Eagle's Flight to Freedom — Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver still expects liberty without knowing how. The king wants a woman of his size to propagate the breed; Gulliver would rather die than leave posterity in cages like tame canaries, perhaps sold to persons of quality. He was the favourite of a great king and queen, but on a foot that ill became the dignity of humankind. He wanted people with whom he could converse on even terms and walk without fear of being trod to death like a frog. After two years, Glumdalclitch, ill with a cold, reluctantly lets a page carry his twelve, foot travelling box to the sea near Flanflasnic while the court progresses south. Gulliver feigns illness, naps with the roof slit open, and the page wanders off hunting birds' eggs. An eagle takes the ring of the box in its beak, fights other eagles, and drops Gulliver into the sea with a squash louder than Niagara. Iron plates keep the closet afloat; for four hours he expects death by wave or broken glass until Captain Thomas Wilcocks of Shropshire tows the box to his ship, hoists it with pulleys, and has a carpenter saw him out. The sailors seem like pigmies; Wilcocks thinks him mad when he talks of quilted furniture and a chest of giant curiosities. After Gulliver tells his story, the captain is convinced and inspects the comb from the king's beard, wasp stings, maid of honour's corn, mouse, skin breeches, and a footman's tooth he finally accepts. Wilcocks wonders at Gulliver's loud voice; Gulliver finds the captain whispering and the supper dishes the size of three, pence. They laugh over eyes bigger than belly and the Phaeton conceit. Nine months later they reach the Downs on 3 June 1706. On the road home Gulliver thinks himself in Lilliput and nearly gets broken heads for shouting at travellers to stand clear. At Redriff he stoops like a goose under his gate, bends below his wife's knees to embrace her, tries to lift his daughter with one hand, and tells his wife she has starved herself and their child to nothing. The servants look like pigmies; the family concludes he has lost his wits as Wilcocks first did. In time they come to a right understanding, though his wife protests he shall never go to sea again, a vow his evil destiny will not let her keep. Escape came by chance, rescue by a stranger's patience, and return by habit fighting habit until home became habitable again.