In the gateway of this fence stood the master of these solitudes, his eyes fixed strangely on my coming with an intense, I had almost said incredulous, interest.  Nor did he cease so to regard me, while the creature that had conducted me thither, told, I suppose, where he had found me, and poured out with childish zeal his own amazement and delight.  By this time, too, his voice had begun to lose its first strangeness, and to take a meaning for me.  And I was presently fully persuaded he spoke a kind of English, and that not unpleasingly, with a liquid, shrill, voluminous ease.  His master listened patiently awhile, but at last bade his servant be silent, and himself addressed me.

“I am informed, Yahoo,” he said with peculiar deliberation, “that you have been borne down into my meadows by the river, and fetched out thence by my servant.  Be aware, then, that all these lands from horizon to horizon are mine and my people’s.  I desire no tidings of what follies may be beyond my boundaries, no aid, and no amity.  I admit no trespasser here and will bear with none.  It appears, however, that your life has passed beyond your own keeping:  I may not, therefore, refuse you shelter and food, and to have you conducted in safety beyond my borders.  Have the courtesy, then, to keep within shelter of these walls till the night be over.  Else”—­he gazed out across the verdant undulations—­“else, Yahoo, I have no power to protect you.”

He turned once more, and regarded me with a lofty yet tender recognition, as if, little though his speech might profess it, he very keenly desired my safety.

He then stepped aside and bade me rather sharply enter the gate before him.  I tried to show none of the mistrust I felt at passing out of these open lands into this repellent yard.  I glanced at the shock-haired creature, alert, half-human, beside me; across the limitless savannah around me, echoing yet, it seemed, with the rumour of innumerable hoofs; and bowing, as it were, to odds, I went in.

On the other hand, I felt my host had been frank with me.  If this was indeed the same Lemuel Gulliver whose repute my infancy had prized so well, I need have no fear of blood and treachery at his hands, however primitive and disgusting his household, or distorted his intellect might be.  He who had proved no tyrant in Lilliput, nor quailed before the enormities of Brobdingnag, might abhor the sight of me; he would not play me false.

His servant, or whatsoever else he might be, I considered not quite so calmly.  Yet even in his broad countenance dwelt a something like bright honesty, less malice than simplicity.

Wherefore, I say, I ordered down my cowardice, and, looking both of them as squarely in the face as I knew how, passed out of the open into the appalling yard of this wooden house.