Escape from Brobdingnag

Gulliver's escape from Brobdingnag is the climax of his second voyage, a sudden and violent rupture from a two-year captivity that had reduced him to a living curiosity. The event is set in motion by a combination of human carelessness and natural predation, and it resolves through a series of improbable physical events that culminate in his rescue by an English merchant ship. The escape is not a planned liberation but a chaotic accident that Gulliver survives through the very engineering of his confinement—the box that held him prisoner becomes the vessel of his deliverance.

The Circumstances of Departure

After two years in Brobdingnag, Gulliver accompanied the king and queen on a progress to the south coast, near the city of Flanflasnic, about eighteen English miles from the sea. Glumdalclitch, his devoted nurse and protector, fell ill and was confined to her chamber. Gulliver, longing to see the ocean—which he recognized as his only possible route to freedom—pretended to be worse than he was and obtained permission to take the fresh air with a page he trusted. Glumdalclitch consented with great unwillingness, bursting into tears as if she had some foreboding of what was to happen. The page carried Gulliver in his travelling-box, a twelve-foot-square wooden chamber with a hammock, windows, and a roof hole for air, to the rocks on the seashore. Gulliver, feeling unwell, told the page he wished to nap in his hammock. The boy shut the window and, thinking no danger could occur, went among the rocks to search for birds' eggs.

The Eagle's Attack and the Fall into the Sea

While Gulliver slept, an eagle seized the iron ring at the top of the box in its beak and carried it high into the air. Gulliver awoke to a violent pull and felt himself raised with prodigious speed; looking through his windows, he could see nothing but clouds and sky. He heard the clapping of wings above him and realized his peril: the eagle intended to drop the box on a rock like a tortoise in a shell and then devour him. The noise and flutter of wings increased, and the box was tossed up and down. Gulliver heard several bangs or buffets given to the eagle, and then felt himself falling perpendicularly for over a minute with incredible swiftness, almost losing his breath. The fall was stopped by a terrible squash, louder to his ears than the cataract of Niagara. The box, by the weight of his body, the goods inside, and the broad iron plates fixed at the four corners of the top and bottom, floated about five feet deep in the water. Gulliver supposed that the eagle had been pursued by two or three others and forced to let him drop while defending itself. The iron plates preserved the balance during the fall and prevented the box from breaking on the surface; the door, which moved up and down like a sash, kept the closet so tight that very little water entered.

Desperate Hours in the Floating Box

Gulliver found himself in a desperate situation. He could not lift the roof of his closet, which would have allowed him to sit on top and preserve himself longer. He saw water oozing in at several crannies and tried to stop the leaks. He expected every moment to see the box dashed to pieces or overset by a violent wave; a breach in a single pane of glass would have meant immediate death. He thought of Glumdalclitch, lamenting the grief she would suffer for his loss, the displeasure of the queen, and the ruin of her fortune. After four hours in this state, he heard a grating noise on the side of the box where two strong staples were fixed—the staples used by a servant to buckle a leathern belt about his waist when carrying the box on horseback. He felt a tugging that made the waves rise near the tops of his windows. Unscrewing one of his chairs and mounting it under the roof hole, he called for help in a loud voice in all the languages he understood, and waved his handkerchief tied to a stick through the hole.

Rescue by the English Ship

Gulliver's signals were seen by the crew of an English merchantman returning from Japan, commanded by Captain Thomas Wilcocks, an honest Shropshire man. The captain had spied the box at a distance, thought it was a sail, and sent out his long-boat to investigate. His men returned in a fright, swearing they had seen a swimming-house. The captain himself rowed around the box, observed its windows and wire lattices, and discovered the two staples. He ordered his men to fasten a cable to one of the staples and tow the chest toward the ship. When it was alongside, they fastened another cable to the ring in the cover and tried to raise it with pulleys, but all the sailors together could lift it only two or three feet. They saw Gulliver's stick and handkerchief thrust out of the hole and concluded that some unhappy man must be shut up inside. The carpenter sawed a passage about four feet square in the cover, let down a small ladder, and Gulliver mounted into the ship in a very weak condition. The sailors were all in amazement, and Gulliver, after having so long accustomed his eyes to the monstrous objects of Brobdingnag, was equally confounded at the sight of so many pygmies. The captain took him into his cabin, gave him a cordial, and made him rest. Gulliver's box, stripped of its goods and boards by the seamen, was dropped into the sea and sank.

Aftermath and Return to England

Gulliver slept several hours, disturbed by dreams of the place he had left and the dangers he had escaped. When he awoke, he gave Captain Wilcocks a faithful account of his travels, from the time he left England to the moment the captain discovered him. The captain, a man of good sense and some learning, was convinced of Gulliver's veracity, especially after Gulliver showed him the rarities he had collected in Brobdingnag: a comb made from the stumps of the king's beard, a collection of needles and pins from a foot to half a yard long, four wasps' stings like joiners' tacks, combings of the queen's hair, and a gold ring the queen had given him. The captain accepted only a footman's tooth as a gift. The voyage was prosperous, and they arrived in the Downs on June 3, 1706, about nine months after Gulliver's escape. Gulliver hired a horse and guide for five shillings, which he borrowed from the captain, and returned to his house in Redriff. His behavior was so unaccountable—he stooped to enter doors, spoke loudly, and saw his family as pygmies—that his wife and friends concluded he had lost his wits. In time they came to a right understanding, but his wife protested he should never go to sea again, a resolution that, as the reader may learn, she had not the power to enforce.