The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Part 64

returned the boy.

"We think also," continued Akka, "that when a human being has attended us on a whole journey he shouldn't be allowed to leave us as poor as when he came."

"I know that what I have learned this year with you is worth more to me than gold or lands," said the boy.

"Since these gold coins have been lying unclaimed in the cleft all these years, I think that you ought to have them," declared the wild goose.

"I thought you said something about needing this money yourselves,"

reminded the boy.

"We do need it, so as to be able to give you such recompense as will make your mother and father think you have been working as a goose boy with worthy people."

The boy turned half round and cast a glance toward the sea, then faced about and looked straight into Akka's bright eyes.

"I think it strange, Mother Akka, that you turn me away from your service like this and pay me off before I have given you notice," he said.

"As long as we wild geese remain in Sweden, I trust that you will stay with us," said Akka. "I only wanted to show you where the treasure was while we could get to it without going too far out of our course."

"All the same it looks as if you wished to be rid of me before I want to go," argued Thumbietot. "After all the good times we have had together, I think you ought to let me go abroad with you."

When the boy said this, Akka and the other wild geese stretched their long necks straight up and stood a moment, with bills half open, drinking in air.

"That is something I haven't thought about," said Akka, when she recovered herself. "Before you decide to come with us, we had better hear what Gorgo has to say. You may as well know that when we left Lapland the agreement between Gorgo and myself was that he should travel to your home down in Skne to try to make better terms for you with the elf."

"That is true," affirmed Gorgo, "but as I have already told you, luck was against me. I soon hunted up Holger Nilsson's croft and after circling up and down over the place a couple of hours, I caught sight of the elf, skulking along between the sheds.

"Immediately I swooped down upon him and flew off with him to a meadow where we could talk together without interruption.

"I told him that I had been sent by Akka from Kebnekaise to ask if he couldn't give Nils Holgersson easier terms.

"'I only wish I could!' he answered, 'for I have heard that he has conducted himself well on the trip; but it is not in my power to do so.'

"Then I was wrathy and said that I would bore out his eyes unless he gave in.

"'You may do as you like,' he retorted, 'but as to Nils Holgersson, it will turn out exactly as I have said. You can tell him from me that he would do well to return soon with his goose, for matters on the farm are in a bad shape. His father has had to forfeit a bond for his brother, whom he trusted. He has bought a horse with borrowed money, and the beast went lame the first time he drove it. Since then it has been of no earthly use to him. Tell Nils Holgersson that his parents have had to sell two of the cows and that they must give up the croft unless they receive help from somewhere."

When the boy heard this he frowned and clenched his fists so hard that the nails dug into his flesh.

"It is cruel of the elf to make the conditions so hard for me that I can not go home and relieve my parents, but he sha'n't turn me into a traitor to a friend! My father and mother are square and upright folk. I know they would rather forfeit my help than have me come back to them with a guilty conscience."

THE JOURNEY TO VEMMINGHoG

_Thursday, November third_.

One day in the beginning of November the wild geese flew over Halland Ridge and into Skne. For several weeks they had been resting on the wide plains around Falkoping. As many other wild goose flocks also stopped there, the grown geese had had a pleasant time visiting with old friends, and there had been all kinds of games and races between the younger birds.

Nils Holgersson had not been happy over the delay in Westergotland. He had tried to keep a stout heart; but it was hard for him to reconcile himself to his fate.

"If I were only well out of Skne and in some foreign land," he had thought, "I should know for certain that I had nothing to hope for, and would feel easier in my mind."

Finally, one morning, the geese started out and flew toward Halland.

In the beginning the boy took very little interest in that province. He thought there was nothing new to be seen there. But when the wild geese continued the journey farther south, along the narrow coast-lands, the boy leaned over the goose's neck and did not take his glance from the ground.

He saw the hills gradually disappear and the plain spread under him, at the same time he noticed that the coast became less rugged, while the group of islands beyond thinned and finally vanished and the broad, open sea came clear up to firm land. Here there were no more forests: here the plain was supreme. It spread all the way to the horizon. A land that lay so exposed, with field upon field, reminded the boy of Skne. He felt both happy and sad as he looked at it.

"I can't be very far from home," he thought.

Many times during the trip the goslings had asked the old geese:

"How does it look in foreign lands?"

"Wait, wait! You shall soon see," the old geese had answered.

When the wild geese had pa.s.sed Halland Ridge and gone a distance into Skne, Akka called out:

"Now look down! Look all around! It is like this in foreign lands."

Just then they flew over Soder Ridge. The whole long range of hills was clad in beech woods, and beautiful, turreted castles peeped out here and there.

Among the trees grazed roe-buck, and on the forest meadow romped the hares. Hunters' horns sounded from the forests; the loud baying of dogs could be heard all the way up to the wild geese. Broad avenues wound through the trees and on these ladies and gentlemen were driving in polished carriages or riding fine horses. At the foot of the ridge lay Ring Lake with the ancient Bosjo Cloister on a narrow peninsula.

"Does it look like this in foreign lands?" asked the goslings.

"It looks exactly like this wherever there are forest-clad ridges,"

replied Akka, "only one doesn't see many of them. Wait! You shall see how it looks in general."

Akka led the geese farther south to the great Skne plain. There it spread, with grain fields; with acres and acres of sugar beets, where the beet-pickers were at work; with low whitewashed farm- and outhouses; with numberless little white churches; with ugly, gray sugar refineries and small villages near the railway stations. Little beech-encircled meadow lakes, each of them adorned by its own stately manor, s.h.i.+mmered here and there.

"Now look down! Look carefully!" called the leader-goose. "Thus it is in foreign lands, from the Baltic coast all the way down to the high Alps.

Farther than that I have never travelled."

When the goslings had seen the plain, the leader-goose flew down the oresund coast. Swampy meadows sloped gradually toward the sea. In some places were high, steep banks, in others drift-sand fields, where the sand lay heaped in banks and hills. Fis.h.i.+ng hamlets stood all along the coast, with long rows of low, uniform brick houses, with a lighthouse at the edge of the breakwater, and brown fis.h.i.+ng nets hanging in the drying yard.

"Now look down! Look well! This is how it looks along the coasts in foreign lands."

After Akka had been flying about in this manner a long time she alighted suddenly on a marsh in Vemminghog towns.h.i.+p and the boy could not help thinking that she had travelled over Skne just to let him see that his was a country which could compare favourably with any in the world. This was unnecessary, for the boy was not thinking of whether the country was rich or poor.

From the moment that he had seen the first willow grove his heart ached with homesickness.

HOME AT LAST

_Tuesday, November eighth_.

The atmosphere was dull and hazy. The wild geese had been feeding on the big meadow around Skerup church and were having their noonday rest when Akka came up to the boy.