I say “appalling,” but without much reason.  Perhaps it was the unseemly hugeness of its balks, the foul piles of skins, the mounds of refuse that lay about within; perhaps the all-pervading beastly stench, the bareness and filthiness under so glassy-clear and fierce a sun that revolted me.  All man’s seemliness and affection for the natural things of earth were absent.  Here was only a brutal and bald order, as of an intelligence like that of the yellow-locked, swift-footed creature behind me.  Perhaps also it was the mere unfamiliarity of much I saw there that estranged me.  All lay in neglect, cracked and marred with rough usage,—­coarse strands of a kind of rope, strips of hide, gaping tubs, a huge and rusty brazier, and in one corner a great cage, many feet square and surmounted with an iron ring.

I know not.  I almost desired Sallow at my side, and would to heaven Rosinante’s nose lay in my palm.

Within the house a wood-fire burned in the sun, its smoke ascending to the roof, and flowing thence through a rude chimney.  A pot steamed over the fire, burdening the air with a savour at first somewhat faint and disgusting,—­perhaps because it was merely strange to me.  The walls of this lofty room were of rough, substantial timber, bare and weatherproof; the floor was of the colour of earth, seemingly earth itself.  A few rude stools, a bench, and a four-legged table stood beside the unshuttered window.  And from this stretched the beauteous green of the grass-land or prairie beyond the stockade.

The house, then, was built on the summit of a gentle mound, and doubtless commanded from its upper window the extreme reaches of this sea of verdure.

I sat down where Mr. Gulliver directed me, and was not displeased with the warmth of the fire, despite the sun.  I was cold after that long, watery lullaby, and cold too with exhaustion after running so far at the heels of the creature who had found me.  And I dwelt in a kind of dream on the transparent flames, and watched vacantly the seething pot, and smelt till slowly appetite returned the smoke of the stuff that bubbled beneath its lid.

Mr. Gulliver himself brought me my platter of this pottage, and though it tasted of nothing in my experience—­a kind of sweet, cloying meat—­I was so tired of the fruits to which enterprise had as yet condemned me, I ate of it hungrily and heartily.  Yet not so fast as that the young “Gulliver” had not finished his before me, and sat at length watching every mouthful I took from beneath his sun-enticing thatch of hair.  Ever and again he would toss up his chin with a shrill guffaw, or stoop his head till his eyeballs were almost hidden beneath their thick lashes, so regarding me for minutes together with a delightful simulation of intelligence, yet with that peculiar wistful affection his master had himself exhibited at first sight of me.

But when our meal was done, Mr. Gulliver ordered him about his business.  Without a murmur, with one last, long, brotherly glance at me, he withdrew.  And presently after I heard from afar his high, melancholy “cooee,” and the crack of his thong in the afternoon air as he hastened out to his charges.