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How does Gulliver escape the land of Lilliput?

Gulliver actually escapes from Lilliput fairly easily: after falling out of favor with the Emperor of Lilliput, Gulliver walks across the channel separating Lilliput from Blefuscu, and then from there he finds a boat, sails away, and is eventually picked up by an English ship. 


Gulliver's need to suddenly escape to Blefuscu can be seen as a satire of the fickle nature of European court culture. Just as Gulliver quickly falls out of favor with the Lilliputian elite, so too did popular courtiers run the risk of becoming suddenly very unpopular, often for trivial reasons. Such a position was often very dangerous, and a punishment similar to the one Gulliver narrowly escapes (being blinded, starved to death, etc.) was probably not out of the ordinary in many European courts. In this way, Swift points out that perhaps being a member of the ruling elite is not as enviable a position as one might think.  

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