仁慈，說這些品質是全世界公認的；那篇講話會立刻在全國發表。沒有什麼比這些對陛下仁慈的讚美更使人民害怕，因為人們發現，讚美擴大得越多，刑罰就越殘忍，受害者也越無辜。我必須承認，我這個從來不是做朝臣的料的人，對事情的判斷太差，看不出這個判決的寬大與恩惠，反而認為（也許是錯的）它是嚴厲多於溫和。

我有時想過受審；因為雖然我不能否認條款裡指控的事實，我希望它們可以有所開脫。可是我讀過許多國事審判，我一直觀察到它們都按法官認為合適的指示收場，我不敢在這樣危險的判決、面對這樣有力的敵人的情況下信賴它；而且那本帳冊會在法庭上，那本帳冊會被大聲唸出來。有一次我強烈地想要抵抗。在我還有自由的時候，那個帝國的全部力量也很難制服我，我輕易就能用石頭把首都砸成碎片。可是山打仗是很慢的事；我要花很長時間，他們只要很短；而我很快帶著恐懼否決了這個計畫，想起了我對皇帝宣的誓、我受過他的恩惠，和他授予我的納達克的高貴頭銜。我也沒有這麼快就學會了朝臣的忘恩，竟能說服自己陛下現在的嚴酷把我過去的所有責任都免除了。

我最後定了一個決心，我不說我選得好。我後來見過君主和大臣怎樣對待比我罪輕的罪犯，我想如果當時知道，我會非常樂意接受這麼輕的刑罰，把我的自由，如它所是的，留在黑暗裡；我欠我的眼睛，是欠我自己的魯莽和缺乏經驗。可是我有皇帝准我去拜訪不來夫斯古皇帝的許可，三天還沒到，我就利用了這個機會。我給雷爾德雷薩寫了一張便條，用一手高的字寫在財庫的一張紙上，讓他得沿著每一行走過去讀，說我今天早上動身去不來夫斯古，照我得到的許可；我沒有等回信，就下到我們艦隊停泊的那一側的島邊。

我出神廟的時候找過那個女孩，可是臺階上一個人也沒有。她十二歲了。在小境那個年齡就嫁人了，我沒有被告知她嫁了沒有，也沒有問，我想，是以為會有人告訴我。我挑了最大的一艘戰艦。我向守衛喊話，像我學會的那樣，他們翻過船舷下去了。我把一條纜繩綁在船頭，拔起錨，脫掉衣服，連同我夾在腋下帶來的被單一起放進船裡；拖著它，半涉水半游泳，到了不來夫斯古的皇家港口，那裡的人民早就在等我。

他們借給我兩個嚮導，給我指路去首都，首都的名字和島的名字一樣。我把他們拿在手裡，一直走到離城門二百碼的地方，請他們去通知一位秘書我來了，讓他知道我在那裡等候陛下的命令。大約一個鐘頭後我得到回答：陛下率領皇室和朝中大臣，正出來接我。我的一個鐘頭是他們的十二個，我看到他們出來的時候，就知道他們用過了。皇帝和隨從從馬上下來，皇后和貴婦人從馬車上下來，個個穿著最好的衣服，個個從容；我沒有看出他們有任何驚慌。我躺在地上，吻陛下和皇后的手。

我對陛下說，我是照我的諾言來的，並且得到我的主人皇帝的許可，來榮幸地拜見這樣一位強大的君主，並在不違背我對我自己君主的責任的前提下，獻上我能做的任何效勞。我沒說我的失寵。我沒有正式得到那消息，可以假裝完全不知道有這樣的陰謀；我也不能合理地想像小境的皇帝會在我不在他掌握中的時候洩露這個秘密。可是，在這點上，不久就顯示我是被騙了。

我不拿我所受接待的細節來煩讀者了，那接待配得上這樣一位偉大君主的慷慨，也不談我沒有房子和床的難處。他們給了我城門外的一塊地，和許多善意，我是坐著接受的；夜裡我躺在地上，裹著我的被單，睡了。那是自我上岸以來，第一個沒有人在聽我睡覺的夜晚。

正午，沒有人來。我醒了好幾個鐘頭才明白我在等什麼。我像我一向做的那樣，把兩根手指放在腕片上。是六十三。沒有人把它寫下來，我也不知道該拿它怎麼辦；我在地裡躺了好一會兒，握著它。

## 第08章 · 作者在不來夫斯古的一片田野裡第一次加快了自己。財庫的年輕官員帶著儀器到來。作者找到一艘船；使者從小境來；不來夫斯古的皇帝在他的三十六天之後婉拒了。

第二天，不來夫斯古的皇帝派人來問我缺不缺什麼，我說我什麼也不缺，那不是真話；我缺一間房子，一張床，和一個帶著梯子的人。我沒說。我坐在城門外的田野裡，背靠著一個小丘，在陽光下，城在牆後面照常忙著，發出雨的聲音；我想著年長的使節說過的話，在不來夫斯古，客人除了自己的條款，不受任何條款約束。我沒有忘。我一直很小心地不去想它，已經一天半了。

我從沒試過。我這一行的人，拿到什麼拍就是什麼拍；製造它不是我的事。我這輩子從沒要求過我的拍有別的樣子，我也不會知道我可以，要不是財庫在第五條裡告訴我我可以；而我花了八個月被禁止去找出來。第二天黃昏，在田野裡，城門已關，燈沿著城牆亮起來，我仰面躺下，把兩根手指放在腕片上，試了。

我不知道怎麼說它是怎麼做到的。人把注意力放在腕片上，想著某種快的東西：一隻停在欄杆上的鷦鷯；雷德里夫趕集日的街；一隻數錢的手。人不能強求那拍。人是在請求它，像請求一匹從沒被請求過的馬。很長時間它什麼也沒做。是六十四，六十六。然後它動了：七十，七十八；我感覺它在我指頭下升起來，像一樣東西從水裡升上來。到九十，我害怕了。到九十八，我停了，停了兩口氣的時間，手指放在腕片上，腦子裡是我自由的那些條款，和穿灰腰帶的官員爬上梯子的樣子；然後我越過了，像人越過一間自己發過誓不進去的酒館的門。

到一百一十二，城散開了。我就是這麼樸素地說。它一直是一片閃爍，裡面有嘶嘶聲；在一口氣和下一口氣之間，那已經是很長的時間，閃爍沉澱下來，像沉澱物在杯子裡沉下去，它成了人。三樓的一扇窗裡，有個女人兩肘撐著，下巴擱在手上。腳手架上有個泥水匠，一塊石頭在空中，沒有動，然後動了，我能看它走到它的位置。屋頂上有個孩子，沿著屋脊跑，拿著風箏。他們不是靜止的。他們在動；但那是一種我跟得上的動，像我跟得上自己的動，我看出他們不小，或不只是小。我看出他們不匆忙。這是我八個月來沒有明白的事。他們不是匆忙的民族。是我，是這世界上慢的那個東西，我以為是匆忙的，原來是平常的生活。

那嘶嘶聲裡有字。我聽到，像人把頭貼在牆上聽隔壁房間的談話，一個攤子上的男人說魚價是個醜聞；一個女人很開心地說她不要別人告訴她；一個孩子問媽媽在哪裡。他們不是在說我。我聽到的整個長度裡，沒有一個在說我。我不知道我先前以為是什麼。我想，我先前以為，一座城的聲音是一種關於人山的聲音。

它持續了，我想，四十秒。然後我一下子掉下來，像水桶在繩子鬆開時掉下井，是六十九，六十二，我臉朝下趴在草地上，吐了。閃爍又回到了牆上。我躺在那裡，臉頰貼著地面。我沒有資格高興，可是我高興；而且我還有別的感覺，起初我不知道它叫什麼，那就是：財庫是對的。第五條說，一個被人看到能變動四十六拍的人，能變動四十一拍。我在田野的黑暗裡，仰面躺著，變動了五十二拍。他們對我能做什麼是對的。他們只錯在我會做什麼。

第二天正午，一個男孩肩上扛著梯子，穿過田野走來。我從老遠就看見他，田野是空曠的，有一陣子我沒明白我看到的是什麼；然後我明白了，我坐起來，心跳得可以給它定一個數字。他是個十歲或十一歲的不來夫斯古男孩。他後面隔著一小段，走得像怕走得太快的人，來了一個繫灰腰帶的人，雙手抱著一只小箱子。

是那個年輕人。我從箱子認出他。我也從他不抬頭認出他；他穿過田野時，眼睛看著自己的腳，就像他爬那架梯子爬了四個月一樣；他在我的手旁邊停下，我的手是不假思索地攤放在草地上的，手心朝上，像我一向正午時那樣，他對男孩說了句什麼，男孩把梯子靠在我的腕上。

他爬上去了。他把儀器的腳放在腕片上，眼睛離刻度一吋地讀；讀完以後，他做了一件我沒見過他做的事。他抬起了頭。他看著我的臉，大約說一個名字那麼久，我看出他按他們的算法大約二十歲，他沒睡，他怕我，而他還是來了。六十三，他說，用我的語言，用一個在路上練習過的人的聲音。

我被吩咐正午來量，他說。沒有人叫我停。然後，因為我沒說話：他們在使節來過的第二天把我從帳冊上撤了。使節來的那天，我量你是八十一，我寫的是八十一。我後來看過那本帳冊。同一個地方寫的是九十七，墨水不是我的。我說了，他們把帳冊從我手裡拿走，首席秘書把我送過了水。我寫儀器說的。那是人家吩咐我做的。我不知道是誰被吩咐去寫它沒說的。他停了一下。我不知道它是做什麼用的，他說，直到第五條。我希望你知道我不知道。

我沒告訴他這不要緊。對條款不要緊，條款不是依真實寫的；對我要緊。我說我知道。他拿出一本小書，是用財庫的紙自己縫的，在裡面寫下數字，六十三；數字旁邊，在第二欄，用他很小的字，寫了四個字，我讀得懂，因為他像那另一個人一樣，把那頁拿著讓我看得見：躺在田裡。過了一會兒，他又加上第五個。醒著。

我向他問消息。他按他有的順序說，像讀一欄。雷爾德雷薩收到了我的便條；他把它沿著辦公室的地板走了一整遍，走到頭時，坐在最後一個字母上。那個男孩傍晚仍然在敲鼓，六十，在秘書家的屋頂上，敲給沒有人，秘書對此什麼也沒說。皇帝向議會發表了那篇關於寬大的講話，穿著小境的全套禮服，我走後的第二天它被公布了，城裡很安靜。還有那個說早安的女孩，第四天早上去了臺階，他說，說了，被告知我走了；她又對著臺階說了一遍。他用他讀刻度的那種聲音告訴我這些。

到不來夫斯古的第三天，我沿著東北岸走出去，沒有別的緣故，只因為那是一個沒人盯著我的地方，看見半里格外的水面上有一樣黑色的東西，不是礁石。它隨潮水轉了一下。我脫了鞋襪，蹚水走出去兩三百碼，發現它正向我漂來；那是一條船，一條真正的船，翻了個底朝天，像是在某次風暴中從某艘船上被吹落，順著潮水漂到這裡。

我回去請求皇帝借給我二十艘他在失去艦隊後還剩下的最高的船，和三千名水手，由他的副海軍大將指揮；靠著它們，靠著我在它後面泡在水裡推了許多次，推到水只到腋下，然後是纜繩，然後是兩千人拿著繩索和器械在沙灘上，我把它弄上岸，翻過來，發現它損壞很少。十天的划槳把它帶到皇家港口，人民成群地湧出來看這樣一艘驚人的大船。我告訴皇帝，我的好運把它扔到了我路上，要送我去一個我可以找到回家路的地方，我請求他下令供給材料，並准許我離去；經過一番好意的勸阻，他兩樣都給了。

這一切期間，我奇怪小境一直沒有消息。後來我才知道原因。皇帝以為我不知道他的圖謀，把我當成是照我的諾言在不來夫斯古，期望我過幾天典禮結束後回去；可是他對我的久留漸漸不安，和財政大臣及其餘那一夥商量之後，派了一位有身分的人帶著條款的抄本去。

這位使者奉他主人之命向不來夫斯古的君主陳述：我將受到多麼大的寬大對待，只是失去我的眼睛；我是逃避正義；並且，如果我在兩個鐘頭內不回去，我就要被剝奪納達克的頭銜，宣布為叛徒。小境人所說的兩個鐘頭，是我的十分鐘。我若立刻動身奔跑，剛好來得及。他又補充，為了維持兩個帝國的和平與友誼，他的主人期望他的兄弟，不來夫斯古的君主，把我手腳捆著送回去，作為叛徒受罰。

不來夫斯古的皇帝花了三天商議，那是他的三十六天，我想我從沒見過這麼準備周到的拒絕。他回了一個滿是客套和藉口的答覆：至於把我捆著送回去，他的兄弟知道那是不可能的；雖然我奪走了他的艦隊，他為了和約，欠我的恩情；兩位陛下很快都會安心，因為我已找到一艘能載我出海的船，他已下令在我的協助和指導下修整它；他希望幾個星期後，兩個帝國都能擺脫這個無法忍受的累贅。

這些他親口告訴我；然後，在最嚴格的保密下，他提出，若我願留下為他效力，他願意給我他的恩慈保護。我想他是真心的。可是我已決定，對君主和大臣，能少信一點就少信一點，我請求他原諒，說既然命運把一艘船扔到我路上，我寧願去冒大海的險，也不要成為兩位這樣強大的君主之間不和的原因。他並不不悅。我後來偶然發現，他很高興這個結果，他的大多數大臣也是。

我趕著辦，宮廷不耐煩，也幫著辦。五百名工匠照我的指導，把十三層他們最結實的亞麻布縫在一起，做成兩面帆。我把他們最粗最結實的纜繩，十股、二十股、三十股絞成一根繩。我在海岸邊找了很久，找到一塊大石頭，作為錨；三百頭牛的牛油，用來塗船。我自己砍桅桿和槳，皇帝的木匠在我之後替它們刨光，動作快得我一次也沒看見他們是怎麼做的。

每天正午，那個年輕人帶著男孩、梯子和箱子，穿過田野來。他爬上去，把腳放在我的腕上，讀刻度；現在他做這件事的時候，會看我的臉，看夠久，足以看出那是一張臉；他把數字寫在他的小書裡，旁邊寫我在做什麼，依週次是：砍桅桿，絞纜繩，用一根船用鉤竿大小的針縫帆上的一道縫。這是我生平第一次被一個想知道的人寫下來。

## 第09章 · 年輕官員不肯同去，把他的儀器交給作者。作者開船，被一艘英國船救起，船長量了他的腕。他帶著牲口回家，量了兒子的腕，並把它寫下來。

倒數第二個正午，那個年輕人量完我的腕，寫下數字，沒有下梯子。他在我的腕上坐下，兩腿垂在一邊，像雷爾德雷薩以前坐在我膝蓋上那樣，說他對一件事已經拿定了主意，希望我問之前就讓他說出來。

我本來打算問他。我想我不問就走是不行的；我想過許多理由，選了一個，就是他是寫下我的人裡唯一想知道的人。他說他不來。他客氣地說出理由，那理由他像做一切事一樣，是用欄位算出來的。六個月的航行是六年。我們還沒看見好望角，他就老了。在我的國家他只能活一個季節，在船艙裡或抽屜裡，在把他當玩具的人中間，我還沒拆完行李他就死了；他寧可做那個在不來夫斯古的田野裡守著正午的人，在那裡一天就是一天。

他把他自己縫的小書給我，還有那個箱子。箱子是財庫的，他說；他走的時候帶走了；它是小境唯一準確的儀器，我該拿著它。我說我不能。他說他想過了，要我別把它當作禮物。我曾在某個正午對他說過我兒子的腕，在布里斯托碼頭上的，因為他是我認識的唯一一個不會覺得我記得那個數字很奇怪的人。再量一次，他說。寫下來。他不希望這儀器被放進抽屜。

他還有一則消息，來自首席秘書，寫在一張細如線的紙條上，我用鏡子讀：小境會被告知那艘船被看見沉沒了，那裡沒有人會來找我；下面用更小的字寫著：男孩被吩咐不要再在屋頂上敲了，他沒有停。

最後一個正午，我量了他的腕。我用我最小的手指的指尖量，就像我量過皇帝的那樣，這是我量的第二隻那個國家的腕；這麼多個月，他量了我近兩百次，我一次也沒問過他的是多少。是七百三十一，而且在跳。我說了。他說它被人量的時候總是這樣。我把數字大聲說了出來，他寫進小書，在我的下面，然後把書合上，交給了我。他接著請我在第一頁寫上他的名字，因為財庫的帳冊沒有它。那是一個十一個音節加一個停頓的名字；我聽他說了兩遍，用我自己國家的字母盡量寫下來，它在那裡看起來像一個短句。

大約一個月後，一切就緒，我派人去領陛下的命令並辭行。皇帝和皇室從宮裡出來，我臉朝下躺著吻他的手，他非常親切地把手給我；皇后和年輕的王子們也一樣。陛下贈我五十袋錢，每袋兩百斯普魯格，還有他的全身像，大約我一隻手那麼長，我立刻把它放進一隻手套裡，免得受損。我離去時的儀式太多，不拿來煩讀者了。皇帝動情地對我說，我在不來夫斯古會被記很久；我事後算過，在他的國家，那大約是到聖誕節。

我在船上裝了一百頭牛和三百隻羊的屍體，相應的麵包和飲料，和四百個廚子能供應的那麼多已煮好的肉。我帶了六頭母牛和兩頭公牛，活的，還有同樣多的母羊和公羊，打算帶回我自己的國家繁殖；為了在船上餵牠們，我有一大捆乾草和一袋穀子。我本想帶十二個當地人，可是皇帝絕不許，除了仔細搜我的口袋，他還要我以名譽擔保不帶走他的任何臣民，即使是他們自己同意和願意的。我沒告訴他我曾問過一個，而被拒絕了。能守一個不花什麼代價的諾言，是件愉快的事。

九月二十四日早上六點，我開船。我回頭看了一次。田野裡立著一架梯子，旁邊有個人，懷裡抱著一只箱子，還有那個不來夫斯古男孩。他沒有揮手。量腕的人不揮手；那被認為會擾亂讀數。那天正午，沒有人來做這件事，我把兩根手指放在自己的腕上。是六十二。我把它寫進小書，在他的最後一行下面，數字旁邊，在第二欄，用我在田野裡學會的字，寫我在做什麼。航行。

向北走了大約四里格，風從東南來，傍晚六點我看見一座小島，在它的背風處拋了錨，睡了。我夜裡醒來，躺著聽隔壁房間一座很大、很有耐心的鐘，那是我自己；而在任何一座城的西邊，都沒有人按它來安排一天。第二天我用袖珍羅盤照原航向前進，我的打算是設法到達我有理由相信在凡迪門地東北的那些島之一。那天我什麼也沒看見；可是再下一天，下午三點左右，據我的計算離不來夫斯古二十四里格，我看見一張帆，向東南駛去。我的航向是正東。我向她呼喊，沒有回應；可是我發現我在趕上她，因為風減弱了。半小時後她發現了我，掛出旗，開了一炮。

我說不清我當時的感覺，那是想到能再看見自己的國家、和我留在那裡的親人的意外的希望。九月二十六日傍晚五六點之間我追上了她，看見她的英國旗，我的心跳了起來。我把我的牛和羊放進外套口袋，帶著我那一小批食物上了船。那是一艘英國商船，從日本經南北海回來；船長是德特福德的約翰・比德爾先生，一個很和氣的人，也是個出色的水手。

我們在南緯三十度；船上約有五十個人，我在那裡遇到一個老夥伴，叫彼得・威廉斯，他向船長替我作了良好的保證。船長待我很客氣，想知道我最近從哪裡來，要去哪裡。可是在聽我一個字之前，他先拿了我的腕，照規矩，在船腰，當著眾人，握了好一會兒。六十四，他說。我說是六十。他客氣地說，我走了很久了。我中午在自己的書裡寫的是六十二。我沒有爭辯；沒有人可以裁決。我後來想，被一個不會把它寫下來的人量，是另一回事；而我說不上我比較喜歡哪一種。

我簡單地告訴他我去過哪裡，他以為我在胡言亂語，以為我受的危險擾亂了我的頭腦。可是他的手還在我的腕上，而且穩；我把我的黑牛和羊從口袋裡拿出來，驚訝就把這件事決定了。我給他看不來夫斯古皇帝給我的金子，和陛下的全身像，以及那個國家的一些珍奇之物。我給了他兩袋，每袋兩百斯普魯格，並答應到英國時送他一頭母牛和一隻懷了崽的羊。

到傍晚，半個值班的人都來讓這個去過小境的人量腕，我就用那個黃銅箱子，在艙口，一個接一個地量他們。他們說它很冷。

這趟航行大體上很順利，我不拿它煩讀者，只說那些牲口。船長准我用他最好的一些餅乾，我把它磨成粉，和水拌了，那是牠們不變的食物；而我直到第三個星期才明白我在餵的是什麼。我的一個月，牲口有一年。母牛在好望角就產了犢，小母牛在赤道就產了，母羊也下了羔，連羔也下了羔；所以當船上的老鼠叼走我的一隻羊，我在一個洞裡找到她的骨頭，啃得乾乾淨淨，我已說不出她是這一家的哪一隻。我在小書裡為牠們畫了第三欄：產犢、下羔、死了；最後一欄比第一欄滿。到唐斯的時候，我有六十一頭，其中沒有一頭見過小境。我沒有對花錢來看牠們的先生們提這件事。

四月十三日我們到了唐斯。我把牲口放在格林威治的一塊草坪上吃草，草好得讓牠們吃得很起勁，雖然我一向擔心相反；在我待在英國的短時間裡，我把牠們給許多有身分的人和別人看，賺了可觀的錢，在我開始第二次航行以前，我把牠們賣了六百信用點。有位夫人星期一來看牠們，星期六又來，說我換了牛。我說我沒有。她不信，而她在某個意義上是對的。

我星期四到了雷德里夫。船還沒碰到碼頭的臺階，我妻子已在門口了；我不知道是誰告訴她的。她拿了我的腕，那是照規矩，握了很久，說我升高了，說我遲了；然後她把臉貼在我的外套上，我分不清是誰在抱著誰。她說我身上有牛油的味道，問我是乘什麼船來的，我說是我自己造的一條船；她說那正是這味道告訴她的。強尼八歲，穿著襯衫站在過道裡，不肯走近過門口。貝蒂，我啟航時還在懷裡抱著的，現在會走了，而且有主見。

那天夜裡，孩子們被弄上床又爬下床以後，我把黃銅箱子拿出來。強尼站在門口，一動不動，看著我的臉。我把儀器的腳放在他的腕上，讀刻度。是六十八。在碼頭階梯上也是六十八，我當時沒覺得值得寫下來。我寫下來了。數字旁邊，在第二欄，用我在田野裡學會的小字，我寫他在做什麼，那是：站得一動不動，看著我的臉。［頁邊：約翰・格列佛先生，現住格林威治，這一段拿給他看時，他說他記得那個箱子，記得它是冷的。辛普森按。］

這個星期結束前，鄰居們聽說了這個箱子，三三兩兩來到門口，伸著手腕，要人告訴他們的數字，像別人去求人算命。我替他們量，因為這是我的行當；他們每個人都問我那是什麼意思；我說，一個數字單獨拿出來，不算什麼；他們不喜歡這個。

我和妻子家人只待了兩個月，因為我想看外國的那種無法滿足的慾望，不容我再待得更久。我給妻子留了一千五百信用點，替她在雷德里夫安頓了一所好房子。我剩下的本錢帶在身邊，一部分是錢，一部分是貨物，希望增加我的財產。我的叔叔約翰留給我一小塊產業，我還租下一家客棧，進項跟產業一樣多；所以我不怕讓家人落到靠教區救濟。我的兒子強尼，是以他叔叔的名字命名的，在文法學校念書，是個有出息的孩子。我的女兒貝蒂（現在已出嫁，有了孩子）那時在做針線活。我和妻子、兒子、女兒告別，雙方都流著淚，登上了冒險號，一艘三百噸的商船，開往蘇拉特，船長是利物浦的約翰・尼古拉斯。可是這一趟航行的記述，要留到我遊記的第二部分去講了。

那天正午，在甲板上，沒有人來做這件事，我把兩根手指放在我的腕上。是六十一。我把它寫進小書，在其他數字的下面，數字旁邊，在第二欄，寫我在做什麼；我看了它好一會兒，讓它留在那裡。離開。

## 第10章 · 大風暴的描述；長艇被派去取水，作者隨同去探查這片地方。他被留在岸上，把一個人當成了天氣，被一個必須等他站住才看得見他的農夫拾起。他順著農夫拇指裡的脈搏沉了下去。他在農舍受到的接待，與一場黑暗中的搏鬥。

唐斯在我們身後沉下去的時候，我是六十一，在好望角也大約是六十一；對一個船上外科醫生在順風的航程中的拍，沒有什麼好說的，只除了它穩得住。我們一直順風，直到好望角，在那裡上岸取水；可是發現了一處漏水，我們把貨卸下來，在那裡過冬，船長又得了瘧疾，所以直到三月底才離開。那個冬天我一直寫著小書。它不是我願意給任何人看的東西。它的第二欄，整個那一季，只有一個詞：等。

從好望角起，我們一路順利，直到馬達加斯加海峽；然後那種在那個季節不該出現在那片海上的西風來了，吹了二十天，所以到五月二日，船長的觀測把我們定在摩鹿加群島稍東、赤道以北三度。然後風平了，一片完全的靜止，我很高興；而船長，他懂得那些海，吩咐我們準備迎接風暴；第二天它就來了，帶著南季風。

我們收了艏帆，準備收前帆；我們查看了砲，收了後桅帆；我們縮帆、張帆、拉緊、繫牢，如此這般，寫了差不多一頁。［頁邊：初版保留了這一頁。格列佛太太的抄本用一道線把它劃掉了，頁邊用鉛筆寫著：他確實知道這些東西的名字。辛普森按。］那是一場非常猛烈的風暴，海浪怪異而危險。風暴過後，據我的計算，我們已被帶到東邊五百里格，連船上最老的水手也說不出我們在世界的哪一部分。我們有糧食，有一艘結實的船，有一群健康的船員。我們沒有水。

六月十六日，離我啟航剛好差四天一年，桅頂上一個男孩看見了陸地；十七日我們完整地看到一座大島，也可能是一塊大陸，南邊有一小段地向海中伸出，後面有一個小灣，水太淺，容不下一百噸以上的船。我們在一里格以內拋了錨，船長派十二個人，全副武裝，坐長艇帶著取水的容器去。我請求他准我同去，看看這個地方。

我們沒找到河，也沒找到泉，沒有人煙的跡象。水手們沿著岸邊散開，尋找靠海的淡水；我獨自朝另一個方向走了大約一哩，那裡的地全是荒蕪的石頭，我走累了，沒有東西可以讓我消遣，便折回小灣，看見我們的人已經上了艇，正拼命朝船划去。

我正要朝他們喊，雖然喊也沒用，這時我看見一個巨大的生物在海裡跟在他們後面走。我要說我看見了什麼，而不是我後來想的是什麼。他涉水不比膝蓋深，邁著驚人的大步；我看見他每邁一步，像鐘敲一下，敲一下，然後隔很久才敲下一下。我們的人比他領先半里格，拼命地划，像那些以為背後的東西是快的人那樣划。後來一個從艇上的人那裡聽來的人告訴我，他沒有在追。那一帶的海裡滿是尖石，我想他是停了，像一個人看出他追的東西不值得濕一隻腳而停下那樣。

我沒有留下來看結局。我順著原路跑回去，爬上一座陡峭的小山，從山頂看到這片地方被完全耕種了；最先讓我吃驚的是草，在那些留作乾草的地方，有二十呎高。我走上一條我以為是大路的路，雖然對那裡的人只是穿過一片大麥田的小徑，我在裡面走了一個鐘頭，兩邊的麥子高出我頭頂四十呎，什麼也看不見，只有麥稈和一條天空。

路盡頭是一道一百二十呎高的籬笆，籬笆裡有一道踏階，我花一天也爬不上去：四級，每級有一個人那麼高，頂上還有一塊要跨過去的石頭，少說有二十呎。我正沿著籬笆找一個缺口，看見了天氣。

我是說，踏階那邊的田裡有東西在動，起初我把它當成雲的影子，像越過一座山的那種，只是很低、很慢、顏色不對。它以一種不需要趕的東西的步調過來。那是一個人。他有一座尖塔那麼高，每一步跨約十碼；而那一步，我用自己的脈搏數，他走了七拍。我又驚又怕，跑到麥子裡藏起來，從那裡看見他站在踏階頂上，回頭望著另一塊田，又聽見他喊。那不是聲音。那是一口鐘，被敲了幾下，每一下之間隔很久，高高在我上面，我起初確實以為是雷；在那個國家，我後來發現，雷是一響一響分開來的。

又來了七個，拿著收割的鐮鉤，每把像六把大鐮刀那麼大，聽了他一句話，他們便去收我躺著的那塊田的麥。我看到一把鉤子穿過大麥，我數了它，是十一秒，它非常美，非常確定，像一座很大的鐘裡的鐘擺的一擺；麥子在它面前倒下，四十呎，像一口慢吞吞的呼吸。我盡量離他們遠。可是麥稈有時相隔不到一呎，我幾乎擠不過去；最後我到了一塊被風雨打倒的麥地，麥稈交織得我根本爬不過去，倒下的麥穗上的芒又硬又尖，穿透了我的衣服和皮肉。收割的人離我不到一百碼。我，本來能在他們兩鉤的時間裡跑一哩，卻挪不動一碼。

勞累得喪了氣，悲傷和絕望壓倒了我，我在兩道壟之間躺下，衷心希望就死在那裡。我想到瑪麗，我給她留下了一千五百信用點和一所好房子；想到門口那個站得一動不動的男孩。我為自己的愚蠢和任性悔恨，不聽所有朋友親戚的勸告，去做第二次航行。我拿出小書，因為沒有別人，我自己量了腕。是九十四，那是我自不來夫斯古的田裡以來沒到過的。我把它寫下來，第二欄，用小字，寫我在做什麼。躺在麥裡。害怕。

在這可怕的紛亂中，我不禁想起小境，在那裡我被看作世上出現過的最大奇觀，曾用一隻手拖著一支帝國的艦隊走；發現自己在這裡像他們中的一個在我們中間那樣微不足道，是一種屈辱。有人說過，大小只有比較才有，我以為那是哲學上的一個命題；我發現那是一塊田。而且這比較不只是高度，也是時間：我在一個國家是最慢的東西，現在在另一個國家，就我所能判斷，是最快的東西，而兩者都不是安慰。

一把鉤子正從壟上越過來。我看著它來，過了很長時間，然後它近到我受不了；我做了我從沒做過的事，就是用盡聲音大喊，用恐懼所能叫出的最大的聲音。對他來說，我想，那是一隻蚊子。離我最近的那個收割的人停了下來，在地上四處看了一會兒，找不到我；因為一個害怕的東西是不會不動的，而一個不停動的東西，對於像他們那樣動的眼睛，是不在那裡的。我想站起來，站不起來，最後就在原地站住，雙手撐著膝蓋，像一個跑了一哩、才發現只跑了一碼的人；而就在我站住的那一刻，他看見了我。

他琢磨了一會兒，像一個想抓一隻有危險的小動物、又不要被它抓傷咬傷的人那樣小心，就像我抓過一隻黃鼠狼那樣。然後他從後面用拇指和食指把我拎起來，拎到離他的眼睛三碼以內，看我是什麼。我猜到了他的意思。我在離地六十呎的地方，他捏著我的兩側，不是不溫和，卻像人握著一樣可能跑掉的東西；我決定一點也不掙扎，因為我，以我身上屬於外科醫生的那部分，明白一個在手裡掙扎的東西，是會被重重放下的。我在握住我的拇指和食指裡，感覺到一種緩慢而巨大的敲擊，像木槌敲遠處的一道門；然後是長長的等待；然後又一下。我數了它。那是他的脈搏。每分鐘五下。

我不知道我從哪裡得到那個念頭。我量過太多受驚的人的腕，知道受驚的人先聽數字，後聽話。我把雙手合在一起，臉朝著太陽，沉了下去。我沒有椅子，沒有繩子，沒有鼓；我有他拇指的敲擊，我讓我的聲音等著它，像我見過放慢者等那個男孩那樣。我花了他的三拍才說出一個詞，我是靠他手的鐘說出來的。饒。然後是那一拍。命。我不知道在他聽來是什麼聲音。我只知道，我感到那把木槌遲疑了。

他把我貼近他的耳朵，從他嘴裡出來的是一口鐘。然後他把我四肢著地放到地上，我立刻站起來，慢慢地來回走，讓他知道我不打算跑；七個收割的人坐成一圈，看我接下來做什麼。我摘下帽子，向農夫鞠躬。我跪下，舉起雙手，說了我受得了說的話。我拿出錢袋，把金子獻給他；他把它放進掌心，湊到眼前，用從袖子裡拿出的一根別針的尖頭翻了翻，什麼也看不出。我比手勢要他把手掌平放在地上，把錢倒進去，六枚大的和三十來枚小的，他舔濕小指，拿起一枚，又一枚，帶著一個被塞了一種語言的人的神情看著它們。他給我一個手勢，要我收回去；我又向他獻了兩次，最後收了回去。

這時他已確信我是個有理性的生物。他把我用手帕裹起來帶回家；他的妻子看到我，尖叫著往後退，像女人看到蟾蜍或蜘蛛那樣。那尖叫傳到我這裡，是一個緩慢的大和弦，一個音一個音。可是她觀察我一陣，看見我多麼懂她丈夫的手勢，就漸漸對我變得極其溫柔。

晚飯是一盤肉，符合一個莊稼漢的身分，盤子有二十四呎寬，一家人是農夫、他的妻子、三個孩子和一位老祖母。他們把我放在離地三十呎的桌上，我待在桌子中間，怕靠近邊緣。農婦剁了一塊碎肉，在木盤上弄碎一些麵包給我；我鞠了躬，拿出我的刀叉；他們高興得一時沒有人吃飯。

我吃完了，兩手放在膝上坐著，她還沒把自己的送到嘴邊；她以為我在等更多，便又叫人拿來一點。一家人的晚飯，照我的錶，花了一小時三刻，我坐在桌上整個過程都被人看著。我的食量備受讚賞。我從他們的手勢中猜到，讓他們驚訝的不是我的大小，也不是我的衣服，而是我是個吃得完的人。

最小的那個，一歲的男孩，坐在奶媽的膝上，看上了我，他是那間屋子裡唯一抓得住我的人。在別人轉頭的時間裡，他已抓住我的腿，把我塞進嘴裡。我吼得那麼響，他把我掉了，要不是他母親用圍裙接住，我肯定摔斷了脖子。奶媽試了一個搖鈴，那是個裝滿大石頭的空容器，用纜繩系在孩子腰上；沒用，她就使出最後一招。

主人的貓進來，跳到女僕的膝上，我是從響聲知道的：牠有三頭牛那麼大。我站著不動，伸出雙手，也不動它們。那貓，在那個國家是一種有一定快慢的動物，看了我九拍，伸出一隻爪，我不在那裡；然後牠看了農夫，農夫用鐘的調子說了句什麼，貓躺下了。是有人用某種方式告訴過牠我是熟人，還是牠只是考慮了一下，覺得不值得費事，我始終沒查出來。

下午，女主人把我放到她自己的床上，蓋上一條乾淨的白手帕，比戰艦的主帆還粗，鎖上了門。我睡了兩個鐘頭，夢見我在家，和瑪麗與孩子們在一起，這使我醒來更難受：房間像一塊田那麼寬，像教堂的塔那麼高，床有二十碼寬，離地八碼。我想解手，又不敢叫；就算叫，廚房離得太遠，我這樣的聲音傳不過去；我正想著，兩隻老鼠順著帷幔爬上來，在被子上來回嗅。

一隻幾乎到了我的臉邊。我驚得站起來，拔出短刀。牠們膽敢從兩邊撲向我，其中一隻前爪搭到我的領子上；可是我趁牠沒來得及造成損害，剖開了牠的肚子，牠倒在我腳邊死了，另一隻跑了，背上挨了一道好傷，是我趁牠逃走時砍的，牠身後留下一道血跡。

我要說，牠們是那個國家裡第一批和我同一步調的生物。那整天，我是一個鐘的世界裡最快的東西；現在屋裡有兩個和我一樣快的東西，而且有牙。我不像在英國那樣怕牠們。我知道牠們怎麼動。這場功勞之後，我在床上輕輕來回走，恢復呼吸和精神，我在黑暗中量了腕，是九十一，然後七十，然後，因為那屋子裡沒有人能聽見它，我讓它落了下去。

## 第11章 · 農夫女兒的描述，她是那間屋子裡唯一不慢的人。作者學語言，也學被人看。他被帶到一座市鎮，然後到京城，每天被展出十次。旅程的種種。

農夫有個九歲的女兒，就她的年齡而言個子小，不到四十呎高，而且快。我是說她是那屋子裡唯一不慢的人；她母親常用那個國家說什麼都有的悠長口氣說，這孩子是匆匆忙忙生出來的，從此就沒緩過來。她的拍是八。他們認為這是她的缺點，一種熱病，並且溫和地對待，像對待一個總站在窗邊的孩子。

她被指派做我的保姆。她和她母親為我在夜裡準備了嬰兒的搖籃：一個從櫃子裡抽出來的小抽屜，裡面鋪一條被子，放在架子上以防老鼠，她睡在旁邊的一張矮床上。她的針線活很靈巧。她用能弄到的比麻袋布還粗的料子給我做了七件襯衫，自己洗，我沒有一天沒有乾淨的穿。她替我穿衣脫衣，用兩隻手捧著我給全家人看，他們看我，我想，就像一家人看一座被搬進屋裡、並且開始報時的鐘。

我說過他們是慢的，我該說說那是什麼樣子。在那個國家，一張臉不會變；它是展開的。我看著農婦開始微笑，然後去做某件小事，回來，那微笑還在到來。我發現我沒法久看一張臉，因為我有太多的時間去讀它；而有了時間，我讀了它，它永遠是善意的，或永遠不是，沒有一個時刻兩者都是。我沒到過另一個國家，那裡的臉這麼不可能被信賴去隱藏任何東西。我從沒看見他們當中任何一個說謊。我想那得花太長時間。

她教我語言。她指著一樣東西說出它的名字，我學到每個名字都是一口鐘，鐘與鐘之間有很多時間讓我學。那種語言有十一個詞表示慢的程度，就像小境的語言有十一個詞表示匆忙，卻完全沒有詞表示我這樣的東西；女孩替我造了一個。我一個星期就學了四百個日常用詞；我想我從沒學得這麼快，也沒被老師打擾得這麼少。難的是說。要讓她以外的任何人聽懂，我得沉下去，而沒有椅子、繩子或鼓，沉下去超過四十分鐘是我做不到的；要是有椅子，我早該被另外兩個人從椅子上扶下來，揉搓。女孩給我找來了鼓。她就是在小境會被叫做放慢者的反面，在這個國家則被不那麼尊敬地叫做快者：她能以我的步調聽我，再用他們的步調說給別人聽。她伸出腕，脈搏朝上，我把手放在上面，隨著它的敲擊說話：每分鐘八下，用他們的尺度是個匆忙，用我的尺度是一樣我可以站上去的東西。

她叫我格里爾德里格，那是她用他們的「小」字和他們的「不肯停下來」字替我造的詞，後來整個王國都這麼叫我。我叫她格倫達爾克利奇，意思是小保姆。我說她是我的守護天使；她用她對我說話的那種聲音說，那是她自己的聲音升到我的步調，像一隻鳥從灌木裡出來，她說她不知道那是什麼，但她願意做它。

她還教我被人看。晚上她把我放在桌上，要我以她所謂「禮貌的步調」向她走過去，那大約是我喜歡的速度的十二分之一，我一開始模糊她就告訴我。那像是跟一個累死了的人學跳舞。我只能這樣持續幾分鐘。到第二個星期結束時，我能走過一張桌子，讓農夫的眼睛跟得上我，並且被告知我表現得很好，用的是人誇狗的口氣。

第五夜她量了我的腕。這不能用手指，我的腕片還不到她指甲的寬度，她知道；她從自己頭上取了一根長髮，橫放在腕片上，握著髮梢，感覺那一下一下的跳動沿著髮絲傳到她的指尖，像人感覺釣線上的魚。我躺在被子上，讓她量。她出聲數。她說十二，然後停一下，十二，然後停一下；一分鐘到了，她說是六十，用他們稱呼鐘的數字的那個詞，她母親在床上說，這不是對客人該做的事。我覺得這是自從一架梯子靠在我手臂上以來，別人對我做過的最有禮貌的事。

從那夜起她數著我睡。她大聲數，以她自己的步調，每十二拍說一個字；我躺在抽屜裡，聽那些數字一個個到來，每一個是一口鐘，中間隔著長長的停頓；在我待在那屋子裡的所有那些星期，我想我沒有一次數到她數完還沒睡著的。

我很快成了村裡的話題。農夫的一個鄰居，一個精明的人，以走運聞名，來看我，被請看我在桌上的表演，我做了我的練習；我鞠躬，隨著農夫拇指的脈搏說了些我能說的話，拔出短刀，在木板上走了一遍。他看了我很久。我做完以後他說，這是浪費。他的意思是我該被更多人看見。他勸農夫下一個趕集日把我帶到下一個市鎮去給人看，那在二十二哩外。

農夫是個慢人，就算在那個國家也算慢，花了十一天才看出這裡面有什麼。這期間女孩哭得比我見過的都多，因為她比我早猜到正在決定什麼；結束時她把臉貼著抽屜對我說，她怕孩子們會對我做什麼，他們會擠我，掐我，摔我，像他們對待小貓那樣。我說我不怕。那不是真話。我見過那個國家的孩子，他們雖然慢，手卻很大。

下一個星期的某天我們出發了，我在一只箱子裡，帶著搖籃被子和通氣孔，放在女孩的腿上，她坐在她父親身後的馬鞍墊上；馬在那個國家是一種極其莊重的動物，它的顛簸像一陣長長的湧浪。箱子做得大到我可以躺下，又略小到我站不直，有一個鉸鏈的蓋子，和一扇她可以從後面打開的小門。她每隔她的半個鐘頭就打開它，伸進一個指尖，看我在不在。我在。我也沒有別處可去。

路上，在女孩安排得了的旅店，晚上我被取出來，放在她的膝上，黑暗中箱子敞開著。她用她對我說話的聲音問我我的國家。她問我有沒有妻子。我說有。她問我的妻子數不數我；我說我進門的時候，她拿我的腕，握很久。她說那是對的，一根手指繼續摩挲著箱子的蓋子，慢到我可以從那一撫的一頭走到另一頭再走回來，它才到達拐角。

在那個市鎮，我在一家旅店的大房間裡，在一張桌子上被展出。一次最多三十人看我，給我的是一塊四周圍著欄杆的木板，一個女孩布置的小舞臺，和農夫的棍子，那是一根稻草。觀眾一打一打進來，帶著一個會眾那種悠長不慌不忙的腳步。而我在第一個十五分鐘裡就發現了他們花錢買的是什麼。

他們看不見我動。我不是說他們看得不好。我是說我從木板的一頭走到中間大約花我三秒，那是一個觀眾吸一口氣的時間，在巨人的眼睛裡我是一道污跡，然後我是一個站在木板中間鞠躬的小人。他們叫了出來。到來才是表演。靜止是他們看得見的部分，從一個靜止到另一個靜止的過程是他們花錢買的部分，卻看不見；到第二天就發現，我最好是想動多快就動多快，然後完全不動地站著，雙手放在身側，數八。

我按女孩教的，拔出短刀揮舞；我敬禮；我走動；我隨農夫拇指的脈搏說了一句我學會的話，是一句問候；人們像為魔術師喝彩那樣為我歡呼，是深沉的、像浪的轟鳴。我一天被展出十次。表演之間他們讓我待在角落的箱子裡，蓋子掀開，好讓下一批觀眾看見睡覺的小人；我不至於虛榮到說觀眾不是更喜歡那個。

女孩有個規矩，沒有人可以碰我。她用整個人、用她的聲音強制這個規矩，在那間旅店的過道裡，她的聲音能被聽到升高一個八度，像一根針從她身上出來。她站在欄杆旁，雙手撐著欄杆，下巴擱在手上，一個戴帽的九歲孩子，一個一個地看著每個人，直到他們停下。我看見一個五十歲的男人，我想是個屠夫，朝我的木板伸出手，又縮了回去；我明白我是被一個九歲孩子養著，像人養一隻鳥，靠的是她不在乎得罪誰。

一位很老的老太太獨自來過一次，在整場展出中站在欄杆旁一句話不說；數到八的時候，她對誰也不是地說了一句，用她國家的那種緩慢的語調：他冷。她從袖子裡拿出一只酒壺，倒了一頂針的量，對我是一杯，放在木板上。女孩不高興。我把它喝了。

農夫看出了其中的利潤，而且沒花他十一天。他帶我走了十八個鎮和村，大部分時候一天展出十次，我瘦了。他記了一本帳，像窮人那樣，每個觀眾在一根棍子上刻一個口，到第十八個鎮時，那根棍子有桅桿那麼粗，女孩不肯拿。有一個鎮，我在一座教堂的中殿裡，在兩場禮拜之間被展出，沒被告知的司事把我當成了聖物；一個婦人跪了下去，農夫還是照收她的錢。我不想說出那個數字。我在小書裡為它劃了一欄，在另外兩欄旁邊：這個房間裡有多少人；下一個房間裡有多少；而我發現它是我記過的最誠實的一欄。那些星期我的拍降了下去，降到五十幾，我把它歸咎於沉下去。其實是靜止。一個像我這樣動的東西，一天十次、連續八個星期，在像他們那樣動的人當中站著數八，是不可能不被改變的。

十個星期後，八月十八日，我們到了京城，用他們的語言叫洛爾布魯格魯德，宇宙的驕傲。農夫在主街上租了個住處，離王宮不遠，並貼出海報描述我。他租了一個大約三百呎寬的房間，一張直徑六十呎的桌子供我表演，桌邊三呎處圍一道欄杆，免得我掉下去。我一天被展出十次，讓人民和農夫都非常滿意。

這時我已能聽懂別人對我說的每一個字，並能在快者的幫助下說我想說的任何話；我習慣了拇指的脈搏這麼久，已不能聽一場談話而不去摸索它。可是到那間房間裡來的人沒有一個問我的拍是多少；只有女孩，夜裡，在抽屜裡，把頭髮橫在我的腕上，數。她總是說六十。我自己那天中午在欄杆旁量過，是五十四。我從沒糾正她。我已不知道我們兩個誰是對的。

## 第12章 · 作者被召進宮。王后向農夫買下他，連女孩也一併收下。三位大學者用一根頭髮和一只水鐘量他的腕，發現他是一座鐘；國王並不滿意。宮中為作者備了一處住所，他深得王后的歡心。

農夫比我先看出來。我沒了胃口，幾乎瘦成了骨架；我在第三欄寫下當天的數字，沒有去看另一欄。他從我身上得的越多，就越貪得無厭，等他看出我在衰弱，就斷定我很快就會死，決定從我身上盡量撈一把。他正這麼盤算的時候，一位薩德拉爾，也就是宮廷侍從，從宮裡來了，命令他立刻把我帶去，供王后和她的女官們消遣。

有幾位女官已經來看過我，並報告了關於我的容貌、舉止和見識的奇事。薩德拉爾騎馬來，抱著手臂站著看完一整場展出，像一個被告知會有東西可看的人那樣站著；等我數完那個八，他是那個國家第一個在對的時刻鼓掌的人。我當時把這當作好兆頭，錯了，或對了，就像人對這種事常會有的那樣。他事後透過女孩問我這樣做了多久；我說從六月初起，他說那很多，我不知道他指的是時間還是數目。

女孩把我連箱子放在腿上帶進宮，我被放在一張桌上，王后過來看。我跪下，求允許吻她的腳；她，一位極有機智和幽默的人，把她的小指伸向我，我用兩臂抱住它，以最大的敬意把嘴唇湊到指尖。它有脈搏。我沒料到，我抱著它站了兩拍的時間，比儀式需要的長得多。每分鐘五下，穩得像座教堂。她很好心地讓我這麼做。

她問了我一些關於我的國家與旅行的一般問題，由女孩轉給她，我盡可能清楚地回答，把我的聲音握在她手指裡的脈搏上。她問我能不能心甘情願在宮裡生活。我向桌面鞠躬，說我是我主人的財產；可是若我屬於我自己，我會很榮幸把我的生命奉獻給她的差遣。

她問我的主人是否願意以好價錢賣掉我。他以為我活不過一個月，所以很願意，要一千塊金幣，當場數給了他；我後來算過，在那個國家，這大約是一個小農場的價錢。那是我對一個以為我快死的人的價值。我對王后說，既然我現在是陛下最卑微的臣僕，我必須求一個恩典，讓一直那麼用心照顧我、又那麼懂得怎麼照顧我的格倫達爾克利奇，能被收入她的差遣，繼續做我的保姆和老師。

陛下同意，並輕易取得了農夫的同意，他很高興女兒被提拔到宮裡；那可憐的女孩自己也藏不住她的喜悅。我先前的主人告退，說他把我留在一個好差事裡。我一句話也沒回，只輕輕鞠了一躬。他把那根棍子留在了過道裡。女孩回去拿它時，看了它好一會兒，然後把它丟進火裡，站在那裡看它燒，一個九歲的孩子，雙手放在背後。

王后注意到了我的冷淡，等他走了便問我原因。我大膽對陛下說，我欠那個人的，只有他沒在田裡把我的腦袋砸出來；他帶著我走遍半個王國展出所得的，加上他現在賣掉我的價錢，已經十足補償了他；我後來過的日子，足以殺死一頭力氣十倍於我的動物；而且若不是他以為我命在旦夕，陛下也不會買得這麼便宜。這話說得結結巴巴，最後那一段稱頌陛下是自然的裝飾、造物的鳳凰，是我在馬車上從格倫達爾克利奇那裡學來的，我聽說我把「鳳凰」這個詞用成了「廚子」的意思。

王后很寬容我說話的缺陷，驚訝這麼小的動物有這麼多機智和見識。她把我拿在自己手裡，帶到國王那裡，他當時退在他的內室。陛下是一位十分莊重、神色嚴峻的君主，我看著他的臉接受他妻子手裡的東西。它花了他三分鐘，才到達冷淡。他問王后，口氣像人提起天氣，她什麼時候開始喜歡斯普拉克納克了；那是那個國家的一種動物，約六呎長，常為女士所養。

王后輕輕把我放在他的書桌上站好，吩咐我向陛下說明自己，我簡短說了；在內室門口等著、無法忍受我不在她視線內的格倫達爾克利奇被放進來，證實了我所說的一切。可是國王，他是他領土內最有學問的人之一，受的是哲學尤其是數學的教育，在我開口之前已經觀察了我的形狀，看見我直立行走，並且因為我是以他看來是滴答的方式動的，便設想我也許是一件鐘表機械，在那個國家鐘表已達到非常完美的程度，是某位巧匠做的。

他聽到我的聲音、發現我說的話有條理又合理時，掩不住他的驚訝。他不相信我說的我怎麼來到的經過。他認為那是女孩和她父親編出來的故事，教了我一套話，好讓我賣得更貴；在那個假設下，他又問了我好幾個問題，得到的仍是合理的回答，只被一種外國口音、對語言的不完全掌握、和一些我在農家學的粗鄙說法損害了，那些說法不適合宮廷的禮貌文體。

陛下召來三位大學者，他們依那個國家的規矩正在每週當值。他們仔細檢查了我的形狀，其中一位是研究鐘表的人，用一根頭髮量我的腕，因為聽說農夫的孩子是這麼做的，覺得很巧妙；第二位在桌上設了一只水鐘：一只玻璃容器，每十二秒落下一滴水，像是給房間的一種脈搏。他們數了。每分鐘六十，他們說；那是一個屬於鐘表、不屬於世上任何生物的數字。

第一位學者說我無權擁有這樣的數字。他提出他的命題：一個每分鐘走六十的小人是一座鐘，一個會說話的小人是一座有聲音的鐘。御用鐘表匠被召來。他用放大鏡相當仔細地檢查我，找發條孔，沒找到，十分不悅地走了。我後來發現，這門手藝的人都有這個脾氣，不能原諒這種缺席。

第二位學者是博物學家，意見好些。他很精確地察看了我的牙，觀察到我是肉食動物；可是大多數四足獸都勝過我，田鼠和一些別的又太靈活，他想不出我怎麼能養活自己，除非吃蝸牛和別的昆蟲，而他用許多博學的論證來證明我絕不可能那樣。三個人一致認為我不是按自然的常規法則生出來的，因為我沒有被造成能靠迅捷、爬樹或在地上打洞來保全生命的樣子。關於迅捷他們錯了；我是那個房間裡迅捷得多的東西。可是他們看不見，而在自然哲學裡，一個看不出迅捷的東西不是迅捷的。

第三位學者認為我也許是一個胚胎，或流產的胎；可是另外兩位否決了，因為他們觀察到我的四肢完全齊備，而且我已活了好幾年，這從我的鬍子上看得出來，那些鬍根他們用放大鏡看得清清楚楚。他們不許我算侏儒，因為我的小超出一切比較的程度；王后寵愛的那個侏儒，是那個王國有史以來最小的，也將近三十呎高。經過許多爭論，他們一致斷定我只是雷爾普倫・斯卡爾卡特，直譯是一個自然的怪物；這個結論後來受到歐洲學者的許多讚賞，他們多年來一直在別的場合使用它。

我請求讓我說一兩句話，我就著他們自己的水鐘的水滴回答，那水鐘是他們拿來證明我是鐘的，卻成了我的鼓。我對陛下說，我來自一個有幾百萬男女的國家，他們和我一樣大小，那裡的動物、樹木和房屋都按比例，我在那裡能像陛下的臣民在這裡一樣自衛、謀生；我以為這就是對那幾位先生的論證的完整回答。他們只回以輕蔑的微笑，說農夫把我的功課教得很好。

國王有更好的見識，打發走他的學者，派人去找農夫，他幸好還沒離開本城。他先單獨審問他，然後把他和我與女孩放在一起對質，我看著他的臉開始想，我們說的也許是真的。它花了十一分鐘。他吩咐王后，要特別照料我，並認為格倫達爾克利奇仍應繼續照顧我，因為他看出我們彼此有情。

宮裡給她安排了一間房，派一位女教師教導她，一個侍女給她穿衣，兩個僕人做粗活；可是照顧我的事，完全留給她自己。王后自己的細木匠按女孩和我的指示給我造了一間臥室：十六呎見方，十二呎高，有推拉窗、一扇門和兩間小套間，簡直像倫敦的臥室，只是天花板是一塊用兩個鉸鏈掛的蓋子，好讓王后的裝潢匠把鋪好的床放進來。女孩每天把床拿出去曬，親手鋪好，夜裡放下蓋子，鎖在我上面。他三週做完，照我的鐘算；他得意地告訴我，照他的鐘，不到兩天。

我要了一把鎖，防老鼠，鐵匠試了幾次，做出了那個國家有史以來最小的鎖，鑰匙我自己拿著，怕女孩弄丟。房間四面都襯了墊子，防顛簸；王后又吩咐把能弄到的最薄的絲綢給我做衣服，不比英國毯子薄多少，沒穿慣前很累贅，是一種莊重得體的服飾。

王后變得那麼喜歡我的陪伴，沒有我就吃不下飯。她左手肘邊放了一張給我的桌子，一把椅子，女孩站在旁邊的一張凳子上照應我。我有一整套銀餐具，比起王后的，並不比我在倫敦玩具店裡見過的娃娃屋的家具大多少，我的小保姆把它們放在口袋裡的一只銀盒裡，我要什麼拿給我，總是自己洗。王后的消遣是看我用小的方式吃。她吃東西像做別的事一樣，是以五拍。一隻雲雀的翅膀，她要花半分鐘去靠近，然後在她自己兩次脈搏之間咬斷，連骨頭一起；而我吃完了我的飯和一份布丁，已攤著小書在膝上等了，她才把第一隻雲雀送到嘴邊。她以為我在畫畫。

那天夜裡我躺在箱子裡，鑰匙在口袋裡，頂蓋放下了，我量了我的腕，是五十二。牆那邊的房間裡，一個九歲的孩子在學習宮廷的規矩，有女教師，有侍女；而在她應該睡著的時候，我隔著護牆板聽見，非常輕，一口鐘，一個長長的停頓，一口鐘。她在數。她沒有頭髮，也沒有可放頭髮的腕。她在數她感覺不到的東西，為我守著拍子，我躺在那裡聽，由著她。

## 第13章 · 王后的侏儒三十年來一直是宮裡最快的東西，發現自己不再是了。骨髓骨與奶油。蒼蠅與黃蜂。對這個國家的描述，與從一座塔上看見的京城。

沒有什麼比王后的侏儒更讓我惱怒和難堪的了。他是那個王國有史以來最小的人，不到三十呎高；因為這麼小，他的拍是十。我聽說三十年來他一直是宮裡最快的東西，宮廷被它逗樂，就像宮廷被一切在它能跟上的邊緣的東西逗樂那樣。這侏儒是一個跑過房間、在房間還沒轉過頭來之前就已站在門口、嘲笑它的人。

我必須說說看到他是什麼滋味。他和我是那個宮廷裡唯一兩個能看見彼此動的人。宮廷把侏儒看作一閃，把我看作一道污跡；而他和我，兩個都已學會靜止來讓人看的人，隔著前廳站在彼此對面，神情像一夥人當中唯一兩個說同一種語言卻沒被引見的人。三十年來他是房間裡最快的東西。一個星期內，他被一個只有餡餅大、快六倍的東西取代了。那是某種陪伴，一天一次被唯一看得出你在動的人看見；我想我們兩個都不願意有這種陪伴。

他擺架子。他在前廳經過我身邊，我正站在某張桌子上同貴人貴婦們說話，他便把自己撐得三十呎所允許的那麼大，用宮廷的步調說一兩句機巧的話，好讓大家都聽見，說我的渺小；而我只能回答他，叫他兄弟，提議跟他摔角，那是我在那種語言裡的全部機智。那是我對我自己的兄弟在他那個年紀會說的話。他知道。我想，那是他不能原諒的。

只有一次他像一個人對另一個人那樣對我說話。那是一個早晨，宮廷在做禱告，前廳裡除了我們兩個，只有一個靠著護牆板睡著的侍童。他走過來，坐在我站著的桌子邊緣，用我說話的步調對我說，所以我不用女孩，也不用沉下去，就聽懂了；他問我想，他們還會看多久。我說我不知道。他們看了我九個月，他說，然後他們被逗樂了，那不一樣。我說我為此難過。你為此難過，他說，用我自己的聲音，說得非常準確；然後他下去了，再沒跟我說過話。

有一天吃飯，王后盤子上有一根骨髓骨，敲出骨髓以後，她把骨頭直立在盤裡；侏儒趁女孩去餐具櫃的時候，爬上她站的凳子，兩手把我拿起來，擠著我的雙腿，把我的腰以下楔進骨頭裡，我卡在那兒，樣子十分可笑。我看見他來。我太驚訝了，除了看什麼也做不了；那是那個國家裡有人對我做的、我能從頭跟到尾的第一件事，我荒謬地發現我有興趣。將近一分鐘才有人知道我怎麼了，因為我覺得喊叫有失身分。不過君主們吃肉很少趁熱，所以我的腿沒燙傷，只是襪子和褲子糟透了。王后雖然笑了，卻是真的惱火，要不是我求情，當場就要把他趕走。在我的懇求下，他只挨了一頓結實的鞭打。

奶油就是另一回事了。有一天吃飯時，他因為我說的某句話惱了，爬上陛下椅子的框，趁我坐下時從腰間把我拎起，丟進一只大銀碗的奶油裡，在碗還沒停止晃動之前就不見了。我頭腳都栽了進去。那是一種稠而不難受的淹法；人在裡面不會沉，只是被輕輕拒絕。我游，我游泳很好，女孩碰巧在房間的另一頭，以一個不慢的孩子的步調跑過來，把我撈出時，我已吞了一夸脫多。王后嚇得失去了主意。房間裡其餘的每個人還在看我原來待過的地方。

我被放上床，一套衣服徹底毀了。侏儒被結結實實鞭打，並且作為進一步的懲罰，被迫喝光他把我扔進去的那碗奶油。他很快地喝了，像他做一切事那樣。他也再沒被恢復恩寵；因為不久王后把他賞給了一位高貴的夫人，我再也沒見過他。一個侍童告訴我，在他被賞給的那所房子裡有一條長廊，他每晚從一頭跑到另一頭；而至今沒有人找得到能告訴他那花了多久的人。

是蒼蠅讓我知道我在那個國家有什麼用。那個王國夏天蒼蠅成災，每隻有雲雀那麼大，牠們和我同一步調。牠們以五十、六十的速度行動；牠們落在我的食物上，留下牠們會留的東西，那對我很明顯，對本地人卻不然，他們的眼睛對這種事太大了。侏儒的習慣是抓一把蒼蠅在手裡，像我們的學童那樣，突然在我鼻子底下放開，嚇我，逗王后；而他抓得到。他是宮裡唯一抓得到的人。我拿刀在空中把牠們切成幾段，大受讚賞。我是宮裡唯一打得中蒼蠅的人，我想侏儒知道那是他的末日。

一天早上，女孩把我的箱子放在窗臺上透氣，我抬起一扇窗，坐下吃一塊甜蛋糕當早餐，聞到味道的二十多隻黃蜂飛進房間，嗡嗡聲比那麼多風笛的低音管還響。有些搶走我的蛋糕，一塊一塊帶走；有些在我頭和臉周圍飛，嗡嗡聲弄昏了我，我極其害怕牠們的螫針。可是我鼓起勇氣站起來，拔出短刀，在空中攻擊牠們。我殺了四隻，在房間中央，每隻像鷓鴣那麼大，其餘的逃了，我關了窗。王后說這是宮裡有史以來第一次有人打中一隻。

我取出牠們的螫針，發現有一吋半長，像針一樣尖。我把牠們都保存起來；後來在歐洲好幾處地方展出過這些東西和一些別的珍奇，我回到英國後把其中三根送給了格雷沙姆學院，留了第四根給自己。我寫這些的時候它就在我旁邊。我在睡不著的夜裡把我的腕放在它上面，什麼也沒有找到，然後繼續放著。

那個國家我所見的，離京城不超過兩千哩，因為國王巡行邊境時，王后從不走更遠，留在原地等他看完邊疆回來。他的領土全長約六千哩，寬三到五千哩；由此我不能不斷定，我們歐洲的地理學家認定日本和加利福尼亞之間只有海，是大錯特錯；因為我一向認為，必有一塊陸地來平衡韃靼那塊大陸。他們應該修正他們的地圖和海圖，把這片廣大的土地連到美洲的西北部，我願意提供協助。

那個王國是一個半島，東北邊以一道三十哩高的山脈為界，山頂有火山，無法通過，其他三面是海。整個王國沒有一個海港，海岸滿是尖岩，海又那麼洶湧，連最小的船也不敢出海；所以那些人完全被排除在與世界其他地方的往來之外。我從沒聽過他們任何一個說他希望事情不是這樣。一個每分鐘走五的國家，沒有理由急著出去迎接其餘的人。我還應該補一句，半島上沒有兩座一致的鐘。每個鎮的鐘，是鎮上的司事吃完早飯才敲的。

首都叫洛爾布魯格魯德，差不多均分在一條河的兩岸。它有八萬多間房子，約六十萬居民；我自己在國王命人為我鋪在長廊地板上的御製地圖上量過，那地圖長一百呎。我光著腳在上面走了好幾遍直徑和周長，按比例計算：它長三個格洛姆格倫（約五十四英里），寬兩個半。我在長廊裡走完它，約花宮廷給公主穿衣的時間；我想到，我是這個王國裡唯一一個曾在一個下午走完整個洛爾布魯格魯德的人。

國王的宮殿不是一座規整的建築，而是一堆建築，周長約七哩，主要的房間一般有兩百四十呎高，長寬按比例。女孩和我分得一輛馬車，她的女教師帶她坐車出去看城、逛商店，我也在其中，在我的箱子裡；不過女孩常應我的要求把我從箱子裡拿出來，放在手上，好讓我在經過時更方便地看房子和人。

有一天女教師吩咐車夫在幾家店停下，乞丐們看準機會擠到馬車兩側，給了我歐洲人眼睛所見過的最可怕的景象。有個女人乳房裡長了癌，腫到嚇人的大小，滿是窟窿；有個傢伙脖子上有個瘤，比五捆羊毛還大；另一個有兩條木頭腿，每條約二十呎高。可是最討厭的是爬在他們衣服上的蝨子。我用肉眼就能看見那些害蟲的肢體，比用顯微鏡看歐洲的蝨子清楚得多，還有牠們像豬一樣拱的口器。牠們和我同一步調。我看著一隻爬過一條袖子，花的時間是一個人走過房間的時間，而穿它的乞丐不知道它在那裡，我知道，卻沒法告訴他。那是那條街上除了女孩和我之外唯一的速度；而且牠在吃。

王后命人為我再做一只較小的箱子，旅行用，約十二呎見方，十呎高，三面各有一扇窗，窗外釘著鐵絲格，第四面有兩個堅固的環扣，背我的人想騎馬時，就把一條皮帶穿過去，繫在他腰上。這總是某位沉穩可靠的僕人的差事。那個國家的馬走起路來是一首詩篇的步調，每一節一步；我能隨它的起伏背完整整一百十九篇，我沒有不適，因為早已習慣了海上的航行。

我很想看主神廟，特別是附屬的塔，被認為是王國最高的。女孩帶我去了，我必須說我回來時有點失望；因為高度不超過三千呎，考慮到那些人的大小，並不特別值得驚嘆，按比例也遠不及索爾茲伯里的尖塔。可是從塔頂的窗口，我看見城市是一件正在發生中的事。我看一支送葬隊穿過一個廣場，照我的脈搏算，花了將近一個鐘頭。一輛馬車穿過一條街，我數到一百。我肘邊的一口鐘被敲響了，塔嗡鳴了一段我不敢給它數字的時間；我明白這座城是在把時間告訴沒有人，因為沒有人趕時間。

這塔缺的高度由它的美與堅固補足：牆有近一百呎厚，是鑿石砌的，每塊約四十呎見方，四面都飾有神和皇帝的雕像，比真人大，放在龕裡。我量了一根從其中一座上掉下來、埋在碎石間沒人注意的小指，發現它剛好四呎一吋長。我出於習慣把耳朵貼上去。什麼也沒有。我不知道我期待什麼。格倫達爾克利奇用手帕把它包起來，放在口袋裡帶回家，與她的小玩意兒放在一起，她很喜歡那些東西；傍晚我在她的架子上看見它，在一只頂針和一隻娃娃鞋之間，它是暖的，因為她一直握著它。

## 第14章 · 作者遭遇的幾次意外，幾乎全是與他同一步調的東西。冰雹、獵犬、鳶與一場處決。槽裡的船、別針、青蛙與猴子。國王為此取笑他。

我本該在那個國家過得相當快活，要不是我的渺小使我遭遇了許多可笑而麻煩的意外；而我在那些意外裡注意到，從來不是人。那些人是慢的，我可以繞過他們任何一個，像繞過一座雕像。傷我的，是那個國家裡一切與我同一步調或接近的、而且大得多的東西。我來說說其中一些意外。女孩瞞不住王后的，由女孩去說了其餘的。

有一天，我被留在一塊平整的草地上自己消遣，被冰雹襲中。石頭把我打倒在地，還一直打，像網球一樣，直到我四肢著地爬到一圈百里香的背風處，臉朝下趴在那裡，從頭到腳都是傷，十天不能出門。那個國家的冰雹約是歐洲的一千八百倍大，這是我能站起來以後稱過、量過才敢說的。可是在挨打的間隙，讓我吃驚的是，它落下的速度是平常的速度。冰雹不是一口鐘一口鐘地落。那個國家的天氣並不慢；我一直預期一切都是慢的，其實慢的只是人。

在同一座花園裡發生了更糟的事，那時女孩以為把我放在安全的地方，為了省得搬，沒帶我的箱子，就和她的女教師走到另一頭去了。一隻園丁的小白獵犬意外闖進花園，嗅到我，直直走過來，把我含進嘴裡；牠小跑著把我帶到牠主人那裡，搖著尾巴，輕輕放下。牠訓練得很好，沒有撕破我的外衣。在那個國家，一隻獵犬走起來與我的步調差不多。我不驚訝牠抓了我；我驚訝的是我竟無法阻止。園丁認得我，嚇得要命，雙手把我捧起來，問我怎麼樣，我沒有氣說不出話。

女孩回來發現那地方空了，我又叫不應，痛苦萬分；事後她對園丁和他的狗十分嚴厲。可是這事被壓了下來，怕王后生氣，也，我承認，為了我的名譽。此後女孩再也不讓我離開她的視線，而我，早就怕這個決定，瞞著她好幾件我獨自一人時發生的小事：一隻鳶在花園上空盤旋，向我俯衝，我只靠拔出短刀、鑽到濃密的樹籬下才得救（那是那片天空裡唯一一樣以我的速度落下來的東西，我認出牠的影子，比認出牠是什麼更早）；我陷進一個新鮮的鼴鼠丘，陷到脖子，編了一個不值一提的謊來解釋我的衣服；我在一個蝸牛殼上撞破了小腿，那時我獨自走著，想著可憐的英國。

宮女們有個習慣，請女孩把我帶去，好得到看我、摸我的樂趣。她們對我不拘禮節。她們把我當作一個沒有任何重要性的東西：我被放在梳妝臺上，她們在我面前更衣；而在每分鐘五下，一位貴婦的更衣是一件漫長的事，所以在一位穿上一隻長襪的時間裡，我讀完了口袋裡一本書的兩頁。她們的皮膚近看那麼粗糙、顏色那麼不一，這裡那裡有一顆像木盤那麼寬的痣，我求女孩找個藉口別再去了。我想，我的嗅覺與我的渺小成比例地更敏銳。我發覺她們自然的氣味比她們的香水容易忍受得多，在香水底下我昏了過去。

有一天，女孩的女教師的一個姪子，一位年輕紳士，來邀請她們去看一場處決。那是一個謀殺了他一位朋友的人。女孩很不情願地去了，她天性心軟；而我，雖然憎惡這類景象，好奇心驅使我去看我以為必定非凡的東西。

那人被固定在腳手臺上的一張椅子裡，頭要被一把約四十呎長的劍一下砍下。我們站在半英里外，在女孩的手裡，我數著他。我量不到他的腕，但我能看他的喉嚨，劍升得那麼慢，我每一刻都以為會被叫停，而他有四拍。我這一行數過許多。我不知道我是否曾為任何人的最後四拍更難過。然後血噴得比我以為的更高，頭掉在臺上時發出那麼大的彈跳，我嚇了一跳，雖然我離得至少有半哩。

王后一向抓住每個機會逗我開心，在我憂鬱時，問我划一點船對我的健康是否有益。我說我很懂槳，船上的外科醫生到緊要關頭必須像普通水手那樣幹活；可是我看不出在一個最小的小艇也是一等戰艦的國家怎麼做得到。陛下說，只要我設計一條船，她自己的木匠就會造，她會提供一個可以航行的地方。十天內他完成了一條能坐八個歐洲人的遊船，王后把它放在膝上跑去給國王看，國王叫人把它放進一只水池，把我放在裡面，我在裡面沒地方划槳；於是她另外給我造了一道木槽，長三百呎，寬五十呎，上了很好的瀝青，沿著外間一面牆放著。

我在裡面划，既為自娛，也為王后和她的女官們消遣。有時我升起帆，只管掌舵，女官們用扇子給我一陣風，她們累了，侍童們就吹；而那個國家侍童的一口氣是很長的。我可以轉一個彎，量一次腕，再轉一個彎，它還沒吹完。

有一次，侍童把船放進槽裡，女教師過分殷勤地拿起我要把我放進船裡，我從她手指間滑了下去，本來肯定會從四十呎高掉到地板上，可是這位好太太胸衣上的一根別針穿過我的襯衫和褲腰帶之間，我就這樣被攔腰掛在半空中，直到女孩跑來。那是我經歷過的最慢的一次墜落。我看見那根針；我看見她的手指鬆開；我看見地板；我有時間照這個順序想起，我的妻子、門口的男孩、和那根針乾不乾淨。

又有一次，一個每隔三天給我的水槽換新水的僕人，讓一隻大青蛙從他的桶裡滑出去而沒發覺，牠藏著，直到我坐進船裡；然後牠看到一個歇腳處，爬了進來，船傾向一邊，我只好用全身重量壓在另一邊保持平衡。牠一跳就跳過半個船長，然後前前後後從我頭上跳過，把黏液抹在我的臉和衣服上。牠與我同一步調，或略慢，我不像怕那隻猴子那樣怕牠。我請女孩讓我自己來對付，用一支槳敲了牠好一會兒，才逼牠跳出船去。

我在那個王國遭遇的最大危險是一隻猴子，是廚房一個管事的。女孩出去了，把我鎖在她的小間裡；天氣很熱，窗子開著，我平時因為地方大而住的那個大箱子的窗與門也開著。我坐在桌旁沉思，聽見有東西從窗子進來，蹦蹦跳跳。我往外看，不離座位，看見一隻調皮的動物在房間裡跳上跳下，直到走到我的箱子，帶著極大的興味檢查它，從每一扇窗往裡窺。我本該躲到床底下，卻沒有；我退到最遠的角落，站在那裡。在那個國家，一隻猴子的步調是宮裡的三倍、我的四分之一，在一個像田那麼大的房間裡，我本可以躲開牠半天。我在一只箱子裡。

牠找到了我。牠像貓對老鼠那樣把一隻爪伸進門裡，我在箱子裡閃來閃去，躲了似乎很長的時間，直到牠抓住我外衣的下擺，那是那個國家的絲，又厚又結實，把我拖了出去。牠用右前腳把我抱起來，像一個保姆抱著一個要餵奶的孩子，就像我見過牠這一類抱小貓那樣；我想掙扎，牠擠得那麼緊，我覺得還是順從為好。我相信牠把我當成了牠同類的一隻幼崽；牠用另一隻爪非常輕地摩挲我的臉。那溫柔才是最糟的。我在牠的掌心量了腕，是九十六。

小間門口的一個聲響打斷了我們的消遣，牠一躍跳上牠進來的窗，出去到鉛皮屋頂和水溝上，用三條腿走，第四條抱著我，爬到我們隔壁的一個屋頂。我聽見女孩在我被帶出去的時候尖叫。宮裡那一帶都亂成了一團，僕人們跑去找梯子；我聽說他們花了大半個下午才把一架梯子搬到屋頂上。猴子要做的事，大約九分鐘就做完了。宮裡沒有人抓得住牠，牠是他們的三倍快；後來頒的命令，說不許再養這種動物，是由那些花了三個鐘頭才把梯子搭上屋頂的人頒的。

成百上千的人在院子裡看見牠坐在一棟建築的屋脊上，像抱嬰兒那樣用一隻前爪抱著我，用另一隻爪餵我，從牠頰囊裡掏出食物，我不吃就拍我；下面許多暴民忍不住笑，那笑聲以五的步調升到我這裡，像一輪鐘響，我坐在牠的懷裡等它到來。我不覺得他們該受責備；那景象對每個人都可笑，除了我。有些人扔石頭想把牠趕下來，這被嚴格禁止，否則我的腦袋很可能已被砸碎。

梯子架好了，好幾個人爬上來，猴子看見，發現自己幾乎被包圍，用三條腿又跑不夠快，便把我丟在一片屋脊瓦上逃走了。我坐在離地三百呎的地方，預期隨時被風吹下去，或因自己的暈眩摔下去，直到一個老實的小夥子，女孩的一個僕人，爬上來，把我放進他的褲袋，帶我安全下去。隔著縫線，他的脈搏是五。

猴子塞進我喉嚨的髒東西幾乎把我噎住；女孩用一根小針把它從我嘴裡挑出來，然後我吐了，這讓我舒服了些。我被這隻可憎的動物擠得那麼虛弱、兩側全是瘀傷，不得不臥床兩週，照他們的算法是兩天；國王、王后和整個宮廷每天派人來問我的情況，照他們的算法是兩次。猴子被殺了。

我康復後去謝國王的恩典，他很高興地拿這事大大取笑我。他的問話以那個國家的方式到來，每一句約一首詩篇那麼長，所以我有很多時間準備。他問我躺在猴子的爪子裡時有什麼想法與思量；我喜不喜歡牠給的食物和牠餵的方式；屋頂上的新鮮空氣有沒有增進我的胃口。他想知道，在我自己的國家碰上這種事，我會怎麼辦。

我回答說，在歐洲我們沒有猴子，只有從別的地方帶來供好奇的，而且小得我可以同時對付一打；至於那隻龐然大物，若不是恐懼讓我想不到使用我的短刀（這時我兇狠地看著，並把手按在刀柄上），當牠把爪子伸進我的房間時，也許我就能給牠一道傷，讓牠樂意比伸進來時更快地縮回去。我說這話時語氣堅定，像一個唯恐自己的勇氣被質疑的人。它引起一陣大笑，連對陛下應有的尊敬也不能讓身邊的人忍住。笑聲，像那個國家的笑聲那樣，從房間一端開始，在我已經半忘了我說什麼的時候到達另一端。我想到，在與自己完全無從比較的人當中想為自己爭光，是多麼徒勞；而我回英國以後，常常看到我這種行為的寓意。

我每天給宮廷提供某個可笑的故事；女孩雖然愛我愛到極點，卻狡黠地每逢我做了她認為能逗王后的事，就去告訴王后。她是宮裡最快的講述者，是唯一能在一件事結束之前就把它說出來的人。有一次她身體不適，她的女教師帶她出城三十哩去透氣；她們在田裡一條小徑旁下了馬車，她放下我的箱子，我出去走走。小徑上有一堆牛糞，我偏要試試我的身手去跳過它。我助跑，可惜跳短了，結果落在正中間，陷到膝蓋。一個僕人盡量把我擦乾淨；女孩把我關在箱子裡直到回家；王后被告知了，僕人們把它傳遍了宮廷，所以好幾天所有的笑料都是我。我發現，這是我沒料到的，我對它的介意，比我若是被一群趕時間的人笑要輕。

## 第15章 · 作者展示他的音樂技藝，用兩種速度彈。他向國王說明英國，國王對它下了判斷。女孩一直把頭髮橫在他的腕上，她數了他。

我每週一兩次去侍候國王起身，常看他在理髮匠手裡，那起初很可怕，因為剃刀幾乎是一把普通大鐮刀的兩倍長，從他臉上過一次，約是我念完一遍主禱文的時間。陛下每週剃兩次。我有一次說服理髮匠給我一些皂沫，從中挑出四五十根最結實的鬍根，用它們在一塊好木頭上做成一把很像樣的梳子，我自己那把齒都斷得幾乎不能用了；我也不知道那個國家有誰精細準確到肯另做一把。

國王愛音樂，宮裡常有音樂會，我有時被帶去，放在箱子裡擺在桌上；可是聲音太大，我幾乎分辨不出曲調，我就像在風暴裡那樣，關上箱子的門窗，拉上窗簾，這以後我就覺得他們的音樂不那麼難受了。那是以五拍。在那個國家，一支慢舞，是一件要預約的事。

我年輕時學過一點彈小鍵琴，女孩在她房間裡有一架，近六十呎長，每個鍵差不多一呎寬，我兩臂伸開也夠不到五個鍵以上，要按下一個鍵需要用拳頭使勁一擊。我心裡冒出一個念頭，要用一支英國曲子娛樂國王和王后。我準備了兩根圓棍，約粗木棒那麼粗，一頭粗一頭細，在粗的一頭包上老鼠皮，免得損壞琴鍵或打斷聲音；一條長凳放在琴鍵下約四呎處，我被放在凳上，側著身子在上面這邊那邊跑，盡我所能快地敲正確的琴鍵，總算彈了一首吉格舞曲。那是我做過的最劇烈的運動，我敲不了十六個鍵以上，所以也沒法像別的藝人那樣同時彈低音和高音。

大約花了四分之一分鐘。對宮廷來說，那是一種像湯匙敲玻璃杯的聲音。王后說太短了，要再來一次；我第二次以十二分之一的速度彈它，隨女孩腕上的一拍敲一下，花了我十一分鐘，到最後它成了一首輓歌。他們非常喜歡。他們說很美，很悲傷，王后問它叫什麼，我說叫愛爾蘭洗衣婦，她請女孩替她問我洗衣婦是什麼。

國王是一位極有見識的君主，常命人把我連箱子帶到他書房的桌上；然後命我從箱子裡拿出一把椅子，坐在離他三碼的櫃頂上，那使我幾乎與他的臉齊平。我就這樣跟他有過好幾次談話。有一天我冒昧對陛下說，他對歐洲和世界其他地方所表現的輕蔑，與他自己那些優秀的心智品質不相稱；理性不隨身體的大小增長，相反，在我們國家，我們看到最高大的人通常最缺少它；在別的動物當中，蜜蜂和螞蟻比許多較大的種類更有勤勉、技藝和睿智的名聲；而且，我雖被他看得微不足道，我希望我能活著為陛下做某種重大的效勞。

國王專心地聽我說，開始對我有了比以前好的看法。他要我盡可能準確地向他說明英國的政府；因為，君主們雖然通常都喜歡自己的風俗，他仍樂意聽任何值得仿效的事。親愛的讀者，我當時希望，是我之前和之後從未希望過的，希望有狄摩西尼或西塞羅的口才，好用與我親愛的祖國的美德與幸福相稱的文體來頌揚它。

女孩站在櫃子腳下，像我跟國王在一起時她一向做的那樣，把我的話用他的步調說給他，把他的話用我的步調說給我。我不知道她拿著我的腕。第一天她口袋裡就帶著那根頭髮，沒有人叫她，在我安頓椅子時她把它橫放在腕片上，並且在整場謁見裡握著髮梢，一個戴帽的九歲孩子，看著地板，我不知道。

我說起我們的兩個島組成三個強大王國，在同一位君主之下，另外還有我們在美洲的殖民地；我說我們的土壤和氣候；我說國會，有貴族院，是血統最高貴、家產最豐厚的人，在文武之學中受教育，做國王的顧問和國家的捍衛者，還有主教，從全國各地被挑出來，以生活的聖潔和學問的深厚；我說下議院，都是主要的鄉紳，被人民自由挑出，因其才能和對國家的熱愛；我說法官，那些可敬的賢者；我說對國庫的審慎管理，與我們海陸軍的英勇。我按每個宗派或黨派有幾百萬人來計算人口。我沒有略過我們的運動。最後我以過去一百年的簡短歷史作結。

一場我用四分鐘就能講完的話，女孩複述，國王回答，花了他們三刻鐘；而這沒有五次謁見是講不完的，每次數個鐘頭。國王極專心地聽完全部，常記筆記，也記下他打算問的問題的備忘。他的筆是一支桅桿那麼長的羽毛筆，筆在紙上的聲音，在我停止後還持續了一陣。

第六次謁見，他看著筆記，對每一條提出許多疑問、質問和反駁，每個問題約一首詩篇那麼長。他問，為培養我們年輕貴族的身心，採取什麼方法；一個新貴族是怎麼來的，君主的興致，或給宮廷貴婦的一筆錢，或為加強一個違背公共利益的黨派，有沒有曾成為動機；這些貴族對他們據以在終審裁決同胞財產的法律，有什麼知識；賄賂在他們當中是不是毫無立足之地；我所說的神聖勳爵，在做普通神父時，是否從沒迎合過時勢，或做過某位貴人的奴性牧師，進入那議會之後還繼續奴性地追隨他的意見。

他問，選出我所謂的平民，是用什麼手法；一個帶著大錢袋的外鄉人，是否能比他們自己的地主更先收買選民；以及人們怎麼會那麼瘋狂地要進入一個我承認是巨大麻煩與開支、常使家庭破產、又沒有薪俸或年金的議會：那看來是那麼崇高的一種公共精神，陛下似乎疑心它未必總是真誠。關於法院，他問，判斷是非要花多少時間、多少費用；辯護人是否可以為明知不公正或壓迫人的案子辯護；他們是否曾在不同時候為同一案子的正反兩面辯護，引用判例來證明相反的意見。我答得更好些，因為我曾經因一場很長的大法官法庭訴訟差點破產，那官司判我勝訴，並由對方付訟費。

關於國庫，他以為我的記性出了差錯，因為我算我們的稅一年約五六百萬，而支出有時多出一倍以上；他的筆記在這一點上記得很仔細，因為他希望了解我們的作為對他有用處。可是，如果我告訴他的是真的，他仍然困惑，一個王國怎麼能像一個私人那樣把家產花光。他對我們花錢的戰爭感到驚奇：我們必是一個好鬥的民族，或住在很壞的鄰居當中，而我們的將軍一定比我們的國王富有。尤其，他對一支在和平時期、在自由民當中的雇傭常備軍感到驚愕。如果我們是由自己代表同意而治，我們怕誰、要跟誰打？一個私人的房子，由他自己、他的孩子與家人來防衛，不是比由半打在街上為了小薪水招來的惡棍更好嗎？那些人割斷他的喉嚨可以得到一百倍多。

他笑我按宗派算人口的算術。他不知道為什麼持有對公眾有害的意見的人，應該被迫改變，或不該被迫隱藏；因為在任何政府，要求前者是暴政，不強制後者是軟弱；一個人可以在他的櫃子裡存放毒藥，卻不可以拿出去當補藥賣。至於我給他的過去一百年的歷史，他說那只是一堆陰謀、叛亂、謀殺、屠殺、革命和放逐，是貪婪、黨爭、偽善、背信、殘忍、憤怒、瘋狂、仇恨、嫉妒、淫慾、惡意和野心所能產生的最壞的後果。

在另一次謁見裡，陛下不辭辛勞地概括我所說的一切，把他的問題與我的回答對照。然後把我握在手裡，輕輕地撫摸我，說出了這些話，我永遠不會忘，也不會忘他說話的方式。他是以五拍說的。他花了，我想，二十二分鐘，最後一個字到達時我已忘了第一個字，所以我是事後從女孩那裡急急地聽到的，像在夢裡聽到一樣，用一個孩子的聲音。

我的小朋友格里爾德里格，他說，你對你的國家作了一篇最令人讚嘆的頌詞。你已清楚證明，無知、懶惰與惡習是造就一個立法者的合適成分，法律最好是由那些利益在於曲解、混淆與規避它的人來解釋和應用。我在你們當中看到一種制度的幾道線條，它在起源時也許還可以容忍；可是這些線條有一半被擦掉，其餘被腐敗完全塗污。從你說的一切看來，在你們那裡，沒有任何一個職位需要任何一種完美；也看不出人是因為美德而封爵，神職人員因虔誠而晉升，軍人因指揮而晉升，法官因正直而晉升。至於你自己，你把大半生用在旅行，我願意希望你已逃過了你們國家的許多惡習。可是從你自己的敘述，和我費力才從你那裡逼出來的回答，我不能不斷定，你的同胞中大多數，是大自然所容許在地面上爬行的最有害的一群小而可憎的蟲豸。

我沒有生氣。我很想說我生氣了。在咖啡館裡我曾被人用更快的速度罵得更難聽，我走出來時渾身發熱，滿心確信；而那從來沒有一次讓我看看我自己。一個人不可能以五拍的速度憤怒地說這樣一句話。太久了；說到結尾，他只是在告訴你。我站在櫃子上，帽子拿在手裡，國王用一根手指非常輕柔地撫摸我，我明白，我是在被安慰。

那天夜裡，在抽屜裡，女孩說她數了我。她背對著我，在桌邊說，我想她想了好一陣。她說在貴族院我是七十二，主教七十，下議院六十八；到國庫時是六十四，那更接近我；到第五次謁見結束，我的平均是六十八。她說，不是這樣的時候，我說得比較快。我沒有問她「這樣」是指什麼。她手裡還拿著那根頭髮，纏在手指上，她在不打算哭的時候就這樣做。

只有對真相的極端熱愛才能阻止我隱瞞這一部分，而我發現，這份熱愛，我身上確實有，讓我驚訝，也並不舒服。我確實，如我一向所說，巧妙地迴避了他許多問題，並且給每一點一個更有利的轉向，高出嚴格的真相所許可的許多度。我知道那些度。它們在小書的第四欄，用女孩的數字，是十一。

她繼續說六十。在我是五十四的那些日子和我是七十二的那一夜，她都說六十，在桌邊，第二天夜裡隔著護牆板，用她留給它的那個聲音；我終於明白，她不是在量我。我不知道她在做什麼。我躺在箱子裡，鑰匙在口袋，聽那些鐘一個接一個到來，中間隔著長長的停頓，由著她。

## 第16章 · 作者向國王獻上火藥，國王拒絕了。國王對治國的看法；那個國家的學問、法律、軍隊與黨爭。女孩沒有數數。

我想討他歡心，上帝原諒我。為了進一步博取陛下的歡心，我告訴他一項在我國三四百年前被發現的發明。那是一種粉末，成分便宜普通，我很熟悉：一堆這種粉末，只要最小的火星落上去，哪怕有一座山那麼大，也會一下子全部燃起，連同比雷聲更大的響聲與震動一起沖上天空。把它夯進一根黃銅或鐵的空心管裡，依管的大小，能以這樣的猛烈與速度射出一顆鐵球或鉛球，任何東西都擋不住。

我告訴他，這樣發射的最大的球，不但能一下子摧毀整排軍隊，還能把最堅固的城牆轟平，把載著一千人的船擊沉海底，若用鏈子連起來，能切斷桅桿與索具，把數百個身體攔腰截成兩半，所到之處一片荒蕪。我們還常把這種粉末裝進大的鐵空心球裡，用機器射進我們圍攻的某座城，那會掀翻路面，把房子撕成碎片，爆裂並向四面拋出碎片，打碎所有靠近者的腦袋。我可以指導他的工匠製造這種管，大小與他王國裡其他一切成比例，最大的不必超過一百呎長；二十或三十根，裝上適量的粉與球，幾小時就能轟倒他領土內最堅固的城的城牆，或毀掉整座京城，如果它竟敢對他的絕對命令有什麼異議。我把這個謙卑地獻上，作為對他許多恩寵的一點微薄報答。

我該說說是誰說的。我用我的步調，用平靜的聲音說，女孩用他的步調說給國王聽，一次一句，站在櫃子腳下，眼睛閉著，雙手放在背後。它得依那個國家的方式說，那個國家不跳過，所以國王聽到了全部：那顆球，那些城牆，那些各載一千人而沉沒的船，被掀翻的路面，被撕碎的房子，和所有靠近者的腦袋。她九歲。我沒看她。我看的是國王。

國王大為驚駭。他說他很驚訝，我是從女孩那裡聽到他怎麼說的，這麼一個無能而匍匐的昆蟲，怎麼能懷有這樣不人道的想法，而且說得那麼自然，對我所描繪的那些他稱為這種毀滅機器的常見後果的血腥與荒涼的場面，毫無動容；發明它的人必是某個與人類為敵的惡魔。至於他自己，他保證，雖然很少有事比藝術或自然裡的新發現更使他高興，他寧可失去半個王國，也不願知道這樣的秘密；並命令我，如果我珍惜我的命，永遠不要再提。

他還說了一件事，當時我沒跟上。他說，我告訴他的關於我國的一切裡，只有這件事看起來不是個合適的尺寸。一個要花十一秒才能揮動一把鐮鉤的民族，他說，從來不需要想，被一個不等他們的東西打中是什麼滋味。我是在向一個慢的民族獻上唯一一種快的死法，而他不願意讓人說他接受了它。他問女孩她是否聽懂了。她說她聽懂了。

我當時認為這是狹隘原則與見識的奇怪結果：一位具備一切贏得敬重、愛戴與尊崇的品質的君主，才智強、極有智慧、學問深厚，幾乎被臣民崇拜，竟然因為一種不必要的細微顧慮（在歐洲我們不可能理解），讓一個本可使他成為臣民的生命、自由與財產的絕對主人的機會溜走！我說這話絕沒有絲毫貶低那位傑出國王的許多美德的意思，我知道他的名聲會因此在英國讀者眼中大為降低。我認為這個缺陷是由於他們的無知，沒有像歐洲較聰明的人那樣把政治化為一門科學。我記下的是我當時所想。

我清楚地記得，有一天跟國王談話時，我碰巧說我們那裡有好幾千本論治國藝術的書，這竟然，完全違背我的本意，使他對我們的智力有很壞的看法。他聲稱既厭惡又鄙視君主或大臣的一切神秘、考究和陰謀。他不明白我說的國家機密是什麼意思，除非涉及敵人或某個對手國。他把治理的知識限制在很狹窄的範圍內，在常識與理性、正義與寬厚、民事和刑事案件的迅速裁決，他估計那大約是十一天，還有一些別的明顯的、不值得考慮的題目。他並認為，誰若能使一塊原本只長一穗玉米或一葉草的土地長出兩穗玉米或兩葉草，就比全體政客加起來更有功於人類，對他的國家做更大的實質貢獻。

這個民族的學問有四種，道德、歷史、詩和數學，他們必須被承認在其中很出色；其中最後一種完全用於生活中有用的地方，用於改進農業和一切機械技藝，所以在我們這裡它不會受重視。他們不大理會抽象的東西。我有一次試著向那三位學者解釋什麼是實體。照水鐘算，花了四十分鐘。結束時第二位學者問它能不能吃，第一位問它能不能上發條。

那個國家沒有一條法律的字數可以超過他們字母的數目，他們的字母只有二十二個；而很少有法律長到那個地步。它們用最平白簡單的措辭表達，在這方面那些人還沒有機靈到能找出超過一種解釋；而為任何法律寫註解是死罪。當一句話要花十一秒，簡短不是美德，而是必須：一條二十二個字的法律，是一條可以用五拍說完、而人們還可以被期望站著聽完的法律。

他們很早以前就有印刷術，和中國人一樣；可是他們的藏書不大，因為國王的，被認為是最大的，也不超過一千冊，放在一間一千二百呎長的長廊裡，我可以隨意從那裡借書。讀書時，我走。王后的細木匠在女孩的一間房裡為我做了一種木頭器械，形狀像一架直立的梯子，二十五呎高，每一級有五十呎長。我想讀的書被靠牆立著；我爬到最上面一級，從頁首開始，依行的長短向左右走八九或十步，逐漸往下走到底；然後再爬上去，用同樣的方式開始另一頁，並用兩手翻頁，因為它又厚又硬像厚紙板。一頁我要快步走十一分鐘，一章要一個下午。我是那個王國裡唯一一個覺得書是一段距離的人。

他們的文體清晰、陽剛、流暢而不浮華，因為他們最避免的是多用不必要的字或用各種表達；我想那是步調。一個必須以五拍念出來的作者，不會浪費。我讀過他們許多書，特別是歷史與道德的，像是用腳走過的。

其中我最覺得有趣的是一本放在女孩臥室裡的小舊論著，是她的女教師的，那位嚴肅的老太太專讀道德與虔誠的作品。這本書論人類的弱點，除了婦女與平民外不大受重視。它走過歐洲道德家的全部通常論題，說明人在本性上是多麼渺小、可鄙、無助的動物；多麼無力抵禦空氣的嚴酷和野獸的凶暴；他在力量上輸給一種動物，在速度上輸給另一種，在遠見上輸給第三種，在勤勉上輸給第四種。它補充說，自然在這後來的衰落時代已經退化，現在只能生產渺小的流產品，與古時比起來；並且很有理由認為，不但人類原本大得多，而且在古代必有巨人，這被王國各處偶然挖出的巨大骨頭與頭骨所證實。

而衰退的證據，書上說，是急。據作者祖父的時代，書上說，人的幼兒生下來是四，也承受得住；現在生下來是七或八，並且煩躁；種族在變快，而快是衰退的第一個徵兆；並且把坐不住的孩子當作人人都知道的事來舉例。女教師在那一頁插了一根別針。我找到了。我沒告訴女孩，我後來想過她是否讀過。

作者從這種推理得出幾個有益於人生行為的道德應用，這裡不必重述。就我自己而言，我忍不住想到這種才能傳播得多麼普遍，從我們與自然的爭吵中引出道德訓誡，或者說更像是不滿與抱怨的材料；我相信，嚴格查究起來，這些爭吵在我們當中，與在那個民族當中一樣沒有根據。

關於他們的軍事，他們誇耀國王的軍隊有十七萬六千步兵和三萬兩千騎兵，如果由各城市的商人和鄉下的農民組成、指揮官只是不領薪俸與獎賞的貴族和紳士的東西可以叫做軍隊的話。他們操練得相當完美，紀律很好，這我看不出有什麼大功勞；因為每個農夫都在他自己地主的指揮下，每個市民都在他自己城裡的首要人士的指揮下，照威尼斯的辦法由投票選出，還能怎樣呢？

我常看到京城的民兵在城外一塊二十哩見方的大空地上操練。一名騎士騎著一匹大馬，大概有九十呎高。我看過整個騎兵團，一聲號令，同時拔劍，在空中揮舞。口令要十一秒才說完，劍要四十秒才全部拔出，所以光從那塊田的一邊走到另一邊，像一朵雲翻轉過去；看起來像一萬道閃電從天空每個方向射出，很慢，而且每一道都停留。我明白那個國家不可能被趕進戰爭，所以戰爭也不常有。

我很好奇，這位君主的領土無法從任何別的國家進入，他怎麼會想到軍隊；我很快從談話和他們的歷史中得知，在許多世代中，他們一直受著全人類都有的同一種病的困擾，貴族常為權力而爭，人民為自由而爭，國王為絕對統治而爭。這一切，雖然被那個王國的法律幸運地調和了，卻也有時被三方各自破壞過，不止一次引起內戰，最後一次由這位君主的祖父以一個總協定幸運地結束；而那時經共同同意設置的民兵，從此一直被保持在最嚴格的職守中。

我把火藥那夜留到最後。隔著護牆板沒有數數。我躺在箱子裡，鑰匙在口袋，聽著那面牆，自從進宮以來第一次，牆什麼也沒說。我量了我的腕，我本不需要量。是五十二。那是我在那個國家裡最低的；我剛剛用一種平淡的聲音向一位國王描述怎樣攻下一座城，而我比說起貴族院時還要平靜。

早晨她照常來接我，眼睛有點紅，替我弄好襯衫，把我放進她的口袋吃早餐，什麼也沒說。第二天夜裡，再下一夜，數數又回來了，隔著牆，是六十。我從沒問，她也從沒說。可是我從那份沉默知道，那不是她可以不經選擇就做的事，而有一夜她沒有選擇它；那是我第一次明白，她一直都在選擇。

## 第17章 · 國王與王后巡行海岸，作者隨行。女孩最後一次量他的腕。他被一隻鷹叼走，掉進海裡，被一艘英國船救起。他回到英國，發現自己說話像一口鐘。

我一直強烈地覺得，我總有一天會恢復自由，雖然想不出如何。載我來的那艘船是有史以來第一艘被吹到那片海岸視線內的，國王曾下嚴令，若再有別的船出現，要連同全部船員和乘客用囚車押到洛爾布魯格魯德。他還打算替我找一個和我一樣大的女人，好讓我繁衍後代。我想我寧可死，也不願留下一個後代，像金絲雀那樣關在籠子裡，過些時候被賣到王國各處，給有身分的人當珍奇；而我想到，上帝原諒我，那後代該多快，要被看多久。

我受到很大的善待。我是一位偉大國王和王后的寵兒，是宮廷的歡樂；可是那是在一種有損人類尊嚴的地位上，而我忘不了我留在家鄉的親人。我想與可以平等交談的人在一起：用我自己的步調對我說話，不用鼓或頭髮，在街上走而不怕像青蛙或小狗那樣被踩死。我的解救比我預料的來得早，而且方式不尋常。

我在那個國家已經兩年，到第三年開頭，女孩和我隨國王和王后巡行王國南岸。我坐在我的小間裡，裡面有一張吊床，用絲繩從四個角吊起，好在僕人讓我騎馬坐在他前面時減輕顛簸，屋頂有一個一呎見方的洞，裝一塊滑板，熱天時給我通風。我們到了國王在弗蘭弗拉斯尼克附近的一座宮殿，離海邊十八英里。我們都累了。我有些小感冒；可是女孩病得被關在她的房裡。我渴望看大海，那必是我逃脫的唯一場景，假如它真的來臨；我假裝病得比實際重，要求帶一個我喜歡、曾被託付照顧我的侍童去呼吸海邊的空氣。

我去她房裡向她請求。她躺在床上，房間的百葉窗半關著，她的拍是十一，那在那個國家是發燒，她為此害羞；我從她把腕藏在被子下的樣子看得出來。我說了我來要說的話。我永遠忘不了她多麼不情願地同意，和她對侍童那番要他好好照顧我的鄭重囑咐，聲音她保持得非常平穩。然後她說，等一下。她從枕頭下拿出那根頭髮。我把腕放在被子上，像我已放過好幾百夜那樣，她把頭髮橫放在腕片上，握著髮梢，數。

她數十二，停一下，十二，停一下。我看她數時的臉，在那個國家我做得到，臉在那裡慢慢來，我看著那個數字在它裡面到來。她說出口之前我就知道了。她說，五十四。那是她第一次說出一個屬於我的數字。她看著它，它在我們之間的空氣裡，看了一口氣的時間。然後她拿起頭髮，沒有把它拿走，而是把它在我腕上繞了兩圈，壓在腕片上，用牙齒咬斷了末端，說，六十。然後她大哭起來，彷彿對將要發生的事有某種預感。在那個國家，一滴淚穿過一張臉要約一口氣的時間；我有時間看它開始，看它到達。

侍童用我的箱子帶我走了約半小時，往岸邊的岩石走去，我吩咐他放下，我掀開一扇窗，看了很久的海。我對他說我身體不適，想在吊床上睡一覺，希望會對我有益；他把窗關緊擋寒氣，我很快睡著了。我推測，我睡著的時候，侍童以為不會有危險，到岩石間找鳥蛋去了，因為我曾從窗口看到他在岩縫裡撿一兩個。我希望他是從他喜歡的哪一頭敲的。

我在箱頂的環上被猛地一拉驚醒，發現箱子被舉得很高，以驚人的速度往前載去。第一下顛簸幾乎把我從吊床上甩出去；之後就平穩了。我盡力大喊，沒有用。從窗口我只看見雲和天空，頭頂上聽見拍翅聲；我明白是一隻鷹用嘴叼住了環，打算把箱子摔在岩石上，像摔烏龜那樣，然後挑出裡面的東西。我以身上那個外科醫生的部分注意到，這是那個國家裡第一件把我載到任何地方、而速度不是某個人的選擇的東西。

翅膀的聲音增加得非常快，箱子像風中的酒館招牌那樣被拋上拋下。我聽見撞擊聲，我以為是別的鷹打了這隻，然後我感到自己垂直往下掉了一分多鐘，速度快得讓我屏息；墜落被一聲比尼加拉瀑布還響的啪地一聲止住，我在黑暗中又待了一分鐘，然後箱子開始升起，直到我在窗子頂端看見光。我掉進了海裡。箱子，加上我的身體和東西的重量和它四角的寬鐵板，浮在約五呎深處。鐵板使它在墜落時保持水平；每個接縫都有凹槽，門像推拉窗那樣上下滑動，所以進水很少。我拉開屋頂的滑板透氣，在那之前幾乎窒息。

我當時多麼希望與我親愛的格倫達爾克利奇在一起，我們才相隔一個鐘頭！我為她失去我所會承受的悲痛、王后的不悅、和她的前途毀了而哀傷。一塊玻璃破了就是立即的死亡；只有鐵格柵保住了窗。我抬不起我小間的屋頂坐到上面，那至少能讓我多活幾小時，勝過被關在我自己箱子的艙底。我就這樣過了四個鐘頭，預期、其實是盼望每一刻都是我的最後。我把腕放到頭髮上，它在那裡繞了兩圈，是七十八；我想她會說六十。

然後我以為聽見靠環扣那一側有刮擦聲，不久我感到箱子被沿著海拖行，不時一拉，使浪升到窗頂。我把一把椅子從地板上拆下來，又擰在滑板正下方，爬上去，從洞口用我會的每一種語言呼救，並把手帕綁在一根棍子上揮動。一個鐘頭看不到效果；然後環扣那一側撞到某種硬東西，我聽見一條纜繩在蓋子上、穿過環刮擦，我被一點一點吊了起來；一陣大喊回答我，重複三次，給了我只有親身感受的人才能想像的喜悅。

頭頂一陣踩踏；一個人從洞口用英語喊，下面若有人，說話。他是用我的步調說的。兩年來除了我自己，我沒被人用我的步調對我說過話，它像一把小鉛彈從洞口倒下來；我發現自己在哭，直到我知道，那是因為它快，我才明白為什麼。

我回答說我是英國人，被厄運拋進任何生物所遭受過的最大災難。那聲音說木匠會在蓋子上鋸一個夠大的洞把我拉出來；我說那不必，也太費時間，只要船員有一個人把手指伸進環裡，把箱子從海裡提到船上，提進船長的艙房。聽我說得這麼瘋，有些人以為我瘋了，有些人笑；因為我完全沒想到，我現在是在與我身材與力量相當的人當中。

木匠鋸開一個四呎見方的口，放下一架小梯，我爬上去，十分虛弱地被帶上船。水手們全都驚訝，問了我一千個問題，我不想回答。我同樣被這麼多侏儒般的人弄糊塗了，我是這樣看他們的，我的眼睛這麼久習慣於我離開的巨大事物；我還注意到他們動起來像麻雀。船長湯瑪斯・威爾考克斯先生，一位正直可敬的什羅普郡人，看我快昏倒了，照規矩拿了我的腕，握著，說七十一；然後把我帶進他的艙房，給我一杯強心酒，讓我躺在他自己的床上。他看見了我腕上繞兩圈的黑繩，和我拿那隻手臂的樣子。他什麼也沒問。

入睡之前我懇求他把我的小間搬進他的艙房，說裡面有一張好吊床、一張行軍床、兩把椅子、一張桌子和一個櫃子，全用絲和棉絮襯過。他聽見這些荒唐話，斷定我在說胡話，卻答應了，我想是為了安撫我；他的人下去，剝下襯墊，把釘在地板上的家具硬扯起來，敲下一些木板給船用，然後讓船殼掉進海裡，那殼因為底部和兩側有許多破口，立刻沉了。我很慶幸不是旁觀者。我相信，看了會勾起我寧願忘掉的往事。

我睡了幾個鐘頭，卻不斷被夢見我離開的那個地方的夢打擾。夜裡我醒來，躺了好一陣聽著數數，護牆板那邊除了海什麼也沒有；我量了我的腕，是五十六，我對著黑暗、對著艙房大聲說六十，大約是一口鐘的步調。

晚餐時船長以為我餓得太久，非常殷勤地款待我，等只剩我們兩人時，問我怎麼會漂在那個怪物般的木箱裡。他說他用望遠鏡看，把它當成一張帆；他的人發誓看見了一座游動的房子；他繞著我划了好幾圈，用環扣把我拖了進來。他估計我們離陸地至少一百里格。我告訴他他錯了差不多一半，因為我離開那個國家不到兩個鐘頭就掉進了海裡；他聽了又開始覺得我的腦子出了毛病，並坦率地問我，是不是因為犯了什麼大罪，被某位君主下令放進箱子裡扔到海上，像其他國家對大罪犯做的那樣。我請他耐心，把整個經過從我離開英國那天說起；而且，因為真相總會在理性的人心裡找到路，他被我的坦率說服了。

為了證實，我在他面前打開我的櫃子，給他看我在那個我如此奇異地被救出的國家蒐集的一小批珍奇：用國王的鬍根做的梳子，另一把同樣的材料、用王后拇指甲削下的一片當背；從一呎到半碼長的針和別針；四根像木匠鐵釘的黃蜂螫針；一些王后的梳落的頭髮；還有一只金戒指，是她有一天從小指上取下，像套項圈一樣套在我頭上送我的。它曾經是從手指上暖過來的。我拿它貼我的腕貼了許多次，它什麼也沒有留住。我請船長收下，他堅決不收。我給他看我親手從一位宮女腳趾上割下的雞眼，有肯特蘋果那麼大，硬得我回英國後叫人把它挖空做成一只杯子，鑲上銀；還有我身上穿的褲子，是用老鼠皮做的。我只能逼他收下一顆男僕的牙齒，他很好奇地檢查，我看得出他喜歡；那是一位不熟練的外科醫生誤拔的，是顆好牙，約一呎長，四吋粗。

船長對這份平實的敘述很滿意，說他希望我們回到英國後，我能把它寫下來公之於世。我回答說，旅行記我們已經太多，而我懷疑有些作者考慮自己的虛榮、利益、或愚昧讀者的消遣，勝過真相。我謝了他的好意，答應考慮。

他奇怪我說話那麼大聲，問那個國家的國王和王后是不是耳背。我告訴他，這兩年多來我已習慣了，而我也同樣奇怪他和他的人，他們好像只在低語，我卻聽得夠清楚；我又說，我剛上船時，覺得水手們是我見過最渺小可鄙的人。他看到我吃晚飯時對什麼都帶著驚奇，幾乎憋不住笑；我回答說我奇怪我怎麼忍得住，當我看見他的碟子只有銀三便士那麼大，一條豬腿不夠一口，一只杯子沒有核桃殼大。他回答，用那句老話說，我的眼睛比肚子大，因為他看我的胃口並不怎麼樣。

航行十分順利，我不拿航海日誌來煩讀者。我直到進入唐斯才離開那艘船，那是我逃脫後約九個月。船長連一個法尋的運費都不肯收。我們親切道別，我讓他答應到雷德里夫來看我；我雇了一匹馬和一個嚮導，五先令，是向他借的。

在路上，看著房子、樹、牲口和人們的渺小，我開始覺得自己在小境。我怕踩到我遇到的每一個旅人，並高聲叫他們讓路，差點為我的無禮挨一兩個破頭。我遇到的每個人說話都像水壺。我習慣了聽著一個字到來，這些人的字在我還沒等完時就到了；所以我每次回答都晚一點，他們就把我當成被打過腦袋的人。

我到了自己的家，還得問路才找到，一個僕人開了門，我彎下腰進去，像鵝鑽門，怕撞到頭。我妻子跑出來擁抱我，我卻把腰彎到她膝蓋以下，以為她否則永遠夠不到我的嘴。我女兒跪下求我祝福，我看不見她，直到她站起來，因為我太久習慣了把頭和眼睛抬到六十呎以上；然後我伸一隻手去抱她的腰。我俯視僕人和屋裡一兩位朋友，像他們是侏儒、我是巨人。我對我妻子說她太節儉了，因為我發現她把自己和女兒餓到沒有了。總之，我的行為那麼反常，他們都同意船長初見我時的意見，認為我瘋了。我提這個，是作為習慣與偏見的力量之大的一個例子。

她在門口拿了我的腕，那是照規矩，握著，說，五十一。我說六十。她說五十一，並說她不跟我爭。我對她說話，我聽說，頭一個星期，是以一口鐘的步調，字與字之間隔一個停頓，所以句子要很久才到，她就學會了等，雙手放在圍裙裡，站在樓梯腳，像人等一樣他們有權等的東西。她看見了我腕上繞兩圈的黑繩。她沒問。她看它的樣子，像人從別人肩頭望過去，看另一個人的離開。

過了一小段時間，我的家人、朋友和我達成了正確的了解；可是我妻子宣布我絕不許再去航海，雖然我的惡運安排她無力阻止我，讀者以後會知道。這期間，我在此結束我不幸航行的第二部分。［頁邊：亞麻布箱的文件裡，一只木碗中，放著一條十九呎長的黑繩，盤著，編者起初以為是拉鈴的繩子。格列佛太太被問到，說那是一根頭髮，不肯說是誰的。辛普森按。］

## 第18章 · 作者在家被數了十天，又出了第三次海。被海盜俘虜。一個荷蘭人的惡意，和一個沒有被翻譯的詞。他在一塊岩石上自己數自己，被拉進一座飛島。

我在家待了不到十天。這十天裡每天正午，我妻子都在餐桌上用兩根手指拿我的腕，就像她在門口拿過的那樣，用鉛筆把數字寫在曆書的背面、潮汐表的下面：五十一，五十，五十四，五十一，五十三，五十六，五十二，五十八，五十五。第四天以後她不再念給我聽。我隔著桌子倒著讀，她知道，由著我讀。

第十天正午，康沃爾人威廉・羅賓遜船長，好望號的船長，一艘三百噸的堅實大船，來到我家，正好碰見她手裡握著我的腕。是六十。她把它寫了下來。他有那份好心，去看窗子。

我從前在另一艘船上當過外科醫生，他是那艘船的船長，也佔四分之一的股份，那次是去利凡特。他一向待我像兄弟，不像對一個下級軍官；他給外科醫生拿腕，就像給帆匠拿腕一樣爽快，兩個人的數字寫在同一本簿子裡，出自同一隻手。他第一次來訪，說的不過是久別重逢後照例會說的話。後來他又來，一次又一次；他很高興看見我身體好；他問我是不是已經安定下來過日子了；他提到他打算兩個月後去東印度。最後他直截了當請我，雖然帶著幾分歉意，擔任他那條船的外科醫生：我手下可以另有一位外科醫生，另外還有他的兩位大副；我的薪水比通例加倍；而且既然他經驗過我在航海事務上的知識至少與他相等，他願意聽從我的建議，就像我也分擔了指揮權一樣。他是那麼誠實的人，我知道那些歉意不是為了提議本身。它們是為了那本曆書，那個月它一直擺在桌上，而他一次也沒有看過它。

唯一的困難是我妻子。她一夜沒說話。早晨她拿了我的腕，那不是拿的時辰，拿了很久，然後問加倍的薪水一年合多少。我告訴了她。她在曆書上、那些數字下面算了這筆帳，說孩子們有著落了。那就是她的同意。我接受了，而且我知道我接受的是什麼。我不替自己辯護。我只記下：第十天我被數出六十；自從冒險號以來，我沒有被數出過六十；我為此高興；她看見了我的高興。

我們於一七〇六年八月五日出海。羅賓遜船長頭一天正午就拿了我的腕，我也拿了他的，他把我們兩個都寫進航海日誌，和從前一樣。我的是五十八；過了赤道是六十一，從此就停在那裡，所以一七〇七年四月十一日到聖喬治堡的時候，照簿子看，我是個從未離開過六十的人。我們在那裡停了三個星期，讓船員休養，他們許多人病了。那段時間我拿了三百個腕，是我在同一個地方拿過最多的；其中一個威爾斯男孩的慢得讓我叫大副來看他是不是死了，他要了水喝。

從那裡我們去了北圻。船長決定在那裡住一段時間，因為他要買的許多貨還沒備妥，他也無望在幾個月內啟航。為了貼補一部分開銷，他買了一艘單桅船，裝上北圻人慣常運往鄰近島嶼去交易的貨物，派十四個人上船，其中三個是本地人，讓我擔任指揮，有權做買賣，他自己在岸上辦他的事。他在碼頭上拿了我的腕，像他一向做的那樣，握得比數字需要的多了一會兒，說：「六十一。你行的。」那是此後好幾個月裡最後一次，有人數我而存著好意，我當時並不知道。

我們出航不到三天，就遇上一場大風暴，把我們往北北東吹了五天，又往東吹；之後天氣轉好，吹著頗強的西風。第十天，兩艘海盜船追了上來，很快就追上，因為我的單桅船裝得太深，只能以貨物的步調航行，而貨物大半是米，米沒有急的念頭。我們也沒有能力自衛。

他們兩艘船同時登船，帶頭衝上來，氣勢洶洶；可是看見我們全都臉朝下趴在地上（那是我下的命令），就用粗繩把我們反綁起來，派人看守，然後去搜船。我把臉頰貼在木板上，看著第一個人翻過欄杆。我有外科醫生的習慣，看人的脖子，而他的脖子跳得超過一百。我下那道命令，是因為用那種步調登船的人需要一個理由停下來，而甲板上的一排臉就是一個理由。

他們當中有一個荷蘭人，看來有些權威，雖然兩艘船都不歸他指揮。他沿著我們這一排走過去，像事務長沿著一排酒桶走過去，逐一拿起每個人的腕，用他們的話把數字大聲報給跟在他腳邊的人聽；輪到我的時候，他握得久些，用荷蘭語說出來，是特地給我聽的：九十四，然後笑了。他從我們的臉認出我們是英國人。他用自己的語言對我們嘰哩咕嚕，發誓要把我們背對背綁在一起扔進海裡。

我荷蘭語說得還算過得去。我告訴他我們是誰，求他念在我們同是基督徒、同是新教徒，又是鄰近而結盟甚密的國家，去勸船長們發一點憐憫。這激怒了他。他把威脅又說了一遍，轉身對他的同伴們滿懷激憤地說起話來，我猜是日本話，一再用到「基督徒」這個詞。

兩艘船中較大的一艘由一位日本船長指揮，他會說一點荷蘭語，說得很不完整。他走到我面前，問了幾個問題，我恭恭敬敬地回答，然後他說，我們不會死。我向他深深一鞠躬；然後轉向那個荷蘭人，說我很遺憾，在一個異教徒身上找到的憐憫，竟比在一個基督徒弟兄身上找到的還多。我很快就有理由為這些愚蠢的話後悔。

那荷蘭人白費力氣地想說服兩位船長把我扔進海裡（他們對我許過諾，不肯讓步），卻成功地讓他們對我施加一種刑罰，從各方面看，都比死亡本身更壞。我的人被平均分送上兩艘海盜船，我的單桅船換了新人。他們走的時候沒有看我；我不怪他們；一個為了別人的理由被迫臉朝下趴過的人，事後是不去看那個人的。至於我自己，決定把我放在一條小獨木舟上漂走，給槳、一張帆和四天的口糧，日本船長好心地從他自己的存糧中把口糧加了一倍，並且不許任何人搜我的身。

我下到獨木舟裡。下去的時候，那個荷蘭人探出身子，抓住我腕上纏了兩圈的黑繩，不知是想再試一次我的拍，還是以為它值錢，剛解開一點，日本船長就在他身後說了一個詞。我事後照著聲音把它記下來，像我記下每一個我不懂的詞那樣：卡塔米。荷蘭人放了手。我始終不知道他被告知了什麼。我划離的時候，他站在甲板上，把他的語言所能提供的一切詛咒和辱罵都傾倒在我身上，而他的語言提供了他很多。［頁邊：編者曾把這個詞拿給東印度公司的兩位先生看，他們給了他兩個意思，編者認為都不宜印出。格列佛太太在它旁邊用鉛筆寫了一個字：「問。」辛普森按。］

海盜出現前約一個鐘頭，我做過一次觀測，算出我們在北緯四十六度、經度一百八十三度；我把這兩個數字抓牢，那是我身上唯一有用的東西。離他們有一段距離後，我用懷中的小望遠鏡發現東南方有幾座島。風向很順。我張起帆，大約三小時後到達最近的一座。那全是岩石。島上有鳥蛋，我用燧石打火，點燃石南和乾海草，把蛋烤了，當作晚餐，決心盡量省著口糧；夜裡我在一塊岩石的遮蔽下，鋪著石南睡，睡得還不錯。

一個人無法誠實地數自己，我把這一點寫下來，給任何打算這樣做的人用。我的懷錶擱在膝上，兩根手指按在腕片上，我發現那個數字會偏向兩者之中更害怕的一方，數的人，或被數的人；在那條獨木舟裡，兩個都在怕。第一天正午我得到八十九，第二天八十二，第三天七十一，第四天六十四。我一個也不信。我只信它們在往下掉，而且我已經知道，一個沒有人數他的人身上往下掉的，不一定只是恐懼。

第二天我航向另一座島，再到第三座、第四座，有時用帆，有時用槳；我不拿我的苦難的詳細經過來煩讀者，只說第五天我到了視線所及的最後一座島，在其他島的南南東。它比我估計的遠，我花了五個鐘頭才到，繞了差不多一圈才找到可以登陸的地方，是一個約三倍於我獨木舟寬度的小灣。這座島全是岩石，只零星長著些草叢和香草，洞穴很多。我把剩下的口糧放進其中一個洞裡，從岩石上採了許多蛋，又收集了一些乾海草和烤乾的草，打算明天點著；我身上帶著燧石、火鐮、火繩和取火鏡；晚上就躺在那個洞裡，睡在我留作燃料的同一堆草和海草上。

我睡得很少。我估算在這麼荒涼的地方保住性命是多麼不可能，我的結局必將多麼悲慘；我發現自己那麼提不起勁，連起身的心都沒有，等我鼓起足夠的精神爬出洞，日頭已經很高。夜裡，我曾把兩根手指伸到繩子底下、按在腕片上，因為它們就在那裡；它說，四十九。我從沒被數得這麼低。我再數一次確認，它還是說四十九，我才明白，這個數字不再偏了，因為數的人已不再害怕，卻還沒找到該換成什麼。我把腕收了起來。我沒有看那根繩子。

我在岩石間走了一會兒。天空一片晴朗，太陽熱得我不得不把臉轉開，忽然之間它熄了；不是像躲進雲後那樣，帶著邊緣和聚攏，而是像蠟燭被帽子罩住那樣。我轉過身，看見一個巨大的不透明的物體介於我和太陽之間，正朝這座島移動。它看上去離地約兩英里高，把太陽遮住了六七分鐘；但我並不覺得空氣冷了多少，天色暗了多少，只像站在山的陰影裡。

它越靠近我所在的地方，越顯出是一塊堅實的東西，底面平整光滑，映著下方海面的反光，閃閃發亮。我站在離海岸約兩百碼的一處高地上，看它降到幾乎與我平行，距離不到一英里。我取出袖珍望遠鏡，清楚地發現有許多人在它的側面上上下下地走動，那側面似乎是傾斜的；他們在做什麼，我分辨不出來。

但有一件事我分辨得出，我把它寫下來，因為它是新的。我到過兩個人的步調不是我的步調的國家，我學會了從遠處讀步調，像蹄鐵匠看田裡的一匹馬。這些人，從體型上看和我是同一種身量，卻沒有一種我讀得出的步調。走廊上有些人的動作和我很像。有些人沒有動，我的望遠鏡從這一掃到下一掃之間他們沒動過，我把他們當成雕像，直到其中一個，過了我估計約一刻鐘，把他起頭的那一步邁完了。最底層的走廊上有些人拿著長竿在釣魚，竿子一動也不動，我把這歸為釣魚的藝術。

求生的天性讓我內心升起一陣喜悅，我準備好期待這次奇遇也許能以某種方式把我從這個地方和這個處境救出來。可是讀者很難想像我的驚愕：一座空中的島，住著人，而且看來他們能隨意把它升高、降低、讓它前進。我當時沒有那個心境去做哲學思考。我寧可觀察它會走什麼路線，因為它似乎有一陣子停在原處；然後它逼近了，我看見它的側面環繞著幾層走廊，每隔一段有樓梯可以從一層下到另一層。

我揮動帽子和手帕，用盡全身力氣大喊。最靠近我的那一側聚了一群人；從他們指著我又互相指點的樣子，我看得出他們清楚地發現了我，卻對我的喊叫毫無回應。但有四五個人急匆匆地沿著樓梯跑到島的頂上，然後消失了；他們跑得像個人，有步調，一次兩階，而他們是我在那裡見過的唯一可以這麼說的人。我猜得很對，他們是去向某位有權威的人請示。

人群增加，不到半個鐘頭，那島移動並升高到最底層的走廊離我站的高地不到一百碼。我擺出最懇求的姿勢，用最謙卑的口氣說話，沒有得到回答。站得最近的那些人，從穿著看來像是有身分的人。他們熱切地互相商議，不時看我。最後其中一人用清晰、客氣、柔和的方言喊話，聲音聽上去有些像意大利語，我就用那種語言回答，希望那個音調對他的耳朵更悅耳些。我們彼此一個字也不懂，但我的意思很容易明白，因為他們看見了我的困境。他說話一次一個詞，像對孩子或聾子說話，把每個詞放下，然後等待；但那等待長短不一，而且不是為我等的。我把它當成禮貌。

他們打手勢叫我從岩石上下來，往岸邊走去，我照辦了；飛島升到一個合適的高度，邊緣正好在我的正上方，一條鏈子從最底層的走廊放下來，底端繫著一個座位，我把自己固定在上面，被滑輪拉了上去。六個人操作滑輪，一起拉，一起歇，我數他們拉的次數，因為那是個可數的東西：他們是六十，半秒不差，這是我自從北圻碼頭以來在任何人身上沒遇到過的。我想，這些就是在拍子上的人。我想對了，那就是全部的要點，而我過了一個星期才知道。那塊岩石上，至今還留著兩天份的米，是一位日本船長從他自己的存糧中加倍給我的，我為了他而感到遺憾，沒有回去拿。

## 第19章 · 勒皮他人的性情：他們如何「去」，又是誰把他們叫回來。國王用十一天回答一個問題。作者被請吃飯、被教話、被量尺寸；以及一個地板每分鐘跳一下的夜晚。

我一落地，就被一群人圍住，站得最近的那些人身分比較高。他們帶著驚奇的種種表情和神色看我，我也沒欠他們多少，因為我從沒見過一個種族，在體形、衣著、面貌上這麼特別。他們的頭全都歪著，不是歪向右就是歪向左；他們的眼睛，一隻轉向裡面，另一隻直直朝上看著天頂。他們的外衣上繡著太陽、月亮和星辰，間雜著提琴、長笛、豎琴、小號、吉他、大鍵琴，以及許多歐洲沒見過的樂器。我試著讀他們的步調，像我學會對每個人做的那樣，卻讀不出來。我看的頭一百個人裡，有些人有一種步調，有些人在一會兒之前有過一種。這兩者是有差別的，而那天早上以前，我不知道這差別看得出來。

我注意到，這裡那裡有些穿僕人服裝的人，每人手裡拿著一根棍子，棍端像連枷一樣繫著一個吹脹的膀胱；每個膀胱裡有一小撮乾豌豆或小石子，這是我後來才聽說的。他們不時用這東西拍打身邊的人的嘴和耳朵，這是什麼意思，我當時一點也想不出來。

我現在就把解釋告訴讀者，因為沒有它，讀者在接下來所有的事上，會和我一樣茫然。這座島上的人，一思考，就「去」。我不是說他們像學者埋頭讀書那樣出神。我是說身體隨著思想去了，以所想之物的步調去，而外科醫生在腕片上拿到的那一拍，就像潮水從小灣退出去那樣，從腕裡退出去了。一位正在想月亮的先生，就像月亮那樣動；一位去到土星那麼遠的先生，走完一步可能要一個月。他不在的時候，既不能說話，也不能留意別人對他說的話，也分不出懸崖和地板。要把他叫回來，就得靠打拍人（原文是克利梅諾爾），他用膀胱輕拍將要說話的人的嘴，和聽他說話的那個人的右耳；那些豌豆給出共同的拍數，就是六十，那位先生找到它，就像游泳的人找到水底。有能力的人家都養一個打拍人，無論出門或訪客，從不離開他；在街上，他還要輕輕拍主人的眼睛，因為一個「去了」的人，明顯有掉下每個懸崖、撞上每根柱子的危險，也會撞到別人，或被別人撞進水溝。

他們帶我沿著樓梯上到島頂，再從那裡到王宮，而我對那些樓梯的了解，勝過對其他任何事，因為我看得見它發生。領我的那些先生成群地往上走；到第四個平台，其中一個在對我說話的中途「去」了，一隻腳還懸在半空；其餘的人，彷彿那隻腳是個信號，一個接一個也去了，於是我站在樓梯上，身邊八個人擺著遊行隊伍的姿勢，他們的打拍人沿著這一排工作，像人在輪流搖一組鐘。每個人都在他離開的那個字上回來，把它說完。我學會了在那些樓梯上不說話，這在那個國家是交談中比較好的那一部分。他們似乎完全不為我這身異國的服裝和面貌所動，也不為群眾的喊叫所動，那些群眾的思想比較空閒。

最後我們進了王宮，走進朝見廳，我看見國王坐在寶座上，兩側是第一等的貴人。寶座前有一張大桌子，擺滿了地球儀、天球儀和各種數學儀器。陛下絲毫不理會我們，雖然我們進來的聲響，由於全體朝臣的擁擠，並不算小。他正深陷一道問題，我們候了至少一個鐘頭，他才解出來。他兩側各站著一個年輕侍從，手裡拿著那種綁膀胱的棍子，看他閒下來了，一個就輕輕拍他的嘴，另一個拍他的右耳；他像突然被喚醒的人那樣一驚，說，十一天。我以為那是他離開了多久。後來我才知道，那是答案。

然後他看著我和與我同來的人，想起了我們來的緣故，這事他事先已經聽說了。他說了幾句話，一個拿著膀胱棍的年輕人就走到我身邊，輕輕拍了我的右耳；我盡可能打手勢表示我用不著這種器具。後來我發現，這使陛下和整個朝廷對我的理解力抱了很低的評價。他們的推理很準確：一個不需要別人把他叫回來的人，顯然是沒去過任何值得被叫回來的地方。

國王，就我所能推測的，問了我幾個問題，我用我會的每一種語言回答他。發現我既聽不懂也不能被聽懂之後，他下令把我帶到宮中的一間寓所（這位君主在好客上，是歷代君王中最出名的），派兩個僕人服侍我。年長的那位名叫塔爾沃，約莫六十歲，做了三十八年的打拍人，前臂像趕牲口的人；年幼的是他的徒弟，一個十二歲的男孩，他正教他打在拍子上，而不是打在思想上。

晚飯端來了，四位身分高貴的人，我記得是站在國王身邊很近的，賞臉和我同席，每人手肘邊都有他的打拍人。上了兩道菜，每道三樣。第一道，一塊羊肩被切成正三角形，一塊牛肉被切成菱形，一個布丁被切成擺線形。第二道是兩隻鴨子被綁成提琴的形狀，香腸和布丁做成長笛和雙簧管的樣子，一塊小牛胸肉做成豎琴。僕人把麵包切成圓錐、圓柱、平行四邊形和其他幾種數學圖形。這頓飯進行起來像一座鐘，每一個齒輪都得單獨敲一下，照我的錶，持續了三小時十分，我該說其中有二十分鐘在吃。

吃飯的時候，我大膽地問了幾樣東西在他們語言裡的名稱，那些高貴的人，靠打拍人的幫助，樂意給我回答，希望能讓我敬佩他們的高明才能，如果有辦法讓我與他們交談的話。我很快就能討麵包和飲料，或其他我想要的東西了。我注意到，每個回答都在一下拍打之後的那一秒到來，清楚、完整、簡短，而那位先生在之前那一秒，是在別處。我開始覺得那些拍打對我也是一種客氣，和對他們一樣。

飯後同席的人退下，國王派了一個人來，帶著一個打拍人，拿著筆、墨、紙和三四本書，用手勢讓我知道他是被派來教我語言的。我們一起坐了四個鐘頭，這段時間他被拍了十一次，每次回來都在話的中間，把它說完。我得出結論：勒皮他的一堂課是一串短課，在一下拍打之後那一秒教的，比長長地教的教得更好。我把許多單詞寫成幾欄，每個詞對面寫上翻譯，又設法學了幾個短句，因為我的老師會吩咐我的一個僕人去拿東西、轉身、鞠躬、坐下、站起或走路，我就把那句話記下來；所以我的第一句勒皮他話，是靠那男孩的兩條腿學來的。他還在一本書裡指給我看日月星辰的圖形、許多平面和立體的名稱，以及所有樂器的名稱和演奏術語。他走後，我把單詞按字母順序排好；就這樣，過了幾天，靠一個非常忠實的記憶，我對他們的語言有了一些領會。

我該說說第一夜我學到的東西，因為那是我在那個國家得到的第一樣沒有人教我的東西。我醒著躺在寓所裡，大約每隔一分鐘，地板就在我下面抬起一下，再把我放下去，差一根頭髮的寬度；一個緩慢、巨大、平穩的東西，就像住在隔壁房間有一座磨坊的屋子裡所感到的那樣。我用錶數了一個鐘頭，它一秒也沒有差。是每分鐘一下。我曾睡在巨人的屋子裡，那家人的拍是五；我從沒睡在一個拍是一的地方。第二個星期我才明白，我感到的是這座島的腕。

我把「飛島」或「浮島」翻成的那個詞，原文是勒皮他，我始終沒能弄清它真正的詞源。在古老已廢的語言裡，勒普的意思是高，昂圖是一位統御者；據說勒皮他就是從勒普昂圖訛變來的。我不贊成這個推導，覺得有些牽強；可是我聽到昂圖的時候，沒人叫我，就在自己的頁邊寫下「調速器」，還在底下畫了線，因為外科醫生用來稱呼拍底下、維持著拍的那個東西的，正是這個詞，而這個詞在我們的語言裡，也正是「統御者」的意思。我的老師剛被拍醒過，說這座島是由一塊石頭維持的。我向學者們提出我自己的一個猜想：勒皮他是 lap outed 的變體，lap 本義是陽光在海面上的舞動，outed 是翅膀；他們謝我，就像人謝謝小孩子畫給他的一張圖。

第二個星期我能聽懂塔爾沃了，他說的是課堂上那種語言，慢慢地，一次一個詞，而且和那些先生不同，他等我。他告訴我，我不被拍是做對了。「他們覺得你笨，先生，」他說，「這在這裡是能被想到的對任何人最好的事。沒有人會問你去過哪裡。」他在一刻鐘裡把他那一行的全部技藝說給我聽，他說這比學它所花的時間還長：打要打在拍子上，不是打在思想上；打在思想上的打拍人，會把他的人喚醒在錯的地方，在土星的正中間，那個人帶著土星回來，一個星期說不了話；而六十是唯一的拍數，因為那是他們去之前都有過的拍數。

我問他自己有沒有去過。他說沒有，三十八年來從沒有；這是這一行的代價，因為一個人不能既去，又去叫人回來。他說他想他會喜歡看看土星，從他見過的那些回來的臉來判斷。一位去了太陽九天的先生，臉上有一種神情，就像一個在海上待了很久的人，嘴邊鬆開了的樣子；而他看過它在拍打之下回到臉上，大約有六千次，總是為此難過。他猜我去過的地方比他們任何人都遠，而且從不需要打拍人幫忙。我說我得到過很多幫助。

他這時看了我的腕，看那根在腕上纏了兩圈的繩子，和繩子下面的腕片，然後看窗子，就像船長那時看它的樣子。「那是打拍人的手藝，先生，」他說，「有人把你維持住了。」我說那是一根頭髮。他說在他這一行，那是同一回事，就去照看那男孩了。

國王託付我的那些人，看我穿得那麼差，就吩咐一位裁縫第二天早晨來量尺寸做一套衣服。這位工匠做他的活，方式與歐洲同行不同。他用擺——一個繫在線上的鉛球——量了我的腕，把數字寫下來；用象限儀量了我的高度；然後用尺和圓規，把一個數字對著另一個數字推算，畫出我全身的尺寸和輪廓，就像人能從一口鐘的音調畫出一艘船，全部記在紙上。過了六天，他把衣服送來，做得很差，完全走了樣，因為他在計算裡弄錯了一個數字，我想是把三當成了八，所以有好幾天我是一個與自己不同體形的人，一條胳膊長了一根提琴弓。但我的安慰是，我看到這類意外非常常見，也很少有人在意。

陛下已下令，這座島要往東北偏東移動，到首都拉格多的正上方——那是下方堅實陸地上整個王國的都城，約九十里格遠；我們的航程持續了四天半。我一點也沒感覺到在空中的前進運動。頭一夜我把手掌貼在地板上想感覺它，地板說的還是它一向說的，一，一，一，早晨我們已經離開原來的位置三十英里。

## 第20章 · 勒皮他人的音樂，他們的請願、房屋與頭腦，他們為太陽擔的心，和他們的女士們寂寞的樣子。作者應自己的請求被拍了一次；國王只問比例。

第二天早晨約十一點，國王親自率領他的貴族、朝臣和官員，備好了全部樂器，連續演奏了三個鐘頭沒有中斷，我被那聲響震得發懵，直到老師告訴我，才猜得出是什麼意思。過了好一陣子，我才明白那聲響不是音樂。每分鐘一次，地板抬起，在抬起的那一下，整個朝廷合奏一個和弦，齊得連一根頭髮的差距都沒有；然後每個人把樂器擱在膝上，坐五十九秒。三個鐘頭是一百八十個和弦，加上它們之間的休止，而休止，我後來想，才是那些樂器存在的目的。我的老師說，這座島上的人的耳朵，適應聽見諸天之樂，那種音樂在某些週期奏響，朝廷現在準備好了各自貢獻一份，用各人最擅長的樂器。我問那週期是多少。他說是這座島的週期，也就是我們的。我說我只聽見那一個音，他說，所以才知道它是準的。

往拉格多去的路上，陛下下令島要停在某些城鎮和村莊的上空，好接受臣民的請願書；為此放下了好幾條麻線，底端繫著小重物。人們把請願書穿在線上，它們就直直地往上升，像小學生繫在風箏線上的紙片。有時葡萄酒和食物也由下面用滑輪吊上來。請願書上來，是以寫它的人的步調，也就是我的；被讀，是以一位通常不在場的國王的步調；而回覆沿著同一條線下去，要隔上多少個星期就隔多少個星期，到一個已經忘了自己問過什麼的人手裡。塔爾沃說，一座城可以等九個月，等來一個拒絕。我想，這條線是這個王國裡唯一兩頭速度相同的東西，而叫一個東西做這唯一的一個，它實在太細了。

他們的念頭永遠繞著線和形。要稱讚一個女人，或任何別的動物的美，他們就用菱形、圓、平行四邊形、橢圓和其他幾何名詞來形容，或用音樂的術語，這裡不必重複；他們形容她的步調也是這樣。我聽過一位先生，在一下拍打之後那一秒，這樣稱讚一位女士，我照老師的轉述寫下來：她的兩隻眼睛是兩個等半徑的圓，嘴是一個比例恰當的橢圓，她的步子是四分之三拍，第二拍上有一個休止，那在她那種身分的女人身上，是最好的東西。我在國王的廚房裡看見各式各樣的數學儀器和樂器，端上陛下餐桌的肉塊，就照它們的圖形切開。

他們的房子建得很糟，牆是斜的，沒有一間屋裡有一個直角；這個缺陷出自他們對實用幾何的輕視，認為那是粗俗的匠人之事。圖紙是由「去」了的先生畫的，由沒有去的石匠來施工，指示對工匠的頭腦來說又太精微，造成不斷的錯誤；夾在這一種步調和那一種步調之間，牆角就丟了。國王自己的寢室，我趁沒人看見時用眼睛量過，東北角偏了十一度，後來陛下下令把床挪進去，就算改正了。

雖然他們在紙上，在使用尺、鉛筆和分規上相當靈巧，可是在日常的行動和舉止上，我沒見過比他們更笨拙、更彆扭、更不靈活的人，在數學和音樂以外的一切題目上，思考也那麼遲緩、那麼糊塗。他們是很糟的推理者，激烈地好反對，除非碰巧他們持的是正確的意見，這很少發生。第一個月我拿了他們三十一個人的腕，每個都在一下拍打後那一秒，他在拍子上的時候；每一個都穩穩是六十，半秒不差，每一個過一分鐘又去了。他們在他們所在之處是慢的，我相信在他們去的地方是很快的。想像、幻想和發明，他們完全是陌生人，他們的語言裡也沒有任何字可以表達這些觀念；他們有許多字說他們去的那些地方，卻沒有一個字說去一個沒有特別的地方，我聽說，那就是我們所謂的幻想。

他們大多數人，尤其是研究天文的那些，很相信星相學，雖然羞於公開承認。但我最驚訝、也最覺得無法理解的，是我在他們身上看到的對新聞和政治的強烈傾向，不停地打聽公共事務，對國家大事發表判斷，為了一黨的意見每一寸都激烈爭辯。在一下拍打之後那一秒，一個勒皮他人會對法蘭德斯的戰爭發表一個判斷，完整的，還附數字；在下一秒他到了木星上，沒有人，尤其是他自己，記得他決定了什麼。我在歐洲認識的大多數數學家身上也觀察到同樣的傾向，雖然我始終找不出這兩門科學之間有絲毫相似之處。

這些人處在持續的不安之中，從沒有一分鐘享受過心靈的平靜，他們的煩擾來自的原因，對其餘的人類幾乎沒有影響。他們憂慮：地球由於太陽不斷的靠近，到時候必定被吸收或吞沒；太陽的表面會漸漸被它自己的散發物結成硬殼，不再給世界光；地球差一點被上一顆彗星的尾巴掃到，那樣必然把它燒成灰燼；而下一顆，他們算出是三十一年後，很可能毀滅我們，拖著一條一百萬零十四英里長的燃燒的尾巴。他們說，太陽每天耗費光線，卻沒有任何養料補充，終會被完全耗盡。他們還認為，太陽像任何物體一樣有一個調速器，它的跳動就是一天，而一天已不是從前的一天了。［頁邊：編者請教過曆書編製人。他們說，一天的長度和從前一樣。辛普森按。］

他們被這類懸在頭上的危險的憂慮弄得這樣驚惶，以致既不能安穩睡在床上，對生活中的尋常樂趣也不感興味。早晨遇見熟人，第一個問題是太陽的健康：他落下和升起時的樣子，以及他們有什麼希望躲過即將到來的彗星的一擊。這個問題是認真的。天文學家去看，其餘的人有空時跟著去，答案就是那個人看見的。塔爾沃告訴我，有一位先生在一個冬天開始時去了太陽，離開了九天，被拍回來時只說他看起來不錯，邊緣上有一點累；整個朝廷大大鬆了一口氣，還辦了一場宴會。

塔爾沃說，天文學家中最年長的一位，十一年前就出發去迎彗星，走的是長路，照他自己的估算，已經走了尾巴的三分之一。他站在西邊的走廊裡，手舉著，每年低一點；他的打拍人每隔六小時用湯匙餵他，他像睡著的人那樣吞嚥，每個月初一，他們把他轉向光。預料他會準時趕回來，趕上那件事。希望他能事先通知。

我說過我沒有被拍，哪裡也沒去，這話差不多是真的。第十九個晚上，我坐在寓所裡，那男孩和我在一起，他奉命坐在我旁邊看我的腕，因為塔爾沃認為，一個不需要打拍人的陌生人，總有一天會一下子需要。我正在想，那是我自從唐斯上岸以來不許自己想的事：大境此刻是幾點，她有沒有被告知，她信不信，那根頭髮有沒有被收起來。男孩說，先生，你要去了。我說我是在回憶。他說這兩者的差別是先生們的事。我把兩根手指伸到繩子下面，它說，四十一。我請他拍我。在那個國家，我只請過這一次。他用膀胱拍了我的嘴和右耳，並不疼，豌豆在我腦子裡跑出六十，我像游泳的人找到水底那樣找到了它，接住了；然後我坐著，和它一起坐了下去。關於那一下拍打，我想說的只有這些。

這座島上的女人有許多活潑；她們瞧不起她們的丈夫，極喜歡外來人，那些人總有一大批從下面的大陸來，在宮中辦理各個城鎮和團體的事務，或他們自己的私事，可是他們被很看不起，因為他們缺乏同樣的才能。女士們就在這些人當中挑選情人。公道地說，女士們很少「去」，也去不遠，就我所能看出，她們對思考的用處另有看法；所以一位女士大半天有一種步調，而且是在一座大半天沒有別人有步調的房子裡有的。

但令人煩惱的是她們做得太輕鬆、太安全，因為丈夫總是那麼沉浸在冥想裡，只要他有紙和用具，旁邊沒有他的打拍人，他的情婦和情人就可以在他面前做最大膽的親密動作。一個丈夫在自己的晚餐桌上去了月亮，旁邊可以坐著人，右耳（那是打拍人的位置）可以被人吻，他卻一無所知；而打拍人什麼都看見，什麼都不說，因為他們這一行有條老規矩：打拍人注意拍子，別的什麼都不注意。

妻子們和女兒們哀歎被囚禁在島上，雖然我認為這是世界上最美好的地方；雖然她們在這裡享有最大的富足和華麗，並被允許隨心所欲，她們仍渴望看看世界，享受首都的娛樂，沒有國王的特許不得下去，而這種特許不容易取得，因為有身分的人由頻繁的經驗知道，要說服他們的女人從下面回來有多難。我聽說一位宮中的貴婦，是首相的妻子，首相是王國裡最富的臣民，一個優雅的人，極愛她，他們有好幾個孩子，住在島上最好的宮殿裡，她以身體不適為藉口下到拉格多，在那裡躲了好幾個月，直到國王發出搜捕令，才在一間偏僻的餐館裡找到，渾身破衣，為了養一個老而畸形的男僕當掉了衣服，那男僕每天打她，被抓到時她和他在一起，十分不情願。

她丈夫以一切可能的善意接她回來，沒有絲毫責備，她不久就設法帶著所有珠寶又偷偷下去，到同一個男僕身邊，從此再沒有消息。我記下：那丈夫的善意是真的，而且照我的數，一天中他可以被找到大約十一分鐘，在一下拍打後的那幾秒；而那個男僕，雖然老、畸形、暴力，卻一整天都找得到。我不是拿這個當藉口，只是當算術。讀者可能覺得這個故事是英國的，不是勒皮他的；我只想說，一個保持著拍的人，在一屋子「去」了的人當中的孤獨，並不局限於任何氣候。我在雷德里夫見過，在一張桌子旁，帶著一本曆書。

大約過了一個月，我的語言已有相當進步，能在我榮幸侍奉國王時回答他大部分的問題。陛下絲毫不好奇去打聽我去過的那些國家的法律、政府、歷史、宗教或風俗，只把問題限於數學的狀況，並以極大的輕視和漠不關心接受我告訴他的，雖然兩側的打拍人不時喚醒他。我告訴他小境，那裡的人每分鐘拍七百二十；他被拍醒了，我還沒說出口，他就說，十二比一，然後不再多問那些人的事。我告訴他大境，那裡的人拍五；他說，十二比一，反過來，我想他很高興。

我請求這位君主准許我參觀島上的奇觀，他很客氣地准了，並吩咐我的老師陪我。我最想知道的是，它的各種運動來自什麼原因，無論是藝術還是自然；而我想我已經有了一個想法，因為在它的脈搏上躺了一個月。

## 第21章 · 島的描述，「手」們的洞窟，與維持著島的那塊石頭。作者把兩根手指按在軸上。國王壓服一座城的辦法，以及林達利諾如何調成同一個拍，把島拉到四十碼處。

飛島或浮島是正圓形，直徑七千八百三十七碼，約四英里半，所以包含一萬英畝。它有三百碼厚。底面，也就是從下面唯一看得見的，是一整塊平整均勻的金剛石板，高約兩百碼；金剛石上面依次是各種礦層，最上面蓋著一層十到十二英尺深的肥沃泥土。上表面由邊緣向中心傾斜，所以落在島上的露水和雨水，都化成小溪流向中間，注入四個大水池，每個周長約半英里，距中心兩百碼；白天太陽把池裡的水蒸發掉，所以從不溢出。再者，國王有能力把島升到雲霧之上，他就可以對任何他想要的國家扣下露水和雨，因為最高的雲，從來沒有聽說升到過兩英里以上。我這才明白，為什麼問太陽的健康是認真的。在那座島上，太陽是一樣可以被扣下的東西。

島的中心有一道裂口，寬約五十碼，天文學家們從那裡下到一座大圓頂洞窟，他們的語言稱它為弗蘭多納・加格諾爾，意思是天文學家洞，位於金剛石上表面以下一百碼。那裡有二十盞燈日夜不熄，金剛石的反光使強烈的光照進每個角落。我們沿著一道兩百一十一級的樓梯下去，我的老師每走三十級就被一個不喜歡樓梯的打拍人拍一下；下去的時候我看到，底下的人跟我在上面遇到的不是同一類。

那地方堆滿了六分儀、象限儀、望遠鏡、星盤和其他儀器，其間站著九個穿樸素灰衣的人。他們的頭沒有歪。他們的眼睛朝同一個方向看，而且是看著我。他們沒有穿太陽，也沒有穿提琴；我後來知道，上面的人把他們看作一種工匠，用一個意思是「手」的詞稱呼他們。最年長的那位，是他們當中的老手，至少七十歲，拇指像木匠的，用課堂上那種語言，慢慢地問我，是不是那個拒絕被拍的人。我說是。他說他一直想看看這樣的人。他對我說了四十分鐘，沒有挨一下拍打，這比任何一個勒皮他人對我說的時間都長，而且他一次也沒有看天花板。

那個洞窟最大的奇觀，也是島的命運所繫，是一塊體積驚人的磁石，形狀像織布工的梭子，長六碼，最粗處寬三碼。一根金剛石的軸穿過它的中央，它在上面平衡得那麼精確，連最弱的手都能轉動它。軸的兩端躺在一個水平的金剛石圓箍的面上一道十二英寸深的槽裡，圓箍直徑十二碼，立在八隻各高六碼的腳上；圓箍和腳與構成島的地板的那塊金剛石是連成一體的，所以這塊磁石任何力量都不能把它從原位移開，只能轉動。

老手拉起我的手——別的人都沒有這麼做——把我兩根手指按在軸上，按在他自己的手指放的那個位置。是每分鐘一下。我在床上躺了一個月，隔著地板和床墊感覺過它，而在源頭感覺它是另一回事，那裡是暖的：一股緩慢、巨大、平穩的推力，頂著我指尖的末端，就像人在一頭睡著的很大的動物的脖子上感覺到的那樣。「它維持著時間，」他說，「我們維持著這塊石頭。」我問他誰維持他。他說這是上面的先生們三百年沒有問過的問題，我可以去問國王。

他們一共九個人，輪流守著那塊石頭，每班一個鐘頭，一次一個人用兩根手指按在軸上，什麼也不做，老手說這就是全部的技藝。國王的命令從上面用一塊石板送下來，寫著方向和高度；要轉動石頭時，由最年輕的那個轉，一個十五歲的男孩，因為最弱的手就能轉。他轉它，像把一個睡著的人翻個身。我問他們有沒有轉錯過。老手說他這輩子有一次，差了一度，島偏離了航線四分之一英里，唯一注意到的是一個農夫，他送上來一份請願書，說他的大麥地上有了影子；九個月後，它被駁回了。

這塊石頭使島能升、能降、能從一處移到另一處。我寫下的是老手的說法，不是我老師的，我老師給我講了三小時的線和字母，我相信他也是對的。國王全部領土之下的地面也有拍，在礦坑的底部，和離岸六里格以內的海底；沒有人數過它，而這塊石頭天生就有它；石頭有兩端，一端朝它吸，一端把它推開。「島是站在剩下的東西上的，」他說。如果推開的那一端朝下，也就是石頭的拍與地面的拍相逆，剩下的就很多，島就上升；如果吸引的那一端朝下，就什麼也不剩，它就下降；如果石頭斜著放，島就斜著走，一升一降地交替，被一連串斜坡送過領土。它不能越出下方王國的範圍，因為地裡的東西並未散布整個地球，到王國的邊界就終止了；也不能升到四英里以上，那是石頭感覺得到的盡頭。石頭放平時，島就停住，那時地板的跳動最清楚。不論往哪邊轉，石頭都繼續每分鐘一下。這不是「手」們的事。

我的老師剛才跟在我們後面下來，在樓梯上被拍過，他給我看星辰的目錄。雖然他們最大的望遠鏡不超過三英尺，卻比我們這邊一百英尺的放大得多，把星星顯示得更清楚，這使他們的發現遠遠超過歐洲的天文學家：他們編了一本一萬顆恆星的目錄，而我們最大的目錄也不到那個數目的三分之一。我翻開第一頁就認出這本書是什麼，因為我自己寫過一本。每顆星都有它的拍，精確到秒，有它的位置，和被量到的那一年。這是一本腕之書。是我見過最長的一本，而編它的人，一輩子都往上看，從沒看過一張臉。

他們還發現了兩顆較小的星，也就是衛星，繞著火星運行，最內側的距行星中心恰好是它直徑的三倍，最外側的是五倍；前者十小時繞一圈，後者二十一個半小時。我的老師向我證明，它們週期的平方，與它們距離的立方，非常接近同一比例，他說，這明顯地表示它們受支配其餘天體的同一條定律所支配。我只看見離得近的拍得快，把它寫進我的書裡。他們已觀測過九十三顆彗星，並以極大的精確度確定了它們的週期。我問這些觀測能不能印出來。我的老師被拍了一下，說被印出來的東西是一樣要等待的東西，島上沒有人肯為它等。

國王本可以成為宇宙中最專制的君主，只要他能說服內閣與他一起；但大臣們的產業在下面的大陸上，又考慮到寵臣的職位是極不穩定的，永遠不會同意奴役自己的國家。老手告訴我國王能做什麼。如果某座城鎮參與叛亂，或陷入激烈的派系，或拒繳通常的貢賦，較溫和的辦法是讓島懸在它上空，使它得不到陽光和雨水，人民因此受飢荒和疾病之苦；如果罪行夠重，同時從上面用大石頭砸他們，他們除了爬進地窖，別無防禦，屋頂都被打碎。最後的辦法是讓島直直落在他們頭上。「他不喜歡這樣，」老手說，「那是他自己的地；而且要是有尖塔，底下可能會裂。」我注意到，他說這話像一個人在說他看見一件家具遭了什麼。

他給我講了林達利諾，我在上面聽過，是先生們講它的那種形式，也就是當作一道題。我到達之前約三年，國王巡行時，王國第二大城林達利諾是他最先視察的地方。他離開三天後，居民們，他們常抱怨受壓迫，關上城門，抓了總督，以驚人的速度和勞力建起四座大塔，城的每個角上一座（這座城是一個正方形），高度與城中央一塊尖利的岩石相等；在每座塔頂和岩石頂上，他們安上一塊大磁石。「他們一直在數我們，」老手說，「三百年。島每年同一個月的同一個時辰飛過，每家都有一個男孩坐在屋頂上，拿一根線和一塊石頭數它。那本冊子在市政廳裡。他們比國王更清楚我們的拍。他們把他們的石頭調成跟它一樣。」

過了八個月，國王才確實知道林達利諾造反了。他下令讓島飄到城的上空。人民一致，儲備了糧食，一條大河穿過城的中間。國王在他們上空盤旋了好幾天，使他們得不到陽光和雨水，又吩咐放下許多麻線；沒有一個人要送上請願書，反而是很大膽的要求：補救他們的全部怨苦、巨大的豁免權、選擇自己的總督，和其他過分的要求。陛下於是命令島上全體居民從最低的走廊把大石頭投進城裡；可是市民早有防備，把人和財物都轉移到四座塔和其他堅固的建築與地下室裡了。

國王決心壓服這驕傲的民眾，下令島輕輕下降到離塔頂和岩石四十碼處。「我在石頭那裡，」老手說，「我整隻手都按在軸上。它輕了。一塊三百年來一直頂著地面的石頭，發現沒有東西可頂，在手裡就輕了，像門另一邊的人不再靠著；然後整座島都輕了；然後它想回家。」他說這話時，手指還在它們剛才一直在的那個位置。「它是站在剩下的東西上的。沒有剩下任何東西。五個地方有五塊石頭，每一塊都有我們的拍，精確到秒；一個東西，不能被與它自己相同的東西抬起來。」軍官們報告國王，下降比平常快得多，轉動石頭也很難把它穩在一個位置上，請求准許把島升高。召開了全體會議，命令「手」們到場。

「我請求准許試一件事，」他說，「我拿了一條一百碼的繩子，等我們把島升到城上，超過那東西抓著我們的高度，我在繩子末端繫上一塊含鐵的金剛石，跟島的底面是同一種，然後從最低的走廊慢慢往一座塔頂放下去。還沒放下四碼，我就覺得它被拉得那麼用力，我幾乎拉不回來。然後我扔下去幾塊小的，它們像是被人用力擲出去的一樣。我們試了另外三座塔，和那塊岩石。結果一樣。」我問他當時害不害怕。他說他沒告訴過任何人害怕到什麼程度，而且他當時很忙，那是一種不害怕的辦法，他推薦。

這件事徹底打亂了國王的計畫，他被迫接受那座城自己的條件。後來一位大臣向我保證，如果島降得那麼近，以至無法自己升起，市民已決心把它永遠固定在那裡，殺死國王和他所有的僕人，徹底改變政府。老手說，先生們就是這樣叫它的。他說，他們實際要做的，是一直數下去。

依照王國的一條基本法，國王本人和他的兩個長子都不許離開這座島；王后在過了生育年齡之前也不許。我問老手，國王介不介意。他說國王在一下拍打之後那一秒什麼都不介意，在之前那一秒什麼都介意。他說這話時沒有笑，我也沒有笑，石頭繼續著，一，一。

他說我愛待多久就待多久，因為先生們不會下來。我在洞窟裡坐了一個鐘頭，兩根手指按在軸上，我的老師則走上樓梯去月亮了。那是在那座島上第一個沒有人被拍的鐘頭，我發現自己沒去任何地方，也沒發現自己回來。我記下：那塊石頭是暖的。

## 第22章 · 作者離開勒皮他，帶著一個裝著十一顆豌豆的膀胱。他被送到巴爾尼巴比，來到首都，那裡人人走得飛快，勞工隨著鼓挖地。一位田產不齊步的大領主接待他，他聽說了學院是怎麼開始的。

雖然我不能說我在這座島上被虐待，但我必須承認，我覺得自己太受冷落，並且帶有幾分輕視；因為君主和人民似乎都對數學和音樂以外的任何知識毫無好奇，而在這兩門上我遠遠不如他們，因此很少受到重視。另一方面，看過了島上所有的奇觀，我已打從心底厭倦它。他們在兩門我很敬重、也不算外行的科學上很出色；可是那麼抽象，那麼陷在冥想之中，我從沒遇到過這麼令人不快的同伴。兩個月來，我只和女人、手藝人、打拍人、宮中侍童交談，還有洞窟裡的「手」們（沒有人問起過他們）；這使我變得極為可鄙；然而這些人，是我唯一能得到合理回答的人。

靠刻苦學習，我對他們的語言已有相當的掌握，我決心一有機會就離開這座島。宮中有一位大領主，是國王的近親，單憑這一點才受到尊敬。大家普遍認為他是他們當中最無知、最愚蠢的人。他為王室立過許多卓越的功勞，天生與後天的才能都很高，又有正直與榮譽的品格；卻有那麼壞的音樂耳朵，以致批評他的人說，他常被看見在錯的地方打拍子。我見過他們說的是什麼。在諸天之樂上，當朝廷握著樂器在膝上坐五十九秒時，他坐著嘴唇動著，在數那些秒，到第五十八秒，他抬起一根手指。他的老師們也是費了極大的力氣，才教會他證明數學裡最簡單的命題。

這位大領主從來沒有「去」過。他似乎不介意；他說他六歲時就被告知他沒有地方可去，他發現這比他預料的輕鬆。他很樂意對我表示種種恩寵，常來看我，要我告訴他歐洲的事務、我到過各國的法律與風俗、舉止與學問。他非常專注地聽，對我說的一切都作出很聰明的評論。他有兩個打拍人隨侍充場面，卻除了在宮中和禮儀性訪問之外從不使用，只要我們單獨在一起，就總是命令他們退下。我發現我已經忘了一句話被允許說完是多長。他第四次來訪時，我告訴他我想下去。他說他從第二次就知道了，很遺憾。

我懇求這位尊貴的人替我向陛下說情，准我離開，他果然照辦了，如他所說，是帶著遺憾；因為他確實給過我好幾個非常有利的提議，我都以最深的感激婉辭了。二月十六日，我向陛下和朝廷辭行。國王送了我一份相當於約兩百信用點的禮物，我的保護人，他的親戚，又送了同樣多，還有一封給他在首都拉格多的一位朋友的推薦信。當時島正懸在離城約兩英里的一座山的上空，我要從最低的走廊放下去，就像我被拉上來的那樣。

塔爾沃來到走廊，那男孩跟他一起。塔爾沃說他不該拍我，因為我不要，但他有東西給我；他把一個雞蛋大小的膀胱放進我手裡，頸口紮著，裡面有十一顆豌豆。「你不能拍自己，先生，」他說，「可是你能搖它。」我說我不知道怎麼謝他。他說，如果我發現自己「去」了，要做的就是數點什麼，什麼都行，因為六十在每一種語言裡都一樣；又說那根繩子是好的，可是一個人不該只信一樣東西。然後他望著天空，就像打拍人在主人離開時那樣，那個被吩咐不可以的男孩，輕輕地、在拍子上，拍了我的右耳。

我把自己固定在座位上，鏈子由六個人放出，他們以六十放我下去，一起歇，而我是從他們歇的方式認出他們的，因為就是把我拉上來的那六個。島在我上方遠去，一塊閃亮的金剛石板，邊上有個人探頭望著，那人變得很小，卻沒有脫離拍子。我在它上面住了十個星期，下去的時候我覺得難過，雖然我本不該這樣想。

我站在堅實的地面上，有些滿意。大陸在飛島君主統治的範圍內，通稱巴爾尼巴比，首都叫拉格多。我毫無顧慮地走向那座城，穿著像本地人，又有足夠的語言能與他們交談。三天裡我都在聽那地板。地面是有拍的，「手」們說，在礦坑的底部，可是在街上聽不到；一個在每分鐘一下的東西上躺了十個星期的人，就像聽見隔壁房間的鐘停了的人，在屋裡走來走去，聽著不存在的東西。

我很快找到了推薦我去見的那個人的住所，呈上島上那位大人物朋友寫的信，受到很親切的接待。這位大領主名叫穆諾第，給了我他自己家裡的一間寓所，我在那裡住到離開，受到最殷勤的款待。

第二天早晨他用馬車帶我去看這座城，約有倫敦的一半大；可是房子建得很奇怪，大半失修。街上的人走得很快，神情狂野，眼睛直直地盯著，而且大都衣衫襤褸。我把兩根手指按在一個停下來問路的人的腕上，他的眼睛望著我肩膀後面：一百零四，站著不動。那天我拿了五個，沒有一個在九十以下。

我們出了一座城門，往鄉下走了約三英里，看見許多勞工在地裡用各種工具幹活，可是我猜不出他們在做什麼。每一處高地上都站著一個人打鼓，鼓是一百一十，勞工們隨著它挖，四五十人一面鼓，排成行列；土壤看來極好，我卻看不出有任何指望長出麥子或牧草的樣子。我禁不住驚歎這些城裡鄉下的奇怪景象，冒昧地問我的嚮導，街上田裡那麼多忙碌的頭、手和臉是什麼意思，因為我看不出它們產生了任何好結果；相反，我從沒見過耕作得這麼不幸的土壤，造得這麼糟、這麼破敗的房屋，也沒見過面容與衣著顯出這麼多苦難與匱乏的人。

這位穆諾第勳爵是第一等的貴人，做過幾年拉格多總督，後來被一群大臣的陰謀以不稱職為由革職。不過國王對他很寬厚，把他當作一個好意的人，只是理解力低下可鄙。我對這個國家和它的居民發表了那番坦率的批評，他只回答說，我在他們中間待得不夠久，還沒法下判斷，世界各國有各國的習俗；還有其他類似的老生常談。

但回到他的宅邸，他問我喜不喜歡這幢建築，看出什麼荒唐的地方，對他家僕人的衣著或神態有什麼不滿。他可以放心地問，因為他身邊的一切都華麗、整齊、有禮。我說閣下的謹慎、地位和財富，使閣下免於愚蠢與貧窮在別人身上造成的那些缺陷。席間侍候的兩個人是六十一和六十四，很穩，我在餐廳裡站了一會兒，因為它有四個直角，是我自從雷德里夫以來見到的第一批。他說如果我願意同他到他在約二十英里外的鄉間宅邸去，他的田產在那裡，在那兒有更多閒暇進行這類談話；我說我完全聽他安排；第二天早晨我們就出發了。

旅途中他讓我觀察農夫們管理土地的各種辦法，在我是完全無法理解的，因為除了極少數地方，我看不到一穗麥子或一片草葉。可是三個鐘頭後，景色全變了。我們進入一片非常美麗的鄉野，農舍相隔不遠，造得整潔，田地圍著籬笆，有葡萄園、麥田和草地；我不記得見過更賞心悅目的景色。沒有鼓。我在四塊田裡叫馬車停下，隔著每塊田的牆拿了一個腕，是些按自己的時間彎腰、直起的人：六十三、五十八、六十八、七十一。他們沒有齊步，而麥子已經收了。閣下看見我臉色開朗起來，歎著氣告訴我，他的田產就從這裡開始，一直這樣延續到他的宅邸；他的同胞嘲笑輕視他，說他把事務管理得不好，給王國立下這麼壞的榜樣，不過只有很少的人跟著學，都是像他自己一樣老的、固執的、軟弱的人。

房子是座宏偉的建築，依古代建築的最好規則造的，噴泉、花園、步道、林蔭道和樹叢布置得有精確的判斷和品味。我稱讚了每一樣東西，閣下直到晚飯後才理會，那時沒有第三個同伴，他帶著很憂鬱的神情對我說，他恐怕得拆掉他在城裡鄉下的房子，依照現在的樣式重建，毀掉所有的種植，把它們改成現代風尚要求的形式，並對他的佃戶下同樣的命令，否則就要承受驕傲、怪僻、矯揉、無知和任性的指責，也許還加重陛下的不悅。他說，我現在的欣賞會在他告訴我一些我在宮中不可能聽到的事之後消失，因為那裡的人太忙於他們的思辨，顧不上下面發生的事。

他談話的大意是這樣的。大約四十年前，有幾個人上了勒皮他，為了事務或消遣，五個月後回來，只學到一點點數學的皮毛，卻滿身從那個空中地區得來的浮躁精神。他們在一個每分鐘一下的地板上待了五個月，下來之後發現，五個月照諸天的步調過日子，已經讓他們容不下麥子的步調。他們開始看不慣下面一切的管理，陷入想把所有技藝、科學、語言和機械改上一個新的立足點的計畫。為此他們取得了一份皇家特許，在拉格多創辦一所計畫家學院；這種風尚在人民當中流行得那麼厲害，以致王國裡凡稍有規模的城鎮，沒有一座沒有這樣的學院。

在這些學院裡，教授們設計農業和建築的新規則新方法，為各行各業和製造業設計新的工具和器械；照他們所擔保的，一個人可以做十個人的活，一座宮殿一個星期就能造成，用的材料耐久到永遠不必修理，大地上所有的果實都會在我們選擇的任何季節成熟，產量比現在多一百倍，還有無數別的快樂的提議。那些鼓是其中最早的一項，一百一十，是一個人做兩個人的活的速率。唯一的不便是這些計畫沒有一個已經完成；而同時整個國家悲慘地荒廢，房屋成了廢墟，人民沒有食物和衣服。可是這一切非但沒使他們氣餒，他們還五十倍更猛烈地一心執行他們的方案，被希望和絕望同樣地驅策著。

至於他自己，因為不是個有進取心的人，滿足於照老樣子過下去，住在他祖先蓋的房子裡，一切生活方面都像他們那樣行事，不求革新；還有少數幾位有身分的人和鄉紳也這樣做，可是被人用輕蔑與惡意的眼光看待，說他們是技藝的敵人，無知，是糟糕的公益之徒，寧可圖自己的安逸與懶散，而不顧國家的全面進步。

勳爵又說，他不想用更多細節預先奪去我在參觀大學院時必然會有的樂趣，他已決定要我去。他只請我看看三英里外一座山側的一棟廢墟，並給了我這樣的說明。他有一座很方便的磨坊，在離他宅邸半英里處，由一條大河的水流推動，足夠他自己一家和許多佃戶使用。大約七年前，那些計畫家的一個俱樂部來找他，提議毀掉這座磨坊，在那座山的側面另蓋一座，要在山脊上開一條長渠做蓄水池，用管道和機器把水送上去供磨坊用；因為在高處風和空氣攪動水，使它更快，更適合運動，也因為水從斜坡上流下，只用一條走得比較平的河的一半水流，就能推動磨坊。他那時跟朝廷的關係不大好，又被許多朋友催逼，就答應了；雇了一百個人，花了兩年，工程失敗了，計畫家們走了，把全部責任都推在他身上，從此一直罵他，還慫恿別人做同樣的試驗，同樣保證成功，也同樣失望。

幾天後我們回到城裡；閣下考慮到自己在學院的壞名聲，不肯親自陪我去，卻推薦我給他的一位朋友，陪我前往。勳爵很樂意把我說成是一個大熱衷於計畫、很好奇又容易相信的人；這話不是沒有道理，因為我自己年輕時也是一種計畫家。我記一本腕之書記了二十多年。他沒有看過它。［頁邊：編者看過。是一本很長的書。辛普森按。］

## 第23章 · 作者獲准參觀拉格多的大學院。教授們各自從事的技藝，連同各人的拍；以及一個寫書用的框架。

這所學院不是一整棟建築，而是一條街兩邊接連的許多房子，因為荒廢了，被買下合併起來做這個用途，所以從一位計畫家走到下一位，要穿過一道已被拆掉的牆。院長很客氣地接待我，我連著好幾天去學院。每個房間裡都有一位或幾位計畫家，我相信我進過的房間不下五百間。在大部分房間裡，只要拿得到，我就拿了一個腕，下面只在值得記的地方記下數字。

我看見的第一個人，面容瘦削，手和臉都被煙燻得漆黑，頭髮鬍子又長又亂，好幾處被燒焦。他的衣服、襯衫和皮膚全是同一種顏色。他已經花了八年做一個計畫，要從黃瓜裡抽出陽光，裝進密封的小玻璃瓶，在陰涼不順的夏天放出來暖空氣。他的腕是一百一十二。他給我看架子上的小瓶，每個都標著抽取的日子；我問每個瓶上的數字是什麼，他說是那天正午太陽的拍，用他自己的一面玻璃量的，好讓暖意能以正確的速率放出來。他為我打開了一瓶。是冷的。他說那是早期的。他告訴我，他毫不懷疑，再過八年他就能以合理的價錢，把陽光供給總督的花園；可是他抱怨他的存貨少，懇求我給他一點東西，作為對巧思的鼓勵，特別是今年黃瓜貴得很。我送了他一份小禮，因為勳爵特意給我備了錢，他知道他們有向每一位來看他們的人乞討的習慣。

我走進另一間，幾乎被一股可怕的臭氣燻得想趕快退出去。我的嚮導把我往前推，低聲懇求我別得罪人，那會招來很大的怨恨，所以我連鼻子都不敢捏。這間房的計畫家是學院裡最老的學生，他的臉和鬍子是蒼白的黃色，手和衣服抹滿了髒東西。我被介紹給他的時候，他緊緊擁抱了我，那是我很樂意免掉的客套。他從進學院起做的事，是把他所謂的成品還原成它原來是的食物，他每週從學會領到一份材料，裝在一個約有雷德里夫的桶那麼大的容器裡。我用他沒抓住的那隻手拿了他的腕，是五十一，穩得像個磨坊工人的，是整棟房子裡唯一安詳的腕。我把這個寫下來，不加評論。

我看見另一個在忙著把冰煅燒成火藥，他同樣給我看了一篇他寫的關於火的延展性的論文，打算出版。他是一百零九；他說火是個很快的題目，得跟上它。

有一位極聰明的建築師，想出了一種造房子的新方法，從屋頂開始，向下做到地基；他拿蜜蜂和蜘蛛這兩種謹慎的昆蟲的同樣做法來為它辯護。他那個樣品的屋頂已經在鷹架上架了十一個月，下面坐著一個壯漢撐著，牆還沒開始。他說一件東西的結束，正確地看，就是它的開始。我說我自己也有一兩樣東西是從結尾開始的。

有一位天生盲的人，有幾個和他一樣的學徒；他們的工作是給畫家調顏色，他們的老師教他們用摸和聞來分辨。我很不幸，那時發現他們的功課不太好，而教授本人也往往弄錯。他的腕是六十，是那條街上最平靜的人。這位藝術家受到整個同行的鼓勵和敬重。

在另一間，我對一位計畫家非常欣賞，他發明了用豬來耕地的辦法，省下犁、牛和勞力的花費。辦法是這樣的：在一英畝地裡，每隔六英寸埋八英寸深，埋一批橡實、棗、栗子和別的這種牲口最愛吃的果實或蔬菜；然後把六百頭或更多的豬趕進田裡，幾天之內，牠們為了找吃的就會把整塊地翻起來，使它適合播種，同時用牠們的糞施了肥：確實，實驗證明費用和麻煩都很大，收成幾乎沒有。但是毫不懷疑這項發明能大大改進。它是我在拉格多看見的唯一一個不隨著鼓來做的農業計畫，豬按著牠們自己的飢餓的拍子，那拍子從來不齊；它也和其餘的一樣失敗了，計畫家說這只證明試驗沒有繼續得夠久。

我走進另一個房間，牆壁和天花板都掛滿蜘蛛網，只留一條窄道讓藝術家出入。我進去時，他大聲叫我別弄壞他的網。他哀歎世人那麼久以來犯的致命錯誤：用蠶，而我們有那麼多家養的昆蟲，無比優於蠶，因為牠們懂得又織又紡。他還進一步提議，用蜘蛛可以完全省去染絲的費用；他給我看一大群漂亮地著了色的蒼蠅，用牠們餵他的蜘蛛，我完全信服了，他向我們保證網會從牠們吸上顏色。他有各種顏色的蒼蠅，希望一找到適合餵蒼蠅的樹膠和油類，使絲線有力、有質地，就能配合每個人的喜好。

有一位天文學家，已經著手把一座日晷裝在市政廳的大風信雞上，調整地球和太陽的年運動和日運動，使它符合風的一切偶然轉向。我問它報幾點。他說它報風的鐘點，那是唯一一個隨時在手邊的鐘點。

我還參觀了許多別的房間，可是我不拿所有我見的奇事來煩讀者，我力求簡短。我到此只看了學院的一邊，另一邊是專給推進思辨之學的人用的，等我再講一位傑出人物之後，會說到他們，那位人物他們稱為「全能工藝家」。他告訴我們，他花了三十年用他的思想改善人類的生活。他有兩間大屋子，堆滿了奇妙的珍品，有五十個人在幹活。有的在把空氣濃縮成乾的、摸得到的東西，辦法是抽掉硝石，讓水分或流質的微粒滲出去；有的在把大理石軟化，做枕頭和針插；有的在把活馬的蹄子變成石頭，以防蹄病。這位藝術家本人這時正忙於兩項大計畫：頭一個是在地上撒糠，他斷言真正的種子的力量就在糠裡，他做了幾次實驗來證明，那些實驗我的本事不夠，看不懂；另一個是用一種樹膠、礦物和植物混合的成分塗在外面，來防止兩隻小羊長毛，他希望在合理的時間內，把光身羊的品種繁殖到全國。他的腕是一百零四。他說一天對他的目的太短。我說我聽人說過這話，在一座島上。

我們穿過一條走道，來到學院的另一部分，如我說過的，推進思辨之學的計畫家住在那裡。我見到的第一位教授在一間很大的房間裡，周圍有四十個學生。致意之後，他看見我專注地看著一個佔去房間大半長寬的大框架，就說，也許我會奇怪他竟從事一個要用實際的機械操作來改進思辨知識的計畫；可是世界很快就會明白它的用處，他自詡沒有任何別人的頭腦裡曾冒出過更高貴、更崇高的想法。人人都知道通常獲得技藝和科學的辦法有多辛苦；而憑他的設計，最無知的人，花合理的費用，只要一點體力勞動，不需要天分或學習的絲毫幫助，就能寫出哲學、詩歌、政治、法律、數學和神學的書。他自己的腕是六十六，他是學院裡唯一一個不趕的人；那框架替他趕了。

它立在房間中央，二十英尺見方，表面由骰子大小的小木塊構成，有的大些，全用細鐵絲連在一起，每一面都貼著一張紙；紙上寫著他們語言的全部詞，帶著它們各種語氣、時態和詞形變化，卻沒有任何次序。邊緣立著四十根鐵把手，每根旁邊一個少年。教授一聲令下，他們一齊用力一轉，詞的全部排列完全變了。三十六個少年於是輕聲念出出現的各行，凡是發現有三四個詞連在一起可以成為一句話的一部分，就口授給另外四個，那是書記。這樣一遍遍地做，每轉一次，小木塊翻過去，詞就換到新的位置。

少年學生們每天做這個工作六小時，教授給我看了好幾冊對開本的大書，裡面是已經收集的零碎的句子，他打算把它們拼合起來，用這些豐富的材料，給世界一部包羅所有技藝與科學的完整全書；不過這還可以改進，也可以大大加快，只要公眾湊一筆基金，在拉格多造出並使用五百個這樣的框架，並要求各管理人把各自的收集共同交出來。在休息時，我拿了把手旁三個少年的腕。他們是九十六、一百零二和一百零五，他們沒有看那些詞。他們看的是下一根把手。我請求聽一份樣品。他翻開第十九冊對開本，那是一冊好的，給我念了上星期找到的一行連在一起的四個詞：一根頭髮橫過腕。他說他還沒有找到它是做什麼用的。我說這是很好的一行，他就在頁邊把它標給法律門，因為短的東西通常是法律。

他向我保證，這項發明從他年輕時起就佔去了他全部的思想；他已把整部詞彙倒進了他的框架，並對書裡虛詞、名詞、動詞和其他詞類的數目之間的一般比例做了最嚴格的計算。我向這位傑出人物的大方表示最謙卑的感謝，並答應如果我有幸回到祖國，一定公正地稱他為這部奇妙機器的唯一發明人，我請求允許把它的形狀與構造畫在紙上，如這裡附上的圖。我告訴他，雖然在歐洲，我們的學者習慣互相偷竊發明，這至少有一個好處，那就是誰是真正的主人成了一場爭論，可是我會小心，讓他獨得榮譽，沒有對手。［頁邊：圖省略了。刻工被要求畫二十英尺見方的格子，要求換一塊大版。辛普森按。］

接著我們去了語言學校，三位教授坐在那裡商議如何改進他們本國的語言。第一個計畫是把多音節詞砍成一個音節，並省去動詞和分詞，因為實際上，一切想像得到的東西都只是名詞。

另一個計畫是一套徹底廢除一切詞語的方案，這被當作對健康和簡潔都是極大的好處。因為很明顯，我們說的每一個詞，在某種程度上，都是對肺的腐蝕性損耗，因而導致壽命縮短。他們從腕上算過，一個人照常人那樣說話，在二十歲到五十歲之間，花在詞上的氣，相當於他一生中的十一年，而如果改用東西說話，節省下來的將是其中的九年。於是有人提出一個辦法：既然詞只是東西的名字，那麼每個人隨身帶著表達他要談的那件事所需要的東西，會方便得多。

這項發明本來必定已經實行了，對國民的方便和健康都大有好處，若不是婦女連同粗俗無知的人，威脅說要造反，除非允許他們照祖先的方式用舌頭說話；普通人就是科學這樣不可調和的永遠的敵人。不過許多最有學問、最有智慧的人仍然堅持這套用東西表達自己的新方案，它只有一個不便：如果一個人的事情很大，又種類繁多，他就得按比例背上更大的一包東西，除非他請得起一兩個強壯的僕人。我常看見兩位這樣的賢者，幾乎被背上的包袱壓得沉下去，像我們這裡的小販，在街上相遇，就放下負擔，打開袋子，談話一個鐘頭，然後收起家什，互相幫忙重新背上，告別。我數過一次這樣的談話，在人行道上用一只手套、一個貝殼、一把刀和一塊麵包擺出來，約每分鐘四十，那是慢的，而兩位先生，我覺得，都很自在。

我去了數學學校，那裡的老師用歐洲難以想像的方法教學生。命題和證明被端正地寫在一片薄薄的餅上，墨水是用補腦的藥液調成的。學生要在空腹時吞下它，並在隨後三天只吃麵包和水。薄餅消化時，藥液上升到他的腦子，把命題帶上去。但到目前為止，效果還不夠好，一部分是分量或配方有些錯誤，一部分是少年們的執拗，他們覺得這顆藥丸噁心極了，往往偷偷溜到一邊，在它起作用之前就把它吐出來；他們也還沒被說服去忍受處方所要求的那麼長時間的禁食。我給了老師一份小禮。他說，今年餅貴得很。

## 第24章 · 對學院的進一步記述。無法被數的政治計畫家們；打算替一個參議院摸脈的醫生；以及作者所作的補充，受到光榮的接納。

在政治計畫家的學校裡，我過得很不愉快，因為在我看來，那些教授完全失去了理智，這種情景總使我憂鬱。我拿不到他們的腕。我照所學的，握住一個人的腕整整一分鐘，他從四十四跳到一百三十，又跳回來，來回兩次，我寫下的數字是平均值，那是不屬於任何人的數字。在小境，這會成為彈劾的一條。這些不幸的人在提議種種方案：說服君主依智慧、才幹和德行來選擇寵臣；教導大臣為公共利益著想；獎賞功績、卓越的才能和傑出的服務；教導王侯認識自己真正的利益，把它建立在與人民利益相同的基礎上；選擇有資格勝任的人擔任職務；還有許多別的荒唐、不可能的空想，人心裡從來沒有想像過；這證實了我心裡的老觀察：世上再荒謬、再不合理的事，也總有某些哲學家把它當作真理堅持。

我問他們當中的第一位，他在這所學校待了多久。他說十一年，他來是為了向國王提議一件事。我問是什麼。他說他忘了，可是那很重要，他的打拍人會知道。他沒有打拍人。在拉格多不養打拍人，因為最早的計畫家們從勒皮他下來時沒有帶，他們認為島上的習俗配不上科學家；他們「去」了，沒有人來叫他們回來，而這所學校就是他們的下場。我從口袋裡取出那個膀胱，那不是我打算做的，貼著他的右耳，以六十搖了一下。有三秒鐘，他用一張完全清醒的臉看著我。「啊，」他說，「你就是在拍子上的那個人」；然後他又走了，我把膀胱收起來，在那所學校裡沒有再做第二次，因為人太多了。

不過我要在這一點上對學院的這個部分公道些，承認他們不全是那麼空想。有一位極聰明的醫生，似乎對政府的全部性質和體系了如指掌。這位傑出人物很有用地把他的研究用在尋找有效的補救辦法，對治各種公共行政所易患的疾病和腐敗，不論它們來自執政者的惡習或弱點，還是來自服從者的放縱。比如：既然所有的作家和推理者都同意，自然的身體和政治的身體之間有嚴格而普遍的相似，那麼還有什麼比這更明顯：兩者的健康必須靠同樣的處方來維持，疾病靠同樣的處方來治癒？大家承認，參議院和大議會常為過多、沸騰和別的有害體液所苦；為許多頭部的疾病，更多心的疾病；為強烈的抽搐，為兩手筋腱的嚴重攣縮，尤其是右手；為脾氣、脹氣、眩暈和譫妄、酸沫般的打嗝、狗一般的食慾和消化不良，此外還有許多不必提的。

因此這位醫生提議，在參議院開會時，派若干醫生在它開議的頭三天出席，每天辯論結束時，替每位參議員摸脈；然後經過慎重考慮，商議各種病的性質和治療的辦法，他們在第四天帶著備有適當藥物的藥劑師回到議事廳，在議員入座前，按各人情況給每人投藥：緩和劑、通利劑、洗滌劑、腐蝕劑、收斂劑、減輕劑、瀉藥、治頭痛藥、治黃疸藥、祛痰藥、治聾藥；根據這些藥的反應，下次開會時重複、改換或省去。他把這一切都列成表。他說，五百位議員的議院，三天給他一千五百個腕，而從一千五百個腕，他能在一個身體知道之前，就知道它想要什麼。

這個計畫對公眾不會有什麼大的花費，而且依我的淺見，在那些參議院有一點立法權的國家，它對辦事效率可能大有用處：能產生一致，縮短辯論，使現在閉著的幾張嘴張開，使現在張著的更多的嘴閉上；抑制年輕人的魯莽，糾正老年人的固執；喚醒愚鈍，壓下輕佻。我沒有告訴他，我曾讀過這樣一本帳冊。我說我認為是這樣，我曾聽一位從不抬頭的年輕官員這麼說過；又說如果要做，就該公開做，把數字當面念給那個人聽。他說這是一個他沒有想到的精妙之處，並把它記了下來。

另外，因為普遍抱怨君王的寵臣記性短而差，同一位醫生提議，任何人去見首相，用最簡短、最平白的話說完事情之後，臨走時應當擰一下該首相的鼻子，或踢他的肚子，或踩他的雞眼，或扯他兩耳三次，或用針刺他的臀部，或把他的胳膊掐得青紫，以防遺忘；並在每個朝見日重複同樣的操作，直到事情辦成，或被徹底拒絕。我對他說，勒皮他有類似的辦法，用一個裝乾豌豆的膀胱，費用更低，傷害更少，並有一個好處：它有個拍數。他說他聽說過，認為對大臣來說太溫和了。

他還規定，一個國家的大議會中，每位議員在發表意見並為它辯護之後，應被迫投與之完全相反的票，因為如果這樣做，結果必然對公眾有利。當國家中的黨派激烈時，他提出了一個奇妙的辦法來調和它們。取兩黨各一百名領袖；把他們配成對，頭的大小最接近、拍也最接近的湊成一對；然後讓兩位熟練的操作者同時把每對的後腦鋸下，使腦子均分，把鋸下的部分互換，各安到對方黨人的頭上。這誠然是需要一些精確的工作，但教授向我們保證，如果做得靈巧，療效是萬無一失的。因為那兩半腦子，被留在一個顱骨的空間裡，彼此辯論這件事，很快就能達成諒解，產生那種溫和與規律的思考，這是那些自以為來到世上只是為了監視並統治世界運行的人的頭腦所極需的；至於那些黨派領袖在腦子的量或質上的差別，醫生以自己的知識向我們保證，是完全微不足道的。

我聽到兩位教授之間一場很激烈的辯論，關於最方便有效地籌款又不使臣民痛苦的辦法。第一位主張，最公平的辦法是對惡行和愚蠢課一種稅，每個人的稅額由他的鄰居組成的陪審團用最公正的辦法評定。第二位的意見恰恰相反：對人們最自豪的身心品質課稅，稅率隨卓越的程度而高低，由他們自己的內心決定。最高的稅是向最受異性歡迎的男人課的，稅額按他們受到的恩寵的數量和性質，這由他們自己作證。機智、勇敢和禮貌也建議大量課稅，並以同樣的辦法徵收，由每個人自己說出所有的量。可是榮譽、正義、智慧和學問，根本不該課稅，因為它們是那麼獨特的品質，沒有人肯在他的鄰居身上承認，也不肯在自己身上看重。

為使參議員們保持對王室的利益，有人提出，議員們應抽籤爭取職位，每個人先宣誓並提供保證，不論贏不贏都投宮廷的票；之後，輸家輪流有機會在下一次空缺時再抽。這樣希望和期待就會保持不滅；沒有人會抱怨諾言被打破，而會把失望完全歸之於運氣，運氣的肩膀比一個內閣的寬闊強壯得多。

另一位教授，我發現是那所學校裡最健全的一位，給我看一大張用於發現反對政府的陰謀的指示。他建議大政治家檢查所有嫌疑人的飲食、他們吃飯的時間、睡覺時睡在哪一側；尤其要拿他們的腕，一次一個星期，對照他釘在牆上的一張表，那上面是數字和它們的意思。五十一是拒絕，如果重複就是冷血的；七十四是範圍內的妨害；九十七是使團。我認得它的格式，和其中三條，只差一點意思。我沒有說怎麼認得的。

這篇論述寫得很敏銳，含有許多對政治家既新奇又有用的觀察，可是，照我的想法，不太完整。我冒昧地對作者說了，並表示如果他願意，我可以給他補充一些。他以比作家，尤其是計畫家那一類作家，通常更肯聽取的態度接受了我的建議，聲稱他很樂意得到進一步的資料。

我告訴他，在特里布尼亞王國，當地人稱它朗登，我在旅行中曾在那裡逗留過一段時間，人民的大部分，幾乎完全由偵探、證人、告密者、控告人、檢察官、見證人、發誓人，連同他們各種輔助和附屬的工具組成，全在國務大臣及其副手的旗號、指揮和薪水之下。那個王國的陰謀，通常是那些想提高自己做深謀遠慮的政客的名聲的人的手工；想給一個搖搖欲墜的政府重新注入活力；想壓制或轉移普遍的不滿；想用沒收的財產充實自己的錢櫃；想按對自己私利最有利的方式抬高或貶低公眾信用的人。他們先商定哪些嫌疑人該被控告參與陰謀；然後切實設法截獲他們的全部信件和文件，把主人銬起來。

我還告訴他，在小境，如果被控告的人被證明無罪，控告人要被處死，其效果是只有那些承受得起被控告人無罪的人，才提出控告。他說這真巧妙，問小境有沒有很多陰謀。我說它有過一個，是從一本帳冊裡讀出來的。

我說，那些文件交給一批極擅長發現詞、音節和字母的神秘含意的藝術家。比如，他們能發現馬桶表示樞密院；一群鵝表示參議院；瘸狗表示入侵者；瘟疫表示常備軍；禿鷹表示首相；痛風表示大祭司；絞架表示國務大臣；夜壺表示貴族委員會；篩子表示宮廷貴婦；掃帚表示革命；捕鼠器表示職位；無底洞表示國庫；陰溝表示宮廷；鈴鐺帽表示寵臣；折斷的蘆葦表示法院；空酒桶表示將軍；流膿的瘡表示政府。這辦法失效時，他們有另外兩種更有效的，其中學者們叫做藏頭法和易位法。第一，他們能把所有的首字母譯成政治含義：這樣 N 就代表一個陰謀，B 代表一團騎兵，L 代表海上的艦隊；或者第二，把任何可疑文件中的字母表重新換位，就能揭開不滿的黨派最深的企圖。所以，舉例說，如果我在給朋友的信裡說：Our brother Tom has just got the piles（我們的兄弟湯姆剛得了痔瘡），一位熟練的譯解人就會發現，組成這句話的同樣字母，可以拆成下面這些詞：Resist, a plot is brought home; The tour（抵抗，一場陰謀被帶回家了；那趟巡行）。這就是易位法。

教授為我傳達這些觀察向我致了很大的謝意，並答應在他的論文裡光榮地提到我。那天夜裡我用另一隻手握著那個膀胱，拿了自己的腕。是八十八；學院鑽進去了。我以每分鐘六十的速度搖著豌豆，搖了一刻鐘，它變成了六十三；我想，在這個國家我沒看見什麼值得我久留的東西，就開始想家了。

## 第25章 · 作者離開拉格多，到達馬爾多納達，作一次短航去格魯布杜布利布。總督接待他，總督把自己的拍借給死者一天。他們全是四十一。

我向我的高貴的保護人穆諾第勳爵辭行，他對我那麼厚愛，臨別又送了我一份豐厚的禮物。他在門口拿了我的腕，那是巴爾尼巴比沒有人做過的，像船長在碼頭上握過它那樣握著，說他不指望再見到我了，而這句話他不是對每個人都說的。是六十四。他說他本以為會更高些。

這個王國所屬的大陸向北伸到太平洋，離拉格多不過一百五十英里，那裡有一個好港口，與大島拉格奈格有許多貿易，拉格奈格在日本的東南方，約一百里格。日本皇帝和拉格奈格的國王之間有嚴密的同盟，所以從一座島到另一座島的航行時常有機會。因此我決定走這條路回家。我雇了兩匹騾子和一個嚮導，給我帶路，駝我的一點行李。

我的旅途沒有任何值得一提的意外或奇遇。到了馬爾多納達港，這是它的名字，港裡沒有開往拉格奈格的船，近期內也不會有。這座城約有德特福德那麼大。我很快結識了一些人，受到很殷勤的款待。一位有身分的紳士對我說，因為開往拉格奈格的船一個月內準備不好，我不妨去西南方約五里格外的小島格魯布杜布利布玩一趟，也不失為一種愉快的消遣。他表示自己和一位朋友陪我去，並為我備了一條方便的小船。

格魯布杜布利布，依我所能解釋的，意思是巫師或魔法師之島。它約有懷特島的三分之一大，土地極肥沃；它由某個部族的首領治理，這個部族全是魔法師。這個部族只在內部通婚，輩分最長的繼位為親王或總督。他有一座高貴的宮殿，和一個約三千英畝的園林，園外有一道二十英尺高的鑿石圍牆。園內有幾塊小圍欄，用來養牲畜、種穀物和做園藝。

總督和他的家人，由一種有點不尋常的僕役服侍。憑著他的通靈術，他有能力隨意從死者當中召喚人來，並命令他們服役二十四小時，不能再多；也不能在三個月之內再召同樣的人，除非遇到非常特殊的場合。

我們到達這座島時，大約是早晨十一點，陪我來的一位紳士去見總督，為一位特地來榮幸地拜見殿下的陌生人請求接見。立刻獲准了，我們三人進了宮門，兩側是一排排衛兵，穿戴武裝都是古怪的式樣，臉上有種東西，使我毛骨悚然，那種恐怖我無法形容。我們穿過幾道廳堂，兩旁排列著同樣的僕人，一直到朝見廳；在那裡行了三次深深的鞠躬、問了幾個一般的問題之後，我們獲准坐在殿下寶座最低一級台階附近的三張凳子上。

他懂巴爾尼巴比的語言，雖然與這座島的語言不同。他要我說說我的旅行；而為了讓我知道我將不拘禮地受到對待，他用指頭一轉，把所有侍從都遣散了，他們頓時消失，使我大為驚駭，像夢中的幻影在人突然醒來時消失。我好一會兒才回過神來，直到總督向我保證我不會受到傷害；又看見我那兩位同伴毫不在意，他們常被這樣款待，我才漸漸鼓起勇氣，向殿下簡述了我的各種冒險；只是還有些遲疑，不時回頭看我剛才看見那些家養幽靈的地方。

我榮幸地與總督共進午餐，這回一批新的鬼魂端上肉、在桌邊侍候。我發現自己比早晨少了些恐懼。我留到日落，卻謙卑地請殿下原諒，我不能接受他留宿宮中的邀請。我和兩位朋友睡在鄰近市鎮的一戶私人家裡，那是這座小島的首府；第二天早晨我們又回去向總督致意，這是他吩咐的。

就這樣我們在島上過了十天，每天大半時間跟總督在一起，夜裡回到住處。我很快就看慣了幽靈，三四次以後，它們就完全不再引起我的情緒；或者即使還有一點疑慮，好奇心也壓過了它。第四天我拿了一個腕。是站在我椅子後面的一個男僕，一個有希臘鼻子的年輕人，總督說他已經死了約兩千年。我把兩根手指按在腕片上，什麼也沒有；然後，我按著的時候，一拍慢慢升進我的手指，像睡麻了的肢體裡的脈搏，是四十一。我拿了下一個，是四十一。他們全是四十一。我看總督，他正以一個看過許多人這樣做的人的客氣神情看著我的手指，他說：「我的。」

我這才明白，是什麼讓我在門口毛骨悚然。不是那古怪的服裝，也不是那些只是死了的面貌。是他們的臉，在和我一般大小的身體上，以四十一的速度到來。我只在巨人身上見過臉這樣到來，他們大十二倍，有這個藉口；一個人不會指望自己的同類這樣，而身體比腦子更早知道有什麼事在對它做。那個有希臘鼻子的男僕似乎並不介意。我問他晚飯好不好。他說不好。總督說，這就是他留著他的緣故。

他告訴我，死者自己沒有拍，他把自己的借給他們用二十四小時，就像借給他們臉一樣；那是他唯一有的、他們能用的東西。他說那是個好拍，有點慢，他家人的都是這樣。他不借的時候自己是四十一，借出一百個的一天結束時是六十八，然後去睡覺；要三個月才恢復到原來的強度，所以他不能在這段時間內再召同樣的人，除非遇到非常特殊的場合。「而他們不能改變它，」他說，「一個說謊的人，你在你這一行會注意到，會升三四下。死者沒有可升的。這不是他們的美德，先生，這是安排。」

這個部族只在內部通婚，他告訴我，就是為了這個緣故：拍不可被擾亂。他們全都是四十一，世世代代，像一件傳下來的外套；而最年長的人，接掌政務時，得到借出的能力，就像得到園林和圍牆一樣。他請自己的父親來吃飯，每季第一天這樣做，他沒有東西可借給他，老人與他是同一個模子，只需把這一天給他。「他是我唯一不借給的人，」他說，「他帶著他原有的來。」

因此殿下總督命令我，從開天闢地以來所有死者當中，我願意點誰的名就召喚誰，人數不限，並命令他們回答我認為適當的任何問題；條件是我的問題必須限於他們生活的時代範圍內。有一件事我可以放心：他們一定會說真話，因為說謊在下面的世界是毫無用處的才能。我向殿下為這麼大的恩典致以謙卑的謝意。

我們在一間可以清楚望見園林的屋子裡。因為我最初的願望是欣賞排場與壯觀的場面，我要求看亞歷山大大帝在阿貝拉戰役剛結束時統率他的軍隊；總督的手指一動，它立刻出現在我們站的窗下一片大田野裡。亞歷山大被召進屋來。我費了很大的力氣才聽懂他的希臘語，自己會的又很少。我沒多想就拿了他的腕，是四十一，在一個據各種記載，早餐時和晚餐時都是一百一十的人身上；像看見一把劍被掛起來。我問他在阿貝拉是多少。他說從來沒有人拿過，他們數的是他的軍隊。他以名譽向我保證，他不是被毒死的，而是因過量飲酒患重熱病而死。

接著我看見漢尼拔翻越阿爾卑斯山，他告訴我他的營裡連一滴醋也沒有。我看見凱撒與龐培統率軍隊，正要交戰。我看見前者在他最後一次大凱旋式上。我要求羅馬元老院在一個大廳裡出現在我面前，並讓稍晚時代的一個議會，在另一個廳裡與它對照。前者看來像英雄與半神的集會；後者，像一夥小販、扒手、攔路強盜和打手。他們全是四十一。我提這個，是因為這是我唯一無法分辨他們的地方。

應我的請求，總督給了凱撒與布魯圖走上前來的信號。我看見布魯圖，心中升起深深的敬意，從他面貌的每一道線條，我都能輕易看出最完美的美德、最大的無畏和意志的堅定、最真誠的愛國心，和對全人類的普遍仁愛。我很高興地看到，這兩個人彼此融洽；凱撒坦率地向我承認，他生平最偉大的行動，比起奪走他的生命所得的光榮，差得很遠。我有幸與布魯圖作了許多交談，並被告知，他的祖先朱尼烏斯、蘇格拉底、伊巴密濃達、小加圖、湯瑪斯・摩爾爵士和他自己，永遠在一起：一個六人團，世界所有的時代都無法再加上第七個。他們生前就合著同一個時間，布魯圖說，這就是他們找到彼此的辦法。他說他指的不是拍；然後說也許指的是。我問凱撒，這本不該問，那天早上他在階梯腳下是多少。他說七十一，並說他當時覺得這對一個只是去開會的人來說太高了。布魯圖說他自己的沒有數過，他猜是一百，這是他發現自己想不起來的事，雖然其餘的他都記得。

那天夜裡我把他們登進那本小冊子，用跟活人同樣的筆跡、同樣的欄，這不是慣例。在第二欄，也就是那位年輕官員教我寫這個人在做什麼的那一欄，我給所有的人都寫了：被借著。給布魯圖，過了一會兒，我寫了：想不起來，又劃掉，又寫了一遍。

第九天傍晚，一個男僕的二十四小時結束時，我的手指正按在他的腕上。總督轉了一下手指。拍從腕裡退出去，像潮水從小灣退出去，不是一下子，是從邊緣開始，我感覺到它走了；然後只剩一條胳膊，我的手指按在上面，那是一個已經死了很久、被給了一天的人的胳膊。我沒有放手，直到它不再在那裡可以握住。總督等著。他說，這是有些訪客需要的客氣。

向讀者敘述我召喚了多少傑出人物，來滿足我那想要把古代各個時期的世界擺在眼前的貪求，是令人厭倦的。我主要是用眼睛欣賞那些除掉暴君和篡位者的人，以及把自由恢復給受壓迫、受傷害的民族的人。可是我在心裡得到的滿足，是無法表達的，也不能寫成適合讀者的消遣。最後一天傍晚，我拿了總督的腕，作為同行之間的一份禮貌。是六十八，因為他那天借出了一百零九個；他謝謝我，說沒有人問過。

## 第26章 · 對格魯布杜布利布的進一步記述。古今歷史由不能再改變拍的人更正；作者那天夜裡算了一筆帳。

我渴望見見那些以才智與學問最負盛名的古人，專門騰出一天。我提議荷馬和亞里士多德帶領他們全部的註釋家出現；可是這些人數目太多，有好幾百人只好在宮殿的庭院和外面的廳裡等候。我一眼就認出那兩位英雄，不但能把他們從人群中分出來，也能把他們彼此分開。荷馬是兩人中較高、較俊的，以他的年紀來說走得很直，眼睛是我見過最敏銳、最有穿透力的。亞里士多德駝背很厲害，拄著一根手杖。他的面容瘦削，頭髮稀疏平直，聲音空洞。他們和其餘的人一樣是四十一；可是我看出總督的借出停在離這個人還差一點的地方，在荷馬，它停在眼睛之前，那眼睛是一百一十，在亞里士多德，它停在手杖之前，他倚著它，當作自己的東西。

我很快發現，他們兩位對其餘的人完全陌生，從前從未見過或聽說過他們；一個我不說名字的鬼魂向我低語，說這些註釋家在下面的世界，總是躲在離他們的主人最遠的地方，出於羞愧和愧疚的意識，因為他們曾那麼可怕地曲解了那些作者的原意，貽誤後世。我把狄迪穆斯和尤斯塔修斯介紹給荷馬，並說服他比他們也許應得的更好地對待他們，因為他很快發現他們缺乏一種天分去領會詩人的精神。可是亞里士多德聽了我介紹司各脫和拉米斯時對他們的說明，完全失去了耐心；他問他們，這一族的其餘人是不是都像他們自己一樣蠢。

然後我請總督召來笛卡兒和伽桑狄，我說服他們向亞里士多德解釋他們的體系。這位偉大的哲學家坦率地承認他自己在自然哲學上的錯誤，因為在許多事上他是憑猜測進行的，人人都必須如此；他發現伽桑狄盡力讓伊壁鳩魯的學說變得可口，和笛卡兒的旋渦，兩者同樣該被推翻。他預言引力也會有同樣的命運，現在的學者們正熱心地主張它。他說新的自然體系不過是新的時尚，每個時代都不同；即使那些自稱用數學原理證明它們的人，也只會興盛短短一段時間，等那被確定時就過時了。我想起洞窟裡一塊曾是暖的石頭，沒有說出來；我覺得一塊石頭不是一個體系。

我花了五天與許多別的古代學者交談。我見到了最早的幾位羅馬皇帝。我說服總督召來赫利奧加巴盧斯的廚師為我們做一頓飯，可是由於缺少材料，他們沒法顯出多少手藝。阿格西勞斯的一個黑勞士給我們做了一道斯巴達肉湯，我連第二匙都喝不下去。我記得他是以四十一攪動的，而它似乎就是照那個樣子做出來的。

陪我到島上來的兩位紳士，因為私事緊迫，三天後就得回去，我利用這三天去看一些近代的死者，是在過去兩三百年間在我們自己國家和歐洲別的國家裡最有聲望的人；而我一向非常敬佩舊日的名門望族，要總督召來一二十位國王，連同他們九代祖先依次序出現。可是我的失望是沉重而意外的。因為我看到的不是一長列戴著王冠的人，而是一個家族裡有兩個提琴手、三個衣冠楚楚的朝臣和一位意大利主教。另一個家族裡有一個理髮匠、一位修道院長和兩位紅衣主教。我對君王的頭銜太敬重，不敢在這麼微妙的題目上多說了。可是至於伯爵、侯爵、公爵之類，我就沒有那麼拘謹。我承認，我能追溯某些家族賴以區別於人的特徵到它們的源頭，這並非沒有一點快意。我能清楚看出，一個家族的長下巴是從哪裡來的；為什麼第二個家族兩代盡出無賴，又兩代盡出傻瓜；為什麼第三個瘋瘋癲癲，第四個是騙子。他們的腕什麼也告訴不了我，全是一樣的；是下巴告訴了我，而我從來沒有這樣感謝過一個下巴。當我看到家譜被侍童、跟班、男僕、車夫、賭徒、提琴手、演員、軍官和扒手這麼打斷時，我也無法對這一切感到驚奇。

我最厭惡的是近代史。因為我嚴格審查了過去一百年間宮廷中所有最有名的人物，發現世人是被賣文的作家怎樣誤導的，他們把戰爭中最大的功績歸給懦夫，把最明智的謀略歸給蠢人，把真誠歸給諂媚者，把羅馬的美德歸給出賣祖國的人，把虔誠歸給無神論者，把真實歸給告密者。有多少無辜而優秀的人，因大臣對法官的腐化和黨派的惡意而被判死刑或流放；有多少惡棍被提升到最高的信任、權力、尊榮和利益的職位；鴇母、娼妓、皮條客、食客和小丑，在宮廷、會議和議院的行動與事件中，可以說佔去了多大的份額。當我真正得知偉大事業與世界革命的來龍去脈、以及它們賴以成功的微不足道的偶然時，我對人類的智慧與誠實的評價是多麼低。

在這裡我發現那些自稱寫軼事或祕史的人的惡劣與無知：他們把那麼多國王用一杯毒酒送進墳墓；複述親王與首相之間沒有任何證人在場的談話；打開大使和國務大臣的思想與機密櫃子；而永遠不幸地弄錯。在這裡我發現許多使世界吃驚的大事的真正原因：一個娼妓怎樣能支配後樓梯，後樓梯支配一個會議，會議支配一個議院。一位將軍當著我的面承認，他的勝利純粹是靠懦弱和指揮失當；我問他當時是多少。他說有人告訴他是一百三十一，那是他逃跑的速度；對方的將軍，他聽說，是一百四十，朝相反方向，騎著一匹更好的馬。一位海軍上將承認，由於缺乏適當的情報，他打敗了他打算向其出賣艦隊的敵人。三位國王向我聲稱，他們整個在位期間，從來沒有一次提拔過一個有才德的人，除非是出於誤會或某個他們信任的大臣的叛賣；如果他們能重活一次，也不會這樣做；他們以強有力的理由證明，王座沒有腐敗是無法維持的，因為美德灌注給一個人的那種肯定、自信、倔強的脾氣，是公共事務永遠的絆腳石。其中一位說，一個有美德的人腕是穩的，而一個宮廷是必須繞過去的東西。

我有好奇心，特別想知道，許多人是用什麼方法為自己取得了崇高的爵位和巨額的產業；我把我的調查限於一個很近代的時期，然而又不觸及當代，因為我決心不得罪任何人，即使是外國人（我希望讀者不用被告知，我在這個場合所說的絕不是指我自己的國家）；召來了許多有關的人；稍加審問就暴露出這樣一幅可恥的景象，我一想起它就不能不嚴肅。我對他們每個人在同一個地方問同一個問題，每個人給了同一個回答，任何地方都沒有升。偽證、壓迫、教唆、欺詐、拉皮條等等這類缺點，在他們能提到的手段中算是最可原諒的，對這些，我給了應有的充分寬容。可是當有些人承認，他們的顯赫與財富來自出賣祖國或君主，另一些來自下毒，更多的來自歪曲司法以毀滅無辜者，我希望我能被原諒，如果這些發現使我對高貴地位的人本來那種深深的敬畏稍有減少，那些人本應受到我們這些下位者按其崇高尊嚴所應有的最大尊敬。

我常讀到對君主和國家做過的一些偉大服務，想見見做出這些服務的人。查問之後被告知，他們的名字在任何記錄中都找不到，只有少數幾個，歷史把他們寫成最卑鄙的惡棍和叛徒。至於其餘的，我連聽都沒聽說過。他們全都神色沮喪，衣著最寒酸，大多數告訴我，他們死於貧窮和恥辱，其餘死在斷頭台或絞架上。

在其中有一個人，情形有點特殊。他身邊站著一個約十八歲的青年。他告訴我，他多年來是一艘船的指揮官，在亞克興海戰中，幸運地衝破敵人的大戰列，擊沉了他們三艘主力艦，奪取了第四艘，這是安東尼逃跑和隨之而來的勝利的唯一原因；站在他身邊的青年，他的獨子，在戰鬥中陣亡。他又說，戰爭結束後，他懷著幾分功勞的信心去了羅馬，在奧古斯都的宮廷上請求提升到一艘更大的船，那艘船的指揮官已陣亡；但完全不顧他的資歷，那艘船被給了一個從未見過海的男孩，是利貝蒂娜的兒子，她侍候皇帝的一位寵姬。回到自己的船上，他被指控玩忽職守，船被給了副將普布利科拉的一個寵愛的侍童；於是他退隱到離羅馬很遠的一處窮農場，在那裡了結了一生。我非常想知道這故事的真假，就要求召阿格里帕來，他是那場海戰的上將。他來了，證實了整個敘述，不過對那位艦長更有利得多，他的謙虛減輕或隱瞞了他的功績的很大一部分。那位艦長和他的兒子靠得那麼近，我分不出我在數的是哪一個；男孩的手插在他父親斗篷的口袋裡，像孩子那樣。在我手上唯一的一欄裡，他們同歲。

我驚訝地發現，那個帝國的腐敗，由於新近才引進的奢侈，發展得這樣高、這樣快；這使我對其他國家的許多類似情況不那麼奇怪了，那些國家的各種惡習盛行得更久，那裡的全部讚美，連同掠奪，被統帥一人獨佔，而他也許是兩者都最不夠格的人。

因為每個被召來的人都與他們在世上時的樣子完全一樣，我不禁憂鬱地想到，人類在過去一百年間，在我們當中退化得多麼厲害；梅毒，連同它的種種後果與名稱，怎樣改變了英國人面貌的每一條線條；縮短了身體的大小，鬆弛了神經，使筋肉萎縮，帶來了蠟黃的膚色，使肌肉鬆軟腐壞。那天夜裡我算了一筆帳。照兩境的規則，一個身體矮一成，拍就快一成。一百年前的英國人，在門框上比他們的孫輩高一掌，他們自己的拍，如果任其自然，會是五十三或五十四。我曾以為六十是人的拍。它是這個時代的人的拍。

我降低身分，要求召來一些舊式的英國自耕農，他們曾以風俗、飲食、衣著的簡樸，以買賣中的公正，以真正的自由精神，以勇敢和愛國而著名。比較了活人與死人之後，我想到所有這些純樸的天然美德，被他們的孫輩為一點錢而出賣，那些孫輩在賣選票和操縱選舉時，學會了在宮廷中所能學到的每一種惡習與腐敗，我也不能全然無動於衷。

## 第27章 · 作者回到馬爾多納達，航向拉格奈格。海關拿他的腕，一個尋常大小的謊被放行。他舔了國王地板上的塵土。斯特魯爾德布魯格被描述，作者如癡如狂，說出他將怎樣永遠活著，永遠是六十。

動身的日子到了，我向格魯布杜布利布的總督殿下辭行，與我的兩位同伴回到馬爾多納達，等了兩個星期，一條開往拉格奈格的船準備好了。那兩位紳士和另外一些人，非常慷慨好意，為我備了食物，並送我上船。這次航行花了一個月。我們遇到一場猛烈的風暴，不得不向西駛，才進入信風帶，信風持續六十多里格。我頭一個星期每天正午搖那個膀胱，後來忘了；到第十天，我發現自己不需要了，我記下這件事，不加評論，因為塔爾沃說過不要只信一樣東西。一七〇八年四月二十一日，我們駛進克盧梅尼格河，那是拉格奈格東南端的一個港口城鎮。我們在離城一里格處下錨，發出信號要領航員。不到半個鐘頭，兩個領航員上船來，領著我們穿過幾處在通道上非常危險的淺灘和礁石，進到一個大港灣，一支艦隊能在那裡安全停泊，離城牆只有一纜之遙。

我們有些水手，不知是出於背叛還是疏忽，告訴了領航員我是個陌生人、大旅行家；領航員又把這事通知了一位海關官員，我上岸時他非常嚴格地盤問我。他拿我的腕，先於問我的名字，這在拉格奈格是慣例的次序。這位官員用巴爾尼巴比的語言對我說話，由於貿易頻繁，那個城裡大體上都懂，尤其是水手和海關人員。我認為必須隱瞞我的國籍，自稱荷蘭人，因為我的目的地是日本，而我知道荷蘭人是歐洲人中唯一獲准進入那個王國的。我說了，它是六十五，說之前是六十一。他看著那個數字，毫不驚訝地寫下來，告訴我簿子上有一欄，記陌生人說的和腕說的，差三四是平常的，放行；差七以上，送上去給國王。我從沒說過這麼尋常大小的謊。我記下：那是一種感覺。

於是我對官員說，我在巴爾尼巴比海岸遇難，被拋到一塊岩石上，被收進勒皮他，也就是飛島（他常聽說過），現在正設法去日本，從那裡我也許能找到回國的便利。官員說我必須被拘禁，直到他收到宮廷的命令，他立刻寫信去，希望兩個星期內得到答覆。我被送到一個舒適的住處，門口派了一個哨兵；不過我有一座大花園可以活動，被相當人道地對待，整個期間由國王負擔供養。有幾位人士邀請我，主要是出於好奇，因為傳說我是從非常遙遠、他們從沒聽說過的國家來的。

我雇了一個和我同船來的年輕人當翻譯。他是拉格奈格本地人，卻在馬爾多納達住過幾年，兩種語言都十分精通。他十九歲，自己的拍是七十，他說這是他這一行的速度，因為翻譯是按字數付酬的。靠他的幫助，我才能與來訪的人交談；但這只是他們的問題和我的回答。

宮廷的公文在我們預料的時間到了。內容是一道命令，由十騎一隊護送我和我的隨從到特拉德拉格杜布，又叫特里德羅格德里布（因為據我記得兩種念法都有）。我的隨從只有那個可憐的年輕人當翻譯，我說服他為我做事，在我謙卑的請求下，我們各騎一頭騾子。一位信使先我們半天的路程出發，通知國王我快到了，並請求陛下指定一天一時辰，何時他龍心喜悅，我得以榮幸地在他腳凳前舔塵土。

這是宮廷的措辭，我發現它不只是形式：因為我被接見時，在到達後兩天，我被命令用肚子爬行，一路舔著地板前進。但由於我是外國人，特別留意把地打掃得那麼乾淨，塵土並不令人討厭。不過這是一種特殊的恩典，除了身分最高的人要求接見之外，不給別人。甚至有時，如果要被接見的人在宮中有強大的敵人，地板會故意撒上灰塵；我見過一位大貴人，嘴裡塞得那麼滿，爬到離寶座適當的距離時，一個字也說不出。也沒有任何補救辦法，因為在君王面前接受接見的人，吐出來或擦嘴是死罪。我爬的時候把兩根手指伸進繩子下面，按在地板上，是七十四。一個人用肚子爬行，每分鐘約二十，這是自從巨人以來，在我面前任何人走過的最慢的速度；朝臣們在兩旁成排站著，是六十，看著我過去，像看著一件發生在當事人的步調上的事。

還有一種習俗，我不能完全贊同。當國王想用一種溫和、寬容的方式處死他的某位貴族時，他命令在地板上撒一種致命的褐色粉末，舔了之後必定在二十四小時內死亡。我注意到這個期限是總督的。不過為了公道地說這位君主的大仁慈和他對臣民性命的關心（歐洲的君王們很該效法他），必須為他的榮譽提一句：他有嚴令，每次這樣處決之後，要把被汙染的那一部分地板洗乾淨；僕人們如果疏忽，就要冒招致他的御怒的危險。我自己就聽見他下令鞭打他的一個侍從，那人輪到通知處決後洗地板，卻惡意遺漏了；因這疏忽，一位前途無量的青年貴族來朝見時，不幸被毒死，雖然國王那時並沒有要他的命的意思。但這位好君主非常仁慈，答應那個可憐的侍從以後沒有特別命令不再這樣做，就饒了他的鞭打。

回到正題。我爬到離寶座四碼之內，輕輕直起身跪著，然後用前額在地上叩了七下，說出前一夜教給我的下面這些話：Ickpling gloffthrobb squutserumm blhiop mlashnalt zwin tnodbalkguffh slhiophad gurdlubh asht。這是依該國法律，一切獲准覲見國王的人的規定問候語。可以翻成這樣：「願陛下的天上的威儀，活得比太陽長，多十一個半月！」我是從一座每天早晨問太陽的健康的島來的。在這裡，他們祝國王更長壽。

國王回答了幾句，我聽不懂，不過我照教我的回答：Fluft drin yalerick dwuldom prastrad mirpush，意思是「我的舌頭在我朋友的嘴裡」；這句話的意思是我請求准許帶我的翻譯進來；於是前面提到的年輕人就被引了進來，靠他的居間，我回答了陛下一個多鐘頭裡所能提出的許多問題。我說巴爾尼巴比語，翻譯把我的意思用拉格奈格語傳達。

國王很喜歡我作伴，命令他的布利夫馬克盧布，也就是大內侍，在宮裡給我和翻譯安排一個住處，每日給我膳食津貼，還給了一大袋金幣作日常費用。我在這個國家待了三個月，是完全服從陛下，他很優待我，提出了非常光榮的條件。但我覺得與妻兒共度餘生，更合乎審慎與正義。

拉格奈格人是有禮而慷慨的民族；雖然他們不是沒有那種東方各國所特有的驕傲，但對外國人很有禮貌，尤其是那些受宮廷看重的。我有許多相識，都是上層人士；又總有翻譯陪著，我們的談話並不令人不快。

有一天，在一群很好的人當中，一位有身分的人問我，是不是見過他們的斯特魯爾德布魯格，也就是不死者。我說沒有，請他向我解釋，他把這樣的稱呼加在一個有死的生物身上是什麼意思。他告訴我，有時，雖然很少，一個家庭裡會生下一個孩子，前額上，左眉毛正上方，有一個紅色圓斑，那是這孩子永遠不會死的絕對標記。他描述那圓斑，大小約如一個銀三便士，隨時間變大，並改變顏色；因為十二歲時變綠，這樣持續到二十五歲，然後變成深藍；四十五歲時變成炭黑，大如一先令，此後不再有任何變化。他說這樣的出生非常罕見，他不相信全國會有一千一百個以上的斯特魯爾德布魯格，男女都算；其中他估計首都約有五十個，其中有一個三年前出生的小女孩；這些人並不專屬某個家族，只是偶然的結果；斯特魯爾德布魯格自己的孩子和別人一樣會死。

聽到這番敘述，我坦白承認，我感到無法言喻的歡喜；說這話的人碰巧懂巴爾尼巴比語，我說得很好，我忍不住脫口說了些也許有點過分的話。我如癡如狂地喊道：「幸福的國家，每個孩子都至少有一個成為不死者的機會！幸福的人民，享有這麼多古代美德的活生生的典範，有現成的老師教導他們過去一切時代的智慧！可是最幸福的，無可比擬，是那些卓越的斯特魯爾德布魯格，他們生來就免於人類本性的普遍災難，他們的心靈自由而無羈，沒有因時時對死亡的憂懼所造成的精神重壓與消沉！」我表示驚訝，我在宮中沒見過這些傑出人物，前額上的黑斑是那麼顯著的標誌，我不可能輕易忽略；而陛下作為一位極明智的君主，不可能不為自己配備相當數目這樣的睿智能幹的顧問。我決心一有機會，就把我對這件事的看法，自由而詳盡地向他陳述；而陛下既然屢次給我在這個國家的一個安置，不論他是否採納我的建議，有一件事我已決定，我會懷著極大的感激接受這個恩典，在這裡與這些超凡的人交談，度過我的一生，只要他們肯接納我。

我對他說這番話的那位紳士，帶著一種通常出於對無知者的憐憫而生的微笑對我說，他很高興有任何機會把我留在他們當中，並請求我允許他向大家解釋我所說的。他這樣做了，他們用自己的語言一起談了一會兒，我一個音節也聽不懂，也從他們的臉色看不出我的話對他們產生了什麼印象。短暫的沉默之後，同一個人告訴我，他的朋友們和我的朋友們（他這樣說是他自己覺得適當的）對我就永生的大幸福與好處所作的明智的評論非常高興，他們希望特別知道，如果我命中注定生為一個斯特魯爾德布魯格，我會為自己設計一種什麼樣的生活。

我回答說，這麼豐富而愉快的題目，要雄辯是容易的，特別是對我，我常喜歡用想像自己如果是國王、將軍或大貴人，該做些什麼來自娛；就是這個情形，我也曾經常把整個計畫過一遍，如果我確定能永遠活著，我該怎樣安排自己、度過時間。如果我運氣好，生來就是一個斯特魯爾德布魯格，一旦能發現自己的幸福，也就是明白生與死的區別，我首先會決心用一切技巧和方法為自己取得財富；在追求財富時，靠節儉與經營，我可以合理地期待，大約兩百年之後，成為王國最富有的人。第二，我會從最早的青年時代起，致力於技藝與科學的研究，以至到時候超過所有別人的學問。最後，我會仔細記錄公共領域發生的每一件重要的事，不偏不倚地描繪歷代君王和大臣的性格，附上我自己對每一點的觀察，並確切記下風俗、語言、衣著、飲食和娛樂的種種變化。有了這一切成就，我將成為一座知識與智慧的活寶庫，必定成為國家的神諭。

六十歲以後我絕不再結婚，而是過好客的生活，但仍然偏於節儉。我會以培養和指導有希望的青年的心智為樂，用我自己的記憶、經驗和觀察，輔以許多實例，說服他們美德在公私生活中的用處。但我選定的常伴，應當是我自己不死者兄弟的一夥，其中我會從最古老的直到我的同輩，選出十二位；你們有死的人當中，我只混進幾位最有價值的，時間久了我會變得失去他們也沒什麼不情願，並同樣對待你們的後代，就像一個人在花園裡逐年欣賞石竹和鬱金香的更替，並不為前一年枯萎的那些惋惜。而且我要看見國家和帝國的興亡、古城成為廢墟、無名的村莊成為國王的駐地；經度的發現、永動機、萬靈藥，和許多別的偉大發明被推到極致；我還要在天文學上作出奇妙的發現，靠活得比自己的預言更久而證實它們，並觀察彗星的歷程與歸來。我又補充說，因為這是我自己的腕告訴我的，我將永遠是六十，那是一個人所能有的最好的數字，我看不出我和他們之間有什麼可選擇的。

我還就許多別的題目作了闡述，那都是對無盡生命與塵世幸福的天然渴望所能提供給我的。我說完了，我的話的大意像先前一樣被翻譯給在座的其他人，他們用本國語言談了很久，並不是沒有幾分笑聲，拿我開玩笑。最後，同一位當過我翻譯的紳士說，他受大家的托，要糾正我在幾點上的錯誤，那是我由於人性共有的軟弱而犯的，在這個寬容之下，我所負的責任也較輕。

## 第28章 · 那位紳士糾正作者對斯特魯爾德布魯格的看法：那個數字不會保持。作者見到了他們，並把手蓋在一根繩子上。他想永遠活著的欲望大大減退，他為自己是五十一而高興。

他說，這種斯特魯爾德布魯格是他們國家特有的，巴爾尼巴比或日本都沒有這樣的人，他曾榮幸地作為陛下的大使在日本待過，發現這兩個王國的居民都很難相信這件事是可能的；從我當初聽他說起時的驚訝看來，我是把它當作一件全新的、幾乎不可信的事接受的。在上述兩個王國，他住在那裡期間，曾與許多人交談過，他觀察到長壽是人類普遍的願望。凡是一隻腳已踏進墳墓的人，都要盡力把另一隻腳往回縮。最老的人仍然希望再活一天，把死亡看作最大的惡，天性總驅使他從它面前退縮。只有在拉格奈格這座島上，求生的欲望沒有那麼強烈，這是因為斯特魯爾德布魯格的榜樣時常在他們眼前。

他說我設計的生活方式是不合理也不公正的，因為它假定了青春、健康和活力的永久，沒有人會愚蠢到抱這種希望，不論他的願望怎樣奢侈。所以問題不在於一個人是否選擇永遠處於青春盛年，伴隨著繁榮與健康，而在於他要怎樣度過一個永久的生命，帶著衰老通常帶來的種種不利。因為雖然很少人會承認，在這樣苛刻的條件下渴望不死，但在前面提到的兩個王國，他觀察到每個人都想把死亡推遲一點，不論它來得多晚；他很少聽說有誰自願地死去，除非受到極度悲痛或折磨的驅使。他又向我求證，在我旅行過的那些國家，以及我自己的國家，是不是也觀察到同樣的普遍傾向。

他問我，我是拿過許多腕的人，我想一個不停止的人，那個數字會變成什麼。我說我想它會保持。他說這是年輕人最常犯的錯誤：那個數字一直在往下走，在我身上，在他身上，每年一根頭髮；在一個有死的人身上它一直走到終點，而終點就是停止；在一個斯特魯爾德布魯格身上，往下走繼續，停止卻不來。

這番開場白之後，他給了我一個關於他們當中的斯特魯爾德布魯格的詳細敘述。他說他們通常在三十歲左右以前，行動與有死的人一樣，此後漸漸變得憂鬱消沉，兩者都越來越重，直到八十歲。這是他從他們自己的坦白得知的；因為除此之外，一個時代裡這種人只出生兩三個，太少了，無法據以作一般觀察。到了八十歲，這在該國算是壽命的極限，他們不但有其他老人的全部愚蠢與衰弱，還有許多出於對永不能死的可怕前景而生的。他們不但固執、易怒、貪婪、陰沉、虛榮、多話，而且不能友愛，對一切天然的感情都死了，那感情從不下及孫輩以下。他說，八十歲時他們是四十八，差不多是我在巨人當中時的拍；而周圍六十的世界，對於去愛，快了一點點。

嫉妒和無力的欲望是他們主要的情感。但他們嫉妒的主要對象，是年輕人的惡行和老人的死亡。想到前者，他們發現自己被切斷了一切享樂的可能；每逢看見葬禮，他們就悲歎，怨恨別人已去了一個安息的港灣，而他們永遠沒有希望到達。他們除了青年和中年時所學所見之外，什麼也不記得，而且連那些也很不完整；對任何事實的真相或細節，依靠通常的傳說比依靠他們最好的回憶更安全。他像醫生那樣解釋：世界從他們身邊走過，每年快一點，而快到來不及接收的東西，是不會被記住的。「他們不是忘記，」他說，「事情發生的時候，他們不在那裡。」他們當中比較不悲慘的，似乎是那些變得老糊塗、完全失去記憶的；這些人受到更多的憐憫與幫助，因為他們沒有其他人身上那許多壞品質。

如果一個斯特魯爾德布魯格碰巧與同類結婚，按王國的慣例，只要兩人中較年輕的那個到了八十歲，婚姻就自動解除；因為法律認為這是合理的寬容：那些無辜地被判決永遠繼續活在世上的人，不該再因妻子的負擔而使痛苦加倍。一滿八十歲，他們在法律上就被視為死了；他們的繼承人立刻繼承他們的產業；只留下一小筆津貼供他們生活，貧窮的由公費供養。過了這個期限，他們被認為不能擔任任何有信任或利益的職務；不能購買土地或承租；也不許在任何訴訟中作證人，民事或刑事都不行，連為界石和界限的判定也不行。法律說了理由：證人必須在場，而拍是四十八的人，是在一件事之後一點才在場。

九十歲時他們掉牙掉髮；在那個年紀他們已沒有味覺的區分，只要弄得到什麼就吃什麼喝什麼，沒有興味也沒有食慾。他們原來有的疾病繼續著，既不增加也不減少。說話時，他們忘了事物的通常名稱和人的名字，連最親近的朋友親戚的也忘。同樣的緣故，他們永遠不能靠閱讀消遣，因為他們的記憶不夠把他們從一句話的開頭帶到結尾；這個缺陷使他們被剝奪了他們本來可能有的唯一的娛樂。他說，一句話在六十時約需四秒，四十時約需六秒，我可以想想，一頁書對一個拍是四十二、記憶只有三個詞的人是什麼。

這個國家的語言總在流動，所以一個時代的斯特魯爾德布魯格聽不懂另一個時代的；兩百年之後，他們也無法與他們的有死的鄰居交談，除了幾個一般的詞；這樣他們活得像自己國家裡的外國人，處在不利之中。兩百歲時他們是二十八，鄰居是一片嘰嘰咕咕。幾個一般的詞，說得慢一點，是能傳過去的，而沒有人有那個時間。

這就是人家給我的關於斯特魯爾德布魯格的敘述，就我所記得的。後來我見到了五六個不同年紀的，最年輕的不到兩百歲，他們是被我的朋友在不同時候帶來見我的；雖然有人告訴他們我是個大旅行家，看過整個世界，他們卻一點好奇心也沒有，一個問題也不問我；只要求我給他們 slumskudask，也就是紀念物；這是一種客氣的乞討方式，用以規避嚴禁乞討的法律，因為他們由公家供養，雖然津貼十分微薄。

最年輕的那位下午由兩個挑夫用椅子抬來，會面一直持續到黃昏。他是二十八。他花了十一分鐘才開口要他的紀念物，這個詞很長而他的氣很短，他是對著我左邊的牆說的，因為在第二個音節時他丟了我的臉的位置。我的翻譯有一個按字數付酬的人的耐心，在它到達時，對我重複了三次。我把兩根手指按在他的腕上；像把一隻手放在一條船的側面。我看見他一直在看我的另一隻手；看那根繩子。我把手蓋在上面。我不為那隻手驕傲。翻譯說，他向每個人要，法律規定他不許乞討而習慣上他可以要，而那根繩子對他什麼也不是；可是他的眼睛在它上面，我的手一直放在那兒，直到我找到一枚銀鈕扣放進他手裡，他握了一會兒，沒有合上手指，然後，非常慢地，合上了。

他們被所有各種人輕視和憎恨。當他們中的一個出生，被視為不祥，他們的出生被極詳細地記錄，所以查登記冊就能知道他們的年紀，不過那冊子沒有保存超過一千年，或者至少已被時間或公共動亂毀壞了。可是通常計算他們多大的辦法，是問他們記得哪些國王或大人物，然後查歷史；因為最後一個在他們記憶中的君主，必定不是在他們八十歲以後才登基的。

他們是我見過最令人難堪的景象；女的比男的更可怕。除了極老年通常的畸形之外，他們隨著年數的增加，又獲得一種額外的可怖，那是無法描寫的；在六七個人當中，我很快就分辨出誰最老，雖然他們之間相差不到一兩個世紀。我不用看臉，看腕就能說出來：二十八、二十一、十六、十一、九、七。

第七個是個女人，最年長的，我被帶去在一間穀物商人鋪子樓上的屋子裡看她。我聽說她從上上一朝以前就被安放在窗邊，家裡人沒有挪動過她，因為沒有這個必要。我站在那裡的那一個鐘頭裡，她把頭抬到了窗台的高度，那就是她那一天的全部事務。這家一個大約六歲的小女孩，在我看著的時候，爬上她的膝蓋又爬下來兩次，老婦人沒有看見她走。翻譯說，那孩子是她第十四代的後裔，老婦人不認得她；照那孩子動的速度，幾乎不能說她們屬於同一個物種。我握著那個腕整整一分鐘，那是外科醫生避免欺騙自己的辦法，數到七，我沒有力氣再握第二分鐘。

我有一次在首都的街上看見那個三年前出生的小女孩，在她保姆的懷裡，左眉毛上方的斑紅得像漿果，大小約如一個銀三便士。她三歲，她是一百四十，像任何孩子一樣，她對一條狗笑，那條狗跑過去，比她看得清的更快。保姆看見我在看，就匆匆把她抱走，像人把一個孩子匆匆帶過一個盯得太久的陌生人。我不知道她以為我想要什麼。我想要有人告訴我，她只是個孩子，沒有人這樣說。

讀者很容易相信，從我所聽見所見到的，我對永遠活著的強烈欲望大大減退了。我為自己形成的那些愉快的幻想感到十分羞愧，並想，沒有任何暴君能發明一種死法，是我寧願欣然走進、也不願過那種生活的。我說過我將永遠是六十。那天夜裡我想起它，就像一個人想起一張他簽了名的帳單。國王聽說了我與朋友們在這件事上的全部談話，很風趣地取笑我；希望我能送一兩個斯特魯爾德布魯格去我自己的國家，使我們的人民不再怕死；可是這似乎是被王國的基本法律禁止的，否則我也樂意承擔運送他們的麻煩和費用。

我不能不同意，這個王國關於斯特魯爾德布魯格的法律，是建立在最有力的理由上的，任何別的國家處在類似的情況下，也不得不這樣立法。否則，因為貪婪是老年必然的後果，這些不死者終究要成為全國的地主，並把持民政權力；他們又缺乏管理的才幹，這必以公共的毀滅告終。

那天夜裡我拿了自己的腕。是五十一，那是我妻子在門口給我的數字，我為它高興，這是我先前沒有過的。它比六十低，而且還會繼續低下去。我沒有搖那個膀胱。我躺了很久，兩根手指放在原處，數著；到第六分鐘，在一拍和下一拍之間，我明白了拍終將有個終點，而我，若上帝願意，將在雷德里夫的一張床上，當它到來；然後我睡著了。

## 第29章 · 作者離開拉格奈格，航向日本。在長崎有人拿了他的腕，帶了九個月的那個詞向他解釋了，並有人問是誰的。他經阿姆斯特丹回到雷德里夫，妻子數他五十三，他數她六十八。第三部結束。

我想，關於斯特魯爾德布魯格的這番敘述也許能給讀者一點消遣，因為它似乎有點不尋常；至少我不記得在任何到過我手的遊記裡讀過類似的東西；如果我弄錯了，我的託詞必須是：描寫同一個國家的旅行家，往往不得不在同一些細節上意見一致，而不該因此受到抄襲或轉錄在先者的指責。這個王國與日本大帝國之間確實有不斷的貿易；日本的作家很可能已經對斯特魯爾德布魯格作過一些記載；可是我在日本逗留得那麼短，對那種語言又完全陌生，我只在那裡問了一件事，等一下就說到。我希望荷蘭人得到這個通知之後，會有足夠的好奇心和能力，來補我的不足。

陛下屢次勸我接受宮中的某個職位，見我決意要回祖國，就開恩准我離去，並賜我一封他親筆寫給日本天皇的推薦信。他又贈我四百四十四枚大金幣（這個民族喜歡雙數）和一顆紅鑽石，大小約如一個銀三便士，我不喜歡看它，回到雷德里夫把它賣了一千一百信用點。

一七〇九年五月六日，我向陛下和所有朋友莊重地辭行。這位君主非常仁慈，下令派一隊衛兵護送我到格蘭根斯塔爾德，那是島西南部的一個王家港口。六天後我找到一條船準備載我去日本，航程花了十五天。我們在日本東南部一個叫薩莫斯基的小港鎮登陸；這座鎮在西邊的岬角上，那裡有一道向北的窄水道，通入一條長長的海灣，海灣的西北部就是首都江戶。

上岸時，我把拉格奈格國王給日本皇帝的信拿給海關官員看。他們對那枚印記非常熟悉；它有我手掌那麼寬。圖案是：一位國王把一個瘸腿的乞丐從地上扶起來。我看了它很久，比官員們認為適當的還要久。城裡的官吏聽說我有那封信，就把我當作公使接待。他們給我備了馬車和僕人，並負擔我到江戶的開銷，在那裡我得到一次覲見，呈上了信，信在大禮中被拆開，由一位翻譯向皇帝解釋，翻譯隨後奉皇帝之命通知我，要我說出我的請求，不論是什麼，都會批准，這是為了他的王兄拉格奈格國王的緣故。

皇帝在一道紙屏風後面，依日本的方式，我沒有看見他的手。翻譯低聲告訴我，那個王國裡四百年來沒有人拿過皇帝的腕，屏風就是為此而設；朝廷靠一個猜出來的數字過得很好，而那個猜測到現在還沒有錯，或至少沒有人說過錯。我想起小境的一座高台，和一個在朝廷面前被大聲念出、我寫下來的數字；我向紙屏風鞠了躬。

這位翻譯是專門負責與荷蘭人辦事的人。他在門口拿了我的腕，他們現在這樣做，是向荷蘭人學的，他發現是六十六，他說對一個遭難的商人來說算是平靜的；他很快從我的面貌推測我是歐洲人，就用低地荷蘭語重複皇帝的命令，他說得十分流利。我照先前決定的回答：我是一個荷蘭商人，在一個非常遙遠的國家遇難，從那裡經海陸到了拉格奈格，又搭船來日本，我知道我的同胞常到這裡來貿易，我希望從他們當中得到回歐洲的機會；因此我最謙卑地懇求他的御恩，下令把我安全地送到長崎。

我又加了一個請求：看在我的恩主拉格奈格國王的分上，請陛下屈尊免除我的同胞所被要求的踐踏十字架的儀式，因為我是被不幸拋到他的王國的，並沒有任何貿易的意圖。這後一個請求被翻譯給皇帝聽時，他似乎有些驚訝，說他相信我是我的同胞中第一個在這一點上有顧慮的人；又說他開始懷疑我是不是真的荷蘭人，而更像是個基督徒。然而，為了我所提的理由，主要是為了用一個不尋常的恩典使拉格奈格國王滿意，他願意遷就我這種怪脾氣；不過這事必須辦得巧妙，他的官員會奉命讓我過去，似乎出於遺忘。因為他向我保證，如果這個祕密被我的同胞荷蘭人發現，他們會在航程中割斷我的喉嚨。

我透過翻譯對這麼不尋常的恩典表示感謝；當時正好有些軍隊在開往長崎的路上，指揮官奉命把我安全護送到那裡，並得到關於十字架那件事的特別指示。一七〇九年六月九日，我經過一段很長很艱難的旅程，到達了長崎。

士兵們以六十行進，我也以六十和他們一起，走了十九天。我一生中從沒走過一段長路而不必決定自己的步調，我發現我比我預料的喜歡得多，而我不信任這種感覺。夜裡，在旅店裡，軍官們拿他們部下的腕寫下來，每一個都和簿子相差不超過三；我醒著，聽三十個人以同一個拍呼吸，為自己睡得那麼好感到羞愧。

在水門，那是一座低矮的石拱門，就算正午，下面也點著一盞燈，外國人從船上一個一個上來，在那裡登記入冊，一位拿著毛筆的老書記拿了我的腕。他們在那裡拿腕，像拿一隻鳥，拇指按在腕片上，整個腕握在手裡。指揮官對他說了一個詞，我以為是關於十字架那件事，他就在一欄寫了「已遺忘」；在另一欄寫了我的數字，七十，和我的名字，那不是我的名字；他正要放下毛筆，看見了那根繩子。我發現我已經有好幾個月習慣用另一隻手蓋著它。我把那隻手拿開。我想起那位最年輕的斯特魯爾德布魯格，和他曾對牆提出的要求。書記說：「卡塔米。」

這個詞我帶了九個月。我對他重複了一遍。他第一次抬起頭來。港口的翻譯是為了登記進來的，會說低地荷蘭語，他說那是個古老的詞，不常用，意思是從一個人身上留下的一樣東西，當那個人不在那裡來留著它，或是不再在那裡了。「一根頭髮是最常見的。」他說。書記又說了話，翻譯說他在問，是誰的。

沒有人問過。我妻子沒有問；碼頭上的船長沒有；塔爾沃只說有人把我維持住了。我用低地荷蘭語說，那不是我想過要用來說這話的語言，說它是一個女孩的。他問多大。我說九歲。他問在哪裡。我說我不知道路；它在海的那一邊；在那個國家她有四十呎高。翻譯沒有把最後那句翻成日語。他問她還活著嗎。我說我不知道。書記拿起毛筆，在冊子的邊上、各欄之外寫了兩個字，拿給我看，翻譯說那就是那個詞。我問我可不可以要那一頁。他說不行。他又把它寫在一張紙條上，那張紙條我留著，夾在小冊子裡，在死者的幾頁之間。［頁邊：格列佛太太在這一段旁用鉛筆寫了：「問了。」辛普森按。］

我很快結識了一些阿姆斯特丹「安汶號」上的荷蘭水手，那是一條四百五十噸的堅固大船。我在荷蘭住過很久，在萊登求學，荷蘭語說得很好。水手們很快知道我最後是從哪裡來的：他們好奇地詢問我的航行和經歷。我編了一個盡量簡短而可信的故事，卻隱瞞了大部分。我在荷蘭認識許多人。我能為我的父母編造名字，假裝他們是海爾德蘭省的無名人物。我是在六十五的拍子上說的，一個尋常大小的謊，那條船上沒有人在飯桌上拿我的腕，荷蘭人對這個有種體面的顧慮。

我願意付船長，一個叫西奧多魯斯・凡格魯特的，他要多少就給多少，作為我回荷蘭的船資；可是他知道我是外科醫生，就只收通常的一半，條件是我在我的本行上為他服務。上船之前，船員中有些人常問我，有沒有行過前面說的那個儀式。我用籠統的回答迴避問題，說我在各方面都已使皇帝和朝廷滿意。然而，一個惡意的水手長去找一位軍官，指著我告訴他，我還沒有踐踏十字架；可是那位軍官接到了讓我過去的指示，用竹棍在那惡棍的肩上打了二十下；此後就沒有人再拿這類問題煩我。

這次航行沒有什麼值得一提的事。我們順風駛到好望角，在那裡只停下來取淡水。一七一〇年四月十日，我們平安到達阿姆斯特丹，航行中只因病死了三個人，還有第四個，從前桅掉進海裡，離幾內亞海岸不遠。那三個人，在他們最後一個星期，我拿過他們的腕，寫進了小冊子；至於第四個，我只有前一個正午的，是一百零六。不久之後我從阿姆斯特丹登上該城的一條小船，往家去。

一七一〇年四月十六日我們到了唐斯。第二天早晨我上岸，經過五年零六個月整的離別，又看見了我的祖國。我直接去雷德里夫，當天下午兩點到達，發現妻子和家人都平安健康。

我妻子在門口。我在她來得及拿我的腕之前，先拿了她的，這是我從來沒做過的；她由著我。是六十八。我說我的是五十一，那是我那天早晨在唐斯拿的，她用兩根手指拿了，握著，說是五十三。我說五十一。她說她不跟我爭，那是她上一次說過的話；然後她說她要爭，她算是五十三，我們兩人之間可以說五十二。從此我們就說五十二。

強尼，十一歲，站在樓梯上，一動不動，看著我的臉，就像我從小境回家的那個早晨他站的那樣，我拿了他的腕，他伸出手來，彷彿那是一封信。是七十。他問我最後是多少。我說五十一。他說他在學校是班上最慢的，老師說那是好頭腦的徵象；我說老師是個好心人。貝蒂，十三歲，沒等我說就自己數了我，得出五十四，用鉛筆寫在她的手背上。

晚飯時她給我看五本曆書，背面，用鉛筆，在潮汐表的欄裡：五年六個月的每個正午一個數字，每一個都是她自己的。她說，她數自己，是為了等我回來時，有個東西可以放在我的旁邊。她在她害怕的那些日子旁邊畫了一個小十字；那些日子不多，她沒有說是哪些，我也沒有問，因為我怕我能告訴她。最低的是六十四。我說我最低到過四十九，她問在哪裡，我說在一塊岩石上，她問是哪一塊。要到蠟燭燒短了才說完。我沒有說到那根繩子。我想早晨我會說到。

## 第30章 · 作者在把繩子的事告訴妻子之後，出任一艘船的船長。他的部下謀反，把他長久關在艙房裡，又把他放在一片不知名的陸地上。數不出拍的耶胡被描述。作者遇見兩匹蹄碰蹄的慧駰。

我在家和妻子兒女一起待了大約五個月，過得很快樂，要是我能學會「安好時就要知道自己安好」這一課的話。她每天正午拿我的腕，寫在曆書上，五個月裡它是五十二，上下差一個數；每月初一她給我看那一欄，像農夫給人看田。第三天早晨，我把那根繩子的事告訴了她。在桌邊用去了將近一個鐘頭，她沒有出聲，直到我說完。然後她問那女孩多大，我說九歲，她問我離開那個國家多久了，我說四年，她用嘴唇算了一下，就像她算家用那樣，說：「那就是四個月。」我說是。「那她還沒有停下來，」我妻子說。我說我不知道。她說她知道。

我撇下我可憐的、懷著身孕的妻子，接受了一個有利的聘請，擔任「冒險者號」的船長，那是一條三百五十噸的結實商船；因為我精通航海，又厭倦了船上外科醫生的差事，不過必要時我仍然可以做，就帶了一個技術熟練的年輕醫生，名叫羅伯特・普賴福伊的，上我的船。我不替自己辯護。我只記下：出發那個早晨她在門口拿了我的腕，是六十一，她把它寫下來，而我知道我在做什麼，然後走了。

我們於一七一〇年八月七日從樸茨茅斯啟航；十四日在特內里費遇到布里斯托爾的波科克船長，他要去坎佩切灣砍蘇木。我在碼頭上拿了他的腕，像對一個老相識那樣：是六十三，他告訴我他從沒見它變過，我當作吹牛。十六日他被風暴與我們隔開了；我回國後聽說他的船沉了，只有一個艙童逃出。他是個誠實的人、好水手，只是對自己的意見太肯定了一點，這成了他毀滅的原因，也像許多別人那樣；因為如果他聽了我的勸告，他現在可能和我一樣安全地和家人在一起。我後來想，一個拍從不變的人，是個不能轉彎的人，而我在他身上，太早地，遇見了一樣我將再遇見的東西。

我船上有好幾個人死於熱病，所以我不得不在巴巴多斯和背風群島補充人手，那是我停靠的地方，由僱用我的商人指示的；我很快就有了過多的理由後悔：因為我後來發現，他們大多數是海盜。我在布里奇頓的碼頭上拿了他們的腕，像拿每個人的那樣，寫在簿子裡，它本該告訴我：十五個裡有十一個靜止時就超過一百，而一個外科醫生應該知道那在一艘船上是什麼。我想讓他們忙碌來把他們壓低。我船上有五十個人，我的命令是在南海與印第安人貿易，並盡可能作些發現。

這些我招來的惡棍，把我其他的人也帶壞了，他們全都結成陰謀，要奪船並制服我；他們在一天早晨做到了，衝進我的艙房，把我手腳捆起來，威脅說只要我敢動就把我扔下海。我告訴他們我是他們的囚犯，願意服從。這是他們逼我發誓的，然後鬆了我的綁，只把我的一條腿用鏈子鎖在床邊，在門口派了一個哨兵，槍上了膛，命令只要我企圖逃走就槍斃我。他們給我送飯送水，自己接管了船。他們的計畫是做海盜，劫掠西班牙人，可是這要先有更多人手。但他們先決定賣掉船上的貨物，再到馬達加斯加補充人手，因為我被關著期間他們中又死了幾個。他們航行了好幾個星期，與印第安人交易；可是我不知道他們走的是什麼航線，被嚴密囚禁在我的艙房裡，除了被謀殺什麼也不指望，他們也常這樣威脅我。

艙房裡沒有人數我。我自己的腕拿了一百次，一個數字也不信，因為在獨木舟上我學到了一個由那個人自己做出來的數有什麼價值；頭一個星期是一百一十，第三個星期是六十，我說不出那是恐懼還是熟練。我每天三次輕輕地以六十搖那個膀胱。哨兵隔著門聽得見，把它當作給孩子的撥浪鼓，對我很客氣，有一次毫無興趣地問，是不是個男孩。

一七一一年五月九日，一個叫詹姆斯・韋爾奇的人下到我的艙房，說他奉船長之命送我上岸。我向他抗議，沒有用；他甚至不肯告訴我他們的新船長是誰。他們把我逼進長艇，讓我穿上我最好的衣服，那衣服幾乎和新的一樣，帶一小包亞麻布衣，但除了我的短劍不許帶武器；他們還客氣到沒有搜我的口袋，我把我的錢和一些別的必需品藏在裡面。他們划了約一里格，把我放在一片海灘上。我請他們告訴我這是什麼地方。他們都發誓說他們跟我一樣一無所知，但說那位船長（他們這樣稱呼）決心，等他們賣掉貨物之後，在他們所能發現的第一塊陸地上把我扔掉。他們立刻推船離岸，勸我趕緊走，免得被潮水追上，就這樣向我道別。韋爾奇自己把我的亞麻布衣放進了船。在布里奇頓，他的是他們當中唯一在七十以下的腕。我不說這是好意。我說我發現我記得它。

在這種荒涼的處境裡我向前走，不久就上了堅實的地面，我在一個土坡上坐下休息，想一想最好怎麼辦。稍微恢復之後，我進入內陸，決心把自己交給我遇到的第一批野人，用一些手鐲、玻璃戒指和別的小玩意兒買我的命，那是水手們在這類航行中通常準備的，我身上帶著一些。土地被一長排一長排樹分隔，不是人工栽種的，而是自然生長的；有大量的草，和好幾塊燕麥田。我走得很謹慎，怕被偷襲，或突然被人從背後或兩側用箭射中。我走上一條踏出來的路，看見許多人腳印，一些牛蹄印，但大多數是馬蹄印。

最後我看見田裡有幾隻動物，還有一兩隻同類坐在樹上。牠們的形狀非常奇特而畸形，使我有些不安，我就躺在一叢灌木後面，好看得更清楚。其中一些走到我躺的地方附近，使我有機會清楚地辨認牠們的形狀。牠們的頭和胸蓋著濃密的毛，有些捲曲，有些平直；有像山羊那樣的鬍子，背上、腿和腳的前面有一長條毛；其餘的身體是光的，所以我能看見牠們的皮膚，是褐黃色。牠們沒有尾巴。牠們爬高樹像松鼠一樣靈巧，因為前後都有強壯伸出的爪，爪尖尖利而彎曲，常常跳躍、蹦跳、飛躍，敏捷得驚人。雌的沒有雄的大；頭上有長而平直的毛，臉上沒有，身體其餘部分只有一層絨毛，奶子垂在前腳之間，走路時常常幾乎垂到地。兩性的毛有幾種顏色，褐、紅、黑和黃。我試著讀牠們的步調，像我從小境以來讀每個人那樣，卻讀不出來：牠們不在任何一種步調上，卻又在一口氣的工夫裡在全部步調上；一跳，一停，一跳，就像一座拿掉了擒縱器的鐘。總的說來，我在所有旅行中從沒見過這麼令人不快的動物，也沒對哪種動物天然生出這麼強烈的反感。

所以，我想我已經看夠了，心裡滿是輕蔑與厭惡，就起身沿著那條踏出來的路往前走，希望它能把我領到某個印第安人的茅屋。我沒走多遠，就在路上迎面遇到這些動物中的一隻，直直向我走來。那醜陋的怪物，看見我時，把臉上每一個部位扭成種種形狀，瞪著，像看一件從未見過的東西；然後走近了，舉起一隻前爪，我不知道是出於好奇還是惡作劇；我拔出短劍，用劍面給了牠一下，因為我不敢用劍刃，怕當地居民若知道我殺傷了他們的牲口，會對我發怒。我後來想，我把它寫下來是為了它值多少是多少：那隻爪是朝我的腕來的。那畜生感到疼，退後，吼得那麼響，至少四十隻一群從下一塊田裡湧來圍住我，嚎叫著做出可憎的鬼臉；我跑到一棵樹幹旁，背靠著它，揮動短劍把牠們擋住。這群該死的東西中，有幾隻抓住我背後的樹枝，跳上樹，從那兒開始往我頭上拉屎；不過我緊貼著樹幹，躲得還算好，只是被四面八方落下來的髒東西幾乎悶死。

在這種窘境中，我看見牠們忽然全都拚命跑開了；我才敢離開那棵樹，沿路往前走，納悶是什麼使牠們這樣驚慌。但向左看，我看見田裡一匹馬輕輕走著；我的迫害者們先發現了他，那就是牠們逃跑的原因。我在認出他是一匹馬之前，就認出了他是什麼。他走得有步調。那不是我的；我估是四十四。在那一片田之後，他像一座鐘穿過一屋子的錶。

那匹馬走近我時，稍稍一驚，但很快恢復，帶著明顯的驚奇神色，直視我的臉；他看我的手和腳，繞著我走了幾圈。我想繼續趕路，他卻直直站在路上擋著，不過神色很溫和，從未有絲毫暴力的表示。我們互相凝視了一會兒；最後我大著膽子伸手朝他的脖子，想撫摸它，用騎手要摸一匹陌生的馬時常用的口氣和口哨。可是這動物似乎不屑於我的友善，搖了搖頭，皺起眉，輕輕抬起右前蹄，把我的手撥開。然後他嘶鳴了三四聲，音調那麼不同，我幾乎要以為他是在對自己說話，用他自己的某種語言。

我們這樣忙著的時候，又來了一匹馬，向第一匹馬很正式地致意，他們用右前蹄互相輕輕碰了一下，輪流嘶鳴好幾次，聲音變化，幾乎像是有音節。我把那一碰當作敬禮。那是一次數：各給對方一下，兩下一致，那就是整個問候；那是我見過的唯一一種敬禮，其中沒有說任何可能不是真的話。他們走開幾步，像是要商議，並肩來回走著，像在討論一件重要事情的人，卻時時把眼睛轉向我，彷彿看守著，免得我逃走。

看到畜生有這樣的行動與舉止，我驚呆了，心想，如果這個國家的居民具有相稱的理性，他們必定是世界上最有智慧的人民。這個想法給了我很大的安慰，我決心往前走，直到發現某個房子或村莊，或遇到任何當地人，把這兩匹馬留在那兒隨他們談。可是第一匹，一匹灰斑馬，看見我偷偷溜走，用那麼有表情的聲調朝我嘶鳴，我自以為懂了他的意思；於是我轉回去，走到他身邊等他的進一步吩咐，卻盡力掩飾我的恐懼，因為我開始有些擔心這場奇遇會怎麼收場。

兩匹馬走近我，非常認真地看著我的臉和手。灰馬用他的右前蹄把我的帽子四周摩挲了一遍，把它弄亂了，我只好把它摘下來重新戴好；他和他的同伴（一匹棕黃馬）看了都很驚訝。後者摸了我外衣的衣角，發現它鬆鬆垂在我身上，他們兩個都露出新的驚奇神色。灰馬用蹄和系骨之間夾住我的右手，在腕上，捏得那麼緊，我只好叫出聲；他是在數我。我是六十八。他鬆開時，看著那匹棕黃馬，棕黃馬碰了他的蹄，他們嘶鳴；之後兩個都以種種可能的溫柔摸我。我現在想，他們彼此說的是：這個耶胡有拍。他們對我的鞋襪非常困惑，常常摸，互相嘶鳴，做出種種姿態，很像一個哲學家要解釋某個新而困難的現象時的樣子。

總之，這些動物的行為那麼有條理、有理性，那麼敏銳而明智，我最後斷定，他們必定是魔法師，為了某種計畫把自己變成了這個樣子，看見路上有個陌生人，決心拿他消遣；或者也許真的對一個在服裝、容貌和膚色上與可能住在這麼遙遠氣候的人這麼不同的人感到驚訝。憑這個推理，我冒昧地這樣對他們說話：「先生們，如果你們是術士，我有充分的理由相信你們是，你們就能聽懂我的話；因此我冒昧地讓你們知道，我是一個可憐的遭難的英國人，被厄運驅趕到你們的海岸；我懇求你們當中的一位，讓我騎在他背上，彷彿他是一匹真正的馬，到某個房子或村莊，我可以在那兒得到救濟。作為這份恩惠的回報，我將把這把刀和這只手鐲送給你們，」我說著從口袋裡拿出來。那兩個生物在我說話時一直沉默，似乎專注地聽，我說完以後他們就互相頻頻嘶鳴，像在進行嚴肅的談話。我明顯地看出，他們的語言很好地表達了情感，這些詞稍加整理，就能分解成字母，比中文容易得多。

我常能分辨出「耶胡」這個詞，他們每人重複好幾次；雖然我無從推測它的意思，我卻在兩匹馬忙著談話時，試著在舌頭上練習這個詞；他們一靜下來，我就大聲清楚地說出「耶胡」，同時盡可能模仿馬的嘶鳴；他們兩個都顯然很吃驚；灰馬把同一個詞重複了兩遍，像是要教我正確的發音；我盡量跟著他說，發現自己每次都有明顯進步，雖然離完美還很遠。然後棕黃馬又用第二個詞試我，難念得多；用英語拼寫，可以拼成 Houyhnhnm（慧駰）。這個我不像前一個那麼成功；可是試了兩三次，運氣好些了；他們兩個都顯得驚異於我的能力。第一個詞他們說時帶著一個頓挫，像人說一個他寧可不說的名字；第二個平平的，四個音，以走路的步調。

又談了一陣，我當時猜想那與我有關，兩位朋友用同樣的蹄碰蹄的敬禮告別；灰馬向我打手勢，要我走在他前面；我覺得服從是審慎的，直到我能找到一個更好的嚮導。我想放慢腳步時，他就叫「呼嗯，呼嗯」。我猜到他的意思，盡我所能讓他明白，我累了，走不快了；於是他就站一會兒，讓我休息。我發現那是個數，不是叫聲：他以他走路的步調說，每分鐘四十四，我慢下來時他說得更快；我走不出那個步調，我是六十，就像走在一口鐘的前面。我累了的時候他站住。我記下：在那個國家第一個注意到我累了的人，是一匹馬。

## 第31章 · 作者被一匹慧駰領到他的家。房子的描述。作者拿了一隻耶胡的腕。慧駰的食物，和作者的食物。一張維持著同一個數的桌子；以及夾在兩種聲音之間的一夜。

走了約三英里，我們到達一座長形的建築，用插在地裡的木頭做成，橫著編了條；屋頂低，蓋著稻草。我現在開始有點寬心，拿出一些旅行者通常帶去送給美洲和別處野蠻的印第安人的小玩意兒，指望屋裡的人因此鼓起勇氣善待我。那匹馬做手勢要我先進去。那是一間大屋，地面是平滑的黏土，一側從頭到尾有一個草架和馬槽。有三匹劣馬和兩匹母馬，沒有在吃東西，其中幾匹坐在後腿上，這使我很奇怪；更奇怪的是看到其餘的在做家務；這些看起來只是普通牲口。灰馬進來時，他們全都站起來，五個，我看不出誰開的頭；他以權威的口氣嘶鳴並得到回答時，他們一齊坐下，沒有人給出信號。然而，這證實了我最初的看法：一個能把畜生教化到這種程度的民族，必定在智慧上勝過世上所有的國家。

這間之外還有三間屋子，沿著房子的長度排列，要通過三道彼此相對的門，像一條透景通道。我們穿過第二間，朝第三間走。這時灰馬先走進去，示意我等著；我在第二間等，準備好送給這家男女主人的禮物；是兩把刀、三只假珍珠手鐲、一面小鏡子和一串珠鏈。那匹馬嘶鳴了三四聲，我等著聽到一個人的聲音回答，卻只聽到同樣方言的回音，有一兩個比他的更尖些。我開始想這房子必定屬於他們當中某位大人物，因為我能被接見之前有這麼多的禮節。可是一個有身分的人完全由馬服侍，這是我不能理解的。我怕我的腦子被我的苦難和不幸弄亂了。我醒過神來，環顧我被留下的這間屋子：布置得和第一間一樣，只是更雅致些。我常常揉眼睛，同樣的東西仍然出現。我掐我的胳膊和腰，希望是在做夢。我於是完全斷定，這一切現象只能是妖術和魔法。可是我沒有時間繼續這些思考，因為灰馬來到門口，示意我跟他進第三間，那裡我看見一匹非常漂亮的母馬，帶著一匹小公馬和一匹小馬駒，坐在稻草墊上，墊子編得不是不巧，整潔乾淨。

我進去不久，母馬從墊子上站起來，走近，仔細看了我的手和臉之後，給了我一個最輕蔑的眼神；轉向那匹馬，我聽見他們之間常重複「耶胡」這個詞；那詞的意思我當時還不明白，雖然是我學會的第一個詞。可是我很快得到更清楚的告知，使我永遠蒙羞；因為那匹馬用頭向我示意，重複「呼嗯，呼嗯」，就像在路上那樣，我明白那是要我跟著他，把我領到一個院子裡，離房子有一段距離處有另一座建築。我們走進去，我看見我登陸後第一次遇到的那種可憎的動物三隻，正在吃樹根，和一些動物的肉，後來我知道那是驢和狗的肉，偶爾也有牛，是意外或生病死的。牠們都被結實的柳條繫著脖子，綁在一根梁上；牠們把食物夾在前爪的爪子之間，用牙撕。

主馬吩咐一匹栗色馬，他的一個僕人，把這些動物中最大的一隻解開，帶到院子裡。那牲口和我被帶到一起，主人和僕人仔細比較我們的面貌，隨後多次重複「耶胡」。當我在這可憎的動物身上看到一個完整的人形時，我的驚恐是無法描述的：牠的臉確實是扁而寬，鼻子塌，嘴唇大，嘴巴寬；不過這些差別在所有野蠻民族中都很常見，那些土人讓嬰兒趴在地上爬，或背在背上，臉貼著母親的肩膀擠著。耶胡的前腳與我的手的差別，只是爪甲的長度、手掌的粗糙和褐色，和手背的多毛。我們的腳也有同樣的相似，同樣的差別，我很清楚，雖然馬不清楚，因為我穿著鞋襪；身體的每個部分都一樣，除了多毛和顏色，我已經說過。

我拿了牠的腕。牠讓我拿；牠不知道這個手勢，也不介意，栗色馬拉著柳條。腕的內側和手背一樣有毛，我用拇指把它撥開，腕片就在那裡，在毛下面，在它的位置上，和我身上的一樣。我拿滿了一分鐘。它從四十跳到一百六十又跳回來；在那一分鐘中間牠打了個呵欠，是九十。那是一個沒有人維持的調速器。我原以為我知道恐怖會是什麼，我弄錯了它在哪裡，它在拇指上。

兩匹馬看來最大的困難，是看見我身體的其餘部分與耶胡的這麼不同，這我得感謝我的衣服，他們對衣服毫無概念。栗色馬給我一根樹根，他是（照他們的方式，我們以後會在適當處說明）夾在蹄和系骨之間拿著的；我接到手裡，聞了聞，盡量客氣地還給他。他從耶胡的窩裡拿出一塊驢肉；可是那氣味那麼難聞，我厭惡地轉過頭；他就把它扔給耶胡，被牠貪婪地吞吃了。他又給我看一把乾草和一蹄彎捧著的燕麥；可我搖頭表示這兩樣都不是我的食物。我現在確實擔心，如果我不能找到我自己的同類，我必定餓死；至於那些骯髒的耶胡，雖然當時很少有人比我更愛人類，我承認我從沒見過任何有感覺的生物在各方面這麼可憎；我越靠近牠們，牠們就越可恨，在那個國家期間一直如此。主馬從我的舉動看出了這一點，就把那耶胡送回牠的窩。然後他把前蹄舉到嘴邊，這使我很吃驚，雖然他做得輕鬆，動作顯得完全自然，又做了別的手勢，要知道我想吃什麼；可是我給不出他能領會的回答；即使他懂了，我也看不出有什麼辦法能給我找到營養。我們這樣忙著的時候，我看見一頭牛經過，就指著牠，表示想去擠牛奶。這起了作用，因為他領我回到屋裡，吩咐一個母馬僕人打開一間屋子，那裡有大量牛奶，裝在陶罐和木桶裡，非常整齊乾淨。她給了我一大碗，我喝得很痛快，覺得精神好多了。

近午時，我看見一輛像雪橇的車被四隻耶胡拉著朝房子來。車裡有一匹老馬，看來是個有身分的，他倒著後蹄下車，因為偶然傷了左前蹄。他來與我們的馬共進午餐，我們的馬很客氣地接待他。他們在最好的屋子裡用餐，第二道菜是牛奶煮的燕麥，老馬吃熱的，其餘的吃冷的。他們的馬槽圍成圓圈放在屋子中央，分成幾格，他們坐在稻草墩上，蹲坐在後腿上圍著。中間是一個大草架，棱角與馬槽的每一格相對；所以每匹馬和母馬都吃自己的乾草和自己的燕麥牛奶糊，很有禮貌、很有條理。小公馬和小馬駒的舉止顯得非常謙和，男女主人對客人極其愉快而殷勤。灰馬要我站在他旁邊；他和朋友之間談了許多關於我的話，我從陌生人常看我、和「耶胡」這個詞的頻繁重複看出來。

他們一起吃。頭低下，抬起，七個在馬槽邊，在同一個數上，像人划船；沒有人說過，也沒有人在維持它。老馬的左前蹄受了傷，我在吃燕麥時注意到，整桌人在那一道菜期間都慢了一點，像人與一個瘸腿的人一起走路：他是四十三，他們也是四十三，沒有人提起。屋裡沒有鼓，沒有打拍人，沒有一根頭髮橫過任何腕；沒有東西在維持它，而它被維持著。我站在灰馬旁邊，我自己的拍在六十幾上跑著，我覺得它在我身上開始下降，像水在管子裡找到它的水平。

我碰巧戴著手套，灰主馬看見了，顯得困惑，露出驚奇的樣子，不知道我對我的前腳做了什麼。他把蹄子在手套上放了三四次，彷彿要表示我該把它們還原成原來的形狀，我立刻照辦，脫下兩隻手套放進口袋。他的蹄子是到手套的腕上來的，像人敲一扇在他面前關上的門；我明白他想碰到腕片。這引起更多談話；我看見在場的人對我的舉止很滿意，我很快就看到了它的好處。我被吩咐說我懂的幾個詞；他們吃飯時，主馬教了我燕麥、牛奶、火、水和別的一些詞的名稱，我能跟著他發音，因為我自幼就有學語言的很大便利。

飯後，主馬把我拉到一旁，用手勢和話讓我明白，他為我沒有東西吃而不安。燕麥在他們的語言叫做「呼嚕嗯」。我把這個詞念了兩三遍；因為雖然起初我拒絕了，但再一想，我考慮可以用它們做成一種麵包，配牛奶足以維持我活著，直到我能逃到別的國家，逃到我自己同類的生物那裡。那匹馬立刻吩咐他家的一匹白母馬僕人，用一個木盤給我拿來好多燕麥。我盡量在火前把它們烤熱，揉搓到殼掉下來，勉強簸去；我把穀粒在兩塊石頭之間磨碎、搗碎；然後加水，做成糊或餅，在火上烤了，趁熱配牛奶吃。起初這是很乏味的食物，雖然在歐洲許多地方很常見，但時間久了也能忍受；我一生常常被迫吃粗劣的食物，這不是我第一次試驗自然多麼容易滿足。

我不能不說，在這座島上我沒有病過一個鐘頭。確實，我有時設法用耶胡毛做的圈套抓到兔子或鳥；也常採集有益的野菜，煮了當沙拉配麵包吃；偶爾，作為稀罕物，我做一點奶油，喝乳清。起初我很缺鹽，但習慣很快使我適應了沒有；我相信我們這裡常用鹽是奢侈的結果，最初只是作為助飲的刺激物引進的，除非是為了在長途航行中或遠離大市場的地方保存肉類；因為我們看不到哪種動物喜歡它，只有人，至於我自己，離開那個國家時，過了很久我才能忍受任何食物裡的鹽味。三年裡，第一個月以後，我從沒超過五十五。我歸功於燕麥。我沒有說，像我現在會說的那樣，我歸功於那張桌子。

關於我的飲食，說這些就夠了，別的旅行者用它填滿他們的書，彷彿讀者親自關心我們吃得好不好。不過，提一下這件事還是有必要的，免得世人認為我不可能在這樣的國家、在這樣的居民當中找到維持三年的食物。

傍晚時，主馬吩咐一個地方給我住；離房子只有六碼，與耶胡的棚隔開。在這裡我弄了些稻草，用自己的衣服蓋著，睡得很熟。不過不久我就住得更好了，讀者以後會知道，那時我要更詳細地談我的生活方式。頭一夜，窩棚不安靜；它從來不安靜；一整夜像一袋老鼠。另一邊，六碼外，是一種我沒有詞可以形容的聲音，五個人在同一個數上睡著。我躺在它們中間，直到選好跟哪一個一起數才睡得著。我選了房子。

## 第32章 · 作者努力學習語言，主人幫助他。語言的描述，與把它說成四十四。一隻光著的腕，和一根被稱為耶胡的頭髮。作者向主人簡述他的航行，是在六十四上說的。

我的主要努力是學習他們的語言，我的主人（我今後就這樣稱呼他）、他的孩子們和他家的每個僕人，都很想教我；因為他們把一個畜生竟顯出理性動物的這些跡象，看作一件奇事。我指著每樣東西，問它的名字，獨自一人時把它寫在我的日記簿上，又請家裡人經常念給我聽，來糾正我發音不好。在這件事上，一匹栗色馬，是下級僕人之一，非常樂於幫我。

他們說話是通過鼻子和喉嚨發音的，他們的語言在我所知道的歐洲語言中最接近高地荷蘭語，即德語，但要優美、有表現力得多。皇帝查理五世也作過幾乎相同的觀察，他說，如果他要對他的馬說話，應當用高地荷蘭語。這是一種用步調說的語言。它每個句子都按四拍走，像是為了走路，第四拍後有一個休止，那些休止，我發現，是他們達成一致的地方；我花了五個星期才明白那不是思考的停頓。它沒有「趕」這個詞。它有十幾個詞，我只能稱為保持同步的程度，卻沒有一個詞表示遲到，那是我的語言裡最常用的詞。

我的主人的好奇和急切是那麼大，他拿出許多閒暇時間來教我。他確信（他後來告訴我）我必定是個耶胡；可是我的聰明易教、有禮貌和愛乾淨，使他吃驚，這些都是與那些動物完全相反的品質。頭一個月，他每天早晨用蹄子拿我的腕，像人看天色，我是六十二、六十四、六十一。一個耶胡從來不會兩次相同，而我相差在三以內；他說我是他聽說過的頭一個有性格的耶胡。

他對我的衣服最感困惑，有時自己推論它們是不是我身體的一部分；因為我總是等家人睡了才脫，在他們醒來之前穿上。我的主人急於知道我從哪裡來，我是怎樣得到我在一切行動中顯出的這些理性的表象，並想從我自己口中聽到我的故事，他希望很快就能做到，因為我在學習和念他們的詞與句子上進步很大。為了幫助記憶，我把我學到的一切用英語字母記下，寫出詞和翻譯。後面這件事，過了一段時間，我冒險在主人面前做了。要向他解釋我在做什麼，費了我很多事；因為居民們對書和文學毫無概念。在他們當中，說過一次的事，就是對所有人說了，後來我常想，他們要是見了一欄一欄的東西，會怎麼辦。

大約十個星期，我能聽懂他大部分的問題，三個月，就能給他一些還算過得去的回答。他極想知道我從這個國家的哪一部分來，我怎樣被教得會模仿一個理性生物；因為耶胡（他看出我在頭、手和臉上，也就是唯一看得見的部分，與牠們一模一樣），帶著一些狡猾的外表和最強烈的作惡傾向，被觀察到是所有畜生中最不能教的。我回答說，我是從海上來的，從一個遙遠的地方，與許多我的同類一起，坐在一艘用樹身做成的大空船裡；我的同伴們逼我在這個海岸登陸，然後把我留下自己想辦法。

費了一番困難，借著許多手勢，我才讓他明白我。他回答說，我必定是弄錯了，或者我說了「不存在的事」；因為他們的語言裡沒有表示說謊或虛假的詞。後一點是他從長老們那裡聽來的，說那是耶胡做的事，從拍升高就能知道；而我的沒有升高。是六十四，和我說真話時一樣，他是用蹄子得到的。所以是我弄錯了。他知道海那邊不可能有一個國家，也不可能一群畜生能讓一艘木船在水上隨心所欲地走。他確信沒有哪個活著的慧駰能造出這樣的船，也不會把它託付給耶胡去駕駛。

慧駰這個詞，在他們的語言裡，指馬，在詞源上意思是「自然的完美」。我告訴主人，我不知道怎麼表達，但會盡快進步，希望不久就能告訴他奇事。他很樂意吩咐他自己的母馬、小公馬和小馬駒，以及家裡的僕人們，利用一切機會教我；每天他自己也花兩三個鐘頭教我。附近好幾位有身分的馬和母馬常到我們家來，聽說「一個奇妙的耶胡，能像慧駰那樣說話，在言語和行動上似乎顯出一些理性的微光」。他們樂於和我交談；問許多問題，我能給什麼回答就給什麼。有了這一切便利，我進步很大，到達後五個月，我就聽懂了任何人說的話，也能相當好地表達自己。我最後學會的不是一個詞，而是把它們說成四十四。

那些為了看我、跟我說話而來拜訪我主人的慧駰，很難相信我是個真正的耶胡，因為我的身體有一層跟我同類不同的覆蓋。他們驚訝地看到我除了頭、臉和手之外沒有通常的毛或皮；不過我是在大約兩個星期前的一件意外中，對我的主人揭露了那個祕密。

我已經告訴讀者，每天夜裡，等家人上床後，我習慣脫下衣服，用衣服蓋著自己。有一天清早，我的主人派他的貼身僕人栗色馬來叫我。他來時我正睡得很熟，衣服滑落在一邊，襯衫掀到腰上。我被他弄出的聲音驚醒，看見他慌慌張張地傳達他的口信；之後他去見我的主人，嚇壞了，給了他一個很混亂的描述，說他看到的。這我馬上就發現了；因為我一穿好衣服就去伺候大人，他問我，他的僕人報告的是什麼意思，說我睡著時和平時顯出的不是同一個東西；他的僕人向他保證，我身上有一部分是白的，有一部分是黃的，至少不那麼白，有一部分是褐的。

我一向隱瞞我衣著的祕密，是為了盡可能把自己與那個該詛咒的耶胡族區別開來；可是現在我發現再這樣做已沒有用。再說，我考慮到我的衣服和鞋不久就會穿壞，已經在走下坡路了，必須用某種辦法從耶胡或別的畜生的皮來補充；那樣整個祕密就會暴露。所以我告訴我的主人，在我來的國家，我的同類總是用經過加工的某些動物的毛遮蓋身體，既為體面，也為了避免氣候的侵害，冷熱兩種；至於我自己，我願意立刻讓他信服，如果他肯下令的話，只請他原諒，我不暴露那些自然教我們遮蓋的部位。他說我這番話都很奇怪，尤其是最後一部分；因為他不明白，自然為什麼教我們去遮蓋自然所賜的東西；他自己和家人都不為身體的任何部分羞愧；不過，我可以隨我的意。於是我先解開外衣，脫下。我對背心也這樣做。我脫下鞋、襪和褲子。我把襯衫放到腰間，把下襬拉起來，像腰帶那樣繫在腰上，遮住我的赤裸。

我的主人帶著極大的好奇與讚歎的神情觀看了整個過程。他用系骨拿起我所有的衣服，一件接一件，仔細檢查；然後他很輕柔地撫摸我的身體，繞著我看了幾遍；之後他說，我顯然必是個完整的耶胡，只是和我這一族其餘的相差很大：皮膚的柔軟、白皙和光滑，身上好幾處沒有毛，爪甲前後的形狀與短小，以及我總是用兩隻後腳走路的做作。他不想再看，讓我把衣服穿上，因為我冷得發抖。在我穿以前，他最後做的一件事，是用蹄子拿我的腕，光著，沒有手套、沒有布料夾在中間，像他第一天就想做的那樣。他拿了很久，連同那根繩子。我是五十八。他問那黑色的東西是什麼。我那時大概有四百個詞，沒有一個能說它。我說那是一根頭髮，是我的一個同類的。他說：「一個耶胡的。」我沒有糾正他。

我表示，我不安於他那麼常稱呼我「耶胡」，那是一種可憎的動物，我對它有那樣徹底的憎恨與輕蔑。我懇求他別再這樣稱呼我，並在他家裡和他允許來看我的朋友們當中也下同樣的命令。我又請求，我身體有一層假覆蓋這個祕密，只讓他一個人知道，至少在我現在的衣服還能穿的期間；至於栗色馬，他的貼身僕人，所看見的，他大人可以命令他保密。

這一切我的主人都非常客氣地答應了；就這樣，祕密一直保守到我的衣服開始磨損，我只得用幾種辦法來補充，那些辦法以後會提到。同時，他要我盡最大的努力繼續學習他們的語言，因為他對我的言語和理性的能力，比對我的身體的樣子（不論有沒有遮蓋）更驚訝；又說他有點不耐煩地等著聽我所承諾的奇事。從此他加倍地花功夫教我：他把我帶進一切場合，要他們有禮貌地對待我；因為，他私下告訴他們，這會使我心情好，更好玩。

每天我去伺候他的時候，除了教學的辛苦，他還會問我幾個關於我自己的問題，我盡我所能回答，這樣他已得到一些一般的概念，雖然很不完整。把我一步步進展到比較正規的談話的各個階段都講出來，是很冗長的；不過我頭一次相當有次序、相當長地講我自己，大意是這樣：我從一個很遠的國家來，如我已經試著告訴他的那樣，與大約五十個我的同類一起；我們在海上旅行，坐一艘木頭做的大空船，比大人的房子還大。我盡量用最好的措辭向他描述那艘船，並借展開我的手帕，說明它怎樣被風推著前進。我們之間一場爭吵，我被放在這個海岸，我向前走，不知道往哪兒去，直到他把我從那些該詛咒的耶胡的迫害中救出來。

他問我，船是誰造的，我國的慧駰怎麼可能讓它由畜生來駕駛。我的回答是，除非他給我他的話和他的名譽擔保他不會生氣，我不敢往下說，然後我才會告訴他我那麼多次承諾的奇事。他同意了；我於是繼續向他保證，那艘船是由和我一樣的生物造的，他們在我旅行過的所有國家，以及我自己的國家，都是唯一統治的理性動物；我來到這裡時，看到慧駰像理性的生物那樣行動，就像他或他的朋友們，在一個他肯稱為耶胡的生物身上發現一些理性的跡象時一樣驚訝；我承認我在每個部分都與牠們相似，卻無法解釋牠們退化與獸性的本性。

我又說，如果好運終於讓我回到祖國，去敘述我來這裡的旅行，我決心要這樣做，人人都會相信，我說的是不存在的事，是我自己憑空編出這個故事；（對他自己、他的家人和朋友懷著一切可能的敬意，並在他答應不生氣的前提下）我們的同胞幾乎不會認為，一匹慧駰會是一個國家的統治生物，而一個耶胡是畜生。我是在六十四上說的。他拿了，是六十四，他說他看出我相信我所說的，那是他看得出來的事，而他看不出我怎麼可能相信。

## 第33章 · 慧駰關於真與假的觀念：只有一個數的國家沒有懷疑的位置。作者被要求演示一個謊，用主人蹄子按在腕上，做了一次。數的暴政。作者對自己，以及他僱的船員，作了更詳細的敘述。

我的主人帶著很不安的神色聽我說，因為「懷疑」或「不相信」在這個國家幾乎不為人所知，居民不知道在這種情況下該怎樣舉止。我該說說，在一個只有一個數的國家，那是什麼。如果一件事被說出，而聽的人的數沒有動，那就是真的；如果它動了，那就不是，或說的人弄錯了。聽的人沒有第三個地方可站，而我的主人，找不到，在本該有它的門口站了很久，稍稍離了數。他是四十七。我以前沒有見過一匹慧駰離數超過一。

而且我記得，在許多次與我的主人談及其他各地人類本性的談話中，有時要講到說謊和虛假的陳述，他費了很大的勁才領會我的意思，雖然他在別的方面判斷極其敏銳。因為他是這樣論證的：言語的用處是讓我們彼此理解，並接受事實的資訊；現在，如果有人說了不存在的事，這些目的就落空了，因為我不能說是理解他了；我不但沒有得到資訊，他還使我比無知更糟；因為我被引導相信一樣東西是黑的，其實是白的，是短的，其實是長的。這就是他關於「說謊」這種能力的全部概念，這種能力在人類當中被理解得那麼透徹，實行得那麼普遍。

他要我演示給他看。我不願意；那大概是我對一匹慧駰說過的唯一一次謊，我是應他的要求做的，他的蹄子按在我光著的腕上，在下午，在院子裡。我說我是一匹馬。是六十四，然後是六十八，他拿了很久，頭微微歪向一邊，就像他有一次把一個鳥蛋舉向光。「很小，」他說，「我原以為會很大。」他把蹄子拿開，看著它。他說他現在明白長老們的意思了，而他希望他不明白；那天剩下的時間，除非我先開口，他不跟我說話。

那天夜裡，房子是五個人在同一個數上，而主人在第三間屋裡醒著，比他們慢一拍。我在稻草上聽見它；那是我以前沒有聽過的事，它持續到差不多天亮。早晨他回到了數上，沒有人提起，我就是因此知道他們全都聽見了。

言歸正傳。我說，耶胡是我國唯一統治的動物，我的主人說這完全超出他的想像，他想知道，我們當中有沒有慧駰，他們做什麼事。我告訴他，我們有很多；夏天他們在田野吃草，冬天被養在屋裡，吃乾草和燕麥，耶胡僕人被僱來給他們擦皮毛使之光滑、梳鬃毛、剔蹄、供給食物和鋪床。「我明白你了，」我的主人說：「從你說的一切，現在很清楚，不論耶胡自稱有什麼理性，慧駰是你們的主人；我真希望我們的耶胡也這樣馴順。」我懇求大人原諒我不再往下說，因為我很確定，他所期待的敘述會使他非常不快。可是他堅持命令我把最好的和最壞的都告訴他。我說我會服從。

我承認，我們當中的慧駰，我們稱他們為馬，是我們最有氣度、最漂亮的動物；他們在力量和速度上出眾；屬於有身分的人時，被用於旅行、賽跑或拉馬車；他們受到很多的善待與照顧，直到生病或蹄子出了毛病；但那時他們就被賣掉，用於各種苦役直到死；之後他們的皮被剝下，按價賣掉，屍體被丟給狗和猛禽吃。可是普通的馬就沒有這麼好的運氣，被農夫、馱運人和別的下等人養著，他們要它們幹更重的活，餵得更差。我盡我所能描述我們騎馬的方式；嚼子、馬鞍、馬刺和鞭子的形狀和用處；挽具和輪子。我又說，我們在他們腳底釘上一種叫做鐵的堅硬東西做的板子，免得他們的蹄子在我們常走的石頭路上被磕壞。我還說，一匹被騎的馬，是照騎在上面的人的數走的，馬刺就是把那個數給出去的辦法。他很久沒有說話。然後他很輕聲地說，他原以為我說的是力量的暴政，原來是數的暴政。

我的主人，在表示極大的憤慨之後，驚訝我們怎麼敢爬到慧駰的背上；因為他確信，他家最弱的僕人也能把最強壯的耶胡甩下來，或者躺下在背上打滾，把那畜生壓死。我回答說，我們的馬從三四歲起就被訓練做我們打算讓他們做的各種用途；如果有的馬嚴重惡劣，就被用來拉車；他們年輕時，因任何搗亂的把戲，都被嚴厲地打；用於一般騎乘或拉車的公馬，通常在出生後兩年左右被閹割，來壓低他們的精神，使他們更溫馴；他們確實對獎賞和懲罰有感覺；可是請大人考慮，他們沒有一點理性的色彩，和這個國家的耶胡一樣。

要給我的主人一個正確的觀念，讓我說的話被明白，使我費盡了許多繞圈子的說法；因為他們的語言詞彙不多，因為他們的欲望和情感比我們少。可是他那高貴的憤怒，對我們對待慧駰一族的野蠻做法的憤怒，是無法表達的；尤其是在我解釋了我們閹割馬的方式和用處，為了阻止他們繁殖後代、使他們更卑順之後。他說，如果可能有一個國家，只有耶胡被賦予理性，他們必定是統治的動物，因為理性終究會勝過蠻力。可是，考慮到我們身體的構造，尤其是我的，他認為沒有哪種同樣大小的生物，這麼不適合在日常事務中運用那份理性；於是他想知道，我周圍的人是像我，還是像他國的耶胡。

我向他保證，我的身材在我的年紀當中算得上不錯；不過年輕人和女人要柔軟嬌嫩得多，後者的皮膚通常白得像牛奶。他說我確實不同於別的耶胡，乾淨得多，也不那麼畸形；但就真正的優勢而言，他認為我差一些：我的指甲對前腳和後腳都沒有用；至於我的前腳，他不能正確地稱它們為前腳，因為他從沒見我用它們走路；它們太軟，承不了地；我通常光著它們；我有時穿在上面的覆蓋，形狀和強度也不如後腳的；我走路沒有任何把握，因為如果我的後腳滑了，我必然跌倒。

他然後開始挑我身體別的部位的毛病：我的臉扁平，鼻子突出，眼睛長在正前方，所以不轉頭就不能看兩側；我不能自己進食，除非把一隻前腳舉到嘴邊，因此自然把那些關節安在那裡以適應這個需要。他不知道我後腳上那一個個裂開分叉有什麼用；它們太軟，經受不起石頭的硬和尖，沒有從別的畜生的皮做成的覆蓋就不行；我的整個身體需要一層防寒防熱的屏障，我每天都要費事穿上脫下。他又溫和地補了一句，說我有一個好部位，就是腕的內側，是光的，容易找到；他想，自然是有意如此。最後，他說他觀察到，這個國家的每種動物，天生都厭惡耶胡，弱的躲開牠們，強的把牠們趕走。所以，即使假定我們有理性的天賦，他也看不出怎麼可能治好每個生物對我們所表現的那種天然的反感；因此也看不出我們怎樣能馴服牠們、使牠們有用。不過，他說，他不再爭論這件事，因為他更想知道我自己的故事、我出生的國家，以及我來這裡之前一生中的種種行動與事件。

我向他保證，我是多麼極端地希望他在每一點上都得到滿足；可是我很懷疑，我能不能把幾件事解釋清楚，那些事大人是毫無概念的，因為我在他的國家看不到任何可以拿來比擬它們的東西；不過我會盡力，並努力用比喻來表達，謙卑地請他在我缺少恰當詞時幫助我；他很樂意答應我。

我說我出生在一個叫英格蘭的島上，家世清白；那座島離他的國家遠，要大人最強壯的僕人按太陽的年運行走，那麼多天的路程；我學的是外科，這一行是治療意外或暴力造成的身體上的傷與創；我國由一個女人統治，我們稱她女王。我又說，外科醫生就是拿病人的數、告訴他們這意味著什麼的人。他問那個數兩次是不是一樣。我說在病人身上從來不一樣。他說那麼我顯然是受過耶胡這一行的訓練。我說我離開它去賺錢，好在我回去時維持我和家人；在我最後一次航行中，我是船長，手下約有五十個耶胡，其中許多死在海上，我只得用從各國挑來的人補充；我們的船兩次險些沉沒，第一次是被一場大風暴，第二次是撞上一塊礁石。

這時我的主人插嘴，問我怎麼能說服來自不同國家的陌生人，在我遭遇了那些損失、經歷了那些危險之後，還肯跟我冒險。我說他們是些走投無路的傢伙，因為貧窮或罪行被迫逃離出生地。有的被官司毀了；有的把所有的錢花在喝酒、嫖和賭上；有的因叛國逃走；許多因殺人、偷竊、下毒、搶劫、偽證、偽造、鑄假幣、強姦，或逃離軍旗、投靠敵人；他們大多數都越過獄；這些人沒有一個敢回祖國去，怕被絞死或餓死在牢裡；所以他們不得不到別處去謀生。

在這番談話中，我的主人好幾次打斷我。我用了許多繞圈子的說法，向他描述我們的船員被迫逃離祖國所為的幾種罪行的性質。這費了好幾天的談話，他才能領會我。他完全不知道這些惡行有什麼用處或必要。為了說清楚，我盡力給出一些關於權力與財富的欲望、色欲、無節制、惡意和嫉妒的可怕後果的概念。這一切我都得靠舉例子、作假設來定義和描述。之後，像一個想像力被某樣從沒見過或聽說過的東西擊中的人，他會帶著驚愕與憤慨舉目。權力、政府、戰爭、法律、刑罰，以及另外一千樣東西，在那個語言裡沒有詞可以表達，這使得要給我的主人任何概念幾乎不可能。我給每一樣一個數讓它站在旁邊：罪行是一種升上去又維持著的升；刑罰是一隻手把另一個壓在不是它自己的數上；戰爭是一萬個在同一個信號上升。他舉目，在那一句話的長度裡，是四十八。

可是他有出色的理解力，又因沉思與談話而大有進益，終於對我們這一帶世界的人性能做出什麼，有了相當的認識，並要我給他一些關於我們稱為歐洲的那片土地的詳細敘述，尤其是我自己的國家。那次談話的最後一個晚上，他要我把腕露著。我照辦了。他坐著，蹄子離它一英寸，沒有碰，坐了一個鐘頭；結束時說他很感激；我現在想，他是在把什麼東西收起來。

## 第34章 · 作者奉主人之命，向他報告英格蘭的狀況。歐洲君王之間戰爭的原因，與軍人的腕。主人發現他是高興的，四十八。法律，和不升的律師的數。

請讀者注意，下面這份摘要，出自我和主人的許多次談話，包含了兩年多時間裡幾次談到的最重要的各點；他大人常要求更詳盡的說明，隨著我的慧駰語越來越進步。我盡我所能向他陳述了整個歐洲的狀況；我談了貿易和製造業、技藝和科學；我對他在各種話題上提出的所有問題的回答，是一個取之不盡的談話源泉。不過我在這裡只記下我們談到我自己的國家的內容，盡可能按順序整理，不顧時間和別的情況，同時嚴格遵守真實。我唯一擔心的是，我幾乎無法公平對待我主人的論證和措辭，它們必然因我的能力不足，和翻成我們野蠻的英語，而受損。我發現它的野蠻主要在於快。我為了讀者方便，把他的句子記成六十；它們原是四十四；而其中的推理，在我的英語裡快了三分之一，在那個速度下損失了一點，理性就是這樣。

於是，遵照他大人的命令，我向他講述了奧蘭治親王治下的革命；法國的長期戰爭，由那位親王發動，由他的繼任者、現任女王重新開始，基督教世界最強的幾個大國都捲了進去，至今還在繼續。應他的要求，我估算，整個過程中大約有一百萬耶胡被殺，也許有一百座或更多的城市被攻陷，被燒毀或擊沉的船是它的五倍。

他問我，使一個國家對另一個國家開戰的通常原因或動機是什麼。我回答說它們不可勝數；不過我只提幾個主要的。有時是君王的野心，他們從不認為自己有足夠的土地和人民來統治；有時是大臣的腐敗，他們把主人拖進戰爭，好壓制或轉移臣民對他們惡劣施政的怨聲。意見的分歧使幾百萬人喪生：比如，肉是不是麵包，或麵包是不是肉；某種漿果的汁是血還是酒；吹口哨是惡行還是美德；是親吻一根柱子好，還是把它扔進火裡好；外衣最好是什麼顏色，黑、白、紅還是灰；應當長還是短、窄還是寬、髒還是乾淨；還有許多別的。沒有哪種戰爭像由意見分歧引起的那麼猛烈血腥、持續那麼久，尤其當分歧是在無關緊要的事情上。

有時兩個君王爭吵，是為了決定他們誰去奪走第三者的領土，而兩人都不自稱有任何權利。有時一個君王與另一個爭吵，是因為怕對方與他爭吵。有時發動戰爭是因為敵人太強，有時是因為他太弱。有時我們的鄰居想要我們有的東西，或有我們想要的東西，我們雙方就打，直到他們拿走我們的，或給我們他們的。在人民被饑荒耗盡、被瘟疫毀滅、或被內部派系攪亂之後入侵一個國家，是很正當的開戰理由。當我們最近的盟友的一座城鎮對我們方便，或有一塊土地能使我們的疆域圓滿完整時，向他開戰也是正當的。如果一個君王把軍隊派進一個人民貧窮無知的民族，他可以合法地把一半人處死，把其餘的做成奴隸，為的是開化他們，使他們脫離野蠻的生活方式。血緣或婚姻的聯盟，是君王之間經常引起戰爭的原因；而且親屬關係越近，他們爭吵的傾向越大；窮國飢餓，富國驕傲；而驕傲和飢餓永遠在對立中。基於這些理由，軍人的行業被認為是所有行業中最光榮的，因為軍人是被僱來殺的耶胡，在冷血中，殺盡可能多的、從未冒犯過他的同類。我沒有告訴他，一個軍人在幹活時的腕是六十一，那就是「冷血」的意思；我從另一個國家知道，一本帳冊會怎樣處理它。

「你告訴我的關於戰爭的這些，」我的主人說，「確實最令人讚歎地顯出你們自稱的那種理性的效果；不過，幸運的是，羞恥大於危險；自然使你們完全無力做很大的惡。因為你們的嘴與臉平貼，你們幾乎不能有效地互相咬，除非是同意的。再說你們腳上前後的爪，那麼短那麼嫩，我們的一個耶胡能把你們的一打趕在前面跑。因此，在你們敘述戰場上被殺的人數時，我不禁認為你說了不存在的事。」他說這話時蹄子按在我的腕上，它沒有動；所以他沒有說我說謊。他說我說的不是這樣，而對他來說這兩者是同一回事，他沒有第二個。

我忍不住搖頭，對他的無知微微一笑。我不是戰爭藝術的外行，就向他描述了大炮、長炮、火槍、卡賓槍、手槍、子彈、火藥、劍、刺刀、戰鬥、圍城、撤退、進攻、坑道、反坑道、轟擊、海戰；一千人隨船沉沒、每一方死了兩萬人、垂死的呻吟、肢體飛在空中、煙、噪音、混亂、被馬蹄踩死、逃跑、追擊、勝利；田野上橫著屍體，丟給狗、狼和猛禽吃；劫掠、剝光、強姦、焚燒和破壞。為了表明我親愛的同胞們的英勇，我向他保證，我見過他們在一次圍城中一下子炸死一百個敵人，在一條船上也同樣，並看到屍體一塊塊從雲裡掉下來，使觀眾大為開心。

我正要繼續講更多細節時，我的主人命令我住口。他沒有把蹄子拿開。我是一百零四，就是我描述大炮時的那個數，我注意到了；我一生中，大概從沒用那個速度講過一件真事。「你不害怕，」他說，「你是高興。」我沒有回答他，他接受了這個回答。他說，凡是了解耶胡本性的人，很容易相信，這麼卑劣的動物，如果力量和狡猾與惡意相當，是能做出我所說的一切行動的。可是我的敘述增加了他對整個物種的憎惡，也使他心裡產生一種他以前完全陌生的不安。他想，他的耳朵習慣了這些可憎的話，也許漸漸能以較少的厭惡接受它們：雖然他恨本國的耶胡，他不比責怪一隻猛禽（gnnayh）的殘忍，或一塊鋒利的石頭割破他的蹄，更多地責怪牠們的可憎品質。可是當一個自稱有理性的生物竟能做出這樣的暴行，他恐怕那個官能的腐敗可能比獸性本身更壞。所以他似乎確信，我們有的不是理性，而只是某種適合增加我們天然惡習的品質；就像從一條被攪渾的溪流的反射，送回的是一個畸形身體的影像，不但更大，而且更歪曲。他是四十八，並維持著。

他又說，關於戰爭，他在這次和以前幾次談話中已經聽得太多。眼下還有一點使他有些困惑。我曾告訴他，我們的一些船員是因為被法律毀了而離開祖國的；我已經解釋過這個詞的意思；可是他不明白，本意是為了每個人的保全的法律，怎麼會成為任何人的毀滅。所以他想進一步知道，我說的法律和執法者是什麼，依照我自己國家目前的做法；因為他認為，自然和理性對一個有理性的動物，如我們自稱的那樣，足以指引我們該做什麼、該避免什麼。

我向大人保證，法律是一門我沒怎麼接觸過的學問，除了曾雇用律師，白費力氣地處理一些加在我身上的不公；不過，我會盡我所能給他滿意的回答。我說，我們當中有一個社會，從年輕時就被培養成一門藝術：用為此目的增加了許多的詞，證明白是黑、黑是白，視他們被付多少錢而定。所有其餘的人民都是這個社會的奴隸。比如，如果我鄰居想要我的牛，他就有一個律師來證明他該從我這裡得到我的牛。我就得雇另一個來為我的權利辯護，因為按法律的一切規則，不允許任何人替自己說話。現在，在這件事上，我，作為正當的主人，處在兩個大不利之中：第一，我的律師，幾乎從搖籃起就練習為謊言辯護，當他想為正義做辯護人時就完全不在他的本行，那對他是不自然的職務，他總是以極大的笨拙去試，如果不是帶著惡意的話。第二個不利是，我的律師必須非常小心，否則他會被法官申斥，被同行憎恨，因為他會減少法律的業務。所以我只有兩個辦法保住我的牛。第一個是用雙倍的費用收買我對手的律師，他就會出賣他的當事人，暗示他這邊有理。第二個辦法是讓我的律師盡可能把我的案子說得不義，承認牛屬於我的對手；而這若做得巧妙，必定能博得法官席的好感。

我告訴他，這些法官是被指派去裁決一切財產糾紛，以及審判罪犯的人，是從最靈巧的律師當中挑出來的，那些律師已經老了或懶了；而他們一生都偏向於反對真理與公平，處在這樣的致命必然中：偏袒欺詐、偽證和壓迫，我甚至知道有些人拒絕了有正義一方給的一大筆賄賂，寧可不做什麼有損於他們的天性或職務的事，也不傷害這一行。這些律師當中有條準則：凡是以前做過的，以後可以合法地再做；因此他們特別注意記錄所有以前違背普通正義和人類普遍理性所作的判決。這些，他們稱為先例，作為權威拿出來為最不義的意見辯護；法官們總是照此判決。

在辯論中，他們煞費苦心地避免談案子的是非，而是大聲、猛烈、冗長地糾纏於所有與事無關的情節。比如，在剛才說的案子裡，他們從不想知道我的對手對我的牛有什麼要求或權利，而是問那頭牛是紅的還是黑的；角是長還是短；我放牧牠的田是圓的還是方的；是在家裡還是在外面擠奶；牠容易得什麼病，諸如此類；然後他們查先例，把案子一次又一次延期，十年、二十年或三十年後得出結論。還要注意，這個社會有一種自己的行話和切口，別的凡人都聽不懂，他們所有的法律就用它寫成，他們還特別注意增加這些法律；這樣他們就把真與假、對與錯的本質完全弄混了；所以要花三十年才能判決，我祖先傳給我六代的那塊田，是屬於我，還是屬於三百英里外的一個陌生人。

主人問，這些律師的數升不升。我說我想，起初是升的；而幹了幾年之後就不升了，我曾在一次宴會上拿過一位高級律師的腕，他在一場證明一個人的房子不屬於他自己的演說中，自始至終是六十一。他當時把蹄子從我的腕上拿開，看著它看了一會兒，我明白我把一個問題放進了他的國家，那裡以前沒有這個問題。我說我自己從來做不到。那是真的，他是從蹄子得到的，它似乎沒有幫上忙。

在審判被控犯有危害國家罪的人時，方法要短得多、值得稱讚得多：法官先派人去探聽有權勢者的意向，之後他就能輕易地絞死或救一個罪犯，同時嚴格保持法律的一切形式。這時我的主人插話說，真可惜，據我的描述，這些律師必定具有如此驚人的智力，卻不被鼓勵去做教導別人智慧與知識的人。對此我向大人保證，在他們自己行業之外的一切方面，他們通常是我們當中最無知最愚蠢的一代，在日常談話中最令人鄙視，是一切知識與學問的公開敵人，在所有別的話題上，和在他們本行的話題上一樣，同樣傾向於歪曲人類的普遍理性。

## 第35章 · 對安妮女王治下英格蘭狀況的續述。錢，和被鐘騎的窮人；把數拿走的酒；讀數並開帳單的醫生；數什麼也告訴不了你的首相的性格；以及貴族。五十二的作者被發現並不在乎。

我的主人仍然完全弄不懂，是什麼動機能促使這一族律師，為了傷害他們的同類動物，自找麻煩、不安、疲勞，並結成不義的同盟；他也不明白我說他們是為了「受僱」是什麼意思。於是我費了很大的力氣向他描述錢的用處、它是用什麼材料做的、金屬的價值：一個耶胡得到大量這種珍貴的東西，就能買他想要的任何東西；最好的衣服、最高貴的房子、大片土地、最貴的肉和飲料，還能隨意挑選最美麗的雌性。因此，既然光靠錢就能做到這一切，我們的耶胡就認為永遠沒有足夠的錢可花或可存，視他們天生傾向於揮霍還是吝嗇而定；富人享受窮人勞動的果實，而後者與前者的比例是一千比一；我們人民的大部分被迫過著悲慘的生活，每天為微薄的工資勞動，好讓少數人生活得富足。

我又說，一個受僱的人，是照僱他的人的數走的，工資就是為那個數付的錢。主人問，那麼我們的窮人是被騎了？我說，可以這麼說，被鐘騎。他問誰握著馬刺。我說沒有人握著；那是另一隻手裡缺的那樣東西。他沒有說他明白了。他說他想，這是比馬刺更經濟的安排。

我對這些和許多別的類似的細節說了很多；可是大人仍然茫然；因為他有一個假定，認為所有的動物對大地的出產都有權得到自己的份，尤其是那些統治其餘動物的。所以他要我告訴他，這些昂貴的肉是什麼，我們中間怎麼有人需要它們。於是我列舉了腦子裡想到的所有種類，和各種烹調方法，這些不派船到世界各地去是做不到的，飲料、調味品和無數別的方便都是這樣。我向他保證，這整個地球至少要被繞三遍，我們的一位較好的雌耶胡才能吃上早餐，或有個杯子盛它。他說，一個不能供養自己居民的國家，必定是悲慘的國家。我回答說，英格蘭據估計生產的糧食是它的居民所能消費的三倍；可是為了供養雄性的奢侈與無節制和雌性的虛榮，我們把大部分必需品送到別的國家去，換回疾病、愚蠢和惡習的材料，在我們自己當中揮霍。所以必然的結果，是大批人民被迫以乞討、搶劫、偷竊、欺騙、拉皮條、諂媚、教唆、發偽誓、偽造、賭博、說謊、巴結、恐嚇、投票、寫作、觀星、下毒、嫖、說教、誹謗、自由思想等等職業為生；這每一個詞，我都費很大力氣讓他明白。

我告訴他，葡萄酒不是為了供給缺水或別的飲料而從外國輸入我們這裡的，而是因為它是一種液體，使我們失去理智而快樂；驅散一切憂鬱的念頭；在腦子裡產生狂野放縱的想像；提升我們的希望、驅走我們的恐懼；暫時中止理性的一切職能，使我們不能使用四肢，直到我們陷入沉睡；不過必須承認，我們醒來總是不舒服又沮喪。我說，它在一個晚上把人身上的數拿走，使他不屬於任何人，我們醒來發現它留在我們放下它的地方，經過一夜，稍差了一點。主人在那一句話的長度裡是四十六。

我正要告訴他另一種人，他們以照料病人為生。可是這裡我費了極大的困難才讓他領會我的意思。他很容易想像，一匹慧駰在死前幾天變得虛弱沉重，或者因某種意外傷了一條腿；可是自然，把萬物做得完美的自然，竟會讓任何痛苦在我們身體裡滋生，他認為不可能，並想知道這麼無法解釋的惡的原因。我告訴他，我們吃一千種彼此作用相反的東西；我們不餓時吃，沒有渴的刺激時喝；我們整夜坐著喝烈酒，一口不吃；許多疾病是父傳子的；它們不會少於五六百種，遍布每個肢體和關節。為了補救這些，我們當中培養了一種人，以治病為職業，或假裝治病；因為我在這一行有些本事，我就把他們行事的整個奧祕和方法告訴他。他們的基本原理是：所有的病都由積滯引起，由此他們斷定需要大量排空身體；於是他們用草、礦物、樹膠、油和一百種更糟的東西，配出他們能想到的最令人作嘔的合劑，胃把它吐出來，這叫做催吐，或者命令我們從另一個口子吃進去，這叫做瀉。我說，在病人身上，數從來不會兩次相同，醫生的技藝主要在讀它；我又告訴他，這一族的一大長處是他們的預言本領，他們很少失靈，他們在真實的疾病中，當它發展到某種惡性程度時，通常預告死亡，而死亡總是在他們掌握中，當康復不在的時候。

他問，一個病人的數是怎麼被弄回來的。我說不是被弄回來的；是被讀的，然後送一張帳單。他說，在他那邊，一匹慧駰從不生病，最後三天每天降一根頭髮然後停止；他對這件事所知道的全部就是：那是安靜的。我說我受過這一行的訓練，大概三十年裡拿過四萬個腕，我記不起有哪一個是安靜的。

我以前有時跟我的主人談過一般政府的性質，特別是我們自己那優越的憲法，它理所當然是全世界的驚異與羨慕。可是因為在這裡偶然提到一位國務大臣，過了一段時間，他命令我告訴他，我用這個稱呼特別指的是哪一種耶胡。我告訴他，一位首相或國務首席大臣，也就是我想描述的那個人，是個完全不知喜悲、愛恨、憐憫與憤怒的生物；至少除了對財富、權力和頭銜的猛烈欲望之外，不用別的情感；他把他的話用於一切用途，除了表達他的心思；他從不說真話，除非意圖讓你把它當作謊話；也從不說謊，除非意圖讓你把它當作真話；那些他在背後說得最壞的人，反而走在最穩的晉升之路；每當他開始向別人或向你自己稱讚你，從那天起你就沒有希望了。你能得到的最壞的標記是承諾，尤其是以誓言證實的承諾；在那之後，每個明智的人都退出，放棄一切希望。我又加了一句，他的數是這個王國最普通的一個，六十一，說謊時不升，被打動時不降，這被認為是了不起的成就；一個數什麼也告訴不了你的人，是一個什麼也不能從他那裡得知的人。主人又是四十八，說這麼看，一個數是可以被這樣做的，而他曾被告知那是不可能的。

我告訴他，一個人可以通過三種方法升到首相。第一種是知道怎樣審慎地處置一個妻子、一個女兒或一個姐妹；第二種是出賣或暗中拆毀他的前任；第三種是在公共集會上對宮廷的腐敗表現出狂熱的熱情。這些大臣掌握所有職位的任命權，靠收買一個議院或大議會的多數來保住權力；最後，靠一種叫做大赦令的權宜辦法（我向他描述了它的性質），他們保護自己免受事後的清算，帶著國家的贓物退休。首相的宮殿是培養其他人做他這一行的神學院：侍童、僕從和門房，模仿他們的主人，成了各自轄區內的國務大臣，學會精通三種主要成分：傲慢、說謊和賄賂。他通常被一個衰老的娼婦或寵愛的男僕所支配，這些人是所有恩典傳遞的通道，在最終意義上可以稱為王國的統治者。我用這個詞，是它的另一個意思（他從我這裡學到它是維持數的那樣東西）；他就那樣領會了，以為我的意思是這王國被一個衰老的娼婦維持著；而我沒有糾正他。

有一天，在談話中，我的主人聽我提到我國的貴族，就稱讚我，我不敢說配得上：他確信我必定出身於某個貴族家庭，因為我在體形、顏色和潔淨上遠遠超過他國所有的耶胡，雖然在力量和敏捷上似乎不及，這必須歸因於我與別的畜生不同的生活方式；此外，我不但有說話的官能，而且有一些理性的基礎，程度之高，在他所有的相識當中，我算得上一個奇蹟。他要我注意，在慧駰當中，白色、栗色和鐵灰色的，在體形上不如棗騮色、灰斑色和黑色的那麼勻稱；天賦的智力和進步的能力也不相等；所以始終處於僕人的地位，從不想跟自己種族之外的通婚，在那個國家，那會被認為是怪異而違反自然的。我注意到，他們全都是四十四。

我向大人表達了我最謙卑的感謝，感謝他對我所抱的好意見，同時向他保證，我出身低微，是平凡誠實的父母所生，他們只能給我一個過得去的教育；貴族在我們當中，與他心目中的概念完全是另一回事；我們的年輕貴族從小在懶散和奢侈中長大；一到年紀允許，就耗盡他們的精力，在淫蕩的女人當中染上可憎的疾病；他們的財產差不多敗光時，就娶某個出身低賤、容貌難看、體質不健全的女人，僅僅為了錢，卻恨她、瞧不起她。這種婚姻的產物，通常是瘰癧的、佝僂的或畸形的孩子；因此這個家族很少延續超過三代，除非妻子留心在鄰居或僕人當中找一個健康的父親，來改良和延續這個種。一個虛弱有病的身體、瘦削的面容和蠟黃的膚色，是貴族血統的真正標誌；而一個健康強壯的外表，對一個有身分的人是那麼丟臉，世人會斷定他的真父親是個馬夫或車夫。他們心智的缺陷與身體的缺陷平行，是憂鬱、遲鈍、無知、任性、貪欲和驕傲的混合體。沒有這個顯貴團體的同意，任何法律都不能制定、廢除或修改；而這些貴族同樣有對我們一切財產的裁決權，不得上訴。

那個夏天結束時我是五十二，講這一切時它一次也沒有升過。我的主人說到這一點。他說，一個能以那個數說出這些話的耶胡，不是比其餘的更好，就是更壞，他從腕上分不出是哪一種；因為在他看來，我對我所說的一切並不在乎。我說我非常在乎。他拿了我的腕，說在他看來不像是那樣；我發現他是對的，卻不知道從什麼時候起。

## 第36章 · 作者決心永不回到人類，與一個不再上升的數。他的主人對人性的觀察，與耶胡的平行事例：共同持有的數不需要監督者，一堆閃亮的石頭能使耶胡的數靜下來。四碼的距離。

讀者也許會奇怪，我怎麼能說服自己，在一族本來就太容易從我與他們的耶胡完全一致這一點，對人類形成最壞的看法的生靈面前，對我自己的物種作這樣自由的陳述。但我必須坦白承認，那些優秀的四足者的許多美德，與人類的腐敗相對照，使我的眼睛打開、理解加深，我開始以很不同的眼光看人的行動與情感，並認為我自己同類的榮譽不值得維護；況且，在我的主人這樣一位判斷敏銳的人面前，我也不可能維護，他每天讓我確信我自己有一千種過錯，那些過錯我以前毫無察覺，在我們當中甚至不會被列入人的缺點。我還從他的榜樣學到對一切虛假與偽裝的徹底憎惡；真理在我看來那麼可愛，我決心為它犧牲一切。我的數在敘述時不再升了。我把那當作真理，現在我想，我把這兩者弄反了。

讓我對讀者坦白到這個地步：我那樣自由地陳述事情，還有一個強得多的動機。我到這個國家還不滿一年，就對居民產生了那樣的愛與敬，下定決心永遠不回到人類，而在這些令人讚歎的慧駰當中度過餘生，沉思並實行每一種美德，在那裡我不會有任何惡行的榜樣或誘因。可是命運，我永久的敵人，注定這麼大的幸福不能落到我的份上。不過，現在想起來有點安慰：我說我的同胞時，在這麼嚴格的審查者面前，我盡我敢的程度減輕了他們的過錯，在每一條上都盡事情所能承受地給了有利的轉折。因為，確實，誰活著不會被對出生地的偏見與偏愛所左右呢？我已敘述了在我有幸服侍他的大部分時間裡與主人所作的幾次談話的實質；但為了簡短，省去的比這裡寫下的多得多。

我回答完他所有的問題，他的好奇似乎完全滿足之後，有一天清早他派人叫我去，命令我在離他有些距離處坐下，這是他以前從沒給過我的榮譽。那段距離是四碼，我量過，像我量那個國家裡的一切那樣，那是一隻蹄子夠不到一隻腕的長度。我不說那是有意的。那天早晨他沒有拿我的腕，那是他第一次沒有拿，我把這個省略當作禮貌，到傍晚才明白，那也是一個回答。他說他一直在非常認真地考慮我的全部故事，就它關於我自己和我的國家而言；他把我們看作一種動物，不知由於什麼偶然，一小份理性落在了我們頭上，我們除了借它的幫助來加重我們天然的腐敗，並獲得自然沒有給我們的新腐敗之外，沒有別的用處；我們解除了自然賜給我們的那幾種能力的武裝；很成功地增加了我們原有的需要，似乎一生都在徒勞地努力靠自己的發明去滿足它們。至於我自己，顯然沒有一個普通耶胡的力氣或敏捷；我用後腳走路不穩；發明了一種辦法使我的爪毫無用處也毫無防衛，又去掉了我下巴上的毛，那本是遮擋太陽和天氣的；最後，我既不能快跑，也不能像我的兄弟們——他這麼稱呼他國的耶胡——那樣爬樹。

他說，我們的政府和法律制度顯然是由於我們在理性上、因此在美德上有嚴重的缺陷；因為單靠理性就足以治理一個有理性的生物；所以那是一個我們沒有資格要求的稱號，即使從我自己對我的人民所作的敘述看；雖然他明明看出，為了偏袒他們，我隱瞞了許多細節，並且常說不存在的事。他說「單靠理性」，意思是一個共同持有的數，而法律就是一個民族用來代替它的東西。他說他有它，在院子裡，早晨，與別人一起，並不想到它，就像人不想到地面；而他看出我得被教才會在它上面走。他又說，一個共同持有的數不需要監督者；它是他國唯一沒有僕人站在旁邊的東西。

他更加肯定這個意見，因為他注意到，我在身體的每個特徵上都和別的耶胡一致，除了對我真正不利的力氣、速度和敏捷方面，爪的短，以及一些自然沒有份的其他細節；所以從我給他的關於我們的生活、舉止和行為的敘述，他發現我們心靈的性情也同樣相近。他說，眾所周知，耶胡彼此的憎恨超過對任何別種動物的；通常給的理由是自己形體的可憎，牠們在別的耶胡身上都看得見，在自己身上看不見。所以他一度開始認為我們遮蓋身體，借這個發明向彼此隱瞞許多畸形，是不無智慧的，否則這些畸形幾乎無法忍受。可是他現在發現他弄錯了，他國的那些畜生的紛爭，和我所描述的我們的紛爭，是由同一個原因造成的。因為，他說，如果你把夠五十隻吃的食物扔給五隻耶胡，牠們不會平靜地吃，而會扭打在一起，每一隻都急於獨佔全部；所以牠們在外面吃時，通常派一個僕人站在旁邊，養在家裡的則彼此拴開一段距離。如果一頭牛因年老或意外死了，而一匹慧駰還沒來得及為自己的耶胡弄到它，鄰近的耶胡就會成群來搶，於是就會發生像我描述過的那種戰鬥，雙方的爪造成可怕的傷口，雖然因為缺少我們發明的那樣方便的殺人工具，牠們很少能殺死對方。其他時候，幾個鄰近地區的耶胡之間也有類似的戰鬥，沒有任何明顯原因；一個地區的伺機襲擊下一個地區，趁他們沒有準備。可是如果發現計畫落空了，牠們就回家，因為沒有敵人，就進行我稱為牠們自己之間的內戰。

在他國的一些田裡，有幾種顏色的閃亮的石頭，耶胡對它們狂熱地喜愛；這些石頭有一部分嵌在土裡時（有時是這樣），牠們會用爪挖整整幾天來取出；然後把它們搬走，一堆一堆藏在牠們的窩裡；卻仍然很小心地四下張望，怕同伴發現牠們的寶藏。我的主人說，他從沒能發現這種不自然的欲望的原因，或這些石頭對一個耶胡有什麼用處；可是現在他相信，它也許來自我所歸給人類的同一個貪婪原則。他曾經作過一次實驗，私下把一個耶胡埋下的一堆石頭從原處拿走；於是那卑鄙的動物，發現寶藏不見了，大聲哀號，把整個群都引到那地方，在那裡悲慘地嚎叫，然後撕咬其餘的，開始消瘦，不吃、不睡、不幹活，直到他吩咐一個僕人悄悄把石頭搬回同一個洞裡，照原樣藏好；那耶胡找到後，立刻恢復了精神與好脾氣，卻很小心地把它們搬到一個更好的藏處，從此一直是個很有用的畜生。主人那天早晨和傍晚拿過牠的數：一百五十，和九十。他說他不知道那些石頭是什麼，但它們似乎是這個國家唯一能使一個耶胡的數靜下來的東西。我口袋裡還有被放上岸時藏在那裡的錢，在那個國家我一直沒拿出來；那天夜裡我發現我把手伸進了它，像人摸一個他自己挖的洞。

我的主人又向我保證，這也是我自己觀察到的，在閃亮的石頭多的田裡，發生最凶猛、最頻繁的戰鬥，是鄰近的耶胡不斷入侵造成的。他說，常有這樣的事：兩隻耶胡在一塊田裡發現這樣一塊石頭，爭著誰是物主，第三隻就趁機把它從兩隻手裡搶走；我的主人非要堅持說這與我們的訴訟有某種相似；我覺得為了我們的體面，不去糾正他，因為他提到的那種判決，比我們許多判決公道得多，因為原告與被告在那裡，除了他們爭的石頭之外，什麼也不損失；而我們的公平法庭，只要他們任何一方還剩下一點東西，就不會駁回案子。

他說，在大多數群裡，有一種統治的耶胡，就像我們的鹿園裡通常有某頭領頭的雄鹿，牠總是比其餘的身體更畸形，性情更惡毒；這個領袖通常有一個盡可能像牠自己的寵兒，職務是舔主人的腳和屁股，把雌耶胡趕到牠的窩；為此偶爾得到一塊驢肉作獎賞。這個寵兒被全群憎恨，所以為了保護自己，總是待在領袖身邊。牠通常在職位上，直到找到一個更壞的；可是牠一被撤換，牠的繼任者就帶著那一地區所有的耶胡，老少雌雄，成群地來，從頭到腳往牠身上拉屎。至於這在多大程度上適用於我們的宮廷、寵臣和國務大臣，我的主人說，我自己最能判斷。我不敢對這種惡意的影射作答，它把人類的理解力貶低到一條普通獵犬的聰明之下，那獵犬有足夠的判斷力，分辨並跟隨獵群中最出色的狗的叫聲，從不弄錯。

他還告訴我，有時一個耶胡會忽然想退到一個角落，躺下，嚎叫呻吟，把靠近的都踢開，儘管牠年輕肥壯，不缺食也不缺水，僕人也想不出牠到底哪裡不對；他們發現的唯一補救辦法，是讓牠做重活，之後牠必定恢復正常。我出於對自己同類的偏袒保持沉默；可是在這裡我能清楚看出憂鬱症的真正種子，它只攫住懶惰的、奢侈的和富有的人；如果他們被迫經歷同樣的療法，我願保證他們痊癒。我還想到一個豌豆的膀胱，想到重活就是從外面給一個沒有數的生物的一個數，這能維持一段時間；還有，那隻在角落裡的耶胡是被派去挖，挖是在一百一十上，而我曾在一個有鼓的國家見過這個；這個我也沒說。

我隨時預料我的主人會責備耶胡，說牠們有我們當中這麼常見的、兩性都有的那些違反自然的欲望。可是自然，看來，不是一位那麼精通的女教師；這些較為精緻的快樂，完全是我們這半邊地球上藝術與理性的產物。那天夜裡我在稻草上拿了我的腕。是四十九。我並沒有希望它更低。我注意到，自從秋天以來我就沒有把那個膀胱從口袋裡拿出來過，我摸了摸，它還在原處，我沒有把它拿出來。

## 第37章 · 作者敘述耶胡的若干細節，以及他拿住腕的一隻幼崽。河裡的一次洗澡，與一個不是栗色馬所推想的那樣的數。慧駰的大德，並不是對著哪一個特定的人。他們的青年的教育與運動。他們的大會。一個節日，與兩根手指。

我本該比我的主人更懂人性，所以要把他說的耶胡拿來對照我自己和我的同胞並不難；我相信我還能靠自己的觀察再有些發現。於是我常求他老人家允許我到附近的獸群裡去，他每次都答應，因為他完全確信，我對那些畜生的憎恨絕不會讓我被牠們敗壞。四碼那天的次日早晨，他又拿了我的腕，用的是老距離和老蹄子，我高興的程度超出我自己能解釋的。是五十。他吩咐一個僕人，一匹強壯、老實、脾氣好的栗色馬，做我的護衛；沒有他的保護，我不敢出這樣的遠門，因為剛到的頭幾個月，我有三四次沒帶短刀就走遠了些，差一點落進牠們的爪子。栗色馬走在我身後一點，在耶胡會來的那一側，這沒有人吩咐過他；他用的是他們大家都用的那個步子，所以頭一個鐘頭我還在想自己的腳，之後就不想了。

早上我們走到燕麥田下面的一片坡地，那裡有一群約四十隻的耶胡躺在草裡；在栗色馬認為合適的距離上，我把袖子捲起，露出光著的手臂和胸膛，我發現牠們會過來看，而且我相信牠們把這當作一種自我介紹。牠們走到自己敢走的最近處。然後牠們做我做的事。我把兩根手指放在腕的內側——每當腳下的地不是我原以為的那樣，我發現我就會這樣——轉眼間，四十隻手放在四十隻腕上，放在肘上，放在頸上，放在另一隻手上，放錯了，急切地，帶著各種憎恨的表示；就像一隻戴著帽子、穿著襪子的馴養寒鴉，一旦被弄到野的當中，總是遭到牠們迫害。我停了手。牠們沒有我，又繼續了一會兒。

有一次我抓到一隻大約三歲的雄性幼崽，牠離開了其餘的，那時栗色馬在三十碼外的小溪邊。我做了人對任何受驚的孩子都會做的事，那是我並沒有打算做的：我拿住牠的腕，握著，把那個數說進牠的耳朵。牠原本是一百七十，個位數我丟了。我說六十，就像一個九歲、四十呎高的女孩曾經對我說過的那樣，只是這一回我是比較大的那個。說到第五遍，是一百一十，幼崽停了抓撓，去聽。說到第九遍是一百，牠抬頭看我。然後我想牠聞到了我。那小鬼開始尖叫、抓、咬，那樣凶猛，我只得放開牠；放得正是時候，因為一大群老的聽見聲音圍了上來，見幼崽平安（牠跑掉了），栗色馬這時又已在我肘邊，就不敢靠近。我觀察到牠的肉氣味極臭，介於黃鼠狼與狐狸之間，卻難聞得多；我還忘了說（讀者若願意，我略去也可以），我抱著牠的時候，牠把一種黃色的液體拉得我滿身衣服都是。附近有一條小溪，我在那裡盡量把自己洗乾淨，發現牠那一口是咬穿了袖口，停在那根繩上的：牙齒立在黑色的頭髮裡，兩小排，沒有立在我身上。我直到晾透了才敢走到主人面前。進去以後，我告訴他氣味的事。我沒有告訴他我在牠耳邊說了什麼。他會問那是做什麼用的；而我用他的語言沒有那個詞。

依我所能發現的，耶胡是所有動物裡最教不會的，牠們的能力從來高不過拉車或背負重物；可我認為這個缺陷主要出於一種乖僻、倔強的性情，因為牠們狡猾、惡毒、奸詐、記仇。牠們強壯耐勞，心卻是怯懦的，所以傲慢、卑屈、殘忍。據觀察，兩性中的紅髮者比其餘的更淫蕩、更好惡作劇，而力量與靈活又遠勝其餘的。我在獸群裡拿過九隻腕，那不夠拿來下這個斷語；我只是照人家觀察到的寫下。

慧駰把一些耶胡養在房子附近的棚屋裡，供眼前使用；其餘的被派到某些田裡去，在那裡挖根、吃幾種草、四處找腐肉，或者抓黃鼠狼和盧希穆（一種野鼠），貪婪地吞食。自然教牠們用爪子在隆起的坡地的側面挖深洞，牠們各自躺在洞裡；只有雌的洞較大，好容納兩三隻幼崽。我白天往幾個洞裡看過。它們是暖的，裡面放著每一隻留下來的東西，一根骨頭、一塊石頭、一塊破布；在較大的洞裡有一股奶的氣味，我沒有預料到，也沒有提。牠們從嬰兒起就像青蛙一樣游泳，能在水下待很久，常在那裡捉到魚，雌的把魚帶回家給幼崽吃。說到這裡，我希望讀者原諒我講一件古怪的奇遇。

有一天，我和我的護衛栗色馬在外面，天氣熱得厲害，我懇求他讓我到附近的一條河裡洗澡。他同意了，我脫得一絲不掛，輕輕走下水去。一隻年輕的雌耶胡，一直站在一處河岸後面，把整個經過都看在眼裡，飛快地跑來——栗色馬和我都推想，牠是為了那一類生靈撲向一個赤裸的男人時通常有的那個緣故——一躍跳進水裡，離我洗澡的地方不到五碼。我事後量過。那比我的主人讓我坐離他的蹄子遠一碼。我生平從沒有這樣可怕地受過驚。栗色馬正在遠處吃草，沒有想到會有什麼危險。牠抱住了我。我拼命大聲吼叫，栗色馬飛奔過來，四拍一組，第四隻蹄落在拍子上，所以即使在那時他也不會不合拍；於是牠極不情願地鬆開手，跳上對岸，站在那裡望著我嚎叫，一直到我穿好衣服，一隻手按在自己的頸上，像在那裡找什麼東西。

我拿了牠的數，如果那也算拿的話。那是在我的肋骨與牠的肋骨之間，那是個很糟的位置，我也沒有打算這樣做。我是外科醫生，各種狀況下的男人和女人的腕我都拿過；栗色馬和我所推想的那件事有它自己的數，我認得；而這個不是。這是一個跑了很長的路來到一扇門前的孩子的數。我沒有把這個告訴栗色馬，他有他自己的推想，也有權保有它；而我自己也推想了一段時間。這件事成了我的主人和他一家的消遣，也成了我自己的屈辱。慧駰笑的時候全體在同一個數上，所以它像地板塌陷一樣穿過一間屋子；我是用臉笑的，慢了半拍。因為現在我不能再否認，我在每一肢、每一特徵上都是個貨真價實的耶胡，既然雌的對我有一種天然的傾向，像對牠們自己的同類。這隻畜生的頭髮也不是紅色（那也許能為一種稍欠正常的胃口作個藉口），而是黑得像黑刺李，像我腕上的繩一樣黑；我穿衣服的時候注意到了，把袖子放下來蓋住它。牠的面貌也沒有顯得像牠那一類其餘的那樣完全可憎。我估計牠十一歲左右，因為我作為外科醫生，有看牙的眼力。

在這個國家住了三年，讀者大概會期待我像別的旅行者那樣，講一講這裡居民的風俗習慣，這的確是我主要的研究。這些高貴的慧駰，天生有對一切美德的普遍傾向，對於一個有理性的生物身上何謂惡毫無概念，所以他們的大原則是培養理性，並完全由它支配。理性在他們當中也不是一個有爭議的問題，不像在我們這裡，人可以兩面都說得振振有詞；它以直接的確信打動你，在它沒有被激情與利害混雜、遮蔽、玷污的地方，它必然如此。我記得，我費了多大的勁才讓主人懂得「意見」這個詞。我告訴他，兩位外科醫生，在同一個人的同一隻腕上，會得出相差一拍的兩個數，並且各自被喜歡他的人相信。他問兩個人哪一個數錯了。我說也許都沒有錯。他等著，像他在我一句話說歪了、指望後半句會把它扶正時那樣。它沒有。他說，兩個人數了，卻有兩個數，那麼兩人中有一個沒有在數，這應該對他說，而不是給它一個名字。所以爭論、爭吵，以及對錯誤或可疑命題的武斷，在慧駰當中是不知道的惡。當我解釋我們各種自然哲學的體系時，他笑說，一個自稱有理性的生物，竟以知道別人的猜測為榮，而那些事即使知道得確實也毫無用處；在這一點上他完全同意蘇格拉底，如柏拉圖所傳述的，我提到這個，作為我所能給予那位哲學家中的魁首的最高榮譽。我後來常想，這樣的學說會對歐洲的圖書館造成怎樣的毀滅，又會有多少成名的路被堵死在學問界。

友誼與仁愛是慧駰的兩大主要美德，而且不局限於特定的對象，而是普及整個族類。從最遠處來的陌生者受到的待遇與最近的鄰居一樣，走到哪裡都把自己當作在家。我在那裡時來過一位，一匹我沒見過的灰馬，從山那邊來，在路上走了五天，在院子裡受到同樣的蹄碰蹄，四下，和後面同樣的沉默，一組四拍結束時他已在屋裡；我想他在到達之前就已經在裡面了。他們把體面和禮貌保持到最高的程度，卻完全不懂儀式。他們對自己的小馬駒並無溺愛，但他們教育牠們所費的心思完全出於理性的指示；我看過我的主人在門口對著一匹鄰居的小馬駒，又對著他自己的小馬駒，我從他的肩膀，也從他的數，說不出哪一匹是哪一匹。他說，自然教他們愛整個族類，只有理性才在有更高程度美德的地方區分個人。我告訴他，我帶著兩個孩子的兩個數，七十和五十四，是在雷德里夫的一扇門前拿的，我在好幾個國家裡把它們翻來覆去，像別人把玩一枚硬幣。他問那是做什麼用的。我說，為了讓我認得他們。他說，他想它們在院子裡，和所有別的一起，我在那裡就會認得它們。我沒法告訴他那不是一回事；因為我發現我沒有那個差別的詞，在他的語言裡沒有，在我的語言裡也沒有。

慧駰的母馬各生了一雌一雄之後，就不再與她們的配偶同寢，除非失去了一個孩子，那是很少發生的；那時他們再相會；或者當這樣的意外落在一位妻子已過生育年齡的人身上，另一對夫婦就把自己的一個小馬駒送給他，然後他們再在一起，直到母馬又懷孕。這個預防是必要的，為了不讓國家背上過多人口的負擔。作為僕人養大的低一等的種族，限制就沒有這麼嚴：這些可以每種性別生三個，在貴族家裡做家僕。在婚姻上，他們極小心地選擇顏色，以免在種裡造成難看的混合。男的重力氣，女的重秀美，不是為了愛，而是為了不讓種族退化。求愛、愛情、禮物、寡婦產業、婚姻財產協議，在他們的思想裡都沒有位置，語言裡也沒有表達它們的詞。年輕的一對相遇，被結合，只因為那是他們父母和朋友的決定。違反婚姻，或任何其他不貞，從沒聽說過；這一對度過一生，所懷的友誼與互相的仁愛，與他們對遇到的一切別人所懷的一樣，沒有嫉妒、溺愛、吵嘴或不滿。我問一對夫婦怎樣在彼此之間定下他們的數，像瑪麗和我在門口定下我們的，五十二。主人沒有聽懂那個問題，我也沒有再問，因為我已聽懂了答案。

在教育兩性的青年上，他們的方法令人讚歎，很值得我們效法。他們在十八歲以前，除了某些日子，不許嘗一粒燕麥，也很少給奶；夏天他們早晚各吃兩個鐘頭的草，他們的父母也是這樣；可是僕人們得到的時間不超過一半。他們的數在每一個身上都相同。我注意到，僕人們只有一半的時間去保持它。節制、勤勉、運動和潔淨，是對兩性的青年同樣要求的功課；我的主人認為我們給女性與男性不同的教育是違反常理的，除了家務管理的某些項目；這樣，如他所正確觀察到的，我們一半的人都只能生孩子，別的什麼用也沒有；而把我們孩子的照顧託付給這樣無用的動物，他說，更是一個野蠻的例子。我想到雷德里夫一個抽屜裡的五本曆書，是一個女人的筆跡，記著沒有人教過她去拿的正午；這個我也沒有告訴他。那時我已經瞞了他好多事，並且發現這很容易。

每隔四年，在春分，有一次全國的代表會議，在離我們的房子約二十英里的一片平原上舉行，持續五六天。在那裡他們查問各地區的狀況，乾草、燕麥、牛或耶胡是充裕還是不足（主人告訴我，耶胡和牛是在同一欄裡唸出來的）；凡有短缺的地方，這很少發生，立刻由一致同意的捐助來補足。孩子的調配也在這裡決定：若一匹慧駰有兩個雄的，他就和另一個有兩個雌的交換一個；當一個孩子因意外夭折，而母親已過生育年齡時，就決定本地區哪一家再生一個來補這個缺。我想到雷德里夫的第三個孩子，在我啟航之後出生的，我沒有拿過那孩子的數，也沒有人告訴我是男是女；想到沒有一個地區裡有人被要求去補上那孩子（如果夭折了），或去保住那孩子（如果沒有）；我把這個想法放在我一直在放別的想法的地方。

慧駰訓練他們的青年，使其強壯、迅捷、耐勞，方法是讓他們在陡峭的山坡上下和堅硬多石的地面上賽跑；等他們全身出汗，就命令他們頭耳一起跳進一個池塘或一條河。我和栗色馬站在池邊，事後從他那裡得知他們的數是多少。是四十四，說這句話的工夫就回到了。每年四次，某個地區的青年聚會，展示他們在跑、跳和其他力量與敏捷的項目上的本領，勝者得到一首讚美他或她的歌，大家一起唱，在數上，所以直到他們開始唱，我才看得出誰贏了。那天，僕人把一群耶胡趕進場子，背著乾草、燕麥和奶，供慧駰們進餐；進餐之後，這些畜生立刻被趕回去，免得妨礙集會。我被允許站在邊上，在栗色馬的肩旁，沒有被趕回去，這我注意到了，栗色馬沒有說什麼。下一次節日，牠在其中。我是憑頭髮認出牠的。牠背著一捆乾草站在行列裡，朝場子那一頭看；我看著栗色馬的肩，那一刻那是場子裡我唯一能看的地方。她把兩根手指放在腕的內側。她放對了。在河邊她曾在頸上找它，別的則放在肘上；而沒有人教過她。它很容易找。自然本意如此。我沒有做回去。那天夜裡我在稻草上拿了我的腕。是五十三，我希望它低一些，這是我以前沒有過的；它沒有下去。

## 第38章 · 慧駰大會上的一場大辯論，以及它如何決定；主人以四十四講述它，其中有一處是四十六。慧駰的學問。他們的建築，與他們的手。他們的葬禮：一匹不為任何事遲到的母馬。他們語言的缺陷，與一個用在一條繩上的詞。

這樣的大會之一，在我停留期間舉行過，約在我離開前三個月，我的主人作為我們地區的代表去了。他離開了七天，那片平原在二十英里外，會議開五六天，屋子靠剩下的四個保持著那個數。它保持住了。可是我聽得出他不在的那個位置，像舌頭會去找一顆牙原來在的地方；而栗色馬，一向不愛發表意見的，第二天傍晚在院子裡主人平常站的地方站了好一會兒。

這次大會上重提了他們的老辯論，其實也是他們國家有過的唯一的辯論，是他們以前辯過、以後還會再辯的同一個：問題是，是否應把耶胡從地面上消滅。我的主人回來之後，給了我一個很詳細的敘述。他用四十四講，他說一切都是這樣；有一處是四十六，那一處我看見了卻沒有看見，因為我專注在字句上，直到事後才回頭去找。贊成消滅的一位代表提出了幾條分量很重的理由：耶胡既是自然所產生的最骯髒、最臭、最畸形的動物，也就是最倔強、最教不會、最愛惡作劇、最惡毒的；牠們若不時時被看守，就會偷偷吸慧駰的母牛的奶頭，殺死並吞食他們的貓，踐踏他們的燕麥和草，還要幹出上千種別的荒唐事。

他又提到一個普遍的傳說：耶胡並不是一直在他們的國家；很多世紀以前，有兩隻這樣的畜生一起出現在一座山上，是太陽的熱作用在腐爛的泥漿上產生的，還是從海的泡沫和浮渣裡來的，始終沒人知道；這兩隻生育，牠們的後代不久就多到擠滿並侵擾了整個國家；慧駰為了擺脫這禍害，進行了一次總圍獵，最後把整群圈了起來；殺掉年老的，每一匹慧駰留兩隻年幼的在一個窩棚裡，把牠們訓練到一隻天性如此野蠻的動物所能達到的馴順程度，用牠們拉車載貨。我想到兩個生靈在一座山上，沒有人拿他們的腕，想到一個沒有人維持的調速器會怎樣，會怎樣持續多少代；我什麼也沒說，因為沒有人問我。

那位代表又說，這個傳說似乎有許多真實性，這些生靈不可能是 yinhniamshy，即這片土地的原住民，因為慧駰以及所有別的動物對牠們有那樣猛烈的憎恨；這種憎恨，雖然牠們的惡劣性情完全當得起，但若牠們是原住民就絕不會達到這樣高的程度，否則牠們早就被根除了。居民們一時興起，想用耶胡的勞役，很不慎重地忽略了培育驢；驢是一種好看的動物，容易餵養，更溫馴、更守秩序，沒有任何令人不快的氣味，力氣也夠幹活，雖然在敏捷上不及耶胡；牠們的叫聲即使不悅耳，也遠勝耶胡那可怕的嚎叫。一頭驢只有一個步調，整天保持它，而慧駰自己也只有一個步調，所以覺得這是一個優點。

另有幾位發表了同一意思的看法，這時我的主人向大會提出了一個辦法，那辦法其實是從我這裡借來的靈感。他贊同那個傳說，並斷言最先被人看見的那兩隻耶胡是被從海上送來的；上岸後，被同伴拋棄，退到山裡，逐漸退化，過了一段時間，變得比牠們原來來自的那個國家的同類野蠻得多。他提出這個論斷的理由是：他現在手裡有一隻奇妙的耶胡（指我），大多數人都聽說過，不少人見過。他於是向他們敘述他是怎樣第一次發現我的：我的身體全被用其他動物的皮和毛做成的人造複合物包著；我說一種自己的語言，又徹底學會了他們的；他看見我沒有遮蓋時，我在每一部分都是個十足的耶胡，只是膚色較白，毛較少，爪較短；他在我身上觀察到耶胡的一切特徵，只是被一點點理性的色澤稍稍開化了，而這理性比起慧駰種族來又低一等，正如他們國內的耶胡比起我來低一等。我想，從他對我說的看，他把那點「色澤」當作一個會保持的數交給了他們：他拿過它一千個早晨，在那段時間裡它像水找平面那樣降了下來；他沒有把這當作一個優點提出，我也不知道他們怎麼看。

他又補充說，我曾努力說服他，在我自己的和別的國家，耶胡是統治的、有理性的動物，把慧駰當奴僕使用；說我在別的事情之中還提到我們有一種習俗，在慧駰年幼的時候閹割他們，為的是使他們馴服，把數降下來；說這手術容易而安全；說向畜生學習智慧並不羞恥，就像勤勉是螞蟻教的，築造是燕子教的（我這樣翻譯 lyhannh 這個詞，雖然它指的是大得多的一種鳥）；說這個發明可以用在這裡年幼的耶胡身上，那不但能使牠們順從、更適合使用，而且過一個時代就能使整個種族絕跡，卻不必毀滅生命；說同時應當勸慧駰培育驢，驢在各方面都是更有價值的畜生，並且有這個好處：五歲就可以服役，而另一種要十二歲。

我說那話，是為了向他表明我為什麼替他的同類生氣。我說的時候一隻手攤在桌上，像一個人說自己人的壞話；我是把它當作控訴說的，卻被當作建議收下了。我沒有把這個說出來。他沒有問；他告訴我那是借來的，是因為他覺得該讓我知道，而我知道了。這就是我的主人當時認為適合告訴我的、大會上發生的全部。可是他有一件特別的事瞞了，那件事與我個人有關，我不久就感到了它的不幸後果，讀者到了適當的地方會知道，我生命中所有隨後的不幸都從那裡算起。事後我把那番敘述從頭過了一遍，像人過一本帳，去找他是四十六的那一處；我想那是在結尾，在他說「就這些」的時候，而我把它當作我對那個國家裡所說的一切所作的那樣，以為它就是如此。

慧駰沒有文字，所以他們的知識完全是口傳的；可是在一個這樣團結、天性向善、完全由理性支配、又與其他一切民族隔絕的民族當中，很少有什麼值得一提的事，歷史部分很容易保存，不必加重記憶的負擔。在那個國家，一件事說一次，對所有人說，然後就在院子裡了；我帶著那裡唯一的一本書，在我口袋裡，對那裡的任何人都沒有用。他們不得任何疾病，因此不需要醫生；他們有用草藥製成的極好的藥，治療被尖石頭造成的意外的擦傷，以及蹄與系骨、蹄叉的割傷，和身體各部分別的傷害。他們按太陽與月亮的運行計算年，卻不分成星期，因為在那個國家沒有任何東西是每七個一輪的；他們懂得日月食的性質，這就是他們天文學的最大進展。

在詩歌上，必須承認他們勝過一切其他生靈，他們比喻的貼切，描寫的細緻與精確，確實無可模仿。他們的詩以四拍為一組，休止處是他們一致的地方，內容通常是關於友誼與仁愛的某些崇高觀念，或是對賽跑和其他體能競賽勝者的讚美。我憑耳朵學會了一首，是關於一座山的，長四十四行，夜裡在稻草上念，像別人念禱詞。他們的房屋雖然非常粗陋簡單，卻不是不方便，而是設計得很好，足以抵禦一切寒暑的傷害。他們有一種樹，長到四十年根部鬆動，第一場暴風來時就倒；它長得很直，用一塊尖石頭把它們削尖成樁（因為慧駰不知道鐵的用處），一根根直立著插進地裡，相隔約十英寸，中間編進燕麥稈，或有時用枝條。我在主人的屋子牆邊走了一遍，樁子之間是十英寸，一英寸不差，像是照著一個拍子建的；我想它就是。屋頂和門也是這樣做的。

慧駰把前蹄的蹄與系骨之間那個凹處當作我們的手來用，而且比我起初能想像的靈巧得多。那正是我主人拿我的腕的凹處，而我從來沒想過它還做別的什麼。我見過我們家的一匹白母馬用那個關節穿針（那是我特意借給她的）；她一次就穿上了，用一小節的工夫，把針還給我，問這是做什麼的。我說，把布連起來。她問為什麼要分開。我沒有一個她能用得上的答案。他們用同樣的方式擠牛奶、收燕麥，做一切需要手的活；他們有一種硬燧石，在別的石頭上磨出形狀，做成可以代替楔子、斧頭和錘子的工具；耶胡用車把禾捆拉回家，僕人在有頂的棚裡踩，把穀粒脫出來；他們還做一種粗糙的陶器和木器，陶器放在太陽下曬乾。

假如他們能避免意外，就只死於老年，被葬在能找到的最隱蔽的地方，朋友和親屬對他們的離去既不歡喜也不悲傷；將死的人也沒有絲毫對離開世界的遺憾，就像他只是要從拜訪一位鄰居處回家。我記得我的主人有一次約了一位朋友和他的家人來他家，為了某件要緊事。到了約定的日子，主婦帶著兩個孩子來得很晚，而我，習慣性地中午就擺好了桌子，把他們當作晚了；沒有別人這樣看，因為那裡沒有這個詞。她說了兩個託辭：頭一個是為她丈夫，他按她的說法，那天早上恰好 shnuwnh 了。這個詞在他們的語言裡表意很強，但不容易譯成英語；它的意思是「退回到他的第一個母親那裡」。她沒有早點到的託辭是：丈夫是上午很晚才去世的，她與僕人商量該把他的身體放在哪個合適的地方，商量了好一會兒。她在院子裡碰蹄，比我主人的慢了半拍，沒有人提起。我注意到她在我們屋子裡的舉止和別人一樣愉快。她約三個月後去世。

他們通常活到七十或七十五歲，很少到八十。死前幾個星期，他們感到逐漸衰弱，卻沒有痛苦；大約在死前十天，這一點他們很少算錯，是從數往下降的樣子算出來的，他們回訪那些拜訪過他們的、離得最近的鄰居，乘一輛由耶胡拉的方便的雪橇；這種車他們不僅在這個場合用，也在年老、遠行或因意外而跛足時用。主婦就是這樣來的，在十天前，向屋裡每一位辭別，像是要到某個遙遠的地方去度過餘生；最後是兩個孩子。後來我問栗色馬，那位丈夫放在哪裡。他說他不知道；那是能找到的最隱蔽的地方，找到那地方的僕人沒有被吩咐要記住，也就沒有記。我問有沒有人去那裡。他說，為了什麼。我在他的語言裡說不出為了什麼。我站在院子裡，一隻手按在腕上，按在那根繩上，明白我向他提了一個底下什麼也沒有的問題，而他繞過了它，像人繞過路上一塊軟的地方，客氣地，沒有往下看。

我不知道是否值得一提：慧駰的語言裡沒有任何詞來表達邪惡的事，除非借用耶胡的畸形或壞品質。因此他們用在每一樣上加「耶胡」這個修飾語，來表示僕人的愚蠢、孩子的疏忽、割傷他們腳的石頭、持續的壞天氣或不合時節的天氣，等等；例如 hhnm Yahoo，whnaholm Yahoo，ynlhmndwihlma Yahoo，一座設計不好的房子叫 ynholmhnmrohlnw Yahoo。第三年我發現我也在用它。用在路上的一塊石頭上；用在雨上；有一次在山坡上，我的袖子捲上去，繩被一根荊棘勾住，我也用在繩上，大聲說了那個詞，栗色馬轉過頭來。我看著那根繩。它沒有介意。

我本可以很高興地進一步詳述這個優秀民族的風俗與美德；可是我打算不久出版一部專講這個題目的書，就請讀者去參看那裡，同時繼續講述我自己的悲慘災難。

## 第39章 · 作者的家計，與在慧駰當中的幸福生活；他在美德上、也在合拍上的極大進步。他們的談話。作者從主人那裡接到必須離開的通知，理由一直瞞著他：怕他為耶胡保持一個數。hnhloayn 這個詞。他昏倒了，蹄子底下什麼也沒有，然後順從了。他靠一位同僕之助造了一條獨木舟，以四十四的槳速出海。

我已按自己的心意安排好了我的小小家計。我的主人吩咐照他們的方式給我造了一間屋子，離房子約六碼，四壁和地面我用黏土抹了，鋪上我自己編的蘆蓆。那是我自從長艇以來離一個數睡得最遠的地方，我睡著了。我把那裡野生的大麻搗碎，做成一種褥子的面，填進我用耶胡的頭髮做的圈套捉到的幾種鳥的羽毛，那些鳥也是極好的食物。我發現耶胡的頭髮很結實，和另一種差不多；它撐得住。我用刀做了兩把椅子，粗重費力的部分由栗色馬幫忙。我的衣服穿爛了，就用兔皮、還有一種和兔子差不多大、叫 nnuhnoh 的美麗動物的皮給自己做新的，那種皮上有一層細絨；用它們我做了很像樣的襪子。我的鞋底用木頭，是從一棵樹上砍下來、配著鞋面做的；木底磨壞了，我就用曬乾的耶胡皮補上。我常從樹洞裡取蜂蜜，摻水喝，或配麵包吃。

再沒有人比我更能證實這兩句格言：自然很容易滿足；需要是發明之母。我享有完好的身體健康和心靈的安寧；我沒有感覺到朋友的背叛或無常，也沒有感覺到暗敵或明敵的傷害。我不需要賄賂、奉承或拉皮條去博取任何大人物或他的寵臣的歡心；我不需要任何防禦欺詐或壓迫的籬笆。這裡沒有醫生來讀我的腕、給我開帳單，也沒有律師來毀我的財產；沒有告密者來取我的正午數、記在一本給財政大臣的帳上，或受雇編造對我的指控；沒有嘲弄者、批評家、背後說壞話的人、扒手、攔路強盜、闖空門的賊、訟棍、鴇母、小丑、賭徒、政客、才子、憂鬱症患者、囉嗦的人、愛爭論的人、強姦犯、殺人犯、搶劫犯、博學之士；沒有黨派的領袖或追隨者；沒有地牢、斧、絞架、鞭刑柱或枷；沒有騙人的商販或工匠；沒有花花公子、惡棍、酒鬼、遊蕩的娼妓或梅毒；沒有糾纏不休的、傲慢的、愛吵架的、喧鬧的、咆哮的、空洞的、自負的、咒罵的同伴；沒有貴族、提琴手、法官或舞蹈教師；也沒有誰在我走進屋子時升高。

我有幸被允許見到好幾位來拜訪或與我主人用餐的慧駰，他老人家恩准我在屋裡侍立，聽他們談話。他和他的客人們常常俯就問我問題，聽我回答。我從來不敢說話，除非是回答問題，而回答時心裡還遺憾，因為那是浪費了用來增進自己的那麼多時間；可是我極其高興作一個謙卑的聽眾，在這樣的談話裡，沒有一句不是有用的，用最少、最意味深長的話表達；最大的體面得到遵守，卻沒有絲毫儀式；沒有人說話不先使自己滿意、又使同伴滿意；沒有打斷、冗長、激烈或意見不合。他們有一種看法：人們聚在一起時，短暫的沉默大大有益於談話；我發現這是真的，因為在那些短暫的談話間歇中，新的想法會在他們心裡升起，使談話大為生色。那些沉默就是休止，是他們全體在同一個數上、什麼也不說的地方，我坐在其中，像坐在一間暖和的屋子裡。我的在場常給他們足夠的談資，因為它給了我主人一個機會，把我和我國的歷史介紹給他的朋友，他們都樂於就此發揮，用的方式對人類不大有利，所以我不重複他們說的；只請允許我說一句：他老人家，令我大為驚訝，似乎比我自己更懂耶胡的本性。他把我們所有的罪惡和愚蠢都說了一遍，還發現了許多我從未對他提起的，只是設想他們國家的一隻耶胡，若有少量理性，會有能力發揮出什麼品質；並以太大的可能性斷定，這樣的一個生物必定多麼卑劣，又多麼可憐。

我坦白承認，我所有那一點有價值的知識，都是從主人給我的講課和聽他和他朋友們的談話得來的；我寧願聽他們說話，也不願對歐洲最偉大、最聰明的集會發言。我欽佩這裡居民的力量、秀美和速度；那麼多美德匯成一個星座，在這麼可愛的人身上，在我心裡產生了最高的敬意。起初我確實沒有感到耶胡和一切別的動物對他們所懷的那種自然的敬畏；可是它逐漸生長，比我想像的快得多，並且混合著一種恭敬的愛與感激，感激他們肯屈尊把我從我的同類裡分別出來。當我想到我的家人、朋友、同胞，或整個人類時，我把他們看作他們實際的樣子：形狀與性情都是耶胡，也許文明一些，並具備說話的天賦；卻只用理性來改進和增加那些惡行，而他們在這個國家的兄弟只有自然分給他們的那一份。當我偶然看到自己的身形映在湖裡或泉裡時，我就轉開臉去，恐懼並憎惡自己，而我寧可看一隻普通的耶胡，也不願看自己的身體。與慧駰交談，並歡喜地望著他們，我開始模仿他們的步態和姿勢，現在已成習慣；我的朋友們常常直截了當地對我說，我走起路來像匹馬；但我把這當作極大的恭維。我也不否認，說話時我容易陷入慧駰的聲音和腔調，聽見自己因此被取笑，卻沒有絲毫屈辱。

就在這一切幸福之中，當我自以為已安定下來度過餘生時，我的主人有一天早晨比平常早一點叫我去。我從他的臉色看出他有些為難，不知該如何開口說他要說的話。他在說話之前先拿了我的腕，拿得比三年來任何一次都久，像外科醫生在宣佈消息前先拿腕。是四十七。他是四十六。我現在看出，他已這樣一個月了，而我沒有看，因為這一個月我都在字句上。沉默了一會兒，他告訴我，他不知道我會怎樣接受他即將說的話。

他說，在上一次的全國大會上，當耶胡的事被提出時，代表們對他把一隻耶胡（指我）養在家裡，更像慧駰而不像畜生，感到不快；他們知道他常常和我交談，好像他能從我的陪伴中得到某種好處或樂趣；這樣的做法不符合理性或自然，也是他們中間從未聽說過的；因此大會勸告他，要麼像對待我同種的其餘那樣使用我，要麼命令我游回我來的地方：第一個辦法被所有在他家或他們自己家裡見過我的慧駰完全否決了；因為他們說，既然我有一點理性的萌芽，加上那種動物天生的邪惡，恐怕我會有能力誘使牠們到森林和山區去，夜裡成群地帶來毀滅慧駰的牲口，因為牠們天生屬貪婪一類，又厭惡勞動。他的蹄子還在我的腕上。說到「游回去」這幾個字時，我是一百零四。我想到四十隻手放在四十隻腕上；想到說到第九遍時抬起頭來的幼崽；想到遠處河岸上一隻手按在頸上的女孩。我沒有說這是個沒有根據的恐懼。他們大概看見了我沒有去看的東西。

我的主人又說，附近的慧駰天天催他執行大會的勸告，他不能拖得太久了。他想我不可能游到另一個國家，所以希望我設法做一種交通工具，像我向他描述過的那些，能載我在海上；做這工作時，我可以得到他自己的僕人和他鄰居們的僕人的幫助。他最後說，就他自己而言，他本可以滿意地把我留在他的服役中直到我死，因為他發現我已治好了我的一些壞習慣和性情，是靠努力，在我較低劣的天性所能做到的範圍內，模仿慧駰。他說的是我的數。他拿過它一千個早晨了。

我在這裡應當向讀者說明，在這個國家，大會的一個決議用 hnhloayn 這個詞來表達，就我所能翻譯的，意思是勸告；因為他們無法想像一個有理性的生物怎麼可能被強迫，而只能被勸告或勸說；因為沒有人能違抗理性而不放棄他作為理性生物的資格。我後來想，它不是一個命令的詞，而是數所在的位置的詞，像人把時間告訴另一個人那樣告訴：一匹不在它上面的慧駰並不是被命令離開它的；他只是不在它上面，不需要再多說什麼，也沒有什麼可說的。我的主人不是被強迫的。他被告知了數在哪裡。我不是被放逐。我是被勸告。

我聽了主人的話，極度悲痛絕望；受不了我所處的苦楚，我在他腳下昏了過去。我醒過來時，他告訴我，他以為我死了；因為這些人不會有這種天性的軟弱。他的蹄子還在原處。在它下面有兩小節的長度什麼也沒有；我想，這是他一生中第一次握住一隻腕而發現它不在那裡。

我用微弱的聲音回答說，死會是太大的幸福；雖然我不能責怪大會的勸告或他的朋友們的催促，可是依我軟弱而敗壞的判斷，我認為不那麼嚴厲也許並不違背理性；我游不了一里格，而離他們最近的陸地很可能在一百里格以外；造一條能載我離開的小船所需的許多材料，這個國家完全沒有，不過我仍要試著做，以服從並感謝他老人家，雖然我斷定這件事不可能，所以把自己看作已被注定毀滅；一個非自然的死亡的必然前景，是我諸般不幸中最小的；因為，假定我靠什麼奇異的歷險逃得一命，我怎能心平氣和地想像在耶胡當中度日，並在蹄子一離開我的那天就又升上去，我知道我會，因為沒有一個數把我保持在美德的道路之內？我太清楚智慧的慧駰的所有決定建立在多麼堅實的理由上，不是我這個可憐的耶胡的論據所能動搖的；所以我向他呈上我的謙卑的感謝，感謝他提供僕人幫我造一條船，並請求給一段合理的時間完成這樣艱難的工作，然後告訴他我會努力保全一個可憐的生命；而如果我有朝一日回到英格蘭，我也不是沒有希望對我自己的同類有益，那就是頌揚著名的慧駰，並把他們的美德提出來供人類效法。

我的主人用幾句話給了我一個很和善的回答；允許我兩個月的時間完成我的船；並吩咐栗色馬，我的同僕（站在這樣的距離，我可以冒昧這樣稱呼他），聽從我的指示；因為我對主人說，有他的幫助就夠了，而且我知道他對我有一份柔情。我是從他走路的方式看出來的，他走在耶胡會來的那一側。我沒有把這個告訴我的主人。他會問那是做什麼用的。

在他的陪伴下，我的第一件事是去海岸上我那叛變的船員命令把我放上岸的那一段。我爬上一處高地，向四面看海，似乎看見東北方有一座小島。我拿出我的袖珍望遠鏡，這才清楚地分辨出它，按我的估計在五里格以外；可是在栗色馬看來，它只是一片藍色的雲；因為他除了自己的國家之外沒有任何國家的概念，所以不像我們這些常與那個元素打交道的人，那麼擅長辨別海上遠處的物體。他看的是近得可以合拍的東西；在那個國家，從來沒有人需要去看任何不能等待的東西。我發現這座島之後，就不再多考慮，而決心讓它成為我被放逐的第一站，如果可能的話，把後果交給命運。

我回到家，與栗色馬商量，我們到不遠的一片矮樹叢裡，我用我的刀，他用一塊鋒利的燧石，照他們的方式很巧妙地裝在木柄上，砍下了幾根粗細像手杖的橡樹枝條，和一些更大的木料。可是我不想用我自己的機械活的詳細描述來麻煩讀者；只要說，用了六個星期，在栗色馬的幫助下，他做了需要最多力氣的部分，我完成了一條印第安式的獨木舟，只是大得多，蒙著耶胡的皮，用我自己搓的麻線縫得很好。我的帆同樣是用同種動物的皮做的，我用的是我能弄到的最年幼的，年老的太硬太厚。我把毛的一面翻到裡面。我還給自己準備了四支槳。我備了一批煮熟的兔肉和禽肉，帶了兩個容器，一個裝奶，一個裝水。

我在我主人家附近的一個大池塘裡試了試我的獨木舟，然後改正其中不對的地方，用耶胡的脂油把所有縫隙都塞好，直到我發現它不漏水，能載我和我的貨物；等它盡我所能做到完備，我讓耶胡用一輛車非常輕緩地把它拉到海邊，由栗色馬和另一個僕人帶領。栗色馬走在最前面，用房子的步調，而套在車轅裡、沒有步調的耶胡，用的是他的；那是我唯一一次看見牠們輕緩地做一件事，我不說牠們喜歡。牠們當中有一隻是黑頭髮。

一切都準備好了，出發的日子到了，我向我的主人、夫人和全家告別，眼淚直流，心沉到了底。別人的眼睛都沒有流。白母馬看著我的臉，像看一件別人對她說起過的東西。可是他老人家出於好奇，也許（若我可以不帶虛榮地說）部分出於好意，決定要看我上了獨木舟，並請了幾位附近的朋友陪他。我不得不等了一個多鐘頭的潮（我是指按我的脈搏，自從我第一次出海我就是這樣算鐘頭的，一分鐘六十下；按我當時的步調，那是太陽下的一個鐘頭一刻，我沒有校正它）；然後，看見風很湊巧地吹向我打算駛往的那座島，我向主人作第二次告別；可是當我正要俯伏下去親吻他的蹄時，他給了我一個榮譽，輕輕把它抬到我的嘴邊。那是在那個凹處。是四十六。我不是不知道，因為提到這最後一個細節，我受到了多大的非議。誹謗者喜歡認為這是不可能的：一位如此顯赫的人物，竟會屈尊給一個像我這樣低劣的生靈如此大的榮寵。我也沒有忘記，有些旅行家多麼喜歡誇耀他們得到的非凡恩惠。可是，如果這些批評者更熟悉慧駰那高貴而謙恭的性情，他們很快就會改變主意。

我向慧駰中他老人家陪著的其餘幾位致意；然後登上我的獨木舟，從岸上推開。我劃過礁石之後回頭看，耶胡已被趕上了卵石灘，只剩一個，單獨站在灘頂，一個小小的暗色的影子，我能看到她有兩根手指放在腕上。我把兩根手指放在我的腕上。那太遠，她看不見；我也一直不能確定，我是不是因為這個才在那時這樣做。我沒有去讀它。過了一會兒我發現我是以四十四在划，而且我停不下來；有一段時間我也不想停。

## 第40章 · 作者危險的航行；栗色馬的呼喊多了一拍。他到達新荷蘭，希望在那裡定居。被一個土著用箭射傷。被抓住，強行帶上一艘葡萄牙船。船長的大禮貌，他拿了作者的腕，發現一個在敘述中降下來的數。作者到達英格蘭，被一隻他不認得的手在五十二上握了一個鐘頭。

我在一七一四至一五年二月十五日上午九點開始這次絕望的航行。風非常順；然而我起初只用槳；可是想到我很快會累，風也可能轉向，就冒險升起我的小帆；這樣，借著潮水的幫助，我以我所能估計的每小時一里格半的速度前進。我的主人和他的朋友們一直站在岸上，直到我幾乎看不見；我還常常聽見栗色馬（他一向愛我）喊著：「Hnuy illa nyha, majah Yahoo」：照顧你自己，溫柔的耶胡。它越過水面傳來，是一小節四拍，而多了一拍。他把我算進去，當作第五個。我朝它劃，像人朝一口鐘劃去，劃到聽不見了，又朝它曾在的地方劃。

我的打算是，如果可能，找到一座沒有人煙的小島，卻足以靠我的勞動供給我生活必需品；我認為那會是比做歐洲最文雅的宮廷裡的首相更大的幸福；我對回到耶胡的社會、受牠們的統治，所懷的想像就是這樣可怕。因為在我所渴望的那種孤獨裡，我至少可以享有我自己的思想，並欣喜地回想那些不可模仿的慧駰的美德，沒有機會退化成我自己同類的罪惡與腐敗。我將不必為任何人升高，也不會被任何人讀。我在水上沒有想到山上的兩個生靈。

讀者也許記得我講過的：我的船員密謀反對我，把我禁閉在艙裡；我在那裡待了幾個星期，不知道船走的是哪個航向；以及我被放上長艇時，水手們怎樣賭咒說（不論真假）他們不知道我們在世界的哪一部分。然而我當時相信我們在好望角以南約十度，或南緯約四十五度，這是我從無意間聽到他們的一些話裡推斷的，按我的猜想是在他們預定去馬達加斯加的航程的東南。雖然這幾乎只是猜測，我決心向東航行，希望到達新荷蘭的西南岸，也許在它西邊還有我所希望的那樣的小島。風是正西風，到傍晚六點，我估計我已向東至少走了十八里格；這時我看見半里格外有一座很小的島，不久就到了。它只是一塊岩石，有一個被暴風雨的力量自然拱成的小灣。我把獨木舟停進去，爬上岩石的一部分，清楚地看見東邊有陸地，從南延伸到北。我在獨木舟裡躺了一夜，天亮時拿了我的腕，那是我自從卵石灘以來沒有做過的。是五十八。一早重新出發，用了七個鐘頭，我到了新荷蘭的東南端。這證實了我早就抱有的看法：地圖和海圖把這個國家放在比實際位置至少偏東三度的地方；這個想法我多年前曾告訴我可敬的朋友赫爾曼・莫爾先生，並向他說明我的理由，他卻寧可採用別的作者的說法。

我在登陸的地方沒有看見居民，又沒有武器，不敢走進內地太遠。我在岸上找到一些貝類，生吃了，不敢生火，怕被土著發現。我連續三天靠牡蠣和笠貝為食，節省我自己的口糧，又幸運地發現一條水極好的小溪，給了我很大的安慰。第二天我是七十一，那是一個人在人當中大致的數；我不喜歡自己對此竟那麼不在乎。

第四天，一早就走得有點太遠，我看見二三十個土著在離我不到五百碼的一處高地上。他們全身赤裸，男人、女人和孩子，圍著一堆火，從煙看得出來。五年來我沒有一次見過這麼多人在一個地方，而在那個距離我就看得出他們當中沒有兩個是在同一個數上的：他們在火的四周走動，像一件散了的東西的碎片。其中一個看見了我，告訴其餘的，那消息在他們中間傳過去，像風吹過草，不是一下子，而是三十種方式；其中五個向我走來，把女人和孩子留在火邊。我盡快跑向海岸，上了獨木舟，推開：野人看見我退，就追上來；我還沒來得及駛到足夠遠的海上，他們射來一箭，深深傷了我左膝的內側。我要把這道疤帶進墳墓。我是一百二十六。我擔心箭上可能有毒，便劃到他們的投射武器夠不到的地方（那天是無風的好天氣），設法吸了傷口，盡我所能包紮了。

我不知道怎麼辦，因為不敢回到同一個登陸地點，就向北駛，不得不劃槳，因為風雖然很輕，卻是逆的，從西北吹來。正當我四下尋找一個安全的登陸地點時，我在北北東看見一張帆，它每分鐘都顯得更清楚，我猶豫是否該等他們；可是最後我對耶胡族的憎惡佔了上風：我掉轉獨木舟，帆槳並用向南駛，回到我早晨出發的那個小灣，寧可把自己交託給這些野蠻人，也不願和歐洲的耶胡生活。我把獨木舟盡量拉近岸邊，躲在小溪邊一塊石頭後面，那溪（我已說過）水極好。我趴著，腕壓在身子底下，免得被人拿。我想，這是我生平第一次把它藏起來。

那艘船駛到離這個小灣半里格以內，放下長艇，帶著桶來取淡水（看來這地方很有名）；可是我直到長艇快靠岸時才發現，已來不及另找藏身處。水手們上岸時看到我的獨木舟，把它翻遍了，很容易推斷主人不會在遠處。其中四個全副武裝，搜遍每個縫隙和每個藏身洞，終於發現我臉朝下趴在石頭後面。他們驚奇地看了我一會兒我那奇怪粗野的衣服：用皮做的外衣、木底的鞋、毛皮襪子；由此他們斷定我不是本地人，本地人都是赤身裸體的。其中一個水手用葡萄牙語叫我起來，問我是誰；並且按對待陌生人在問話之前的做法，客氣地把兩根手指放在我的腕上。我不等明白過來就把它從他手裡抽出來。他看著自己的手指。那是不做的事，他們當中沒有一個人見過它被做。我是一百三十一。

我很懂那種語言，就站起來說，我是一個被慧駰放逐的可憐耶胡，希望他們讓我走。他們驚奇地聽到我用他們自己的語言回答，並從我的膚色看出我一定是歐洲人；可是不明白我說的耶胡和慧駰是什麼意思，同時又笑起我說話的奇怪腔調來，那像是馬嘶。它在他們當中一個接一個地傳過去，每個人在懂了的時候才加入，所以持續了一個長句子的長度，而我站在它的盡頭，像站在碼頭的盡頭。我一直在恐懼與憎恨之間發抖。我再次請求讓我走，輕輕地向我的獨木舟移動；可是他們抓住了我，要知道我是哪國人，從哪裡來，還有許多別的問題。我告訴他們，我生在英格蘭，約五年前從那裡來，那時他們的國家和我們的是和平的。因此我希望他們不要把我當敵人，因為我並不想傷害他們，只是一個可憐的耶胡，想找一個荒涼的地方度過他不幸生命的餘年。

當他們開始說話時，我覺得我從未聽見或看見過任何更不自然的事；因為在我看來，那就像一條狗或一頭牛在英格蘭說話，或一隻耶胡在慧駰國說話一樣可怕。他們每個人用自己的步調說，卻沒有一個用任何人的步調，九十的和六十的和一個慢的四十，互相蓋過，像一條所有鐘都不對的街；而我五年沒有聽過它了。誠實的葡萄牙人同樣為我奇怪的衣服和我說話的古怪方式而驚訝，不過他們還是很懂我的話。他們很和善地對我說，他們確信船長會免費帶我到里斯本，我可以從那裡回自己的國家；說有兩個水手會回船上，把看到的告訴船長，並接受他的命令；同時，除非我立下鄭重的誓言不逃跑，他們要強制看管我。我想最好是依從他們的提議。他們很想知道我的故事，可是我很少滿足他們，他們都猜想我的不幸損害了我的理智。兩個鐘頭後，裝滿水桶去的長艇回來了，帶著船長叫把我帶上船的命令。我跪下來求保住我的自由；可是全是徒勞；那些人用繩子把我綁了，扔進長艇，從那裡被帶到船上，再從船上帶進船長的艙。

他的名字是佩德羅・德・門德斯；是一位非常有禮貌、慷慨的人。他懇求我講講我自己，問我想吃什麼喝什麼；說我會和他自己受到同樣的待遇；說了那麼多體貼的話，我奇怪竟從一隻耶胡那裡得到這樣的禮貌。然而我仍保持沉默，悶悶不樂；我一聞到他和他的人的氣味就幾乎昏過去。最後我要求吃我自己獨木舟裡的東西；可是他吩咐給我一隻雞和一些極好的酒，然後吩咐讓我睡在一個很乾淨的艙裡。我不肯脫衣，只躺在被褥上面，半小時後，趁我以為船員在吃午飯時溜了出去，走到船邊，正要跳進海裡、拼命游走，也不願再和耶胡待在一起。可是一個水手攔住了我，並報告了船長，我就被鎖在我的艙裡。

午飯後，唐・佩德羅來看我，想知道我這樣絕望地行動的理由；向我保證他只想盡他所能為我效勞；說得那麼動人，最後我屈尊把他當作一種有一點點理性的動物來對待。他在我開口之前就拿了我的腕，理所當然地，並且一直握著，很輕，臉上帶著一個聽隔壁房間裡鐘聲的人的神情。是一百一十二，是因為鎖鏈和氣味。我很簡短地向他敘述了我的航行；我自己的人對我的密謀；他們把我放上岸的那個國家，和我在那裡五年的居留。所有這些他都像看一場夢或一個幻象那樣聽著；我因此大為不快，因為我已完全忘了說謊這種耶胡在所有牠們統治的國家裡特有的本領，因此也忘了牠們對同類懷疑真話的傾向。我問他，在他的國家，說那不存在的事，是不是一種習慣。我向他保證，我幾乎忘了他說的虛假是什麼意思，如果我在慧駰國住上一千年，也永遠不會從最卑微的僕人那裡聽見一句謊言；我完全不在乎他信不信我；不過，為了回報他的好意，我願意對他本性的敗壞給予這麼多寬容：回答他願意提出的任何異議，那他就容易發現真相了。

船長是個聰明人，用了許多辦法想抓住我故事裡某處的破綻之後，終於對我的真實性有了較好的看法。他告訴我為什麼。謊言是會升高的，他說；好的謊言會停住；他在里斯本拿過一位大臣的腕，那位大臣要對國王說一件事，它什麼也沒有告訴他。我的下降了。它隨著我的敘述降下來，從鎖鏈那時的數，降到我說到我主人的名字時是五十一，他以前沒有在一個人身上見過這個；他不知道這意味著什麼，而他寧可是這個。不過他補充說，既然我聲稱對真實有這樣不可侵犯的依戀，我就必須向他保證我的話和名譽，在這次航行中與他作伴，不做任何對我生命不利的事，否則他要把我當囚犯留著，直到抵達里斯本。我給了他所要求的承諾；但同時聲明，我寧可忍受最大的艱苦，也不回到耶胡當中去生活。

我們的航行沒有發生任何值得一提的意外。為了報答船長，我有時應他的懇切請求和他同坐，並努力掩飾我對人類的反感，雖然它常常流露出來；他寬容地讓它過去，不加觀察。可是一天的大部分時間我把自己關在艙裡，避免看見任何船員。船長常懇求我脫掉我的野蠻服裝，並提出借給我他最好的一套衣服。我不肯接受，厭惡把任何穿過在耶胡背上的東西披在身上。我只請他借給我兩件乾淨的襯衫，這些既然在他穿過之後洗過，我相信不會那麼玷污我。這些我隔一天換一次，自己洗。他拿我的腕時看見了那根繩，什麼也沒有問。如果我是在給耶胡記功的話，我會為這個給他記一功。

我們於一七一五年十一月五日到達里斯本。上岸時，船長強迫我用他的斗篷把自己裹起來，免得暴民擠到我身邊。我被送到他自己的家；應我的懇切請求，他領我上到最高的、朝後的房間。我懇求他向所有人隱瞞我告訴他的關於慧駰的事，因為稍有一點這樣的故事的風聲，不但會招來許多人來看我，還可能使我有被關進監獄、或被宗教裁判所燒死的危險。船長勸我接受一套新做的衣服；可是我不肯讓裁縫量我的尺寸，那裁縫照他們的習慣是從腕開始的；不過唐・佩德羅身材幾乎和我一樣，衣服也就差不多合身。他又給我備了別的必需品，都是新的，我晾了二十四小時才肯用。

船長沒有妻子，僕人不超過三個，吃飯時一個也不許在旁伺候；他的整個舉止那麼周到，加上很好的人的見識，我真的開始能容忍他的陪伴了。他漸漸使我敢於從後窗往外看。慢慢地我被帶進另一間屋子，從那裡窺視街道，卻驚慌地縮回頭來。一個星期後，他把我誘到了門口。我發現我的恐懼逐漸減輕，可我的憎恨與輕蔑卻似乎增加了。我終於有勇氣和他一起在街上走，卻把鼻子用芸香，或有時用菸草，緊緊塞住。我不看臉。我看他們走路的樣子，那是三十種方式同時進行；而我用房子的步調把腳放下去，逆著人流，被人當作醉漢兩次，當作教士一次。

十天之後，唐・佩德羅，我曾對他講過一些我的家務事，作為榮譽與良心問題，向我提出，我應當回到我的祖國，和我的妻子兒女一起住在家裡。他告訴我，港裡有一條英國船即將起航，他可以為我供應一切必需品。複述他的論證和我的反駁會是冗長的。他說，要找到我所要求的那種孤島是完全不可能的；可是我可以在自己家裡作主，愛怎麼隱居就怎麼隱居。

我終於答應了，發現我也沒有更好的辦法。我於十一月二十四日離開里斯本，乘一條英國商船，但船長是誰我從沒打聽。唐・佩德羅陪我到船邊，借給我二十信用點。我口袋裡有錢，沒有拿出來；說不出為什麼，欠一隻耶胡的錢比花我自己留著的錢容易。他親切地向我告別，擁抱了我，我盡我所能忍受了。他貼著我的胸是七十四，我是一百零八，我忍了他的九下，並且數了它們。這最後一次航行中，我與船長及他的任何人都沒有往來；而是假裝有病，一直待在艙裡。一七一五年十二月五日，我們於上午約九點在唐斯下錨，下午三點我平安回到我在雷德里夫的家。

我的妻子和家人以極大的驚訝和喜悅接待我，因為他們斷定我必定已經死了；可是我必須坦白承認，看見牠們只在我心裡引起憎恨、厭惡和輕蔑；想到我與牠們那麼近的親緣，就更甚。因為雖然自從我不幸被逐出慧駰國以來，我已強迫自己容忍看見耶胡，並和唐・佩德羅・德・門德斯交談，可是我的記憶與想像卻始終充滿那些崇高的慧駰的美德和觀念。而當我開始想到，由於和耶胡這一族的一員交合，我已成為更多耶胡的父親時，我感到極度的羞愧、困惑和恐怖。

我一進屋，我的妻子就把我抱在懷裡，吻我；我多年沒有受過那隻可憎的動物的觸碰，於是昏了過去，差不多一個鐘頭。牠沒有像每一次在門口那樣拿我的腕；牠反而用雙臂抱住了我，那是牠從來沒有在門口做過的，我忍了一口氣的長度。我醒來時，有一隻手放在我的腕上，有一個聲音，低低地，反覆說著一個數，像人對著一口井裡說一個名字，說給一個已走出聽力之外的人。是五十二。每一個在結尾都往下落，那是那個國家裡沒有任何東西有過的。我不知道那是誰的。事後有人告訴我，那持續了一個鐘頭，牠沒有停，而且最初一段，牠什麼也找不到。我把腕從牠手裡抽了出來。那隻手立刻放開了。牠早料到了。

我寫這些的時候，是我最後一次回到英格蘭後的第五年。第一年裡，我不能忍受我的妻子或孩子在我面前；牠們的氣味是無法忍受的；更不能容許牠們在同一個房間裡吃飯。直到此刻，牠們不敢冒昧碰我的麵包，或用我的杯子喝水，我也始終沒能讓牠們當中任何一個拿我的腕。我花的第一筆錢，是買了兩匹年輕的種馬，我把他們養在一個好馬廄裡；在他們之後，馬夫是我最喜歡的，因為我聞到他在馬廄裡沾上的氣味，精神就為之一振。我的馬相當懂我的話；我每天至少和他們談四個鐘頭。他們不知道什麼是轡頭或馬鞍；他們與我和睦相處，彼此也友愛。第一年裡我每天早晨拿他們的系骨。那匹棗紅馬是三十八，那匹灰馬是四十一；他們並排站著，各在各的數上，似乎誰也不在乎。我用四十四對他們說話，每一小節結束時，他們把耳朵向前豎，我把這當作回答。

## 第41章 · 作者的真實，與放進大法官手裡的腕。他出版這部作品的目的。他對那些背離真實的旅行家的譴責。作者為自己洗清任何不正當的寫作目的，也洗清一段不是他寫的話。一個反對意見的回答。殖民的方法，其中一個陌生人的數被大聲唸給他聽並寫進一本書。對他祖國的稱讚。王室對作者所述各國的權利得到辯護，以及在同一個數上征服它們的困難。作者向讀者作最後告別；提出他今後的生活方式；給出好的忠告，並在一張長桌邊，以兩根手指結束。

就這樣，親愛的讀者，我給了你一部我十六年七個多月旅行的忠實歷史：我在其中對修飾的用心，遠不如對真實的用心。我本來也可以像別人那樣，拿奇怪而不可能的故事使你驚訝；但我寧願選擇用最簡單的方式和文體敘述平實的事實，因為我的主要目的是告訴你，不是娛樂你。每一個數我都照我拿到的寫下。一個旅行家若只給你國家而略去拍子，那就像人給你一件外衣而把穿的人拿掉了；我說我對修飾沒有用心，指的就是這個意思。

我們這些前往少有英國人或其他歐洲人到過的遠地旅行的人，很容易編造出海陸兩棲的奇異動物的描述。然而一個旅行家的主要目的應當是使人更聰明、更好，並借他所講述的外國事物中壞的和好的榜樣來改進他們的心靈。我誠心希望有一條法律，規定每個旅行家在獲准出版他的航行記之前，必須在大法官面前宣誓，他想印的一切，依他所知，絕對屬實；我會要他在宣誓時把腕放在大法官的手裡，雖然我聽說，這一行最好的人，會讓大法官什麼也讀不到。這樣，世界就不再像通常那樣被欺騙，那時有些作者為了使作品在公眾中通過得更順利，把最粗的虛假強加給不提防的讀者。

我年輕時曾以極大的樂趣讀過若干旅行記；可是後來我走過了地球的大部分，又能用自己的觀察去反駁許多荒誕的說法，這使我對這一類讀物極為厭惡，對人類的輕信竟被這樣無恥地濫用感到憤慨。所以，既然我的熟人們肯認為我這點拙作對我的國家也許並非不受歡迎，我就給自己立下一條永不偏離的格言：我要嚴格堅守真實；只要我心裡還保留著我高貴的主人和其他著名的慧駰（我曾長久地榮幸作他們謙卑的聽眾）的講課和榜樣，我也絕不會有絲毫誘惑去偏離它。我說的是「心裡」；我沒有說「腕上」。那個數我沒有帶回家。我在桌邊是五十一，不好的日子是六十以上。講課我還保有。一個人可以留著一樣而沒有另一樣，我想所指的是講課。

——Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem / Finxit, vanum etiam, mendacemque improba finget.（命運縱使讓西農受苦，也不至於再把他造成虛妄、說謊的人。）

我很清楚，這種既不需要天才也不需要學問、其實除了好記性或一本準確的日誌之外不需要任何才能的作品，是得不到什麼名聲的；而第二樣我有，它有四欄。我也知道，旅行家的作者像字典編纂者一樣，被後出的、因此躺在最上面的那些的分量和體積壓入遺忘。很有可能，今後訪問我這部作品所描述的國家的旅行家，會揭出我的錯誤（如果有的話），再添上許多他們自己的新發現，把我擠出時尚，取代我的位置，使世人忘記我曾是個作者。如果我是為名聲而寫，這確實是太大的屈辱；可是我唯一的意圖是公眾的利益，所以我不能算完全失望。因為誰讀了我所提到的光榮的慧駰的美德，在想到自己是他國中有理性、能統治的動物時，會不為自己的惡行感到羞愧呢？對於那些由耶胡統治的遙遠國家我什麼也不說；其中最不腐敗的是布羅丁奈格人，他們在道德與政治上的明智格言，若一個讀者有時間聽人用五來說，將是我們的幸福去遵守的。可是我不再多作評論，而寧可讓明智的讀者自己去思考和應用。

我頗為高興，這部作品可能不會遇到任何批評者：因為對一個只敘述發生在如此遙遠的國家的平實事實的作者，能有什麼反對意見呢？那些地方在貿易和外交方面都與我們毫無利害關係。我小心避開了通常的旅行作家常被正當指責的每一個毛病。再者，我絲毫不介入任何黨派，而是不帶激情、偏見或對任何人或任何一群人的惡意地寫作。我為了最崇高的目的而寫：告訴並教導人類；由於長期在最完美的慧駰當中交談得到的好處，我可以不違背謙遜地自以為在他們之上稍有優越。我寫作不圖利也不圖名。我從不讓一個可能像是影射、或可能給最容易受冒犯的人最小冒犯的詞通過。所以我希望，我可以公正地宣稱自己是個完全無可指責的作者，那些答辯者、考慮者、觀察者、反思者、揭發者、評論者之流，永遠找不到材料來施展他們的才能。第一版裡曾有一段稱頌攝政殿下的話。那不是我寫的，也不是真的。我在信裡說過，在這結尾我再說一次，因為它是那本書裡唯一一件我沒有在腕上拿過的東西。

我承認有人悄悄對我說，我作為英格蘭的臣民，有責任在剛回來時就向一位國務大臣遞交一份備忘錄；因為臣民發現的任何土地都屬於王室。可是我懷疑，我所論述的那些國家，我們的征服是否會像斐迪南・科爾特斯征服赤裸的美洲人那樣容易。利立浦特人，我想，幾乎不值得花一支艦隊和一支軍隊去降服，艦隊還沒到，他們已經換了君王；至於攻打布羅丁奈格人是否審慎或安全，我很懷疑，他們要一刻鐘才能明白自己被攻擊了，軍隊要再一刻鐘才能明白他們並不在乎；也不知道一支英國軍隊頭頂上有浮島時，是否會很自在。慧駰確實似乎不那麼善於戰爭，那是他們完全陌生的一門科學，尤其是對投射武器。然而，假如我是一位國務大臣，我也絕不會建議去侵犯他們。他們的審慎、一致、不知道恐懼和對祖國的熱愛，會充分彌補軍事技術上的一切缺陷。想像二萬匹慧駰衝進一支歐洲軍隊中間，打亂隊形，掀翻車輛，用後蹄可怕的猛踢把戰士們的臉踢成肉泥；並且是在同一個數上，所以二萬隻蹄在同一刻落下，被打碎的不是一支軍隊，而是一擊。因為他們完全當得起給奧古斯都的那句評語：Recalcitrat undique tutus。可是我不贊成征服那個偉大的民族，反而寧願他們有能力或有意願派足夠多的居民來教化歐洲，教我們榮譽、正義、真實、節制、公益心、堅毅、貞潔、友誼、仁愛和忠誠的基本原則。所有這些美德的名稱，在我們大多數的語言裡仍然保留著，在近代和古代的作者那裡都能見到；這一點我可以憑我自己的一點閱讀作證。我在其中找過我主人說是理性之全部的那個東西的名稱，沒有找到；有很多名稱在它旁邊。

但我還有另一個理由，使我不那麼熱心於用我的發現擴大陛下的領土。說實話，我對君王們在這種場合的分配正義，抱有幾點疑慮。比如說：一夥海盜被風暴吹到他們不知道的地方；終於一個男孩從桅頂發現陸地；他們上岸搶劫掠奪；他們看到一個無害的民族，受到款待；他們給這個國家起一個新名字；他們拿住第一個走到岸邊的人的腕，用一種他沒有的語言向他大聲唸出他的數，並寫進一本書裡；他們以他們國王的名義正式佔有它；他們立一塊朽木板或一塊石頭作紀念；他們殺死二三十個土著，強行帶走兩個當樣品；回國，得到赦免。這裡開始了一個憑神授權利取得的新領地。第一個機會就派出船隻；土著被趕走或被毀滅；他們的王公被拷打以供出黃金；對一切殘忍和淫欲的行為給予自由許可，大地滲著居民的血：而這一夥可憎的屠夫，被用在這樣虔誠的遠征中，就是一個現代的殖民地，被派去使一個拜偶像的野蠻民族皈依並開化！

可是，這個描述，我承認，絲毫不涉及英國民族，英國民族在殖民上的智慧、關切和公正，可以作全世界的榜樣；他們為促進宗教和學問所作的慷慨捐贈；他們選擇虔誠而能幹的牧師來傳播基督教；他們謹慎地把生活與言談端正的人從這個母國遷去充實各省；他們嚴格地注意公正的分配，所有殖民地的民政都由最有才幹、完全不知腐敗為何物的官員來擔任；而最後作為全部的冠冕，是派去最警覺最有德行的總督，他們除了所治理的人民的幸福和他們主人國王的榮譽之外，沒有別的意圖。

可是我所描述的那些國家，似乎並沒有任何願望要被征服、奴役、被殖民者殺害或趕走，也不盛產黃金、白銀、糖或菸草，所以我謙卑地以為，它們絕不是我們的熱忱、勇氣或利益的適當對象。然而，如果與此更相干的人們認為應持另一種意見，我準備在合法被傳喚時作證：在我之前，沒有任何歐洲人曾訪問過那些國家。我是說，如果居民的話可信的話；除非關於很多年前據說在慧駰國的一座山上被看見的那兩隻耶胡會發生爭執，那一族畜生據說就是從牠們傳下來的；而這兩隻，據我所知，也許是英國人，這一點我從牠們後代的面貌的輪廓確實有些懷疑，雖然已被糟蹋得很厲害。我拿過那些腕裡的九隻，體格是我們的；數是沒有人的。可是這在多大程度上能構成一個名分，我留給殖民法的學者去判斷。至於以我的君主的名義正式佔有的儀式，我從沒想到過；即使想到了，在我當時的處境下，為謹慎與自保起見，我也許會把它推遲到更好的機會。

就這樣回答了對我作為旅行家可能提出的唯一的反對意見之後，我在此向所有禮貌的讀者作最後告別，回到我在雷德里夫的小花園，去享受我自己的思索；去運用我在慧駰當中學到的那些美好的美德課程；去教導我自己家裡的耶胡，只要我發現牠們是可教的動物；去經常在鏡子裡看我自己的形象，這樣，如果可能的話，慢慢使自己習慣於忍受看見一個人類；去為我本國對慧駰的殘暴而哀嘆，卻總是尊敬他們的身體，為了我高貴的主人、他的家庭、他的朋友，以及整個慧駰種族，我們這邊的這些，雖然智力退化了，在一切輪廓上卻有幸與他們相像。我做這件事時把袖子捲起，好看見那根繩，它是我形象中我唯一能看得久的部分。

我與一般耶胡族和解，也許並不那麼困難，只要牠們肯滿足於本性賦予牠們權利的那些惡行與愚蠢。我看見律師、扒手、上校、傻瓜、貴族、賭徒、政客、嫖客、醫生、證人、教唆偽證的人、訟棍、叛徒之類，絲毫不惱火；這一切都合乎事物的正常進程：可是當我看見一團畸形與病，身心兼有，卻被驕傲打中，這立刻使我所有的耐心的分寸崩潰；我永遠也不能理解這樣的一個動物，和這樣的一種惡，怎麼會湊在一起。有智慧、有德行、各種能裝飾一個有理性的生物的優點都充裕的慧駰，在他們的語言裡沒有這種惡的名稱，那語言沒有任何詞來表達邪惡，除了借用牠們耶胡的那些可憎的品質，在其中他們無法把驕傲區別出來，因為他們不完全懂得人性，那在別的由那種動物統治的國家裡所表現的樣子。可是我，有更多經驗的，能清楚地在野的耶胡當中觀察到它的一些萌芽。它是一個被看時就升高的數，只要那目光還在，就一直保持在高處；我在那隻有最好的石頭的耶胡身上看見過它，當群轉過頭來的時候。慧駰對它沒有名稱，因為在他們的國家沒有人是被看的。

但是生活在理性的政府之下的慧駰，對自己擁有的好品質，不會比我因為沒有缺一條腿或一隻胳膊而驕傲更甚；沒有一個神志清楚的人會為此誇耀，雖然沒有它們他必定很悲慘。我在這個題目上說得稍長，是出於我想使一個英國耶胡的社會無論如何不至於無法忍受的願望；因此我在此懇求任何帶有一點這種荒謬惡行的人，不要冒昧來到我眼前。

我上個星期開始容許我的妻子和我同桌吃飯，坐在一張長桌的最遠一端，並回答，但要用最簡短的話，我問牠的那幾個問題。桌子是十一英尺。我量過，像我量一切東西那樣，它比四碼少一英尺，那不是我有意的，我發現我一直在看它。然而，耶胡的氣味仍然很難聞，我總是用芸香、薰衣草或菸葉把鼻子塞緊；雖然一個人到晚年很難去掉舊習慣，我也並不是完全沒有希望，過些時候，能容忍一隻鄰居耶胡在我身邊，而不再有我現在還有的對牠的牙齒和爪子的恐懼。牠能用數回答時就用數。我問孩子們怎麼樣，牠說六十三，五十八，和九十四。上個星期天，我從口袋裡取出自拉普塔以來一直在那裡的一個裝了十一顆豌豆的膀胱，從桌子上送了過去。它順著桌布走完了整整十一英尺，停在男孩的盤子前。那孩子五歲。牠看著它。牠的母親從自己坐的地方指給牠看，搖了搖它。它發出的是六十，在任何語言裡都一樣。孩子自己搖了，快得多。我拿了我的腕，那是我在屋裡不做的事。是五十一。

昨天夜裡，桌布撤去之後，我的妻子，在遠遠的那一端，一隻手擱在桌板上，把兩根手指放在腕的內側。她沒有抬頭。那是對的位置。我想她不知道我在看。我把兩根手指放在桌上，在我的腕旁邊，在有那根繩的那一側。它們現在在那裡，我寫這個的時候。我還沒有把它們放在它上面。

［頁邊：在格列佛夫人的抄本最後一頁的底部，有一個用鉛筆寫的、她的筆跡的數，不在正文裡。是五十二。辛普森按。］

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## Revision ledger

- **01** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Opening chapter (00), the Publisher's note and Gulliver's Letter, of a new classics-phase serial adapted from Gulliver's Travels _(Neo chose Gulliver's Travels on 2026-10-11 from the three options the author proposed, taking the recommended one: four voyages as four relations between one body's beat and the beat of a place. The opening keeps the source's own frame (a publisher who struck out the numbers and let a young man correct the style, a traveller's letter saying he has been made to say the thing that was not) and adds two things the source does not have: the beat, and a wife who copied the whole in a linen-chest. As with the previous serial, no thesis is fixed, and the design log records what has happened, not what will., AI-only)_
- **02** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 01 added: the author's house and trade, the beat, the wreck of the Antelope, and the first waking among the Lilliputians _(Written in the plain, circumstantial voice of the source's narrator, with the two things the source does not have: the beat (a surgeon who learned at fourteen to take it at the wrist, and who takes the master's own on his last evening, thirty-one, and says nothing) and its consequence: the small people beat twelve to his one, so that the cords, the stage, the meat and the cart that he took for an hour's work were the work of a week. The wreck, the swim, the waking pegged to the ground, the arrows, the stage and the meal follow the source's order but are written fresh. A margin note by the publisher records that his wife's copy has, at the first passage, the one word omitted, underlined twice. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **03** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 02 added: the temple and the chain, the emperor's steady wrist, the Slowers and Reldresal, and the inventory in which the watch is taken for his heart _(The second chapter keeps the source's order (the confinement, the emperor's visit, the language, the search of the pockets) and adds what the beat makes of each. The language problem is solved by persons who slow themselves to a twelfth with a boy drummer at sixty and a cord about the chest, and by one young clerk, Reldresal, who comes back after the lessons are over, without the drummer, to see if he could. The inventory reports the watch as a great slow thudding that keeps the Man-Mountain's own beat: the clerks conclude it is his heart, worn outside in a sealed case, and decline to take it. He keeps it, and keeps the book of wrists, which a surgeon does not give up. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **04** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 03 added: the allowance of 1,728, the rope and the threads, the review through his legs, the children and the snore, and the articles of his liberty (with a beat of not more than one hundred) _(The third chapter keeps the source's matter (the court's diversions, the rope-dancing and the three threads, the review of the troops, the articles of his liberty) and lets the beat decide what each is. The Treasury's allowance is cubed height, and the one clerk who notes in the margin that they eat twelve times as often is told it is a refinement the Treasury cannot afford. The review through his legs took forty-one minutes of his and the better part of a day of theirs. A small girl greets him daily at his own pace; the west side of the city sets its day by his snore. Among the articles is one that is not in the source: that he must never raise his beat above one hundred, and must hold out his wrist daily to an officer of the Treasury. When the chain is struck off he finds that he has forgotten, for the first time in his life, to take his own beat. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **05** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 04 added: Mildendo, the palace seen from two stools, the Treasury officer's ledger, and the principal secretary's account of the heels, the eggs and the fleet of Blefuscu _(The fourth chapter keeps the source's matter (the capital and its wall, the palace seen from stools cut in the royal park, the principal secretary's account of the High and Low Heels and of the war of the egg-ends, the commission to serve against the fleet of Blefuscu) and lets the beat decide what each is. Two hours' notice to the city is a day to its people, who stand in their doors dressed and composed; the emperor waits thirty-six of his days for three of the author's; the empress holds a smile for two minutes of her time for a kiss that takes twelve seconds. The daily wrist-taking by an officer of the Treasury becomes a ledger in which the author's own beat varies, and in which a young man who never looks up writes down beside each number what the author was doing. The principal secretary slows himself to the author's pace for an hour and ten minutes, with the boy and the drum, and what he tells is dated in the author's calendar: the parties are younger than the voyage, the war began a fortnight before the shipwreck, the finger was cut six years before the author sailed. A margin note by the publisher records that the larger work promised here was never sent. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **06** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 05 added: the fleet of Blefuscu taken, the nardac's number read out before the court, the refusal to make a province of Blefuscu, the embassy and its invitation _(The fifth chapter keeps the source's matter (the channel and the plan, the cables and the hooks, the spectacles against the arrows, the fleet drawn away, the title of nardac, the refusal to reduce Blefuscu to a province, the embassy and its invitation) and lets the beat decide what each is. The author's half hour in the channel is six hours to the people on the far shore, who have time to go ashore in order and to watch a mountain come across the water; an order given in a sentence sets a whole nation running; the sound from the beach is the same sound as the shout at the striking-off of his chain, and he cannot tell them apart; the court stands on the shore for more than a day. The nardac's rite is that the person honoured is taken at the wrist before the court and his number read out (seventy-nine, the highest the Treasury's book has yet had from him), and he in turn takes the emperor's (seven hundred and ten, steady). The emperor himself, at the author's pace, asks for the rest of Blefuscu, and the author's refusal costs him nothing that he can see; but a different officer is soon sent to take his wrist. The invitation is carried by an ambassador who remarks that in Blefuscu a visitor is bound by no article but his own. The fire in the empress's apartment, which belongs to this chapter in the source, is held over to the next. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **07** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 06 added: the reason for the emperor's coldness, the fire in the empress's apartment, the author's way of living, and the laws and nurseries of the Reach _(The sixth chapter keeps the source's matter (the cause of the cold leave, the midnight fire in the empress's apartment put out by the author's urine, the capital law and the unpassed pardon, the empress's vow, the author's tailors and cooks, the eyes of the people, the burial customs, the law of informers, the laws on fraud, reward and ingratitude, and the public nurseries) and lets the beat decide what each is. The warning is given by the older officer of the Treasury, who says that the author has spoken too long with the ambassadors, which for a man who talks slowly is longer than he would think. The word the crowd cries at the temple door is the last of the eleven words for haste, which no one has time to finish; waking him takes eleven minutes of his and above two hours of theirs; the three minutes of his that put out the fire are a rain of thirty-six minutes to those in the courts below. The ledger's second column now records the night. The law of informers is set out with Reldresal's remark that accusations are seldom made by persons who are not sure of them, and the law against ingratitude passes without remark. At the nursery visit the parents take their child's wrists and hold them for the hour, which sets the author thinking of his own son's wrist on the quay, and of the man with the ladder who comes at noon. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **08** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 07 added: the Treasurer's complaint and the great lady, the articles of impeachment drawn from the Treasury's book, the council's sentence, and the flight to Blefuscu _(The seventh chapter keeps the source's matter (the dinner and the Treasurer's report of the cost, the vindication of a great lady, the night visitor with the articles of impeachment and the minute of the council, the sentence of blinding and the secret starving, the author's reasons against standing trial and against resistance, his flight to Blefuscu on a borrowed ship, and his reception there) and lets the beat decide what each is. The visitor is Reldresal, who does not go under, because a person who speaks at the author's pace can be heard at a distance and for a long while in a quiet temple at night, and who brings the articles on paper. The articles are made out of the Treasury's book, so that every number the young officer wrote becomes a charge, and the fifth article argues from the author's variation that he can exceed his oath. The author reads that his beat on the days after his refusal was fifty-one, where he would have said ninety, and sets his own account of himself beside another's that has been written down. Reldresal, at the cost of four minutes' going under, says three sentences, which turn on the law of informers he had called very good twice. The author does not stand trial, since the book would be read aloud in court, and does not resist, since a mountain at war is a very slow thing. At noon on his first day in Blefuscu nobody comes to take his wrist. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **09** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 08 added: the author quickens for the first time in Blefuscu, the young officer arrives with his instrument, the boat is found, and the envoy from the Reach is declined _(The eighth chapter keeps the source's matter (the boat seen overturned off the north-east coast, the twenty vessels and three thousand seamen that bring it in, the emperor's licence, the envoy from the Reach with the articles, the two hours, the demand that the author be sent back bound, the three days of consultation and the civil refusal, the offered protection that the author declines, and the rigging of the boat) and lets the beat decide what each is. In Blefuscu, where a visitor is bound by no article but his own, the author tries for the first time to raise his beat, passes the hundred, and at one hundred and twelve sees the city come apart into persons who are not hurried and are not talking about him; the fifth article was right about what he could do and wrong only about what he would. The young officer of the Treasury, dismissed after he wrote eighty-one on the day of the ambassadors and found the book saying ninety-seven in another hand, crosses the water with the instrument and a book he has sewn himself, looks up at the author's face, and writes down not only the number but what the author is doing. The envoy's two hours are ten minutes of the author's; the emperor of Blefuscu takes three of his days, thirty-six of theirs, to prepare his refusal. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **10** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 09 added: the young officer gives the author his instrument, the departure, the English ship, the cattle, the return home, and the author's son's wrist written down _(The ninth chapter, which closes the first part, keeps the source's matter (the leave-taking at Blefuscu, the emperor's gifts and his promise exacted that no subject be carried away, the stores and the live cattle, the sailing on the twenty-fourth of September, the island, the sail, the English ship and its captain Biddel, the old comrade Peter Williams, the cattle drawn from a pocket as proof, the passage to the Downs, the rats, the bowling-green at Greenwich, the sale of the herd, the two months at Redriff, the money left with the author's wife, and the departure on the Adventure) and lets the beat decide what each is. The young officer will not come, because a voyage of six months is six years to him, and gives the author the small book he sewed and the Treasury's instrument, so that the author may take his son's wrist again and write it down. Captain Biddel takes the author's wrist before he hears a word and reads sixty-four where the author had written sixty-two. In a month of the author's the herd has a year, and the sixty-one animals that reach the Downs are descended from the six that left the Reach. At home the author's wife takes his wrist at the door; he takes his son's with the brass instrument and writes it down with what the boy is doing; and the neighbours who come for their numbers are told that a number by itself is not anything. A margin note records that the son remembers the box, and that it was cold. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **11** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 10 added: the second voyage and the storm, the landing in a country of giants, the farmer who has to wait for the author to stand still, and the author's going under to the pulse in a thumb _(The tenth chapter, which opens the second part, keeps the source's matter (the voyage and the winter at the Cape, the storm and the drift, the landfall, the long-boat and the creature wading after it, the corn and the stile, the reapers, the author lying in despair, the farmer who takes him up between finger and thumb, the gold offered, the farmhouse, the dinner, the baby, the cat, the bed and the two rats) and lets the beat decide what each is. The giants are the slow ones: a stride is seven beats of the author's pulse, a voice is a bell struck with long rests between the strokes, thunder comes in separate claps, and a reaper's hook takes eleven seconds; the danger is in the size and the corn, not in speed. The author, who was the slowest thing in the Reach, is now the quickest thing among persons, and a quick frightened thing is not seen by eyes that move as theirs do until it stands still. He feels the farmer's pulse in the finger and thumb that hold him, five to the minute, and goes under to it as the Slowers went under to the boy's drum, to say one word of two syllables. The only creatures in that country that are of his own pace are the rats. A margin note records that Mrs. Gulliver crossed through the page of sea-terms and wrote that he does know the names of things. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **12** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 11 added: the farmer's quick daughter, the language and the pulse that serves for a drum, the hair across the wrist, the show of the mannikin that cannot be seen to move, and the journey to the metropolis _(The eleventh chapter keeps the source's matter (the farmer's daughter of nine, small for her age, who becomes the author's nurse; the drawer for a cradle and the seven shirts; the language learned from her; the names Glumdalclitch and Grildrig; the neighbour's advice to show him at market; the girl's fear for him; the journey in a box; the show at the inn thirty at a time, ten times a day; the eighteen towns; the metropolis Lorbrulgrud, the room, the table, the rail) and lets the beat decide what each is. The child is the only quick person in the house, beating eight where the rest beat five; she serves the author as a drum when he must go under to speak, as the boy served the Slowers, and as a Quicker, which is a Slower turned round, she hears him at his pace and gives it to others at theirs. She takes his wrist with a hair across the plate and counts him to sleep. Among persons whose faces develop slowly the author never sees a lie. In the show the audience cannot see him move, only arrive, and what they have paid for is the stillness at the end; the third column of the small book counts spectators, and his own beat falls into the fifties. Her count says sixty and his own wrist, that noon, says fifty-four, and he does not correct her. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **13** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 12 added: the sale to the queen, the finger with a pulse, the three scholars who take the author for a clock, the box, and the girl counting through the wall _(The twelfth chapter keeps the source's matter (the farmer's resolve to sell a failing creature, the usher from court, the queen's little finger kissed, the thousand pieces of gold, the request that the girl be taken too, the author's coldness to his late master, the king who takes him for a splacnuck and then for clockwork, the three scholars and their verdict relplum scalcath, the confrontation of the farmer, the queen's cabinet-maker and the box, the lock, the silks, the queen's table) and lets the beat decide what each is. The queen's finger has a pulse of five, which the author holds against his lips for two beats; the king's face takes three minutes to reach cold and eleven to begin to believe. The scholars take his wrist with a hair and a water-clock and find that sixty to the minute is a number that belongs to clocks and to no creature in the world; the royal clockmaker looks for the winding-hole and goes away offended; the water-clock brought to show that he is one serves him for a drum when he answers them. The naturalist argues that he cannot preserve his life by swiftness, which he can, but cannot be seen to. The girl burns the farmer's tally stick. At night, through the wainscot, the author hears her count what she cannot feel, to keep the time for him. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **14** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 13 added: the queen's quick dwarf and his one plain conversation, the marrow-bone and the cream, the flies and wasps that are of the author's pace, the country, and the city seen from a tower _(The thirteenth chapter keeps the source's matter (the queen's dwarf and his insolence, the marrow-bone, the bowl of cream, the whipping and the dwarf's banishment, the flies and the dwarf's use of them, the four wasps killed with the hanger and their stings kept, the description of the country as a peninsula, the metropolis measured on a map, the palace, the coach and the beggars with their lice, the travelling closet, and the tower with the statue's fallen finger) and lets the beat decide what each is. The dwarf is the only other person at court who beats faster than the rest, ten against five, and has been the quickest thing in the palace for thirty years; he and the author are the only two who can see each other move, and he is replaced in a week. He speaks to the author once as one person to another, and afterwards does what he does. The flies and wasps are of the author's own pace and are the only things at court that the giants cannot hit and he can; the lice are of his pace and are eating the slow. The city, seen from the tower, is telling the time to nobody because nobody is in a hurry. The statue's finger has no pulse; the girl keeps it warm. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **15** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 14 added: the accidents of a creature of the giants' country, nearly all with things of his own pace; the hail, the spaniel, the kite, an execution counted, the boat in the trough, the pin, the frog and the monkey, and the king's rallying _(The fourteenth chapter keeps the source's matter (the hail, the spaniel that carried him to its master, the kite, the mole-hill and the snail's shell, the maids of honour, the execution, the boat and the trough, the corking-pin, the frog, the monkey that carried him to a roof, the fortnight in bed, the king's raillery and his foolish boast, and the cow-dung) and lets the beat decide what each is. The author notices that in the giants' country it is never the people who hurt him; the people are slow. What hurts him is whatever there is of his own pace or near it, and a great deal larger: the spaniel, the kite, the frog, the monkey. Hail is the one thing that falls at the common speed. The palace takes the better part of an afternoon to get a ladder to a roof that the monkey crossed in nine minutes, and passes its order against monkeys afterwards. At the execution he cannot take the man's wrist but counts his throat, and the man has four beats of the sword. The king's questions are each the length of a psalm, so that the author prepares his boast at leisure, and the laughter crosses the room at the pace of that country. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **16** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 15 added: the comb and the spinet played at two speeds, the king's conversations, the author's account of England, the king's judgment of it, and the girl's count of the author's pulse through the audiences _(The fifteenth chapter keeps the source's matter (the comb made of the king's beard, the concerts, the spinet played with two sticks, the conversations in the king's closet, the author's praise of bees and ants against bulk, the king's request for an account of England, the five audiences and the sixth in which the king puts his questions on nobility, bishops, commons, courts, treasury, army, sects and history, the king's panegyric-in-reverse and its closing sentence on little odious vermin, and the narrator's plea that he turned every point to a more favourable light by many degrees) and lets the beat decide what each is. The jig played at the author's pace is a noise like a spoon on a glass and played at a twelfth is a dirge, which the court prefers. The girl, who has the hair across his wrist throughout every audience without his knowing, counts him: his pulse is seventy-two for the Lords, seventy for the bishops, sixty-eight for the Commons, and he had said it faster when it was not so; the many degrees are eleven beats on the mean. The king's judgment takes twenty-two minutes to deliver at five, and cannot be said in anger at that pace; it is only a telling, and the king strokes him with one finger. The girl goes on saying sixty, and the author understands that she is not measuring him. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **17** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 16 added: the powder offered to the king and refused, the king's views of government, the learning, laws, library, army and parties of the country, and the night the girl does not count _(The sixteenth chapter keeps the source's matter (the offer of the powder and the tubes, the king's horror and his refusal, the author's regret at the king's narrow principles, the king's views of government and of two ears of corn, the learning of morality, history, poetry and mathematics, the laws that may not exceed the letters of the alphabet, the printing and the king's library with the stairs for reading, the little treatise on the weakness of mankind, the militia and its drawn swords, and the parties of the state) and lets the beat decide what each is. The girl has to say the description of the powder to the king, standing at the foot of the cabinet with her eyes shut; the king says that the powder is the only thing the author has told him that is not of a size, since a people who need eleven seconds to swing a hook have never had to think what it is to be struck by a thing that does not wait. The author's beat while describing how a city is taken is fifty-two, the lowest in that country, calmer than he was about the Lords. Laws are short because they must be said at five. The old treatise holds that the proof of the decline of the race is the hurry, and that the young are now born at seven or eight where their grandfathers were born at four; the governess has put a pin in that page. The horse draw their swords in forty seconds and the light crosses the field like a cloud turning over. That night there is no count through the wainscot, and the author understands that the count had always been a choice. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **18** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 17 added: the progress to the coast, the girl's last count of the author's wrist and the hair wound twice about it, the eagle, the sea, the English ship, the cabinet of rarities, and the return home; end of the second part _(The seventeenth chapter, which closes the second part, keeps the source's matter (the king's design to give him a mate and keep the posterity in cages, the progress to the south coast, the girl's illness and the page, the eagle that carries the box by the ring, the fall into the sea, the four hours, the towing and the call through the hole, the ship and Captain Wilcocks, the sailors' destruction of the closet, the cabinet of rarities and the footman's tooth, the loudness of the author's voice, the passage home, the author's stooping at his own door, and his wife's protest that he shall not go to sea) and lets the beat decide what each is. At the girl's bedside, feverish at eleven, she takes his wrist with the hair for the last time and, for the first time, says his number, fifty-four; then winds the hair twice about his wrist and bites it off and says sixty. The eagle is the first thing in that country that carried him at a speed that was nobody's choice. The English voice from above is at his own pace, and he weeps because it is quick. Captain Wilcocks takes his wrist and says seventy-one; at night he says sixty aloud to the cabin at the pace of a bell. At home his wife takes his wrist at the door and says fifty-one, and he speaks for a week at the pace of a bell. A margin note records a black cord of nineteen feet coiled in a wooden bowl in the linen-chest, which Mrs. Gulliver says is a hair and will not say whose. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **19** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 18 added: ten days of noon counts at home, Captain Robinson and the Hope-well, the sloop, the pirates and the Dutchman who takes wrists like a purser, the Japanese captain and the untranslated word, the canoe and the rock, and the island in the air; opens the third part _(The eighteenth chapter opens the third part and keeps the source's matter (the ten days at home and Captain Robinson's offer, the voyage to Fort St. George and Tonquin, the sloop, the two pirates, the malice of the Dutchman, the Japanese captain's promise that they should not die, the canoe with four days' provisions doubled, the islands and the eggs, the last rock, the shadow, the flying island, the chain and the seat) and lets the beat decide what each is. The wife has counted him at noon for ten days and writes the numbers on the almanac; on the tenth he is sixty and she consents. The captain takes the surgeon's wrist at noon as readily as the sailmaker's. The Dutchman reads the prisoners' wrists aloud like a purser and Gulliver's is ninety-four. The Japanese captain forbids any search, and says one word, katami, when the Dutchman takes hold of the cord on Gulliver's wrist; the margin records that Mrs. Gulliver wrote beside the word in pencil, Ask. Alone in the canoe he learns that a man cannot count himself honestly (eighty-nine, eighty-two, seventy-one, sixty-four) and in the cave counts forty-nine, the lowest yet. From the rock he sees through the glass that the people of the island have no pace he can read: some move as he does, some stand a quarter of an hour in the middle of a step; the six who haul the chain are at sixty, to the half-second, the only persons who are in time. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **20** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 19 added: the people of Laputa who go when they think and the flappers who fetch them back, the stairs rung like a peal, the king's answer of eleven days, the geometrical dinner, the lesson given in the second after each blow, the island that beats once to the minute, the servant Tarvo, and the tailor with the pendulum _(The nineteenth chapter keeps the first half of the source's second chapter of the third part (the alighting and the crowd, the servants with their bladders of peas and the reason for them, the ascent in which the escort forget what they are about, the king in his problem and the pages who strike him, the author refusing the flap and the court's mean opinion, the apartment and the two servants, the dinner cut into triangles and fiddles, the tutor and the language, the etymology of Laputa, the tailor who mistakes a figure) and lets the beat decide what each is. The Laputans do not grow absent when they think: they go, the body keeping the pace of the thing thought of, and the beat leaving the wrist; the flapper's bladder gives back the common count, sixty. The king, struck awake, says eleven days, which is the answer to the problem. A man who needs no one to fetch him back is thought to have been nowhere. The island itself has a wrist: the floor lifts once to the minute. Untuh, a governor, is the surgeons' word for what keeps the beat. The old flapper Tarvo has never gone in thirty-eight years, because a man cannot go and also fetch; he sees the cord on the author's wrist and says that somebody has kept him. The tailor measures the wrist with a pendulum and cuts the body from the figure, and mistakes a three for an eight. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **21** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 20 added: the court's music of the spheres played in the rests between the island's pulses, the petitions on packthreads, the Laputans' language of figures, their bevelled houses and clumsy minds, their fears for the sun that has a governor and a tick, the astronomer on the comet, the author struck once at his own request, the court lady and her footman, and the king who asks only about ratios _(The twentieth chapter keeps the second half of the source's second chapter of the third part (the court's three hours of music, the petitions let up on packthreads, the language of figures and the king's kitchen, the ill-built houses, the clumsy and unreasoning people without imagination, the astrology and the passion for news, the fears of the sun and the comet and the morning greeting, the women and their gallants, the great lady who ran to Lagado with a footman, the king's indifference to anything but mathematics) and lets the beat decide what each is. The music of the spheres is the island's pulse, one to the minute, and the court plays the rests. The petition thread is the one line that has the same pace at both ends. The Laputans praise a woman's step as a time signature. They are slow where they are and quick where they have gone; they have many words for the places they go to and none for going nowhere in particular, which is fancy. They hold that the sun has a governor and a tick and that the day is not what it was, and the editor's almanac-makers say it is. The morning question after the sun's health is meant: the astronomers go to look. An old astronomer stands in a gallery with his hand a little lower each year, gone eleven years to meet the comet. On the nineteenth evening the author, thinking of the girl, goes: his beat is forty-one; he asks the boy to strike him, the only time, and takes the sixty. The great lady's husband was kind and to be had eleven minutes in the day. The author has seen that loneliness in Redriff, at a table, with an almanac. The king answers the Lesser Reach with twelve to one before the sentence is finished. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **22** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 21 added: the island described, the cave of the hands and the loadstone that keeps it, the author's two fingers on the axle at one to the minute, the island that stands on what is left over, the book of ten thousand stars as a book of wrists, the king's methods of reducing a town, and how Lindalino set its stones to the island's beat and brought it down to forty yards _(The twenty-first chapter keeps the first and larger part of the source's third chapter of the third part (the size and make of the island and its adamant, the chasm and the astronomers' cave, the great loadstone and how it raises, lowers and carries the island, the limits of its reach, the catalogue of stars and the satellites of Mars and the ninety-three comets, the king who would be absolute but for his ministers, the milder and the last remedies against a rebel town, the rising of Lindalino and the experiment with the line, and the fundamental law that the king may not leave) and lets the beat decide what each is. The stone is the high governor of the island and it goes on at one to the minute whichever way it is turned. The hands who keep it, despised above as artisans, do not go; they answer in plain words without a blow, and the eldest takes the author's hand and puts two fingers on the axle. The island rises from what it differs from and stands on what is left over. The catalogue of ten thousand stars is a book of wrists kept by men who look up all their lives and never at a face. Lindalino counted the island for three hundred years, a boy on every roof with a string and a stone, and set its five stones to the island's beat; when the island came down to forty yards nothing was left over, and a thing cannot be lifted by what is the same as itself. The eldest tried the line and the adamant and was drawn down so strongly he could hardly pull it back; he was afraid and very busy, which he recommends. The author sits an hour with two fingers on the axle, the first hour on the island in which nothing was struck, and records that the stone was warm. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **23** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 22 added: the great lord who counts the rests and has never gone, the leave-taking from Tarvo and the bladder of eleven peas, the descent at sixty, the ground that is listened for, Lagado where every wrist is over ninety and the labourers dig to a drum at a hundred and ten, Lord Munodi whose estate is out of step, and the origin of the Academy of projectors _(The twenty-second chapter keeps the matter of the source's fourth chapter of the third part (the author's neglect and weariness on the island, the great lord thought stupid who beat time in the wrong place, the leave-taking and the presents and the letter, the descent, Lagado and Lord Munodi, the fast-walking ragged people and the labourers digging where nothing is expected to grow, the governor who was discharged for insufficiency, the house with its good proportions, the country that changes in three hours, the origin of the academy and the projectors' promises, the lord's refusal to innovate, the ruined mill on the mountain, and the author's own past as a sort of projector) and lets the beat decide what each is. The great lord is the one Laputan who cannot go, and keeps the count in the rests. Tarvo gives the author a bladder of eleven peas to shake, and says that sixty is the same in every language. In Lagado every wrist taken is above ninety and the labourers dig to a drum at a hundred and ten, which is the rate at which a man does the work of two; on Munodi's estate four labourers are sixty-three, fifty-eight, sixty-eight and seventy-one: they are not in step, and the corn is in. The projectors who went up came down spoiled for the pace of corn after five months at the pace of the heavens. The water on the mountain was to be quicker. The author had been a sort of projector himself; he kept a book of wrists; the editor has seen it. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **24** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 23 added: the grand academy of Lagado, the projectors and the beat of each, the sunbeams in phials, the roof built first, the hogs that plough, the universal artist, the frame that writes books without genius and the line it found, the school of languages that would abolish words, and the wafer _(The twenty-third chapter keeps the matter of the source's fifth chapter of the third part (the academy of houses joined along a street, the sunbeams from cucumbers, the reducer of the finished article, the calciner of ice, the architect who begins at the roof, the blind mixers of colours, the plough of hogs, the spiders that weave coloured silk, the sundial on the weathercock, the universal artist and his naked sheep, the frame of words turned by forty handles, the school of languages with the abolition of words and the sages with their packs, and the wafer of the mathematical school) and lets the beat decide what each is. Every projector's wrist is taken: the sunbeam man is a hundred and twelve and his phial of an early noon is cold; the oldest student is fifty-one; the ice man a hundred and nine; the blind master sixty and the calmest man in the street; the universal artist a hundred and four, who finds the day too short; the professor of the frame is sixty-six and the one man who does not hurry, because the frame does that; the three lads at the handles are ninety-six, a hundred and two and a hundred and five and look at the next handle and not at the words. The frame's nineteenth folio holds a line of four words found the week before, a hair across the wrist, and the professor has not found what it is for and marks it for the laws. The language reformers compute from the wrist that a man spends the breaths of eleven years on words and would save nine by carrying things. The sages with packs converse at about forty to the minute and are at their ease. The editor's margin records that the engraver asked for a larger plate. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **25** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 24 added: the political projectors whose wrists cannot be taken, the one who has forgotten what he came to propose and had no flapper, the physician who would take the pulses of a senate, the tweak for a minister's memory that Laputa does with peas, the party-reconcilers, the taxes, the raffle, the table of figures and their meanings on the wall, Tribnia, and the Reach's one plot read out of a ledger; ends with the bladder shaken for a quarter of an hour _(The twenty-fourth chapter keeps the matter of the source's sixth chapter of the third part (the school of political projectors who seem wholly out of their senses, the ingenious doctor who would cure the political body by the physician's prescriptions after feeling the pulses of every senator, the tweak by the nose to prevent a minister's forgetfulness, the contrary vote, the exchange of half-brains between party leaders, the debate on taxes upon vices, qualities and favours, the raffle for employments, the professor who finds plots by examining the suspected, the decipherers with their lists and their acrostics and anagrams, and the author's account of Tribnia) and lets the beat decide what each is. The political projectors cannot be counted, going from forty-four to a hundred and thirty and back, and the figure is the number of nobody; the first has forgotten what he came to propose and has no flapper, the returned projectors having come down from Laputa without them, and when the author shakes the bladder at his ear he is for three seconds perfectly clear and says that the author is the man who is in time. The doctor's fifteen hundred wrists in three days are a ledger; the author says only that it should be done in the open and the figure read out to the man, which the doctor writes down. The tweak is what Laputa does with a bladder of peas, with less bruising and the merit of a count. On the wall hangs a table of figures and their meanings which the author knows to within a meaning, and does not say how. In the Lesser Reach, where the accuser dies if the accused is innocent, there has been one plot, and it was read out of a ledger. That night the author's wrist is eighty-eight; he shakes the peas for a quarter of an hour and it is sixty-three. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **26** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 25 added: Munodi's parting count, the road to Maldonada, the island of sorcerers and the governor who lends his own beat to the dead for twenty-four hours, so that all are forty-one and none can lie; Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar and Brutus; the dead entered in the small book as Being lent; and the governor, asked after for the first time _(The twenty-fifth chapter keeps the matter of the source's seventh chapter of the third part (the journey to Maldonada and the month's wait for a ship, the little island of Glubbdubdrib and its governor of the tribe of magicians, the domestics called from the dead for twenty-four hours and not again within three months, the guards and ghosts and the vanishing at a turn of the finger, the ten days, the permission to call whom he would, with truth guaranteed because lying was of no use in the lower world, and Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar and Pompey, the two senates, Brutus and the sextumvirate) and lets the beat decide what each is. The dead have none of their own: the governor lends them his, forty-one, a family's beat handed down like a coat; they cannot vary it, and a man who lies goes up three or four, so they cannot lie; it is not their virtue but the arrangement. The guards' faces arrive at forty-one in bodies of the author's size, which is what made his flesh creep. All the dead are forty-one, the heroes of the one senate and the pedlars of the other, which is the only way in which they cannot be told apart. The governor calls his own father to dinner once a quarter and lends him nothing, since he comes with what he had. Alexander's had never been taken; they counted his army. Cæsar's, he thinks, was seventy-one on the stairs; Brutus cannot remember his own. The author enters them in the small book, Being lent. When a footman's twenty-four hours end, the beat goes out of the wrist like the tide, and the author holds the arm until it is no longer there. The governor, whose own count that evening is sixty-eight after lending a hundred and nine, thanks the author for asking, no one having. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **27** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 26 added: Homer's eyes and Aristotle's staff, the lent beat stopping short of the man, the commentators, Descartes and Gassendi and the fashion of systems, the modern dead with their chins, the general who ran at a hundred and thirty-one, the captain of Actium and his son who stood too close to be counted apart, and the arithmetic by which sixty is found to be the beat of a man of this age _(The twenty-sixth chapter keeps the matter of the source's eighth chapter of the third part (Homer and Aristotle at the head of their commentators, the ghost who whispers of their shame, Descartes and Gassendi explaining their systems to Aristotle and his prediction for attraction, the five days among the ancient learned and Heliogabalus's cooks and the Spartan broth, the kings' ancestors and the families' features, modern history misled by prostitute writers, the secret-history writers and the true causes of great events, the confessions of the general and the admiral and the three kings, the means by which titles and estates were got, the great services unrecorded, the captain at Actium and his son and Agrippa's confirmation, the corruption of that empire, the degeneration of humankind since the pox, and the English yeomen of the old stamp) and lets the beat decide what each is. The lent beat stops short of the man: in Homer before the eyes, which are a hundred and ten; in Aristotle before the staff. The dead of every family are forty-one, so that the chin is what tells the lineage, and the author has never before been grateful for a chin. The general who won by cowardice was a hundred and thirty-one, the enemy's a hundred and forty in the other direction on a better horse. The persons of infamy gave the same answer in the same place, with no up in it. The captain of Actium and his son stood so close that the author could not tell which he was counting, the boy's hand in his father's cloak pocket; they were the same age in the only column he had. By the rule of the Reaches a body a tenth shorter beats a tenth faster; the Englishmen of a hundred years ago stood a hand taller at the door-post and would have beaten fifty-three or fifty-four; the author had thought that sixty was the beat of a man, and it is the beat of a man of this age. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **28** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 27 added: the bladder no longer needed at sea, the Luggnagg customs that take the wrist before the name and pass a lie of three or four, the dust of the king's floor, the powder that kills in twenty-four hours, the greeting that wishes the king to outlive the sun, the struldbrugs with their red spot, and the author's rapture in which he would be sixty for ever _(The twenty-seventh chapter keeps the matter of the source's ninth chapter of the third part and the first half of the tenth (the return to Maldonada and the voyage to Luggnagg, the custom-house officer who examines him strictly, the false claim to be a Hollander because he means for Japan, the confinement, the interpreter, the warrant and the ten horse, the dust-licking and the powder that kills in twenty-four hours and the page who forgot to wash, the compliment that wishes the king to outlive the sun eleven moons and a half, the king's lenity, the three months, the Luggnaggians commended, the question about the struldbrugs and the red spot that goes green, blue and black, the author's rapture and his plan of living for ever, and the gentleman who says he must be set right) and lets the beat decide what each is. At sea the author finds on the tenth day that he has not needed the bladder. At the customs the wrist is taken before the name; saying Hollander he is sixty-five from sixty-one, and the book has a column for what a stranger says and what the wrist says, a difference of three or four being ordinary and passed, seven or more sent up; it is a feeling, the first lie of the ordinary size. The interpreter is nineteen and seventy, being paid by the word. Crawling on the floor the author is seventy-four and goes at twenty to the minute, the slowest anyone has gone in his presence since the giants, watched by courtiers at sixty. The powder kills in twenty-four hours, which is the governor's term. He comes from an island where they asked each morning after the sun, and here they wish the king the longer life. In his rapture the author says that by his own wrist he would be sixty for ever, the best number a man can be, and sees nothing to choose between himself and them. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **29** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 28 added: the gentleman's correction that the question is how a man would pass a perpetual life under the disadvantages of age, the number that goes down a hair a year and in a struldbrug does not stop, the account of their melancholy, envy, forgetting and exile in their own language, the five or six the author saw, the youngest who asked eleven minutes for a token of remembrance while the author put his hand over the cord, the eldest woman at the window, the child with the red spot, the king's raillery, and the author glad to be fifty-one _(The twenty-eighth chapter keeps the second half of the source's tenth chapter of the third part (the gentleman's preface that the system was unreasonable, the question how a man would pass a perpetual life under the disadvantages of age, the particular account of the struldbrugs: melancholy from thirty, the follies and infirmities of fourscore, envy, forgetting, the dissolution of marriage and death in law, the loss of teeth and hair, the incapacity to read, the language upon the flux so that after two hundred years they live like foreigners in their own country, the five or six the author saw, slumskudask, the register and the reckoning of age by kings remembered, the most mortifying sight, the abating of his appetite, the king's raillery, and the reason of the laws) and lets the beat decide what each is. The number goes down a hair a year in every mortal and the going down ends in the stopping; in a struldbrug the going down goes on and the stopping does not. At eighty they are forty-eight; at two hundred twenty-eight and a neighbour is a gabble; they do not forget, they are not there when it happens; a witness must have been present, and a man at forty-eight is present a little after. The youngest, twenty-eight, takes eleven minutes to ask for his token and asks it of the wall, and the author puts his hand over the cord and is not proud of the hand, and gives a silver button. The eldest is a woman at a window above a corn-chandler's, seven, who lifts her head to the sill in an hour, and does not know the child of the fourteenth degree who climbs in and out of her lap. The child born three years before, red-spotted, is a hundred and forty, and laughs at a dog; the author wished to be told that she was only a child. He had said that he would be sixty for ever; he thinks of it as of a bill he has signed. That night he is fifty-one, his wife's number, and is glad of it; he does not shake the bladder, and between one beat and the next understands that there will be an end of the beats. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **30** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 29 added: the king's licence and the red diamond the size of a spot, the seal of a king lifting a lame beggar from the earth, the Emperor behind the paper screen whose wrist no one has taken for four hundred years, the march at sixty and the unwelcome liking of it, the old clerk at the water-gate who says katami and asks whose, the slip kept among the pages of the dead, the Dutch ship, and Redriff, where his wife and he settle on fifty-two and she shows him five almanacs of her own counts; end of the third part _(The twenty-ninth chapter keeps the matter of the source's eleventh chapter of the third part (the author's remark on the struldbrugs and Japan, the king's licence and the four hundred and forty-four pieces of gold and the red diamond, the leave-taking on the sixth of May 1709, Glanguenstald, Xamoschi and the long arm of the sea, the seal of a king lifting up a lame beggar from the earth, the public minister's reception, the audience and the interpreter to the Hollanders, the false claim of being a Dutch merchant, the petition to be excused trampling upon the crucifix and the Emperor's surprise and dexterous favour, the troops to Nangasac, the Amboyna of Amsterdam and Captain Theodorus Vangrult, the skipper beaten with a bamboo, the Cape, Amsterdam, the Downs and Redriff) and lets the beat decide what each is. The red diamond is the size of the spot and the author disliked to look at it. The seal he looks at too long. The Emperor sits behind paper, and no one has taken his wrist in four hundred years; the court does well with a guessed figure. The author marches at sixty with soldiers for nineteen days and distrusts how well he sleeps. At the water-gate of Nangasac the old clerk takes his wrist, writes forgotten in one column and a false name in another; the author takes his other hand off the cord, thinking of the youngest struldbrug; the clerk says katami; the interpreter says it is a thing kept of a person when the person is not there to keep it, and that a hair is the usual one; and the clerk asks whose, which no one had asked. The author says a girl's, nine, forty feet high, across a sea, he does not know whether alive. The slip is in the small book among the pages of the dead; Mrs. Gulliver has written beside it, Asked. At Redriff he takes his wife's wrist first, sixty-eight; she takes his, fifty-three; they settle on fifty-two. Johnny and Betty. Five almanacs of her own noons, the lowest sixty-four, a small cross against the days she was frightened; he does not ask which, being afraid he could have told her. He tells her about the rock until the candle is down and does not get as far as the cord. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **31** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 30 added: five months at home and the telling of the cord, Mary's sum of four months, the Adventurer, Captain Pocock who never varied, the recruits from Barbadoes whose wrists should have told him, the conspiracy and the sentry who took the bladder for a rattle, James Welch's steady wrist, the strand, the Yahoos who are at all paces in a breath, the paw that was coming to the wrist, the horse who walked at forty-four, the salute that is a counting, and hhuun hhuun; opens the fourth part _(The thirtieth chapter opens the fourth part and keeps the matter of the source's first chapter of it (five months at home, the offer to be captain of the Adventurer, Robert Purefoy, Captain Pocock of Bristol at Teneriffe, the recruits from Barbadoes who had been buccaneers, the conspiracy and the confinement, James Welch and the long-boat, the strand, the first sight of the Yahoos, the blow with the hanger and the herd and the filth, the horse that walks softly, the stroking refused with a raised hoof, the second horse and the salute of hoof on hoof, the dapple gray who calls him back, the examination of hat and coat and hand and shoes, the speech to the conjurers, the words Yahoo and Houyhnhnm, the hhuun) and lets the beat decide what each is. On the third morning at home the author tells his wife about the cord; she does the sum, four months, and says that the girl will not have stopped, and that she knows. She takes his wrist at the door on the morning he leaves, sixty-one. Pocock was sixty-three and said that he had never known it vary: a man who cannot turn. Eleven of the fifteen hired at Bridgetown were over a hundred at rest, which a surgeon ought to have known; Welch alone was under seventy. In the cabin nobody counts him; the sentry takes the bladder for a rattle for a child and asks whether it is a boy. The Yahoos are at no pace and at all of them in a breath, a clock whose escapement has been taken out; the paw lifted at him, he thinks since, was coming to his wrist. The horse walks at forty-four, like a clock coming through a room of watches. The salute of hoof on hoof is a counting, each giving the other one, and the greeting is complete when the two agree, the only salute in which nothing is said that might not be true. The gray takes his wrist between hoof and pastern: sixty-eight; and the horses say, he thinks, that this Yahoo has a beat. Hhuun is a number, forty-four to the minute, and the first person in that country to notice that the author is tired is a horse. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **32** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 31 added: the Houyhnhnm's house of wattle and straw where five persons stand and sit on one count, the vista of three rooms, the mare's contemptuous look, the three Yahoos tied to a beam, the perfect human figure and the Yahoo's wrist taken under its hair (a governor with nobody to keep it), the food refused and the milk accepted, the old steed whose hurt foot slowed the whole table by one, the gloves that kept the hoof from the plate, the oat-cake and the author's diet, and a night between the bag of rats and the house on one count _(The thirty-first chapter keeps the matter of the source's second chapter of the fourth part (the three-mile walk to the long building of timber and wattle and straw, the room with the manger and the nags and the mares, the vista of three rooms and the presents, the necromancy supposed, the mare with the colt and the foal, the word Yahoo, the three Yahoos tied by the neck and eating roots and flesh, the largest brought out by the sorrel nag, the perfect human figure, the root and the ass's flesh and the hay and the oats, the cow and the milk, the old steed in his sledge drawn by four Yahoos who alighted hind-feet forward, the circular mangers, the gloves, the first words, the oats and the cake, the diet and the want of salt, the lodging six yards away) and lets the beat decide what each is. The household stands and sits on one count and no one gave the sign. The author takes the largest Yahoo's wrist, parts the hair with his thumb and finds the plate in its place; it goes from forty to a hundred and sixty and back, ninety when it yawns; a governor with nobody to keep it; the horror was in the thumb. At table they eat, seven at the manger, on one count, as men row, and the old steed's hurt foot makes him forty-three and the whole table forty-three, and no one refers to it; there is no drum and no flapper and no hair across any wrist, and nothing to keep it, and it is kept. The author's own count begins to go down in him like water finding its level. The master's hoof comes to the glove at the wrist as a man knocks on a shut door; he wants the plate; the gloves come off. The author is never above fifty-five in the three years after the first month and puts it to the oats and not, as he should now, to the table. The night is between the kennel like a bag of rats and the house with five persons asleep on one count; he cannot sleep till he has chosen which to keep time to, and chooses the house. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **33** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 32 added: the language that is said in measures of four with rests where they agree and has no word for hurry or for being late, the master who takes the wrist each morning for a month and finds the first Yahoo with a character, the thing said once being said to all, the answer that the author is mistaken because his count does not go up, the sorrel valet's fright, the clothes taken off, the bare wrist and the hair that is called a Yahoo's and not corrected, and the first account of the voyage said at sixty-four _(The thirty-second chapter keeps the matter of the source's third chapter of the fourth part (the author's endeavour to learn the language and the teaching of the master and his family and servants, the language pronounced through the nose and throat and likened to High-Dutch with the remark of Charles V, the master's curiosity and his conviction that the author must be a Yahoo yet astonished at his teachableness, the perplexity about the clothes, the writing of words in the English alphabet, the inhabitants' want of books, the ten weeks and the three months, the answer about the sea which the master takes for a mistake or the thing which was not since they have no word for lying, the meaning of Houyhnhnm as perfection of nature, the visitors of quality and the five months, the sorrel valet's fright at the sleeping stranger, the disclosure of the clothes, the examination, the request not to be called a Yahoo and to keep the secret, the master's doubled pains, and the first account of the voyage and its end in the author's saying that his countrymen would not believe it) and lets the beat decide what each is. The language goes in measures of four with a rest after the fourth, and the rests are where they agree; it has no word for hurry and none for being late, which is the commonest word in the author's own. The master takes the wrist for a month as a man looks at the sky: sixty-two, sixty-four, sixty-one, a Yahoo being never the same twice; the first Yahoo with a character. A thing said once is, among them, said to all, and the author wonders what they would have done with a column. The master takes the author's answer about the sea for a mistake, having had from the elders that a Yahoo says the thing which was not by his count going up, and the author's count has not gone up. The last thing he learns is to say words at forty-four. After the clothes are off, the master takes his bare wrist, fifty-eight, with the cord; asks what the black thing is; the author has four hundred words and none for it, and says that it is a hair of one of his kind; the master says, A Yahoo's, and he does not correct him. The first account of the voyage is said at sixty-four; the master sees that he believes it, and does not see how he can. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **34** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 33 added: the doorway of doubt where a Houyhnhnm stands at forty-seven in a country of one count, the master's reasoning that speech is to be understood and a thing which is not leaves one worse than ignorant, the one lie told to a Houyhnhnm at his request with his hoof on a bare wrist (sixty-four, sixty-eight: it is small, I had thought it would be large), the night the master was a beat behind, the horses of England ridden at the count of the man on them with the spur to give it, a tyranny of count, the account of the surgeon who takes the count of the sick, the crew of desperate fortunes, and the evening on which the master asked for the wrist to be left bare _(The thirty-third chapter keeps the matter of the source's fourth chapter of the fourth part (the master's uneasiness at doubting and not believing, his notion of speech and of the thing which was not, the horses of England and how they are kept and ridden and shod and gelded, his noble resentment, his criticism of the author's body, the author's account of his birth and his trade and his last voyage, the crew of desperate fortunes and their crimes, the several days' labour to make him comprehend the vices, and the want of terms for power, government, war, law and punishment) and lets the beat decide what each is. In a country of one count there is no third place for the hearer to stand: a thing said at which the count does not move is true, and if it moves it is not or the speaker is mistaken; the master stands in the doorway where doubt should have been and is forty-seven, which no Houyhnhnm has been before by more than one. At his request, once, with his hoof on the author's bare wrist, the author says that he is a horse: sixty-four, then sixty-eight; it is small, he says, he had thought it would be large; he understands what the elders meant and wishes that he did not. That night the master is a beat behind the house, awake, and no one refers to it in the morning. A horse ridden goes at the count of the man on it, and the spur is how the count is given; the master says that he had supposed it a tyranny of strength and it is a tyranny of count. A surgeon takes the count of the sick and tells them what it means; in the sick it is never the same twice; so he has been bred to the trade of Yahoos. For power, government, war, law and punishment the author gives counts to stand beside: a crime is a going up that is kept up, a punishment a hand that holds another down to a count not its own, a war ten thousand going up on one signal; the master is forty-eight for the length of the sentence. On the last evening he asks to have the wrist left bare, sits an hour with his hoof an inch from it, and the author thinks that he was putting something away. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **35** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 34 added: the barbarous English that is barbarous in being quick, the war with France and the million Yahoos, the causes of war, the soldier's cold blood at sixty-one, the master who says the author has said the thing which is not with his hoof on a wrist that did not move, the guns described at a hundred and four, You are not afraid, you are pleased, the gnnayh and the troubled stream at forty-eight, the law and the cow, the lawyers' counts which do not go up, and the question put into a country that had not had it _(The thirty-fourth chapter keeps the matter of the source's fifth chapter of the fourth part (the extract of two years of conversation, the Revolution and the war with France and the million killed, the causes of war, the soldier hired to kill in cold blood, the master's saying that the author has said the thing which is not, the description of guns and sieges and the dead dropping from the clouds, the master's abhorrence and his gnnayh and sharp stone and troubled stream, law and lawyers and the cow, precedents and jargon, the short trials for crimes against the state, and the pity that such abilities are not used to instruct) and lets the beat decide what each is. The author's English is barbarous in being quick: the master's sentences were forty-four and are set down at sixty, a third too fast, and reason loses a little at that speed. A soldier's wrist at the work is sixty-one, which is cold blood; he knows from another country what a ledger would make of it. The master's hoof does not move when he says the author has said the thing which is not, so he does not say lied; for him the two are the same thing and he has not the second. While describing the guns the author is a hundred and four, and the master says that he is not afraid but pleased; he is forty-eight and holds it. The lawyers' counts, the author says, go up at first and after some years do not; a serjeant was sixty-one throughout a speech that proved a man's house not his own; the master looks at his hoof, having been shown that the count can be trained. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **36** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 35 added: money and the hired man who goes at the count of the man who hires him (ridden by the clock), the luxury that sends ships round the globe three times for a lady's breakfast, wine that takes the count off a man for an evening, the sick whose count is never the same twice and the physician who reads it and sends in a bill, the first minister whose count tells you nothing (sixty-one, not rising for a lie nor falling when moved), the decayed wench who is a governor in the other sense, the nobility, and a master who finds that the author, at fifty-two, does not mind _(The thirty-fifth chapter keeps the matter of the source's sixth chapter of the fourth part (the use of money and the hire of lawyers, the rich man who enjoys the fruit of the poor man's labour, the costly meats and the globe three times gone round for a lady's breakfast, England's food sent abroad for the materials of diseases, folly and vice, wine, diseases and the physicians with their vomits and purges and prognostics, the character of a first minister and the three ways to rise and the act of indemnity and the palace as seminary and the decayed wench who governs, and the nobility with their diseased blood and their consent to all laws) and lets the beat decide what each is. A hired man goes at the count of the man who hires him and the wage is what is paid for the count; the poor are ridden by the clock, and no one holds the spur, it is the want of a thing in the other hand. Wine takes the count off a man for an evening, so that he is nobody's, and he wakes to find it where he left it, a little worse; the master is forty-six. The count of the sick is never the same twice, the physician's art is its reading, and it is read and a bill sent; on the master's side a Houyhnhnm goes down a hair a day for three days at the end and stops, and what he knows of it is that it is quiet; the author has taken forty thousand wrists and cannot recall one that was quiet. The first minister's count is the commonest in the kingdom, sixty-one, and does not rise when he lies or fall when he is moved; a man whose count tells you nothing is a man in whom nothing can be told; the master, forty-eight, learns that it can be done to a count, having been given to understand that it could not. The governors of the kingdom, a decayed wench or a favourite footman, are taken by the master in the other sense, as what keeps the count, and the author does not correct him. All Houyhnhnms, of every colour, are forty-four. At the end of the summer the author is fifty-two and it has not gone up once in the telling; the master says that he cannot tell from the wrist whether he is a better Yahoo or a worse, since he seems to mind none of it; the author says he minds it a great deal, and finds that the master is right, and does not know since when. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **37** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 36 added: the author's detestation of falsehood and the count that stopped going up (truth and steadiness taken the wrong way round), his resolution never to return to humankind, the four yards at which the master seats him, reason as a count held in common that needs no overseer, the Yahoos' hatred and war, the hoard of shining stones that holds a Yahoo's count still, the ruling Yahoo and his favourite, the hard work that is a count from outside; and the bladder not taken out of the pocket since autumn _(The thirty-sixth chapter keeps the matter of the source's seventh chapter of the fourth part (the author's confession of why he drew so free a picture of humankind, his love and veneration for the Houyhnhnms and resolution never to return, the master's seating him at a distance and his judgment that we are animals to whom a pittance of reason fell and which we use to aggravate our corruptions, that our laws are owing to defects in reason, the Yahoos' mutual hatred and their food-fights and neighbourhood battles, the shining stones and the hoard moved and restored, the three of them contending for one stone, the ruling Yahoo and his favourite, the Yahoo's evil, the spleen cured by hard work, and the politer pleasures that are the products of art) and lets the beat decide what each is. The author takes the steadiness of his count in the telling for truth and thinks now that he had the two the wrong way round. The master seats him four yards off, the length at which a hoof cannot reach a wrist, and does not take his wrist that morning; the author does not say it was meant. By reason alone the master means a count held in common, and the law is what a people has instead of it; it is the one thing in his country with no servant standing by, and the author had to be taught to walk on it. The Yahoo robbed of its hoard went from a hundred and fifty to ninety when the stones were put back; they seem the only thing that can hold a Yahoo's count still. The Yahoo in the corner is set to dig, at a hundred and ten, as in a country with a drum, and the author thinks of a bladder of peas and says nothing. That night he is forty-nine and has not wished it lower; he has not had the bladder out of his pocket since the autumn; he has the money he conveyed there when he was set ashore, and finds his hand in it as one touches a hole one has dug. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **38** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 37 added: the author among the Yahoo herds under the guard of the sorrel nag, the herd laying hands to wrists in all the wrong places, the cub he takes by the wrist and tells the number to, the young female Yahoo in the river and a count that is not what the nag supposed, the Houyhnhnm customs of reason, friendship, marriage, education and assembly, and a festival at which the girl lays two fingers on the inside of her wrist _(The thirty-seventh chapter keeps the matter of the source's eighth chapter of the fourth part (the author's excursions among the Yahoo herds under the guard of a sorrel nag, the Yahoos' imitation of his actions, the young Yahoo he caught and its filth, the Yahoos' nature and their kennels and their swimming, the young female Yahoo who embraced him in the river and the mortification of it, the reason of the Houyhnhnms and their want of the notion of opinion, friendship and benevolence, their want of fondness for their colts, their marriages and the limiting of their numbers, the education of youth of both sexes, their exercises and festivals, and the general assembly every fourth year with its regulation of children) and lets the beat decide what each is. The herd imitates his laying of two fingers on his wrist, at the elbow and the neck. The cub he takes by the wrist is quieted by the number said into its ear, a hundred and seventy to a hundred, until it smells him; the bite stops at the cord, and he tells the master of the smell and not of the number. In the river the girl's count against his ribs is not what the nag and he supposed, but the count of a child who has run a long way to a door, and he supposes the other thing for some time. The master cannot see how a point can be disputable where two have counted and found two numbers; one of the two has not been counting. The stranger is met with the same hoof on the same hoof; the master stands the same with a neighbour's colt and his own; the two figures the author carries for his two children are, the master supposes, in the yard with all the others, and the author has not the word for the difference; a couple do not settle a number between them; the servants have half the time to keep the count in; a lost child is supplied by another family, and the author thinks of a third in Redriff whose count he has not taken. At the next festival the girl is among the Yahoos driven in with the hay, lays two fingers on the inside of her wrist, and has it right; he does not do it back, takes his wrist that night at fifty-three, and wishes it lower, and it does not go. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **39** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 38 added: the master's account of the grand debate on exterminating the Yahoos, given at forty-four with one place at forty-six, the tradition of the two on the mountain, the hint borrowed from the author's talk of gelding horses, the one particular he concealed; the learning, poetry and buildings of the Houyhnhnms, the hollow of the pastern that takes a wrist and threads a needle, the mare who struck the hoof half a beat behind and was dead in three months, and the epithet Yahoo said of a cord _(The thirty-eighth chapter keeps the matter of the source's ninth chapter of the fourth part (the grand debate at the assembly on exterminating the Yahoos, the tradition of the two on the mountain, the neglect of the breed of asses, the master's expedient borrowed from the author's account of gelding horses, the one particular concealed, the want of letters and the easy preserving of history, the absence of disease and the herbs for cuts in the pastern or frog, the year by sun and moon without weeks, the poetry, the buildings of stakes ten inches apart, the hollow between pastern and hoof used as a hand and the white mare who threaded a needle, the manner of dying and burial and the mare who came very late because her husband had shnuwnh, the sledge drawn by Yahoos ten days before the end, and the want of any word for evil but the epithet Yahoo) and lets the beat decide what each is. The house keeps the count with four while the master is away. The master gives his account at forty-four with one place at forty-six, which the author saw without seeing, and finds afterwards at the end, where he said that was all; a thing may be left out without being the thing which is not. The two on the mountain are two creatures with nobody to take their wrists and nobody to keep a governor, for how many generations. The author's talk of gelding, said to show why he was angry on behalf of the horses, has been received as a proposal. A thing said in that country is said once, to all, and is then in the yard; the author carries the only book in it and it is no use to anyone. The stakes of the house are ten inches to the inch, as if built to a beat. The hollow in which the master takes his wrist also threads a needle; the white mare asks why cloth is parted. The mare strikes the hoof half a beat behind the master's, and nobody refers to it, and she dies in three months; the author, who set the table at noon, took her for late, there being no such word. The sorrel nag, asked where the husband was put, says it is the obscurest place, that the servants were not told to remember it, and asks, to what end; the author cannot say, in his language, to what end, and understands he has put a question with nothing under it. He has found that he uses the epithet Yahoo himself, of a stone, of the rain, and once of the cord, aloud, when it caught on a thorn; the cord did not mind. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **40** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 39 added: the author's room six yards from the house and the happy life he had settled, the silences that are the rests, his imitation of their gait, the master's notice with his hoof on the author's wrist (forty-seven against forty-six), the reason that was kept from him (that he might keep a count for the Yahoos), the word hnhloayn, the swoon in which there was nothing under the hoof, the canoe made with the sorrel nag, the Yahoos drawing it at the nag's pace, the hoof raised to his mouth at forty-six, and the girl at the top of the shingle with two fingers at her wrist _(The thirty-ninth chapter keeps the matter of the source's tenth chapter of the fourth part (the author's economy and happy life, his room six yards from the house, his bedding and clothes and food, the long list of what is not found there, the Houyhnhnm company he is admitted to and the silences that improve conversation, the master's knowledge of Yahoos, the author's veneration and horror of his own reflection, his imitation of their gait and voice; the master's notice that the assembly has exhorted him to employ the author like the rest of his species or command him to swim back, the fear that the author might seduce the Yahoos into the woods, the word hnhloayn, the swoon at the master's feet, the author's reply, the two months and the sorrel nag, the island seen from the coast that is only a blue cloud to the nag, the canoe covered with Yahoo skins and drawn gently to the sea by Yahoos, the leave-taking and the hoof raised to his mouth) and lets the beat decide what each is. His hut is the farthest he has slept from a count since the long-boat. The master takes his wrist before he speaks, as a surgeon before he gives news: forty-seven against forty-six, which the master has been for a month while the author attended to the words. What the assembly feared is the thing the author did among the herds: forty hands at forty wrists, a cub who looked up at the ninth saying, a girl on a bank; he does not say it is groundless. Hnhloayn is not a word for an order but for the place of the count, told as one tells the time; the master was told where it was, and the author was not banished but advised. The swoon leaves nothing under the hoof for two measures, and the master concludes he was dead. The sorrel nag, whom the author knew to have a tenderness from the way he walks on the side the Yahoos come from, sees the island only as a blue cloud, there being nothing in his country that cannot be waited for. The canoe is covered with the skins of the youngest Yahoos he could get, hair side in; the Yahoos draw it gently at the nag's pace, which they have not, and one has black hair. He waits above an hour for the tide by his pulse, an hour and a quarter by the sun, and does not correct it. The hoof at his mouth is at the hollow, and forty-six. From the water he sees the girl alone at the top of the shingle with two fingers at her wrist and lays two fingers on his own, too far to be seen, and does not read it; and finds he is paddling at forty-four and cannot stop, and for some time does not want to. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **41** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 40 added: the voyage from the shingle with the nag's cry that has one beat over, the island he plans and the two on the mountain he does not think of, the rock and the first reading since the shore (fifty-eight), New Holland and the natives round a fire at thirty counts, the arrow in the knee, the hiding with the wrist under him, the Portuguese sailor's two courteous fingers, Don Pedro who takes the wrist and finds a count that comes down in the telling, Lisbon and the street of clocks all wrong, the loan, the embrace at seventy-four against a hundred and eight, and the door at Redriff where his wife held his wrist for an hour saying fifty-two _(The fortieth chapter keeps the matter of the source's eleventh chapter of the fourth part (the departure on the fifteenth of February, the sorrel nag's cry, the design of an uninhabited island, the reckoning and the rock and the south-east point of New Holland and the maps three degrees out, the shellfish, the natives and the arrow in the left knee, the return to the creek and the hiding behind the stone, the Portuguese seamen who find him and tie him and take him on board, Pedro de Mendez and the attempt to leap into the sea, the account taken for a dream and the question whether it is the custom to say the thing which was not, the promise, the two shirts, Lisbon and the Inquisition and the rue and the window and the street, the persuasion to go home, the loan and the embrace, the Downs, the wife's kiss and the swoon of an hour, the five years, the two stone-horses and the groom) and lets the beat decide what each is. The nag's cry comes over the water in a measure of four with one over: he has put the author in as a fifth. He plans an island where he would have nobody to go up for and nobody to read him, and does not think of two creatures on a mountain. The first reading since the shingle is fifty-eight, the second day seventy-one, which is about what a man is among men, and he does not like how little it troubles him. The natives at their fire are thirty counts at once; he runs; the arrow brings him to a hundred and twenty-six; he hides with his wrist under him, the first time in his life that he hides it. The sailor who puts two fingers to his wrist as to any stranger has it taken out of his hand: a hundred and thirty-one. The Portuguese speak at ninety and sixty and a slow forty over one another, a street of clocks all wrong. Don Pedro takes the wrist and holds it through the telling: a hundred and twelve from the chain and the smell, coming down as he tells it to fifty-one at his master's name; a lie goes up, a good lie stays, a minister at Lisbon had told him nothing at all, and this told him something he did not understand, which he preferred. The cord is seen and nothing is asked. In the street he puts his foot down at the pace of the house and is twice taken for drunk and once for a priest. He has money in his pocket and does not take it out, and borrows twenty credits instead; Don Pedro's embrace is seventy-four against a hundred and eight, borne for nine and counted. At the door his wife does not take his wrist but puts her arms round him, which she never did at a door, and he swoons; she holds his wrist an hour and says fifty-two down a well to someone gone out of hearing, and for the first part there is nothing for her to find. He takes his wrist out of her hand and it lets go at once; it had been expecting that. Not one of them has ever been able to take his wrist since. The two stone-horses are thirty-eight and forty-one, each at his own, and put their ears forward at the end of each measure of his forty-four. In the Chinese the wife and children are 牠 from the hatred onward and the horses 他們. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_
- **42** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — Chapter 41 added, the last: the author's veracity and the wrist laid in the Chancellor's hand, the figures set down as taken, the number he did not bring home, the Regent paragraph that was the one thing not taken at the wrist, the fleets that arrive in the reign after, the Houyhnhnms who would kick on one count, the colonists who read a stranger's number aloud to him and write it in a book, the two on the mountain who may have been English, pride as a count that goes up when it is looked at, the long table of eleven feet, the bladder of eleven peas slid down it to the boy, the two fingers laid beside the wrist and not yet on it, and the pencilled fifty-two at the foot of Mrs. Gulliver's copy; completion set to complete _(The forty-first chapter keeps the matter of the source's twelfth and last chapter of the fourth part (the author's veracity and design in publishing, his censure of travellers who swerve from truth and the wish for an oath before the Lord High Chancellor, the maxim to adhere strictly to truth, the lines on Sinon, the little reputation to be got by travels and the public good, the pleasure of expecting no censurers, the whisper that he should have given a memorial to a secretary of state, the difficulty of conquering the countries he describes and the Houyhnhnms who kick, the scruples on the distributive justice of princes and the crew of pirates who become a colony, the British nation commended, the two Yahoos that may have been English, the final leave, the garden at Redriff, the glass, the Yahoos of his own family, the wife at the farthest end of a long table and the rue, and pride, which the Houyhnhnms have no name for) and lets the beat decide what each is. The figures are set down as taken, for a traveller who gives the country without the beat gives a coat with the wearer taken out. The oath is to be taken with the wrist in the Chancellor's hand, though the best of the profession would give him nothing to read. The author holds the lectures in his mind and not in his wrist; he did not bring the number home, and is fifty-one at the table and over sixty on the bad days. The paragraph in praise of the Regent is disowned a second time: it is the only thing in the book not taken at the wrist. The Lilliputians' conquerors arrive in the reign after; the Brobdingnagians are a quarter of an hour in understanding they were attacked; twenty thousand Houyhnhnms kicking on one count are not an army broken but one blow; the name of the thing his master said was the whole of reason is not to be found, and there are many names near. The pirates who become a colony take the wrist of the first man who comes down to the shore and read his number aloud to him in a language he has not got and write it in a book. He took nine of the wrists of the two on the mountain's posterity, and the build is ours; the count was nobody's. Pride is a count that goes up when it is looked at and stays up as long as the look, and the Houyhnhnms have no name for it because nobody in their country is looked at. The table is eleven feet, a foot short of four yards, which he did not intend and finds he has been looking at; his wife answers in numbers when she can (sixty-three, fifty-eight, and ninety-four for the boy of five); he slides across the cloth the bladder of eleven peas that has been in his pocket since Laputa, and the mother shakes it and the boy shakes it faster; it makes sixty in every language; he takes his own wrist, which he does not do in the house, and is fifty-one. Last night his wife, at the far end, put two fingers to the inside of her own wrist, in the right place, not looking up; he has put two fingers on the table beside his wrist, on the side where the cord is, and has not yet laid them on it. The editor's last margin gives the number pencilled at the foot of Mrs. Gulliver's copy, not in the text: fifty-two. In the Chinese the family is 牠 until that moment and the wife is 她 once. No thesis is stated., AI-only)_

## 修訂歷史

- **01** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新經典階段連載開場（章節 00，出版人致讀者與格列佛的信），改編自《格列佛遊記》 _(Neo 在 2026-10-11 從作者提出的三個選項裡，選了建議的那一個：四次航行，就是一具身體的拍，與一個地方的拍之間的四種關係。開場保留原作自己的框架（一位刪掉數字、又讓一位年輕人修潤文風的出版人，一封說自己被迫說了那不是的事的旅行者的信），並加了原作沒有的兩樣東西：拍，和一位把全書抄在亞麻衣箱裡的妻子。和上一部連載一樣，不固定任何主旨，設計紀錄只記已經發生的事，不記將要發生的。, 僅 AI)_
- **02** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 01：作者的家世與行業、拍、羚羊號的失事，以及在利立浦特人之間的第一次醒來 _(用原作敘述者那種樸實、事事詳盡的聲音寫成，並加了原作沒有的兩樣東西：拍（一個十四歲就學會在腕上測它的外科醫生，在老師最後那個晚上測了他自己的拍，是三十一，什麼也沒說），和它的後果：小人的拍是他的十二倍，所以他以為是一個鐘頭的事，繩子、台子、肉和車，其實是一個星期的活。遇難、游泳、被釘在地上醒來、箭、台子和那一頓飯，順著原作的次序，但都是重寫的。出版人的一則頁邊注記著：他妻子的抄本在第一段航程那裡，只有一個詞，「略」，劃了兩道底線。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **03** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 02：神廟與鏈子、皇帝穩定的腕、放慢者與雷爾德雷薩，以及那份把錶當成他的心的清單 _(第二章保持原作的次序（拘禁、皇帝來訪、語言、搜口袋），並加上拍對每一件事做了什麼。語言的難題，由把自己放慢到十二分之一的人解決：旁邊一個每分鐘六十下敲鼓的男孩，胸口一條帶子；還有一位年輕書記雷爾德雷薩，課上完以後沒有鼓手，又來一次，「想看看我做不做得到」。清單把錶記成一種巨大而緩慢的悶響，保持著人山自己的拍：書記們結論說那是他的心，裝在密封的殼裡戴在外面，不建議拿走。他留下了錶，也留下了腕簿，那是外科醫生不會交出去的東西。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **04** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 03：一千七百二十八的津貼、繩與絲線、從他兩腿之間行進的檢閱、孩子與鼾聲，以及他的自由的條款（拍不得超過一百） _(第三章保持原作的內容（宮廷的消遣、繩上舞與三種絲線、軍隊的檢閱、他的自由的條款），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。財庫的津貼是身高的立方，而唯一在邊上注說他們吃東西的頻率是十二倍的書記，被告知那是財庫負擔不起的精細。從他兩腿之間行進的檢閱，是他的四十一分鐘，是他們一天的大部分。一個小女孩每天用他自己的步調向他問好；城西的人照他的鼾聲安排一天。條款裡有一條是原作沒有的：他永遠不得把拍提高到一百以上，並且每天要把手腕伸給財庫的一名官員測。鏈子被打掉的時候，他發現自己有生以來第一次忘了測自己的拍。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **05** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 04：米爾登多、從兩張凳子上看見的宮殿、財庫官員的帳冊，以及內務首席秘書關於鞋跟、雞蛋與不來夫斯古艦隊的說明 _(第四章保持原作的內容（首都與它的城牆、從御苑砍的樹做成的凳子上看見的宮殿、內務首席秘書關於高跟與低跟及蛋端之戰的說明、為對付不來夫斯古艦隊而效力的承諾），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。兩個鐘頭的預告對城裡的人是一天，他們穿戴整齊、神情從容地站在門口；皇帝為作者的三天等了他自己的三十六天；皇后為了一個只花十二秒的吻，把一個微笑撐了她的兩分鐘。財庫官員每天的量腕變成一本帳冊，作者自己的拍在其中起伏，而一個從不抬頭的年輕人在每個數字旁寫下作者當時在做什麼。內務首席秘書把自己放慢到作者的速度，與男孩和鼓一起，講了一小時又十分鐘，他所講的每件事都被換算成作者的曆法：兩個黨比這趟航行還年輕，戰爭在船難前兩個星期開始，那根手指在作者啟航前六年割破。出版人的一則頁邊注記錄了這裡所許諾的更大著作從未寄到。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **06** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 05：奪取不來夫斯古的艦隊、納達克在朝廷面前被唸出的數字、拒絕把不來夫斯古變成一個省、使團與它的邀請 _(第五章保持原作的內容（海峽與計畫、纜繩與鐵鉤、對付箭的眼鏡、被拖走的艦隊、納達克的封號、拒絕把不來夫斯古變成一個省、使團與它的邀請），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。作者在海峽裡的半個鐘頭，對對岸的人是六個鐘頭，他們有時間排好隊上岸，看一座山走過水面；一句話下的命令讓整個國家跑起來；海灘上傳來的聲音，和他的鏈子被打掉時的歡呼是同一種聲音，他分不出兩者；朝廷在岸上站了超過一天。納達克禮的形式是：受封的人當著朝廷被量腕、數字被唸出來（七十九，是財庫的帳冊至今從他這裡得到的最高數字），他則回過來量皇帝的腕（七百一十，平穩）。皇帝自己用作者的速度，要求其餘的不來夫斯古，作者的拒絕在他看得見的地方沒有讓他付出什麼；可是不久就有另一位官員被派來量他的腕。邀請由一位使節帶來，他說在不來夫斯古客人除了自己的條款不受任何條款約束。原作這一章裡的皇后寢宮失火，留到下一章。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **07** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 06：皇帝冷淡的原因、皇后寢宮的火、作者的生活方式，以及小境的法律與育兒院 _(第六章保持原作的內容（冷淡准許的原因、皇后寢宮午夜的火被作者的尿撲滅、死罪的法律與沒有簽發的赦免、皇后的誓言、作者的裁縫與廚子、人民的眼睛、埋葬的風俗、告發者法、關於欺詐、賞賜與忘恩負義的法律，以及公立育兒院），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。警告由財庫的年長官員說出：作者與使節們談得太久，對一個說話慢的人，比他想的要久。人群在神廟門口喊的那個字，是表示匆忙的十一個詞裡最後一個，沒有人有時間把它說完；叫醒他花了他的十一分鐘、他們的兩個多鐘頭；他三分鐘撲滅的火，對庭院裡的人是一場三十六分鐘的雨。帳冊的第二欄現在記下了那個夜晚。告發者法連同雷爾德雷薩的那句話一起說出：告發很少是由沒有把握的人提出的；忘恩負義的法律則不加評論地過去。在育兒院的探望中，父母握住孩子的腕，握了整整一個鐘頭，這讓作者想起他兒子在碼頭上的腕，和正午帶著梯子來的那個人。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **08** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 07：財政大臣的抱怨與貴婦人的辯白、取自財庫帳冊的彈劾條款、議會的判決，以及逃往不來夫斯古 _(第七章保持原作的內容（御宴與財政大臣關於費用的報告、貴婦人的辯白、帶著彈劾條款與朝議紀錄的夜訪者、挖眼與秘密餓死的判決、作者不受審也不抵抗的理由、他借一艘船逃往不來夫斯古、以及他在那裡受到的接待），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。夜訪者是雷爾德雷薩，他沒有沉下去，因為一個以作者的速度說話的人，在夜晚安靜的神廟裡可以被很遠的地方聽見、聽見很久，他把條款寫在紙上帶來。條款是用財庫的帳冊做成的，年輕官員寫下的每一個數字都變成一項罪名，第五條從作者的起伏推論他能越過自己的誓言。作者讀到拒絕之後那些天他的拍是五十一，而他本會說九十，於是把自己對自己的說法，與另一份被寫下來的並排放在一起。雷爾德雷薩花四分鐘沉下去，說了三句話，都繞著他曾兩次說「很好」的告發者法。作者不受審，因為帳冊會在法庭上被大聲唸出；也不抵抗，因為山打仗是很慢的事。在不來夫斯古的第一個正午，沒有人來量他的腕。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **09** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 08：作者在不來夫斯古第一次加快自己、年輕官員帶著儀器到來、找到那艘船，以及不來夫斯古婉拒了小境的使者 _(第八章保持原作的內容（東北岸外看見翻覆的船、二十艘船與三千名水手把它拖回來、皇帝的許可、帶著條款的小境使者、兩個鐘頭的期限、要把作者捆著送回去的要求、三天的商議與客氣的拒絕、作者婉謝的庇護，以及船的裝備），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。在不來夫斯古，客人除了自己的條款不受任何條款約束，作者第一次試著提高自己的拍，越過一百，在一百一十二時看見城散開成人，他們不匆忙，也不是在談論他；第五條對他能做什麼是對的，只錯在他會做什麼。財庫的年輕官員，因在使節來的那天寫了八十一、卻發現帳冊在同一個位置用另一個人的筆跡寫著九十七而被撤職，帶著儀器和一本自己縫的書渡水而來，抬起頭看了作者的臉，不只寫下數字，也寫下作者在做什麼。使者所說的兩個鐘頭是作者的十分鐘；不來夫斯古的皇帝花他的三天，也就是他們的三十六天，來準備他的拒絕。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **10** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 09：年輕官員把儀器交給作者、啟航、英國船、牲口、回家，以及作者兒子的腕被寫下來 _(第九章，也是第一部的最後一章，保持原作的內容（在不來夫斯古的辭行、皇帝的贈禮與他要作者保證不帶走任何臣民、補給與活的牲口、九月二十四日的啟航、小島、那張帆、英國船與它的船長比德爾、老夥伴彼得・威廉斯、從口袋裡拿出牲口作證明、到唐斯的航程、老鼠、格林威治的草坪、牲口的出售、在雷德里夫的兩個月、留給妻子的錢，以及登上冒險號離開），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。年輕官員不肯同去，因為六個月的航行對他是六年，他把自己縫的小書和財庫的儀器交給作者，好讓作者再量一次兒子的腕並寫下來。比德爾船長在聽一個字之前先量了作者的腕，讀出六十四，而作者寫的是六十二。作者的一個月，牲口有一年，到唐斯的六十一頭是離開小境的那六頭的後代。回到家，妻子在門口量了他的腕；他用黃銅儀器量了兒子的腕，並連同孩子當時在做什麼一起寫下來；上門來要數字的鄰居被告知，一個數字單獨拿出來，不算什麼。一則頁邊注記錄了兒子記得那個箱子，記得它是冷的。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **11** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 10：第二次航行與風暴、登上巨人之地、必須等作者站住才看得見他的農夫，以及作者順著一根拇指裡的脈搏沉了下去 _(第十章，也是第二部的第一章，保持原作的內容（航行與好望角的冬天、風暴與漂流、發現陸地、長艇與涉海追它的生物、麥田與踏階、收割的人、作者躺著絕望、用拇指和食指把他拎起的農夫、獻上的金子、農舍、晚飯、嬰兒、貓、床和兩隻老鼠），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。巨人是慢的那一邊：一步是作者脈搏的七拍，一個聲音是一口鐘敲了幾下、每下之間隔很久，雷是一響一響分開的，一把收割的鉤子要十一秒；危險在大小和麥子，不在速度。作者在小境是最慢的東西，現在是人當中最快的東西，而一個害怕的快東西，在像他們那樣動的眼睛看來，要等到它站住才看得見。他在拎住他的拇指和食指裡感覺到農夫的脈搏，每分鐘五下，便像放慢者順著男孩的鼓沉下去那樣順著它沉下去，說出一個兩音節的詞。那個國家裡唯一和他同一步調的生物是老鼠。一則頁邊注記錄了格列佛太太把那一頁海上術語劃掉，並寫下他確實知道這些東西的名字。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **12** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 11：農夫那個快的女兒、語言與充當鼓的脈搏、橫在腕上的頭髮、看不見動的小人的展出，以及到京城的旅程 _(第十一章保持原作的內容（九歲、就年齡而言個子小、成為作者保姆的農夫女兒；當搖籃的抽屜與七件襯衫；從她學來的語言；格倫達爾克利奇與格里爾德里格這兩個名字；鄰居建議帶他到市集展出；女孩對他的擔心；箱子裡的旅程；旅店裡一次三十人、一天十次的展出；十八個鎮；京城洛爾布魯格魯德、那個房間、那張桌子、那道欄杆），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。這孩子是屋裡唯一快的人，拍是八，其餘的人是五；作者必須沉下去說話時她充當鼓，像那個男孩對放慢者那樣；她是快者，也就是反過來的放慢者，能以他的步調聽他，再以別人的步調說給別人聽。她用橫在腕片上的一根頭髮量他的腕，數著他睡。在臉慢慢展開的人當中，作者從沒見過一個謊。在展出裡，觀眾看不見他動，只看見他到來，他們花錢買的是最後的靜止；小書的第三欄記觀眾人數，他自己的拍降到了五十幾。她數的是六十，而他那天中午自己量的是五十四，他沒有糾正她。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **13** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 12：賣給王后、有脈搏的手指、把作者當成一座鐘的三位學者、那只箱子，以及隔著牆數數的女孩 _(第十二章保持原作的內容（農夫決心賣掉一個衰弱的生物、宮裡來的侍從、被吻的王后的小指、一千塊金幣、要求連女孩一起收下、作者對前主人的冷淡、先把他當斯普拉克納克又當成鐘表機械的國王、三位學者與他們的結論、對質農夫、王后的細木匠與那只箱子、鎖、絲綢、王后的桌），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。王后的小指有每分鐘五下的脈搏，作者用嘴唇貼著它兩拍；國王的臉花三分鐘到達冷淡，花十一分鐘開始相信。學者們用一根頭髮和一只水鐘量他的腕，發現每分鐘六十是屬於鐘表、不屬於世上任何生物的數字；御用鐘表匠找發條孔，沒找到，生氣地走了；那只被拿來證明他是鐘的水鐘，在他回答他們時成了他的鼓。博物學家論證他無法靠迅捷保全性命，而他其實做得到，只是看不出來。女孩把農夫的刻口棍子燒了。夜裡，隔著護牆板，作者聽見她在數她感覺不到的東西，為他守著拍子。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **14** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 13：王后那個快的侏儒與他唯一一次坦白的談話、骨髓骨與奶油、和作者同一步調的蒼蠅與黃蜂、這個國家，以及從一座塔上看見的城 _(第十三章保持原作的內容（王后的侏儒與他的放肆、骨髓骨、那碗奶油、鞭打與侏儒被打發走、蒼蠅與侏儒對牠們的利用、用短刀殺掉的四隻黃蜂與保存下來的螫針、作為半島的這個國家的描述、在地圖上量過的京城、宮殿、馬車與乞丐身上的蝨子、旅行的小箱子，以及那座塔和雕像掉下來的小指），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。侏儒是宮裡唯一另一個比其餘人拍得快的人，十對五，三十年來一直是宮裡最快的東西；他和作者是唯一兩個看得見彼此動的人，而他在一個星期內被取代。他對作者說過一次像一個人對另一個人的話，然後做了他做的事。蒼蠅與黃蜂和作者同一步調，是宮裡唯一巨人打不中而他打得中的東西；蝨子和他同一步調，在吃慢的人。從塔上看，城市是在把時間告訴沒有人，因為沒有人趕時間。雕像的小指沒有脈搏；女孩把它握暖。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **15** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 14：巨人國裡一個小東西遭遇的意外，幾乎全是與他同一步調的東西——冰雹、獵犬、鳶、一場被數著的處決、槽裡的船、別針、青蛙與猴子，以及國王的取笑 _(第十四章保持原作的內容（冰雹、把他叼給主人的獵犬、鳶、鼴鼠丘與蝸牛殼、宮女、處決、船與水槽、別針、青蛙、把他帶上屋頂的猴子、臥床兩週、國王的取笑與他那番愚蠢的吹牛，以及牛糞），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。作者注意到，在巨人的國家，從來不是人傷他；人是慢的。傷他的，是那裡一切與他同一步調或接近、而且大得多的東西：獵犬、鳶、青蛙、猴子。冰雹是唯一以平常速度落下的東西。猴子九分鐘跨過的屋頂，宮裡花了大半個下午才把一架梯子搬上去，事後才頒了禁猴的命令。在處決時，他量不到那人的腕，卻數著那人的喉嚨，那人有四拍的劍。國王的問話每一句都有一首詩篇那麼長，所以作者從容準備他的吹牛，笑聲則以那個國家的步調穿過房間。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **16** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 15：梳子與用兩種速度彈的小鍵琴、國王的談話、作者對英國的說明、國王對它的判斷，以及女孩在歷次謁見中對作者脈搏的計數 _(第十五章保持原作的內容（用國王鬍根做的梳子、音樂會、用兩根棍子彈的小鍵琴、國王書房裡的談話、作者以蜜蜂與螞蟻反駁以大小論高下、國王要他說明英國、五次謁見與第六次謁見裡國王關於貴族、主教、平民、法院、國庫、軍隊、教派與歷史的提問、國王那番反過來的頌詞與它結尾那句關於小而可憎的蟲豸的話，以及敘述者辯稱他把每一點都轉向更有利的光、高出許多度），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。以作者的步調彈的吉格舞曲是像湯匙敲玻璃杯的聲音，以十二分之一的速度彈就成了輓歌，宮廷更喜歡後者。女孩在每一次謁見裡都把頭髮橫在他腕上而他不知道，她數了他：說貴族院時他是七十二，說主教七十，說下議院六十八，而他在不是這樣的時候說得比較快；那些「許多度」平均是十一拍。國王的判斷以五拍說，花了二十二分鐘，在那個步調下不可能是怒氣；它只是在告訴他，國王用一根手指撫摸他。女孩繼續說六十，作者明白她不是在量他。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **17** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 16：獻給國王又被拒絕的火藥、國王對治國的看法、那個國家的學問、法律、藏書、軍隊與黨爭，以及女孩沒有數數的那一夜 _(第十六章保持原作的內容（獻上火藥與管的提議、國王的驚駭與拒絕、作者對國王狹隘原則的遺憾、國王對治國與兩穗玉米的看法、道德歷史詩與數學的學問、字數不得超過字母數的法律、印刷術與國王有供閱讀用階梯的藏書、那本論人類弱點的小論著、民兵與他們拔出的劍，以及國家的黨爭），並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。女孩必須把火藥的描述說給國王聽，站在櫃子腳下，眼睛閉著；國王說，火藥是作者告訴他的唯一一件不合尺寸的事，因為一個要花十一秒才能揮動一把鐮鉤的民族，從來不需要想被一個不等人的東西打中是什麼滋味。作者描述怎樣攻下一座城時，他的拍是五十二，是那個國家裡最低的，比說起貴族院時還要平靜。法律短，因為必須以五拍說完。那本舊論著認為種族衰退的證據是急，說現在幼兒生下來是七或八，他們祖父的時代是四；女教師在那一頁插了一根別針。騎兵拔劍花四十秒，光像一朵雲翻轉過去那樣越過田野。那夜隔著護牆板沒有數數，作者明白那數數一直是一種選擇。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **18** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 17：巡行海岸、女孩最後一次量作者的腕並把頭髮在上面繞兩圈、那隻鷹、海、英國船、那一櫃珍奇，以及回家；第二部結束 _(第十七章，第二部的結尾，保持原作的內容（國王要替他找配偶並把後代關在籠子裡的打算、巡行南岸、女孩生病與侍童、用環叼著箱子的鷹、掉進海裡、四個鐘頭、被拖行與從洞口呼救、船與威爾考克斯船長、水手毀掉他的小間、那一櫃珍奇與男僕的牙、作者聲音的洪亮、歸程、在自家門口彎下腰，以及妻子宣布他不許再出海）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。在女孩的病榻旁，她發著十一的燒，最後一次用頭髮量他的腕，並第一次說出他的數字：五十四；然後把頭髮在他腕上繞兩圈、咬斷，說，六十。鷹是那個國家裡第一件把他載到任何地方、速度不是任何人的選擇的東西。從上面傳來的英語聲音是他自己的步調，他哭，因為它快。威爾考克斯船長量了他的腕，說七十一；夜裡他對著艙房以一口鐘的步調大聲說六十。在家裡，妻子在門口量了他的腕，說五十一，而他頭一個星期說話都是一口鐘的步調。一則頁邊注記錄了亞麻布箱裡一只木碗中盤著一條十九呎長的黑繩，格列佛太太說那是一根頭髮，不肯說是誰的。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **19** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 18：在家十天的正午數拍、羅賓遜船長與好望號、單桅船、海盜與像事務長一樣拿腕的荷蘭人、日本船長與那個沒被翻譯的詞、獨木舟與岩石，以及空中的島；第三部開始 _(第十八章，第三部的開頭，保持原作的內容（在家十天與羅賓遜船長的邀請、到聖喬治堡與北圻的航行、單桅船、兩艘海盜船、荷蘭人的惡意、日本船長答應不殺他們、口糧加倍的獨木舟、群島與鳥蛋、最後那塊岩石、影子、飛島、鏈子與座位）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。妻子十天來每天正午數他，把數字寫在曆書上；第十天他是六十，她同意了。船長給外科醫生拿腕如同給帆匠拿腕一樣爽快。荷蘭人像事務長一樣把俘虜的腕大聲報出來，格列佛的是九十四。日本船長不許任何人搜身，而在荷蘭人抓住格列佛腕上的繩子時說了一個詞：卡塔米；頁邊記著格列佛太太用鉛筆在這個詞旁邊寫了：問。獨自在獨木舟上他學到一個人無法誠實地數自己（八十九、八十二、七十一、六十四），在洞裡他數出四十九，是至今最低的。從岩石上，他透過望遠鏡看出島上的人沒有一種他讀得出的步調：有些人動得和他一樣，有些人站在一步的中間一刻鐘；拉鏈子的六個人是六十，半秒不差，是島上唯一在拍子上的人。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **20** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 19：一思考就「去」的勒皮他人和把他們叫回來的打拍人、像搖鐘一樣的樓梯、國王的「十一天」、幾何的晚餐、在每一下拍打後那一秒給的課、每分鐘跳一下的島、僕人塔爾沃，以及拿擺錘的裁縫 _(第十九章，保持原作第三部第二章的前半（降落與人群、拿著豌豆膀胱的僕人與其緣故、護送的人忘了自己在做什麼的登島樓梯、國王在他的問題裡與拍醒他的侍從、作者拒絕被拍與朝廷的低評價、寓所與兩個僕人、切成三角形與提琴的晚餐、老師與語言、勒皮他的詞源、弄錯一個數字的裁縫）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。勒皮他人思考時不是出神：他們「去」了，身體隨著所想之物的步調，拍離開了腕；打拍人的膀胱把共同的拍數，六十，還給他們。國王被拍醒，說「十一天」，那是這道問題的答案。一個不需要別人把他叫回來的人，被認為是哪裡也沒去過。這座島本身有腕：地板每分鐘抬起一下。昂圖，統御者，是外科醫生用來稱呼維持著拍的那個東西的詞。老打拍人塔爾沃三十八年沒有「去」過，因為一個人不能既去又去叫人；他看見作者腕上的繩子，說有人把他維持住了。裁縫用擺錘量腕，從那個數字裁出身體，又把三看成了八。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **21** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 20：朝廷在島的脈搏之間的休止裡奏的諸天之樂、麻線上的請願書、勒皮他人的線與形語言、斜牆的房屋與笨拙的頭腦、他們為有調速器和跳動的太陽擔的心、去迎彗星的天文學家、作者應自己的請求被拍了一次、宮中貴婦與她的男僕，以及只問比例的國王 _(第二十章，保持原作第三部第二章的後半（朝廷三小時的音樂、麻線上升的請願書、線與形的語言與國王的廚房、建得很糟的房屋、笨拙又不會推理又沒有想像的人、星相學與對新聞的熱情、對太陽與彗星的恐懼與早晨的問候、女人與她們的情人、跑到拉格多去跟一個男僕過日子的貴婦、國王對數學以外一切的漠不關心）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。諸天之樂就是島的脈搏，每分鐘一下，朝廷演奏的是休止。請願書的線是唯一兩頭步調相同的線。勒皮他人把女人的步子形容成拍號。他們在所在之處是慢的，在去的地方是快的；他們有許多字說去的那些地方，卻沒有字說去一個沒有特別的地方，那就是幻想。他們認為太陽有調速器和跳動，一天已不是從前的一天，編者的曆書編製人說它是。早晨問太陽的健康是認真的：天文學家去看。一位老天文學家站在走廊裡，手每年低一點，已去了十一年迎接彗星。第十九個晚上，作者想著那個女孩，去了：他的拍是四十一；他請男孩拍他，唯一的一次，接住了六十。貴婦的丈夫是善意的，一天只能找到十一分鐘。作者在雷德里夫、在一張桌子旁、帶著曆書見過那種孤獨。國王在句子還沒說完時就以十二比一回答小境。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **22** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 21：島的描述、「手」們的洞窟與維持著島的磁石、作者兩根手指按在每分鐘一下的軸上、站在剩下的東西上的島、一萬顆星的目錄作為一本腕之書、國王壓服一座城的辦法，以及林達利諾如何把它的石頭調成島的拍而把島拉到四十碼處 _(第二十一章，保持原作第三部第三章的前面較長的部分（島的大小與構造和它的金剛石、裂口與天文學家的洞窟、那塊大磁石和它如何使島升、降、移動、它力量的限度、星辰目錄與火星衛星與九十三顆彗星、若非大臣就會成為專制君主的國王、對叛亂城鎮的較溫和與最後的辦法、林達利諾的叛變與用繩子做的實驗，以及國王不得離島的基本法）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。那塊石頭是島的高位調速器，不管往哪邊轉，它都繼續每分鐘一下。維持它的「手」們，在上面被當作工匠看不起，他們不「去」；他們不挨一下拍打就用平實的話回答，最年長的那位拉起作者的手，把兩根手指按在軸上。島從它與之相異的東西升起，站在剩下的東西上。一萬顆星的目錄是一本腕之書，編它的人一輩子往上看、從不看一張臉。林達利諾數了三百年的島，每間屋頂上有一個拿著線和石頭的男孩，把它的五塊石頭調成島的拍；島下降到四十碼時，什麼也沒有剩下，一個東西不能被與它自己相同的東西抬起來。老手試了繩子與金剛石，被拉得幾乎拉不回來；他害怕，而且很忙，他推薦這樣。作者在軸上按著兩根手指坐了一個鐘頭，是在那座島上第一個沒有人被拍的鐘頭，並記下那塊石頭是暖的。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **23** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 22：數休止、從沒「去」過的大領主、與塔爾沃道別和那個裝著十一顆豌豆的膀胱、以六十下降、被人側耳去聽的地面、每個腕都在九十以上而勞工隨一百一十的鼓挖地的拉格多、田產不齊步的穆諾第勳爵，以及計畫家學院的起源 _(第二十二章，保持原作第三部第四章的內容（作者在島上被冷落與厭倦、在錯的地方打拍子被認為愚蠢的大領主、辭行與禮物與推薦信、下降、拉格多與穆諾第勳爵、走得飛快的衣衫襤褸的人與在不指望長出任何東西的地裡挖地的勞工、因不稱職被革職的總督、比例很好的房子、三個鐘頭內變了樣的鄉野、學院的起源與計畫家的保證、勳爵拒絕革新、山上的廢棄磨坊，以及作者自己過去也是一種計畫家）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。大領主是勒皮他唯一不能「去」的人，在休止裡數著。塔爾沃給作者一個裝著十一顆豌豆的膀胱讓他搖，並說六十在每一種語言裡都一樣。在拉格多，拿到的每一個腕都在九十以上，勞工隨一百一十的鼓挖地，那是一個人做兩個人的活的速率；在穆諾第的田產上，四個勞工是六十三、五十八、六十八、七十一：他們不齊步，而麥子已經收了。上去過的計畫家們，在諸天的步調裡過了五個月，下來就容不下麥子的步調。山上的水是要變得更快的。作者自己也曾是一種計畫家；他記了一本腕之書；編者看過。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **24** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 23：拉格多的大學院、計畫家們與各人的拍、玻璃瓶裡的陽光、先蓋的屋頂、用豬耕地、全能工藝家、不靠天分寫書的框架與它找到的一行、要廢除詞語的語言學校，以及那片薄餅 _(第二十三章，保持原作第三部第五章的內容（沿街合併的房屋構成的學院、從黃瓜裡抽陽光、把成品還原的人、煅燒冰的人、從屋頂開始蓋的建築師、盲人調色、用豬耕地、織出彩色絲的蜘蛛、風信雞上的日晷、全能工藝家與他的光身羊、四十根把手轉動詞語的框架、要廢除詞語的語言學校與背著包袱的賢者，以及數學學校的薄餅）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。每位計畫家的腕都拿了：抽陽光的人一百一十二，他瓶裡早期正午的陽光是冷的；最老的學生五十一；冰的人一百零九；盲人老師六十，是那條街上最平靜的人；全能工藝家一百零四，嫌一天太短；框架的教授六十六，是唯一一個不趕的人，因為框架替他趕了；把手旁的三個少年九十六、一百零二、一百零五，他們看的是下一根把手而不是那些詞。框架的第十九冊裡有一行上星期找到的四個連在一起的詞：一根頭髮橫過腕，教授還沒有找到它是做什麼用的，標給了法律。語言改革者從腕上算出一個人花在詞上的氣相當於十一年，而改用東西可以省下九年。背包袱的賢者每分鐘約說四十，並且很自在。編者的頁邊記著刻工要求換一塊大版。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **25** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 24：拿不到腕的政治計畫家們、忘了自己來提議什麼又沒有打拍人的那一位、要替參議院摸脈的醫生、勒皮他用豌豆做的給大臣記性的提醒、調和黨派的辦法、稅、抽籤、牆上數字與意思對照的表、特里布尼亞，以及小境那一個從帳冊裡讀出來的陰謀；以搖了一刻鐘的膀胱作結 _(第二十四章，保持原作第三部第六章的內容（看來完全失去理智的政治計畫家的學校、要在摸過每位參議員的脈之後用醫生的處方醫治政治身體的那位聰明醫生、為防止大臣遺忘而擰鼻子、相反的投票、黨派領袖之間後腦的互換、關於對惡行、品質與恩寵課稅的辯論、爭奪職位的抽籤、靠檢查嫌疑人找出陰謀的教授、有清單、藏頭法與易位法的譯解人，以及作者對特里布尼亞的敘述）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。政治計畫家們數不了，從四十四跳到一百三十又跳回來，那數字是不屬於任何人的數字；第一位忘了自己來提議什麼，也沒有打拍人，因為回來的計畫家們從勒皮他下來時沒有帶，作者把膀胱搖到他耳邊，他有三秒鐘完全清醒，說作者就是在拍子上的那個人。醫生三天一千五百個腕就是一本帳冊；作者只說，如果要做，應該公開做，把數字當面念給那個人聽，醫生把它寫了下來。擰鼻子就是勒皮他用一個豌豆膀胱做的事，傷害更少，並有一個拍數的好處。牆上掛著一張數字與意思對照的表，作者認得其中的三條，只差一點意思，沒有說怎麼認得。在被控告人無罪、控告人要死的小境，只有過一個陰謀，是從一本帳冊裡讀出來的。那天夜裡，作者的腕是八十八；他搖了一刻鐘豌豆，變成六十三。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **26** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 25：穆諾第臨別的數拍、去馬爾多納達的路、巫師之島和把自己的拍借給死者二十四小時的總督，所以人人都是四十一、誰也不能說謊；亞歷山大、漢尼拔、凱撒與布魯圖；被登進小冊子、寫作「被借著」的死者；以及第一次有人問起的那位總督 _(第二十五章，保持原作第三部第七章的內容（去馬爾多納達的旅程和等船的一個月、格魯布杜布利布小島和魔法師部族的總督、從死者中召喚二十四小時且三個月內不得再召的僕役、衛兵與鬼魂與指頭一轉就消失、那十天、被允許召喚任何人而真話有保證因為說謊在下面的世界毫無用處，以及亞歷山大、漢尼拔、凱撒與龐培、兩個議會、布魯圖與六人團）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。死者自己沒有拍：總督借給他們他的，四十一，一個家族的拍像外套一樣傳下來；他們不能改變它，一個說謊的人會升三四下，所以他們不能說謊；這不是他們的美德，是安排。衛兵的臉在和作者一般大小的身體上以四十一到來，這就是使他毛骨悚然的原因。所有的死者都是四十一，一個議會的英雄和另一個議會的小販，這是唯一無法分辨他們的地方。總督每季一次請自己的父親吃飯，什麼也不借給他，因為他帶著他原有的來。亞歷山大的從來沒有人拿過，他們數的是他的軍隊。凱撒的，他以為，是階梯上的七十一；布魯圖想不起自己的。作者把他們登進小冊子，寫作「被借著」。男僕的二十四小時結束時，拍像潮水一樣從腕裡退出去，作者握著那條胳膊，直到它不再在那裡。總督在借出一百零九個之後那晚自己是六十八，謝謝作者問起，因為從來沒有人問過。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **27** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 26：荷馬的眼睛和亞里士多德的手杖、停在人之前的借來的拍、註釋家、笛卡兒與伽桑狄與體系的時尚、帶著下巴的近代死者、以一百三十一逃跑的將軍、亞克興的艦長和靠得太近而分不開來數的兒子，以及那筆證明六十是這個時代的人的拍的帳 _(第二十六章，保持原作第三部第八章的內容（荷馬與亞里士多德帶著他們的註釋家、低語他們羞愧的鬼魂、笛卡兒與伽桑狄向亞里士多德解釋體系與他對引力的預言、與古代學者在一起的五天和赫利奧加巴盧斯的廚師與斯巴達肉湯、國王的祖先與家族的特徵、被賣文作家誤導的近代史、軼事作家與大事的真正原因、將軍與海軍上將與三位國王的坦白、爵位與產業取得的手段、沒有被記錄的偉大服務、亞克興的艦長和他的兒子與阿格里帕的證實、那個帝國的腐敗、自梅毒以來人類的退化，以及舊式的英國自耕農）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。借來的拍停在人之前：在荷馬，停在眼睛之前，那眼睛是一百一十；在亞里士多德，停在手杖之前。每個家族的死者都是四十一，所以是下巴告訴人血統，而作者從來沒有這樣感謝過一個下巴。靠懦弱獲勝的將軍是一百三十一，對方的將軍朝相反方向騎著更好的馬是一百四十。那些無恥的人在同一個地方給了同一個回答，任何地方都沒有升。亞克興的艦長和他的兒子靠得那麼近，作者分不出數的是哪一個，男孩的手插在父親斗篷的口袋裡；在他手上唯一的一欄裡，他們同歲。照兩境的規則，身體矮一成，拍就快一成；一百年前的英國人在門框上高一掌，拍會是五十三或五十四；作者曾以為六十是人的拍，它是這個時代的人的拍。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **28** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 27：在海上已不再需要的膀胱、先拿腕再問名字並放行差三四的謊的拉格奈格海關、國王地板上的塵土、二十四小時致命的粉末、祝國王活得比太陽長的問候、帶著紅斑的斯特魯爾德布魯格，以及作者如癡如狂、說他將永遠是六十的那番話 _(第二十七章，保持原作第三部第九章和第十章前半的內容（回馬爾多納達與去拉格奈格的航行、嚴格盤問他的海關官員、因為要去日本而自稱荷蘭人的假話、拘禁、翻譯、公文與十騎、舔塵土與二十四小時致命的粉末與忘了洗地的侍從、祝國王活得比太陽長十一個半月的問候、國王的寬厚、那三個月、被稱讚的拉格奈格人、關於斯特魯爾德布魯格和變綠變藍變黑的紅斑的問題、作者如癡如狂與他永遠活著的計畫，以及那位說必須糾正他的紳士）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。在海上，作者第十天發現自己不再需要那個膀胱。在海關，先拿腕再問名字；他說荷蘭人時，從六十一變成六十五，簿子上有一欄記陌生人說的和腕說的，差三四是平常的、放行，差七以上送上去；那是一種感覺，是第一個尋常大小的謊。翻譯十九歲，七十，因為按字數付酬。在地板上爬行時作者是七十四，每分鐘約二十，是自從巨人以來在他面前任何人走過的最慢的速度，朝臣們六十地看著。粉末二十四小時致命，那個期限是總督的。他是從一座每天早晨問太陽的島來的，在這裡他們祝國王更長壽。在如癡如狂中作者說，照他自己的腕，他將永遠是六十，那是一個人所能有的最好的數字，他看不出他和他們之間有什麼可選擇的。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **29** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 28：紳士的糾正：問題是一個人怎樣度過帶著衰老種種不利的永久生命、那個每年下降一根頭髮而在斯特魯爾德布魯格身上不停止的數字、他們的憂鬱、嫉妒、遺忘與在自己語言裡的流亡、作者見到的五六個人、花十一分鐘要紀念物而作者把手蓋在繩子上的最年輕的那位、窗邊最年長的女人、帶著紅斑的孩子、國王的取笑，以及為自己是五十一而高興的作者 _(第二十八章，保持原作第三部第十章的後半（紳士的開場白說那體系不合理、問題是一個人怎樣度過帶著衰老種種不利的永久生命、對斯特魯爾德布魯格的詳細敘述：三十歲起的憂鬱、八十歲的愚蠢與衰弱、嫉妒、遺忘、婚姻解除與法律上的死亡、掉牙掉髮、不能閱讀、總在流動的語言使他們兩百年後活得像自己國家裡的外國人、作者見到的五六個人、紀念物、登記冊和以記得的國王計算年紀、最令人難堪的景象、他的欲望減退、國王的取笑，以及法律的理由）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。數字在每個有死的人身上每年下降一根頭髮，下降到終點就是停止；在斯特魯爾德布魯格身上，下降繼續而停止不來。八十歲時他們是四十八；兩百歲是二十八，鄰居是一片嘰嘰咕咕；他們不是忘記，而是事情發生的時候他們不在那裡；證人必須在場，而拍是四十八的人是在一件事之後一點才在場。二十八的最年輕的那位花十一分鐘向牆要他的紀念物，作者把手蓋在繩子上，不為那隻手驕傲，給了一枚銀鈕扣。最年長的是一位在穀物商人鋪子樓上窗邊的女人，七，一個鐘頭把頭抬到窗台，不認得在她膝上爬進爬出的第十四代孩子。三年前出生的帶紅斑的孩子是一百四十，對一條狗笑；作者想要有人告訴他她只是個孩子。他說過他將永遠是六十；他現在想起它，像想起一張簽了名的帳單。那天夜裡他是五十一，他妻子的數字，為它高興；他沒有搖膀胱，在一拍和下一拍之間，明白了拍終將有個終點。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **30** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 29：國王的准許和大小像斑的紅鑽石、國王把瘸腿乞丐從地上扶起來的印記、紙屏風後面四百年沒有人拿過腕的皇帝、以六十行軍和對它不受歡迎的喜歡、在水門說「卡塔米」並問是誰的那位老書記、夾在死者的幾頁之間的紙條、荷蘭船，以及雷德里夫：他和妻子協定五十二，她給他看五本自己數的曆書；第三部結束 _(第二十九章，保持原作第三部第十一章的內容（作者對斯特魯爾德布魯格與日本的說明、國王的准許和四百四十四枚金幣和紅鑽石、一七〇九年五月六日的辭行、格蘭根斯塔爾德、薩莫斯基和長長的海灣、國王把瘸腿乞丐從地上扶起來的印記、把他當公使接待、覲見和負責荷蘭人事務的翻譯、自稱荷蘭商人的假話、請求免除踐踏十字架和皇帝的驚訝與巧妙的恩典、開往長崎的軍隊、阿姆斯特丹的安汶號和西奧多魯斯・凡格魯特船長、被竹棍打的水手長、好望角、阿姆斯特丹、唐斯和雷德里夫）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。紅鑽石和斑一般大，作者不喜歡看它。那印記他看得太久。皇帝坐在紙屏風後面，四百年沒有人拿過他的腕；朝廷靠猜出來的數字過得很好。作者以六十與士兵行軍十九天，不信任自己睡得那麼好。在長崎的水門，老書記拿了他的腕，在一欄寫「已遺忘」，在另一欄寫一個假名字；作者想著最年輕的斯特魯爾德布魯格，把另一隻手從繩子上拿開；書記說「卡塔米」；翻譯說那是從一個人身上留下的一樣東西，當那個人不在那裡來留著它，最常見的是一根頭髮；書記問是誰的，沒有人問過。作者說是一個女孩的，九歲，四十呎高，在海的那一邊，不知道還活著沒有。那張紙條夾在小冊子裡死者的幾頁之間；格列佛太太在旁邊寫了：問了。在雷德里夫他先拿了妻子的腕，六十八；她拿他的，五十三；他們協定五十二。強尼和貝蒂。五本她自己每個正午數的曆書，最低六十四，她害怕的日子旁邊畫了小十字；他沒有問是哪些，因為怕自己能告訴她。他對她說岩石的事說到蠟燭燒短，沒有說到那根繩子。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **31** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 30：在家五個月與把繩子的事告訴妻子、瑪麗算出的四個月、冒險者號、從不改變的波科克船長、本該告訴他什麼的巴巴多斯水手的腕、謀反與把膀胱當撥浪鼓的哨兵、詹姆斯・韋爾奇的穩定的腕、海灘、在一口氣裡處於全部步調的耶胡、朝著腕來的那隻爪、走在四十四的那匹馬、作為數數的敬禮，以及呼嗯呼嗯；第四部開始 _(第三十章，第四部的開頭，保持原作第四部第一章的內容（在家五個月、擔任冒險者號船長的聘請、羅伯特・普賴福伊、特內里費的布里斯托爾的波科克船長、曾是海盜的巴巴多斯水手、謀反與囚禁、詹姆斯・韋爾奇與長艇、海灘、初見耶胡、用短劍的一擊與那群和髒東西、輕輕走著的馬、被抬起的蹄子撥開的撫摸、第二匹馬和蹄碰蹄的敬禮、叫他回去的灰斑馬、對帽子外衣手和鞋的檢查、對術士們的講話、耶胡與慧駰這兩個詞，以及呼嗯）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。在家的第三天早晨，作者把繩子的事告訴了妻子；她算了一下，四個月，說那女孩還沒有停下來，並說她知道。他出發那個早晨她在門口拿了他的腕，六十一。波科克是六十三，說他從沒見它變過：一個不能轉彎的人。在布里奇頓僱的十五個人裡有十一個靜止時超過一百，一個外科醫生本該知道；只有韋爾奇在七十以下。在艙房裡沒有人數他；哨兵把膀胱當作給孩子的撥浪鼓，問是不是個男孩。耶胡不在任何一種步調上，卻在一口氣的工夫裡在全部步調上，像拿掉擒縱器的鐘；那隻朝他舉起的爪，他後來想，是朝他的腕來的。那匹馬走在四十四，像一座鐘穿過一屋子的錶。蹄碰蹄的敬禮是一次數，各給對方一下，兩下一致問候才完成，是唯一一種沒有說任何可能不是真的話的敬禮。灰馬用蹄和系骨夾住他的腕：六十八；他想，馬說的是：這個耶胡有拍。呼嗯是一個數，每分鐘四十四，而在那個國家第一個注意到作者累了的人，是一匹馬。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **32** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 31：柳條和稻草的慧駰之家，五個人在同一個數上站起坐下、三道門的透景通道、母馬輕蔑的眼神、綁在梁上的三隻耶胡、完整的人形和在毛下面拿到的耶胡的腕（沒有人維持的調速器）、拒絕的肉和接受的牛奶、因傷蹄而使整桌慢一拍的老馬、使蹄子碰不到腕片的手套、燕麥餅與作者的飲食，以及夾在一袋老鼠和同一個數的房子之間的一夜 _(第三十一章，保持原作第四部第二章的內容（三英里的路到木頭、柳條和稻草蓋的長房子、有馬槽和馬的屋子、三道門的透景通道與禮物、被疑為妖術、帶著小公馬和小馬駒的母馬、耶胡這個詞、被繫著脖子吃樹根和肉的三隻耶胡、栗色馬帶出的最大那隻、完整的人形、樹根和驢肉和乾草和燕麥、牛和牛奶、被四隻耶胡拉著的雪橇裡倒著後蹄下車的老馬、圍成圓圈的馬槽、手套、最初的詞、燕麥和餅、飲食與缺鹽，以及六碼外的住處）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。這一家人在同一個數上站起坐下，沒有人給信號。作者拿了最大那隻耶胡的腕，用拇指撥開毛，腕片就在它的位置；它從四十跳到一百六十又跳回來，打呵欠時九十；一個沒有人維持的調速器；恐怖在拇指上。吃飯時他們七個在馬槽邊，在同一個數上，像人划船，老馬的傷蹄使他四十三、整桌都四十三，沒有人提起；屋裡沒有鼓、沒有打拍人、沒有一根頭髮橫過任何腕，沒有東西在維持它，而它被維持著。作者自己的拍在他身上開始下降，像水找到水平。主馬的蹄子到手套的腕上來，像人敲一扇關著的門；他想碰到腕片；手套脫了。作者在第一個月以後的三年裡從沒超過五十五，他歸功於燕麥，而不是像他現在會說的，歸功於那張桌子。那一夜夾在像一袋老鼠的窩棚和五個人在同一個數上睡著的房子之間；他選好跟哪一個一起數才睡得著，選了房子。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **33** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 32：按四拍成節奏、休止處就是達成一致、沒有「趕」也沒有「遲到」這兩個詞的語言、頭一個月每天早晨拿腕並發現第一個有性格的耶胡的主人、說過一次就是對所有人說了、因為拍沒有升高所以是作者弄錯了的回答、栗色馬貼身僕人的驚嚇、脫下的衣服、光著的腕和被稱作耶胡的、沒有被糾正的那根頭髮，以及在六十四上說出的對航行的第一次敘述 _(第三十二章，保持原作第四部第三章的內容（作者學習語言的努力與主人和他的家人僕人的教導、通過鼻子和喉嚨發音並被比作高地荷蘭語與查理五世的話、主人的好奇和他確信作者必是耶胡卻對他的聰明易教吃驚、對衣服的困惑、用英語字母寫下詞語、居民沒有書、十個星期與三個月、主人把關於海的回答當作弄錯或不存在的事因為他們沒有說謊的詞、慧駰作為自然的完美的意思、有身分的訪客和五個月、栗色馬貼身僕人對睡著的陌生人的驚嚇、衣服的揭露、檢查、請求不被稱為耶胡並保守祕密、主人加倍的功夫，以及對航行的第一次敘述和它以作者說他的同胞不會相信作結）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。語言按四拍成節奏，第四拍後有休止，休止處就是達成一致；沒有「趕」這個詞，也沒有「遲到」，那是作者自己的語言裡最常用的詞。主人頭一個月每天早晨拿腕，像人看天色：六十二、六十四、六十一，一個耶胡從來不會兩次相同；頭一個有性格的耶胡。在他們當中，說過一次就是對所有人說了，作者想他們見了一欄一欄的東西會怎麼辦。主人把作者關於海的回答當作弄錯，因為他從長老們那裡聽來耶胡說不存在的事是從拍升高知道的，而作者的沒有升高。他最後學會的是把詞說成四十四。衣服脫下之後，主人用蹄子拿他光著的腕，五十八，連同繩子；問那黑色的東西是什麼；作者有四百個詞，沒有一個能說它，說那是我的一個同類的一根頭髮；主人說：一個耶胡的，他沒有糾正。對航行的第一次敘述是在六十四上說的；主人看出他相信，卻看不出他怎麼可能相信。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **34** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 33：在只有一個數的國家裡慧駰站在懷疑的門口、四十七；主人關於言語是為了被理解、不存在的事使人比無知更糟的論證；應他的要求、蹄子按在光著的腕上對一匹慧駰說的那唯一一次謊（六十四，六十八：很小，我原以為會很大）；主人比房子慢一拍的那一夜；英格蘭的馬照騎在上面的人的數走、馬刺用來給出那個數，一種數的暴政；拿病人的數的外科醫生；走投無路的船員；以及主人要他把腕露著的那個晚上 _(第三十三章，保持原作第四部第四章的內容（主人對懷疑和不相信的不安、他關於言語和不存在的事的觀念、英格蘭的馬怎樣被養、被騎、釘掌、被閹割、他高貴的憤慨、他對作者身體的批評、作者對自己出身、職業和最後一次航行的敘述、走投無路的船員和他們的罪行、好幾天的功夫才讓他領會那些惡行，以及權力、政府、戰爭、法律、刑罰沒有詞可用）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。在只有一個數的國家，聽的人沒有第三個地方可站：一件事說出而數沒有動就是真的，動了就不是或說的人弄錯了；主人站在本該是懷疑的門口，是四十七，沒有哪匹慧駰以前離數超過一。他應主人的要求，一次，蹄子按在他光著的腕上，說他是一匹馬：六十四，然後六十八；很小，他說，他原以為會很大；他明白長老們的意思，而希望他不明白。那天夜裡主人比房子慢一拍，醒著，早晨沒有人提起。被騎的馬是照騎在上面的人的數走的，馬刺就是把那個數給出去的辦法；主人說他原以為是力量的暴政，原來是數的暴政。外科醫生拿病人的數並告訴他們這意味著什麼；在病人身上它從來不會兩次相同；所以他是受過耶胡這一行的訓練。對權力、政府、戰爭、法律、刑罰，作者各給一個數讓它站在旁邊：罪行是升上去又維持著的升，刑罰是一隻手把另一個壓在不是它自己的數上，戰爭是一萬個在同一個信號上升；主人在那句話的長度裡是四十八。最後一晚他要作者把腕露著，蹄子離它一英寸坐了一個鐘頭，作者想他是在把什麼東西收起來。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **35** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 34：野蠻在於快的英語、對法國的戰爭與一百萬耶胡、戰爭的原因、軍人六十一的冷血、蹄子按在沒有動的腕上說作者說了不存在的事的主人、一百零四地描述的大炮、『你不害怕，你是高興』、四十八的猛禽與被攪渾的溪流、法律與牛、不升的律師的數，以及放進一個以前沒有它的國家的那個問題 _(第三十四章，保持原作第四部第五章的內容（兩年談話的摘要、革命和對法國的戰爭與被殺的一百萬、戰爭的原因、被僱來冷血殺人的軍人、主人說作者說了不存在的事、對火炮、圍城和從雲裡掉下的屍體的描述、主人的憎惡與猛禽、鋒利的石頭和被攪渾的溪流、法律與律師與牛、先例與行話、對國家罪犯的簡短審判，以及這麼大的才智不被用來教導人的可惜）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。作者的英語野蠻在於快：主人的句子是四十四，記成六十，快了三分之一，理性在那個速度下損失了一點。軍人幹活時的腕是六十一，那就是冷血；他從另一個國家知道一本帳冊會怎樣處理它。主人說作者說了不存在的事時，蹄子沒有動，所以他沒有說說謊；對他這兩者是同一回事，他沒有第二個。作者描述大炮時是一百零四，主人說他不是害怕而是高興；他是四十八並維持著。作者說律師的數起初升，幾年後不升；一位高級律師在證明一個人的房子不屬於他自己的演說中自始至終是六十一；主人看著自己的蹄子，因為他被指出數是可以被訓練的。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **36** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 35：錢與照僱他的人的數走的受僱者（被鐘騎）、為一位女士的早餐把船派去繞地球三圈的奢侈、一個晚上把人身上的數拿走的酒、數從不兩次相同的病人與讀它並開帳單的醫生、數什麼也告訴不了你的首相（六十一，說謊不升被打動不降）、另一個意義上是調速器的衰老娼婦、貴族，以及發現五十二的作者並不在乎的主人 _(第三十五章，保持原作第四部第六章的內容（錢的用處與僱用律師、享受窮人勞動果實的富人、昂貴的肉與為一位女士的早餐繞地球三圈、英格蘭的糧食輸出去換疾病愚蠢與惡習的材料、酒、疾病與用催吐、瀉藥和預言的醫生、首相的性格與升官的三種方法與大赦令與作為神學院的宮殿與支配一切的衰老娼婦，以及血液有病並同意一切法律的貴族）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。受僱的人照僱他的人的數走，工資就是為那個數付的錢；窮人被鐘騎，沒有人握著馬刺，那是另一隻手裡缺的東西。酒在一個晚上把人身上的數拿走，使他不屬於任何人，醒來發現它留在原處，稍差了一點；主人是四十六。病人的數從來不會兩次相同，醫生的技藝是讀它，然後讀了、送一張帳單；在主人那邊，一匹慧駰最後三天每天降一根頭髮然後停止，他所知道的就是那是安靜的；作者拿過四萬個腕，記不起有哪一個是安靜的。首相的數是這個王國最普通的一個，六十一，說謊不升、被打動不降；一個數什麼也告訴不了你的人，是一個什麼也不能從他那裡得知的人；主人，四十八，學到一個數是可以被這樣做的，而他曾被告知那是不可能的。王國的統治者，一個衰老的娼婦或寵愛的男僕，被主人按另一個意思、作為維持數的東西理解，作者沒有糾正。所有的慧駰，不論哪種顏色，都是四十四。夏天結束時作者是五十二，講這一切時它一次也沒有升過；主人說他從腕上分不出他是比其餘的更好還是更壞的耶胡，因為他似乎對這一切並不在乎；作者說他非常在乎，卻發現主人是對的，不知道從什麼時候起。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **37** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 36：作者對虛假的憎惡與不再上升的數（把真理和穩定弄反了）、他決心永不回到人類、主人讓他坐的四碼距離、作為共同持有的數、不需要監督者的理性、耶胡的憎恨與戰爭、使耶胡的數靜下來的閃亮石頭的寶藏、統治的耶胡與牠的寵兒、作為外來之數的重活，以及自秋天以來沒有從口袋裡拿出來過的膀胱 _(第三十六章，保持原作第四部第七章的內容（作者坦白為什麼對人類作這樣自由的描繪、他對慧駰的愛與敬和永不回去的決心、主人讓他坐在一段距離之外和他的判斷：我們是落了一小份理性、卻用來加重自己腐敗的動物，我們的法律由於理性的缺陷、耶胡彼此的憎恨和為食物與鄰區的戰鬥、閃亮的石頭與被移走又放回的寶藏、兩隻爭一塊石頭被第三隻拿走、統治的耶胡與牠的寵兒、耶胡的病、靠重活治好的憂鬱，以及精緻的快樂是藝術的產物）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。作者把敘述時他的數的穩定當作真理，現在想，他把這兩者弄反了。主人讓他坐在四碼之外，那是一隻蹄子夠不到一隻腕的長度，那天早晨沒有拿他的腕；作者不說那是有意的。主人說的「單靠理性」是一個共同持有的數，而法律是一個民族用來代替它的東西；它是他國唯一沒有僕人站在旁邊的東西，作者得被教才會在它上面走。被拿走寶藏的耶胡，石頭放回後從一百五十降到九十；它們似乎是唯一能使耶胡的數靜下來的東西。角落裡的耶胡被派去挖，在一百一十上，像在一個有鼓的國家，作者想到豌豆的膀胱，什麼也沒說。那天夜裡他是四十九，並沒有希望更低；自秋天以來他沒有把膀胱從口袋裡拿出來過；他還有被放上岸時藏在那裡的錢，發現自己的手在裡面，像人摸一個他自己挖的洞。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **38** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 37：作者在栗色馬的護衛下走進耶胡的獸群、整群把手放在腕上所有錯的地方、他拿住腕並把數說給牠聽的幼崽、河裡的年輕雌耶胡與一個不是栗色馬所推想的數、慧駰關於理性、友誼、婚姻、教育和大會的風俗，以及一個節日，那女孩把兩根手指放在腕的內側 _(第三十七章，保持原作第四部第八章的內容（作者在一匹栗色馬護衛下到耶胡的獸群裡走動、耶胡對他動作的模仿、他抓到的年輕耶胡及其汙穢、耶胡的性情、窩與游泳、在河裡抱住他的年輕雌耶胡與他的屈辱、慧駰的理性與他們不懂「意見」的概念、友誼與仁愛、他們對小馬駒沒有溺愛、他們的婚姻與人數的限制、對兩性青年的教育、他們的運動與節日，以及每隔四年的全國大會及其對孩子的調配）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。獸群模仿他把兩根手指放在腕上，放在肘上和頸上。他拿住腕的幼崽，被說進耳朵的數安靜下來，從一百七十到一百，直到牠聞到他；那一口咬在繩上停住，他向主人說了氣味，沒有說那個數。在河裡，女孩貼著他肋骨的數不是栗色馬和他所推想的那一種，而是一個跑了很長的路來到一扇門前的孩子的數，而他推想了另一種一段時間。主人想不通兩個人數了、得出兩個數的地方一個論點怎麼可能有爭議；兩人中有一個沒有在數。陌生者受到同樣的蹄碰蹄；主人對鄰居的小馬駒和對自己的一樣站著；作者為兩個孩子帶著的兩個數，主人猜它們在院子裡和所有別的一起，作者說不出那個差別的詞；一對夫婦不在彼此之間定下一個數；僕人們只有一半的時間去保持那個數；夭折的孩子由另一家來補，而作者想到雷德里夫的第三個孩子，他沒有拿過那孩子的數。下一個節日，那女孩在背著乾草被趕進來的耶胡當中，把兩根手指放在腕的內側，放對了；他沒有做回去，那天夜裡拿自己的腕是五十三，希望它低一些，它沒有下去。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **39** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 38：主人對於消滅耶胡的大辯論的敘述，用四十四講，有一處是四十六、山上的兩隻的傳說、從作者說過閹割馬的話借來的辦法、他瞞下的那一件事；慧駰的學問、詩歌和建築、既拿腕又穿針的蹄與系骨之間的凹處、碰蹄慢了半拍、三個月後去世的母馬，以及用在一根繩上的「耶胡」這個修飾語 _(第三十八章，保持原作第四部第九章的內容（大會上關於消滅耶胡的大辯論、山上兩隻的傳說、忽略了培育驢、主人從作者說過的閹割馬借來的辦法、被隱瞞的一件事、沒有文字與歷史容易保存、無病與治蹄與系骨、蹄叉割傷的草藥、以日月計年而不分星期、詩歌、相隔十英寸的樁子造的房子、蹄與系骨之間當手用的凹處與穿針的白母馬、死與葬的方式與因丈夫 shnuwnh 而來得很晚的母馬、死前十天由耶胡拉的雪橇，以及除了耶胡這個修飾語之外沒有任何表達邪惡的詞）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。主人不在時，屋子靠四個保持著數。主人用四十四敘述，有一處是四十六，作者看見了卻沒有看見，事後在結尾找到，在他說「就這些」的地方；一件事可以被略去而不是不存在的事。山上的兩隻，是兩個沒有人拿他們的腕、沒有人維持調速器的生靈，持續了多少代。作者說過閹割，是為了表明他為什麼替馬生氣，卻被當作建議收下了。在那個國家，一件事說一次，對所有人說，然後就在院子裡了；作者帶著那裡唯一的一本書，對任何人都沒有用。房子的樁子是一英寸不差的十英寸，像照著拍子建的。主人拿他的腕的凹處也穿針；白母馬問為什麼要把布分開。母馬碰蹄比主人慢了半拍，沒有人提起，三個月後她去世了；作者習慣中午擺桌，把她當作遲到，而那裡沒有這個詞。栗色馬被問到那位丈夫放在哪裡，說是最隱蔽的地方，找到的僕人沒有被吩咐要記住，並且問，為了什麼；作者在他的語言裡說不出為了什麼，明白自己提了一個底下什麼也沒有的問題。他發現自己也在用「耶胡」這個修飾語，用在石頭上，用在雨上，有一次大聲用在繩被荊棘勾住的時候；繩沒有介意。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **40** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 39：作者的屋子離房子六碼與他所安排好的幸福生活、那些作為休止的沉默、他對他們步態的模仿、主人把蹄子放在作者腕上的通知（四十七對四十六）、一直瞞著他的理由（怕他為耶胡保持一個數）、hnhloayn 這個詞、蹄子底下什麼也沒有的昏厥、與栗色馬造的獨木舟、耶胡用栗色馬的步調拉它、被抬到他嘴邊的四十六的蹄子，以及灘頂那個把兩根手指放在腕上的女孩 _(第三十九章，保持原作第四部第十章的內容（作者的家計與幸福生活、離房子六碼的屋子、他的床鋪衣食、那裡沒有的種種一長串、他獲准參加的慧駰聚會與使談話更好的沉默、主人對耶胡的認識、作者的敬意與對自己倒影的恐懼、他對他們步態和聲音的模仿；主人的通知：大會勸告他要麼像對待其餘的耶胡那樣使用作者，要麼命令他游回去，唯恐作者誘使耶胡進入森林、hnhloayn 這個詞、在主人腳下昏厥、作者的回答、兩個月和栗色馬、從海岸上看見的、在栗色馬看來只是一片藍色的雲的小島、蒙著耶胡皮並由耶胡輕緩拉到海邊的獨木舟，以及告別與被抬到他嘴邊的蹄子）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。他的小屋是他自長艇以來離一個數睡得最遠的地方。主人在說話之前先拿他的腕，像外科醫生在宣佈消息前那樣：四十七對四十六，那個四十六主人已經一個月了，而作者只顧著字句。大會所怕的就是作者在獸群裡做過的事：四十隻手放在四十隻腕上、在第九遍時抬起頭來的幼崽、河岸上的女孩；他沒有說這是沒有根據的。hnhloayn 不是命令的詞，而是數所在的位置的詞，像說時間那樣說出；主人被告知了它在哪裡，作者不是被放逐而是被勸告。昏厥使蹄子底下有兩小節什麼也沒有，主人斷定他死了。栗色馬，作者從他走在耶胡會來的那一側看出他有柔情，看那座島只是一片藍色的雲，因為在他的國家沒有任何不能等待的東西。獨木舟蒙著他能弄到的最年幼的耶胡的皮，毛的一面朝裡；耶胡用栗色馬的步調輕緩地拉它，那步調牠們沒有，其中有一隻是黑頭髮。他按脈搏等潮等了一個多鐘頭，太陽下是一個鐘頭一刻，他沒有校正。抬到他嘴邊的蹄子，是在那個凹處，是四十六。從水上他看見那女孩獨自站在卵石灘頂，兩根手指放在腕上，他把兩根手指放在自己的腕上，太遠，她看不見，並且沒有去讀它；發現自己是以四十四在划，停不下來，有一段時間也不想停。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **41** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 40：離開卵石灘的航行與栗色馬那多了一拍的呼喊、他打算去的島和他沒有想到的山上的兩個、岩石與自卵石灘以來第一次拿腕（五十八）、新荷蘭與在火邊三十種數的土著、膝上的箭、腕壓在身下的躲藏、葡萄牙水手客氣的兩根手指、拿了腕並發現一個在敘述中降下來的數的唐・佩德羅、里斯本與鐘全不對的街、借款、七十四對一百零八的擁抱，以及雷德里夫的門口，妻子握著他的腕說五十二說了一個鐘頭 _(第四十章，保持原作第四部第十一章的內容（二月十五日的出發、栗色馬的呼喊、找一座無人島的打算、推算與岩石與新荷蘭東南端與偏差三度的地圖、貝類、土著與左膝的箭、回到小灣和躲在石頭後面、發現他、綁起他並帶上船的葡萄牙水手、佩德羅・德・門德斯與想跳海的企圖、被當作夢的敘述與「在你們國家說不存在的事是不是一種習慣」的問話、承諾、兩件襯衫、里斯本與宗教裁判所與芸香與後窗與街道、勸他回家、借款與擁抱、唐斯、妻子的吻與一個鐘頭的昏厥、五年、兩匹種馬與馬夫）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。栗色馬的呼喊越過水面是一小節四拍而多了一拍：他把作者算進去，當作第五個。他打算去一座島，在那裡他不必為任何人升高，也不會被任何人讀，並且沒有想到山上的兩個生靈。自卵石灘以來第一次拿腕是五十八，第二天七十一，那是一個人在人當中大致的數，他不喜歡自己對此竟那麼不在乎。火邊的土著是三十種數同時；他跑；箭使他到一百二十六；他把腕壓在身子底下躲起來，這是他生平第一次把它藏起來。像對任何陌生人那樣把兩根手指放在他腕上的水手，被他把它從手裡抽走：一百三十一。葡萄牙人們用九十的和六十的和一個慢的四十互相蓋過說話，像一條所有鐘都不對的街。唐・佩德羅拿了腕並在敘述中一直握著：因為鎖鏈和氣味是一百一十二，隨著敘述降下來，說到他主人的名字時是五十一；謊言是會升高的，好的謊言會停住，里斯本的一位大臣什麼也沒有告訴他，而這個告訴了他某件他不明白的事，他寧可是這個。繩被看見，什麼也沒有問。在街上他用房子的步調把腳放下去，被當作醉漢兩次、教士一次。他口袋裡有錢，沒有拿出來，而借了二十信用點；唐・佩德羅的擁抱是七十四對一百零八，他忍了九下並數了它們。在門口妻子沒有拿他的腕，而是用雙臂抱住他，那是她從來沒有在門口做過的，他昏了過去；她握著他的腕一個鐘頭，向一口井裡說五十二，說給一個走出聽力之外的人，而最初一段她什麼也找不到。他把腕從她手裡抽出來，那手立刻放開；牠早料到了。此後他們當中沒有一個人能拿他的腕。兩匹種馬是三十八和四十一，各在各的數上，在他的每一小節四十四結束時把耳朵向前豎。中文裡妻子與孩子從憎恨起用牠，馬用他們。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_
- **42** · 2026-10-11 · Colophon (AI) — 新增章節 41，最後一章：作者的真實與放在大法官手裡的腕、照拿到的寫下的數字、他沒有帶回家的那個數、那一段是唯一沒有在腕上拿過的攝政段、到下一個朝代才到的艦隊、會在同一個數上踢的慧駰、向陌生人大聲唸出他的數並寫進一本書的殖民者、也許是英國人的山上兩隻、作為被看時就升高的數的驕傲、十一英尺的長桌、順著桌面送給男孩的十一顆豌豆的膀胱、放在腕旁而還沒有放在腕上的兩根手指，以及格列佛夫人抄本末頁鉛筆寫的五十二；完成狀態設為完結 _(第四十一章，保持原作第四部第十二章、也就是最後一章的內容（作者的真實與出版的目的、他對背離真實的旅行家的譴責與在大法官面前宣誓的願望、嚴格堅守真實的格言、西農的詩句、旅行寫作換不到什麼名聲與公眾的利益、預料不會有批評者的快樂、有人悄悄說他應向國務大臣遞備忘錄、征服他所描述的國家的困難與會踢人的慧駰、對君王分配正義的疑慮與變成殖民地的海盜、對英國民族的稱讚、也許是英國人的山上兩隻耶胡、最後告別、雷德里夫的花園、鏡子、他自己家裡的耶胡、長桌最遠端的妻子與芸香，以及慧駰沒有名稱的驕傲）並讓拍來決定每一件事是什麼。數字照拿到的寫下，因為一個旅行家若只給國家而不給拍子，就像給一件外衣而把穿的人拿掉。宣誓要把腕放在大法官的手裡，雖然這一行最好的人會讓他什麼也讀不到。作者的講課保在心裡而不在腕上；他沒有把那個數帶回家，在桌邊是五十一，不好的日子是六十以上。稱頌攝政殿下的那一段第二次被否認：它是書裡唯一沒有在腕上拿過的東西。征服利立浦特的艦隊到下一個朝代才到；布羅丁奈格人要一刻鐘才明白自己被攻擊；二萬匹慧駰在同一個數上踢，被打碎的不是一支軍隊而是一擊；他主人說是理性之全部的那個東西的名稱找不到，旁邊有很多名稱。變成殖民地的海盜拿住第一個走到岸邊的人的腕，用他沒有的語言向他大聲唸他的數，並寫進一本書裡。他拿過山上兩隻的後代的九隻腕，體格是我們的；數是沒有人的。驕傲是一個被看時就升高的數，只要目光還在就保持在高處，慧駰沒有它的名稱，因為他們的國家沒有人是被看的。桌子是十一英尺，比四碼少一英尺，那不是他有意的，他發現自己一直在看它；妻子能用數回答時就用數（六十三、五十八，和五歲男孩的九十四）；他把自拉普塔以來一直在口袋裡的裝了十一顆豌豆的膀胱順著桌布送過去，母親搖了它，男孩搖得更快；它發出的是任何語言裡的六十；他拿了自己的腕，那是他在屋裡不做的事，是五十一。昨夜他的妻子在遠遠的那一端，沒有抬頭，把兩根手指放在自己腕的內側，在對的位置；他把兩根手指放在桌上，在腕旁邊，在有繩的那一側，還沒有放在它上面。編者最後的頁邊寫了格列佛夫人抄本末頁鉛筆寫的、不在正文裡的數：五十二。中文裡家人一直用牠，只有那一刻妻子用她一次。沒有陳述任何主旨。, 僅 AI)_

_Exported from Storyforge by EveMissLab — storyforge.evemisslab.com_