I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir; for as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground, and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner.  I likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my armpits to my thighs.  I could only look upward; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended mine eyes.  I heard a confused noise about me, but, in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky.

In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which, advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending mine eyes downward as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back.  In the meantime, I felt at least forty more of the same kind (as I conjectured) following the first.  I was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them, as I was afterward told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground.  However, they soon returned; and one of them, who ventured so far as to get a full sight of my face, lifting up his hands and eyes by way of admiration, cried out, in a shrill but distinct voice, “Hekinah degul.”  The others repeated the same words several times; but I then knew not what they meant.  I lay all this while, as the reader may believe, in great uneasiness.

At length, struggling to get loose, I had the fortune to break the strings and wrench out the pegs that fastened my left arm to the ground; for, by lifting it up to my face, I discovered the methods they had taken to bind me, and, at the same time, with a violent pull, which gave me excessive pain, I a little loosened the strings that tied down my hair on the left side, so that I was just able to turn my head about two inches.  But the creatures ran off a second time, before I could seize them; whereupon there was a great shout, in a very shrill accent, and, after it ceased, I heard one of them cry aloud, “Tolgo phonac”; when, in an instant, I felt above an hundred arrows discharged on my left hand, which pricked me like so many needles; and, besides, they shot another flight into the air, as we do bombs in Europe; whereof many, I suppose, fell on my body (though I felt them not), and some on my face, which I immediately covered with my left hand.

When this shower of arrows was over, I fell a-groaning with grief and pain; and then, striving again to get loose, they discharged another volley, larger than the first, and some of them attempted, with spears, to stick me in the sides; but, by good luck, I had on me a buff[2] jerkin, which they could not pierce.  I thought it the most prudent method to lie still; and my design was to continue so till night, when, my left hand being already loose, I could easily free myself; and as for the inhabitants, I had reason to believe I might be a match for the greatest armies they could bring against me, if they were all of the same size with him that I saw.