Chapter 2.
The Humors and Behaviors of the Laputins.
The author's receptions there and the inhabitants' fears.
After boarding the vessel, I was surrounded by a crowd of people.
They looked on me with great wonder, and I stared at them in much the same way.
Their heads were all bent to the right or left, with one of their eyes turned inward and their other turned directly up to the heavens.
Their clothes were covered with symbols of the moon, sun and stars, along with many musical instruments.
Many had the appearance of servants, holding pouches fastened to the end of sticks.
In each of these pouches was a small quantity of dried peas.
With these devices, the servants now and then tapped the mouths and ears of the person who stood near them.
It turned out that the minds of these people were so full of their own thoughts that they could neither speak nor listen to the conversation of others without being reminded to do so.
For that reason, those who could afford it always employed a servant known as a flapper.
When two or more people were in company, it was the job of the flapper to strike the mouth of the person who was to speak and the right ear of the person who was to listen.
The flapper also joined the master on all of his walks, giving him the occasional flap on his eyes.
Without this, the master would be so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he would constantly be falling and bumping into things.
While we were climbing the stairs to the top of the island, the people leading me oftentimes forgot what they were doing until they were reminded by their flappers.
At last we entered the palace and proceeded into the main chamber.
I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on both sides by noble lords.
Before the throne was a large table filled with globes, spheres, and mathematical instruments.
The king was deep in thought about a problem and we stood there for an hour or so while he solved it.
Finally, looking toward me and the company I was in, he remembered my arrival, which he had been told about several times.
As he spoke to me, a young man came up and flapped me gently on the right ear.
I made signs as well as I could that I had no use for such a reminder.
I later found out that this gave His Majesty and the whole court a very low opinion of my intelligence.
The king asked me several questions.
When it was clear that neither of us could understand the other, I was led away to a comfortable apartment.
Dinner was brought to me, and four lords did me the honor of dining with me.
We had several courses, including a shoulder of lamb cut into triangles, a piece of beef cut into rhombuses and a pudding formed in the shape of a cylinder.
There was also a slice of duck tied up to look like a fiddle and various sausages twisted into the shapes of flutes and harps.
While we ate, I asked the names of several things in their language, and I was soon able to call for more bread or drink.
After dinner, my company left and a teacher was sent to me by the king's orders, along with a flapper.
He brought with him a pen, ink, paper, and three or four books.
We sat together for hours.
He showed me the figures of the sun, moon, and stars.
He gave me the names and descriptions of all the musical instruments, as well as the general terms for playing on each of them.
After he left, I placed all the words he had taught me in alphabetical order.
Following this method and memorizing the lists that I made, I had some understanding of their language in just a few days.
One of the first words I mastered was the term for their flying island, Laputa.
The king also ordered a tailor to come and measure me for a new suit of clothes.
This man worked very differently from the tailors.
I was used to taking his measurements with a ruler and compass and graphing the results on paper.
The clothes he made fit me quite poorly.
I was told this was due to a mistake in the calculations, a frequent event regarded with little importance.
As we traveled, the island stopped over certain towns and villages so that the king could receive the requests of his subjects.
Several threads were let down with small weights attached to them.
The people strung their requests to these threads and sent them back up.
We also received food and water from below by way of pulleys.
I soon learned that on account of their many fears these poor people never enjoyed a minute's peace.
For example, they worried that the earth, by the continuous approach of the sun toward it, must in time be swallowed up.
They also worried that the earth, having recently escaped collision with a comet that would have destroyed it, would certainly collide with the next comet.
They calculated that this comet would arrive in 130 years.
When they met in the morning, their first question was about the sun's health, how it looked at its rising and setting and what hopes there were of it avoiding the approaching comet.
