The Greatest Works of Selma Lagerlöf. Selma Lagerlöf
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his full strength.
The boy lay sleeping in the quarters where Akka and the other wild geese slept, when Dunfin called: "Thumbietot, Thumbietot! Morten Goosey-Gander is being torn to pieces by an eagle."
"Let me get up on your back, Dunfin, and take me to him!" said the boy.
When they arrived on the scene Morten Goosey-Gander was badly torn, and bleeding, but he was still fighting. The boy could not battle with the eagle; all that he could do was to seek more efficient help.
"Hurry, Dunfin, and call Akka and the wild geese!" he cried. The instant he said that, the eagle flew back and stopped fighting.
"Who's speaking of Akka?" he asked. He saw Thumbietot and heard the wild geese honking, so he spread his wings.
"Tell Akka I never expected to run across her or any of her flock out here in the sea!" he said, and soared away in a rapid and graceful flight.
"That is the self-same eagle who once brought me back to the wild geese," the boy remarked, gazing after the bird in astonishment.
The geese had decided to leave the island at dawn, but first they wanted to feed awhile. As they walked about and nibbled, a mountain duck came up to Dunfin.
"I have a message for you from your sisters," said the duck. "They dare not show themselves among the wild geese, but they asked me to remind you not to leave the island without calling on the old fisherman."
"That's so!" exclaimed Dunfin, but she was so frightened now that she would not go alone, and asked the goosey-gander and Thumbietot to accompany her to the hut.
The door was open, so Dunfin entered, but the others remained outside.
After a moment they heard Akka give the signal to start, and called
Dunfin. A gray goose came out and flew with the wild geese away from the
island.
They had travelled quite a distance along the archipelago when the boy began to wonder at the goose who accompanied them. Dunfin always flew lightly and noiselessly, but this one laboured with heavy and noisy wing-strokes. "We are in the wrong company. It is Prettywing that follows us!"
The boy had barely spoken when the goose uttered such an ugly and angry shriek that all knew who she was. Akka and the others turned to her, but the gray goose did not fly away at once. Instead she bumped against the big goosey-gander, snatched Thumbietot, and flew off with him in her bill.
There was a wild chase over the archipelago. Prettywing flew fast, but the wild geese were close behind her, and there was no chance for her to escape.
Suddenly they saw a puff of smoke rise up from the sea, and heard an explosion. In their excitement they had not noticed that they were directly above a boat in which a lone fisherman was seated.
However, none of the geese was hurt; but just there, above the boat,
Prettywing opened her bill and dropped Thumbietot into the sea.
STOCKHOLM
SKANSEN
A few years ago, at Skansen—the great park just outside of Stockholm where they have collected so many wonderful things—there lived a little old man, named Clement Larsson. He was from Hälsingland and had come to Skansen with his fiddle to play folk dances and other old melodies. As a performer, he appeared mostly in the evening. During the day it was his business to sit on guard in one of the many pretty peasant cottages which have been moved to Skansen from all parts of the country.
In the beginning Clement thought that he fared better in his old age than he had ever dared dream; but after a time he began to dislike the place terribly, especially while he was on watch duty. It was all very well when visitors came into the cottage to look around, but some days Clement would sit for many hours all alone. Then he felt so homesick that he feared he would have to give up his place. He was very poor and knew that at home he would become a charge on the parish. Therefore he tried to hold out as long as he could, although he felt more unhappy from day to day.
One beautiful evening in the beginning of May Clement had been granted a few hours' leave of absence. He was on his way down the steep hill leading out of Skansen, when he met an island fisherman coming along with his game bag. The fisherman was an active young man who came to Skansen with seafowl that he had managed to capture alive. Clement had met him before, many times.
The fisherman stopped Clement to ask if the superintendent at Skansen was at home. When Clement had replied, he, in turn, asked what choice thing the fisherman had in his bag. "You can see what I have," the fisherman answered, "if in return you will give me an idea as to what I should ask for it."
He held open the bag and Clement peeped into it once—and again—then quickly drew back a step or two. "Good gracious, Ashbjörn!" he exclaimed. "How did you catch that one?"
He remembered that when he was a child his mother used to talk of the tiny folk who lived under the cabin floor. He was not permitted to cry or to be naughty, lest he provoke these small people. After he was grown he believed his mother had made up these stories about the elves to make him behave himself. But it had been no invention of his mother's, it seemed; for there, in Ashbjörn's bag, lay one of the tiny folk.
There was a little of the terror natural to childhood left in Clement, and he felt a shudder run down his spinal column as he peeped into the bag. Ashbjörn saw that he was frightened and began to laugh; but Clement took the matter seriously. "Tell me, Ashbjörn, where you came across him?" he asked. "You may be sure that I wasn't lying in wait for him!" said Ashbjörn. "He came to me. I started out early this morning and took my rifle along into the boat. I had just poled away from the shore when I sighted some wild geese coming from the east, shrieking like mad. I sent them a shot, but hit none of them. Instead this creature came tumbling down into the water—so close to the boat that I only had to put my hand out and pick him up."
"I hope you didn't shoot him, Ashbjörn?"
"Oh, no! He is well and sound; but when he came down, he was a little dazed at first, so I took advantage of that fact to wind the ends of two sail threads around his ankles and wrists, so that he couldn't run away. 'Ha! Here's something for Skansen,' I thought instantly."
Clement grew strangely troubled as the fisherman talked. All that he had heard about the tiny folk in his childhood—of their vindictiveness toward enemies and their benevolence toward friends—came back to him. It had never gone well with those who had attempted to hold one of them captive.
"You should have let him go at once, Ashbjörn," said Clement.
"I came precious near being forced to set him free," returned the fisherman. "You may as well know, Clement, that the wild geese followed me all the way home, and they criss-crossed over the island the whole morning, honk-honking as if they wanted him back. Not only they, but the entire population—sea gulls, sea swallows, and many others who are not worth a shot of powder, alighted on the island and made an awful racket. When I came out they fluttered about me until I had to turn back. My wife begged me to let him go, but I had made up my mind that he should come here to Skansen, so I placed one of the children's dolls in the window, hid the midget in the bottom of my bag, and started away. The birds must have fancied that it was he who stood in the window, for they permitted me to leave without pursuing me."
"Does it say anything?" asked Clement.
"Yes. At first he tried to call to the birds, but I wouldn't have it and put a gag in his mouth."
"Oh, Ashbjörn!" protested Clement. "How can