[00:00.63] Gulliver's Travels.
[00:02.56] Part one.
[00:04.74] Chapter one.
[00:06.88] Shipwrecked.
[00:11.81] I had always dreamed of going to sea, and so it was with great excitement that I set sail on the ship Antelope, on fourth May 1699.
[00:27.12] I was hoping for great adventures, but my travels took me to lands stranger and more dangerous than anything I had ever imagined.
[00:39.38] The Antelope took me halfway round the world.
[00:44.28] But when we were northwest of Tasmania, we met a great storm that blew us onto a rock, and split the poor Antelope into pieces.
[00:57.35] A few of us managed to get away in a rowing boat, but after about half an hour, a huge gust of wind capsized it, and threw us into the sea.
[01:11.70] I don't know what happened to the others, but I was carried along on enormous waves for a long time before I saw land.
[01:22.57] By the time I'd managed to fight my way ashore, I was so exhausted that all I could do was throw myself down and sleep.
[01:34.29] I must have slept all night, because when I woke up, the sun was high in the sky above me.
[01:43.76] I tried to turn over, and that was when I found to my horror that my arms and legs and even my hair were tied to the ground with hundreds of pieces of string.
[01:59.54] As if that wasn't bad enough, I realized that something was crawling up my leg.
[02:08.94] I squinted down hastily, and saw the last thing I was expecting.
[02:17.40] It was a little man.
[02:21.78] He was about half as long as my foot, and he was holding a bow and arrow.
[02:31.75] I screamed with shock and struggled to get free.
[02:37.76] The little man ran off as fast as his legs would carry him, but at once a flight of tiny arrows stabbed into my face with a sting like a hundred needles.
[02:51.65] I fell back, groaning with pain.
[02:58.81] All I could do was to keep still and hope the little people would stop shooting.
[03:06.36] I soon felt the little man climbing back up on top of me.
[03:12.24] He made a speech in a language I couldn't understand.
[03:19.85] And then a whole procession of little people climbed up and fed me bullet-sized loaves and joints of meat from an animal about as big as a mouse.
[03:32.80] They also gave me a tiny barrel of wine to drink.
[03:39.69] I soon fell asleep again, because, as I found out later, the wine contained a sleeping potion.
[03:49.92] And the next time I woke up, I discovered they had moved me.
[03:57.96] I was now chained by the leg to the wall of a grand building that was nearly as tall as I was.
[04:10.83] There must have been a hundred thousand little people standing round gawping at me, and all I could think of to do was to sit and gorp back.
[04:26.33] One spiteful man tried firing another arrow at me, but a man in a gold helmet ordered him to be tied up and prodded forward so I could reach him.
[04:41.10] I picked him up and pretended I was going to bite his head off, which made him screech and struggle like anything.
[04:53.24] But instead, I cut his ropes with my pen knife and let him go.
[05:01.54] It was very lucky indeed that I let him go, because that made the man in the gold helmet, who was the king, decide I wasn't dangerous after all.
[05:18.23] So, instead of killing me, he ordered his people to bring me food and bedding.
[05:26.46] But I was still left chained to the wall.