All this was bad enough, as Little Jacket thought. But he was very
thankful that he was alive and on shore, and able to use his limbs,
and that he found some companions still left. He was not long either
in using his wits, and in making the best use of the chances still
left him. He found himself upon a rocky promontory. But on climbing a
little higher up, he could see that there was beyond it, and joining
on to it, a beautiful smooth beach. The rocks were enormous, and he
and his comrades had hard work to clamber over them. It took them a
good while to do so, exhausted as they were by fatigue, and dripping
with wet. At length they reached the beach, the sands of which were of
very large grain, and so loose that they had to wade nearly knee deep
through them. The country back of the shore seemed very rocky and
rough, and here and there were trees of an enormous magnitude. Every
thing seemed on a gigantic scale, even to the weeds and grasses that
grew on the edge of the beach, where it sloped up to join the main
land. And they could see, by mounting on a stone, the same great
gloomy cliffs which they saw before the ship struck, but some miles
inland. But what most attracted their attention, was the enormous and
beautiful great sea-shells, which lay far up on the shore. They were
not only of the most lovely colors, but quite various in form, and so
large that a man might creep into them. Little Jacket was not long in
discovering the advantage of this fact, for they might be obliged,
when night came on, to retire into these shells, as they saw no house
anywhere within sight. Now, Little Jacket had read Robinson Crusoe,
and Gulliver's Travels, and had half believed the wonderful stories of
Brobdignag; but he never thought that he should ever be actually
wrecked on a giant's island. There now seemed to be a probability that
it might be so, after all. What meant these enormous weeds, and trees,
and rocks, and grains of sand, and these huge shells? What meant these
great cliffs in the distance? He began to feel a little afraid. But he
thought about Gulliver, and how well he fared after all, and, on the
whole, looked forward rather with pleasure at the prospect of some
strange adventure. Now and then he thought he could make out something
like huge footprints on the shore--but this might be fancy. At any
rate, they would hide themselves if they saw the giant coming. And if
they could only find some food to live upon, they might get on
tolerably well for a time. And perhaps this was only a fancy about
giants, and they might yet find civilized beings like themselves
living here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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