Satire, Greek -- Translations into English; Voyages, Imaginary -- Early works to 1800
The next morrow the rest of the country people, perceiving what had
happened, came to assault us. The Tarychanians were ranged in the
right wing, with Pelamus their captain: the Thinnocephalians were
placed in the left wing: the Carcinochirians made up the main battle:
for the Tritonomendetans stirred not, neither would they join with
either part. About the temple of Neptune we met with them, and joined
fight with a great cry, which was answered with an echo out of the
whale as if it had been out of a cave: but we soon put them to flight,
being naked people, and chased them into the wood, making ourselves
masters of the country. Soon after they sent ambassadors to us to crave
the bodies of the dead and to treat upon conditions of peace; but we
had no purpose to hold friendship with them, but set upon them the
next day and put them all to the sword except the Tritonomendetans,
who, seeing how it fared with the rest of their fellows, fled away
through the gills of the fish, and cast themselves into the sea. Then
we travelled all the country over, which now was desert, and dwelt
there afterwards without fear of enemies, spending the time in exercise
of the body and in hunting, in planting vineyards and gathering fruit
of the trees, like such men as live delicately and have the world at
will, in a spacious and unavoidable prison. This kind of life led we
for a year and eight months, but when the fifth day of the ninth month
was come, about the time of the second opening of his mouth (for so
the whale did once every hour, whereby we conjectured how the hours
went away), I say about the second opening, upon a sudden we heard
a great cry and a mighty noise like the calls of mariners and the
stirring of oars, which troubled us not a little. Wherefore we crept
up to the very mouth of the fish, and standing within his teeth, saw
the strangest sight that ever eye beheld--men of monstrous greatness,
half a furlong in stature, sailing upon mighty great islands as if they
were upon shipboard. I know you will think this smells like a lie,
but yet you shall have it. The islands were of a good length indeed,
but not very high, containing about an hundred furlongs in compass;
every one of these carried of those kind of men eight-and-twenty, of
which some sat on either side of the island and rowed in their course
with great cypress trees, branches, leaves and all, instead of oars.
On the stern or hinder part, as I take it, stood the governor, upon
a high hill, with a brazen rudder of a furlong in length in his
hand: on the fore-part stood forty such fellows as those, armed for
the fight, resembling men in all points but in their hair, which was
all fire and burnt clearly, so that they needed no helmets. Instead
of sails the wood growing in the island did serve their turns, for
the wind blowing against it drave forward the island like a ship,
and carried it which way the governor would have it, for they had
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