The Most Beloved Works and Christmas Books of Selma Lagerlöf. Selma Lagerlöf

Akka appeared with an eagle in her train. The wild goose flock was continually surrounded by swarms of the curious who loudly expressed their astonishment. Akka bade them be silent, but it was impossible to stop so many wagging tongues.

      "Why do they call me an eagle?" Gorgo asked repeatedly, growing more and more exasperated. "Can't they see that I'm a wild goose? I'm no bird-eater who preys upon his kind. How dare they give me such an ugly name?"

      One day they flew above a barn yard where many chickens walked on a dump heap and picked. "An eagle! An eagle!" shrieked the chickens, and started to run for shelter. But Gorgo, who had heard the eagles spoken of as savage criminals, could not control his anger. He snapped his wings together and shot down to the ground, striking his talons into one of the hens. "I'll teach you, I will, that I'm no eagle!" he screamed furiously, and struck with his beak.

      That instant he heard Akka call to him from the air, and rose obediently. The wild goose flew toward him and began to reprimand him. "What are you trying to do?" she cried, beating him with her bill. "Was it perhaps your intention to tear that poor hen to pieces?" But when the eagle took his punishment from the wild goose without a protest, there arose from the great bird throng around them a perfect storm of taunts and gibes. The eagle heard this, and turned toward Akka with flaming eyes, as though he would have liked to attack her. But he suddenly changed his mind, and with quick wing strokes bounded into the air, soaring so high that no call could reach him; and he sailed around up there as long as the wild geese saw him.

      Two days later he appeared again in the wild goose flock.

      "I know who I am," he said to Akka. "Since I am an eagle, I must live as becomes an eagle; but I think that we can be friends all the same. You or any of yours I shall never attack."

      But Akka had set her heart on successfully training an eagle into a mild and harmless bird, and she could not tolerate his wanting to do as he chose.

      "Do you think that I wish to be the friend of a bird-eater?" she asked. "Live as I have taught you to live, and you may travel with my flock as heretofore."

      Both were proud and stubborn, and neither of them would yield. It ended in Akka's forbidding the eagle to show his face in her neighbourhood, and her anger toward him was so intense that no one dared speak his name in her presence.

      After that Gorgo roamed around the country, alone and shunned, like all great robbers. He was often downhearted, and certainly longed many a time for the days when he thought himself a wild goose, and played with the merry goslings.

      Among the animals he had a great reputation for courage. They used to say of him that he feared no one but his foster-mother, Akka. And they could also say of him that he never used violence against a wild goose.

      IN CAPTIVITY

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      Gorgo was only three years old, and had not as yet thought about marrying and procuring a home for himself, when he was captured one day by a hunter, and sold to the Skansen Zoölogical Garden, where there were already two eagles held captive in a cage built of iron bars and steel wires. The cage stood out in the open, and was so large that a couple of trees had easily been moved into it, and quite a large cairn was piled up in there. Notwithstanding all this, the birds were unhappy. They sat motionless on the same spot nearly all day. Their pretty, dark feather dresses became rough and lustreless, and their eyes were riveted with hopeless longing on the sky without.

      During the first week of Gorgo's captivity he was still awake and full of life, but later a heavy torpor came upon him. He perched himself on one spot, like the other eagles, and stared at vacancy. He no longer knew how the days passed.

      One morning when Gorgo sat in his usual torpor, he heard some one call to him from below. He was so drowsy that he could barely rouse himself enough to lower his glance.

      "Who is calling me?" he asked.

      "Oh, Gorgo! Don't you know me? It's Thumbietot who used to fly around with the wild geese."

      "Is Akka also captured?" asked Gorgo in the tone of one who is trying to collect his thoughts after a long sleep.

      "No; Akka, the white goosey-gander, and the whole flock are probably safe and sound up in Lapland at this season," said the boy. "It's only I who am a prisoner here."

      As the boy was speaking he noticed that Gorgo averted his glance, and began to stare into space again.

      "Golden eagle!" cried the boy; "I have not forgotten that once you carried me back to the wild geese, and that you spared the white goosey-gander's life! Tell me if I can be of any help to you!"

      Gorgo scarcely raised his head. "Don't disturb me, Thumbietot," he yawned. "I'm sitting here dreaming that I am free, and am soaring away up among the clouds. I don't want to be awake."

      "You must rouse yourself, and see what goes on around you," the boy admonished, "or you will soon look as wretched as the other eagles."

      "I wish I were as they are! They are so lost in their dreams that nothing more can trouble them," said the eagle.

      When night came, and all three eagles were asleep, there was a light scraping on the steel wires stretched across the top of the cage. The two listless old captives did not allow themselves to be disturbed by the noise, but Gorgo awakened.

      "Who's there? Who is moving up on the roof?" he asked.

      "It's Thumbietot, Gorgo," answered the boy. "I'm sitting here filing away at the steel wires so that you can escape."

      The eagle raised his head, and saw in the night light how the boy sat and filed the steel wires at the top of the cage. He felt hopeful for an instant, but soon discouragement got the upper hand.

      "I'm a big bird, Thumbietot," said Gorgo; "how can you ever manage to file away enough wires for me to come out? You'd better quit that, and leave me in peace."

      "Oh, go to sleep, and don't bother about me!" said the boy. "I'll not be through to-night nor to-morrow night, but I shall try to free you in time for here you'll become a total wreck."

      Gorgo fell asleep. When he awoke the next morning he saw at a glance that a number of wires had been filed. That day he felt less drowsy than he had done in the past. He spread his wings, and fluttered from branch to branch to get the stiffness out of his joints.

      One morning early, just as the first streak of sunlight made its appearance, Thumbietot awakened the eagle.

      "Try now, Gorgo!" he whispered.

      The eagle looked up. The boy had actually filed off so many wires that now there was a big hole in the wire netting. Gorgo flapped his wings and propelled himself upward. Twice he missed and fell back into the cage; but finally he succeeded in getting out.

      With proud wing strokes he soared into the clouds. Little Thumbietot sat and gazed after him with a mournful expression. He wished that some one would come and give him his freedom too.

      The boy was domiciled now at Skansen. He had become acquainted with all the animals there, and had made many friends among them. He had to admit that there was so much to see and learn there that it was not difficult for him to pass the time. To be sure his thoughts went forth every day to Morten Goosey-Gander and his other comrades, and he yearned for them. "If only I weren't bound by my promise," he thought, "I'd find some bird to take me to them!"

      It may seem strange that Clement Larsson had not restored the boy's liberty, but one must remember how excited the little fiddler had been when he left Skansen. The morning of his departure he had thought of setting out the midget's food in a blue bowl, but, unluckily, he had been unable to find one. All the Skansen folk—Lapps, peasant girls, artisans, and gardeners—had come to bid him good-bye, and he had had no time to search for a blue bowl. It was time to start, and at the last moment he had to ask the old Laplander to help him.

      "One of the tiny folk happens to be living here at Skansen," said Clement, "and every morning I