After this he walked to the coast opposite Blefuscu, and lying down there behind a hillock, so that he might not be seen should any of the enemy’s ships happen to be cruising near, he looked long through a small pocket-telescope across the channel.  With the naked eye he could easily see the cliffs of Blefuscu, and soon with his telescope he made out where the fleet lay—­fifty great men-of-war, and many transports, waiting for a fair wind.

Coming back to the city, he gave orders for a great length of the strongest cable, and a quantity of bars of iron.  The cable was little thicker than ordinary pack-thread, and the bars of iron much about the length and size of knitting-needles.  Gulliver twisted three of the iron bars together and bent them to a hook at one end.  He trebled the cable for greater strength, and thus made fifty shorter cables, to which he fastened the hooks.

Then, carrying these in his hand, he walked back to the coast and waded into the sea, a little before high water.  When he came to mid-channel, he had to swim, but for no great distance.

As soon as they noticed Gulliver coming wading through the water towards their ships, the Blefuscan sailors all jumped overboard and swam ashore in a terrible fright.  Never before had any of them seen or dreamt of so monstrous a giant, nor had they heard of his being in Lilliput.

Gulliver then quietly took his cables and fixed one securely in the bows of each of the ships of war, and finally he tied the cables together at his end.  But while he was doing this the Blefuscan soldiers on the shore plucked up courage and began to shoot arrows at him, many of which stuck in his hands and face.  He was very much afraid lest some of these might put out his eyes; but he remembered, luckily, that in his inner pocket were his spectacles, which he put on, and then finished his work without risk to his eyes.

On pulling at the cables, however, not a ship could he move.  He had forgotten that their anchors were all down.  So he was forced to go in closer and with his knife to cut the vessels free.  While doing this he was of course exposed to a furious fire from the enemy, and hundreds of arrows struck him, some almost knocking off his spectacles.  But again he hauled, and this time drew the whole fifty vessels after him.

The Blefuscans had thought that it was his intention merely to cast the vessels adrift, so that they might run aground, but when they saw their great fleet being steadily drawn out to sea, their grief was terrible.  For a great distance Gulliver could hear their cries of despair.

When he had got well away from the land, he stopped in order to pick the arrows from his face and hands, and to put on some of the ointment that had been rubbed on his wounds when first the Lilliputians fired into him.  By this time the tide had fallen a little, and he was able to wade all the way across the channel.

The King and his courtiers stood waiting on the shore.  They could see the vessels steadily drawing nearer, but they could not for some time see Gulliver, because only his head was above water.  At first some imagined that he had been drowned, and that the fleet was now on its way to attack Lilliput.