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They had bathed and primped, and now they lay and gulped half-rotten pond-weed and water-clover. The white goosey-gander had the good fortune to spy a perch. He grabbed it quickly, swam ashore with it, and laid it down in front of the boy. "Here's a thank you for helping me into the water," said he. It was the first time the boy had heard a friendly word that day.
There was a rejoicing, and a cackling, and a fluttering, and a calling which no one can describe, when they saw that the goosey-gander and Dunfin had succeeded in finding Thumbietot. The woods grew pretty high up on Taberg's sides, but her highest peak was barren; and from there one could look out in all directions.
He hadn't grasped the whys and wherefores of all this confusion, until he caught sight of a little long-legged dog who ran over the ice with a goose in his mouth. In a minute the boy was after that dog, to try and take the goose away from him. He must have heard the goosey-gander call to him: "Have a care, Thumbietot! Have a care!"
The goosey-gander got in head first. For an instant he lay motionless in the slime, but soon he poked up his head, shook the water from his eyes and sniffed. Then he swam, proudly, between reeds and seaweed. The wild geese were in the lake before him. They had not looked around for either the goosey-gander or for his rider, but had made straight for the water.
All the wild geese loved her, and the tame white goosey-gander would have died for her. When Dunfin asked for anything not even Akka could say no. As soon as Dunfin came to Lake Mälar the landscape looked familiar to her. Just beyond the lake lay the sea, with many wooded islands, and there, on a little islet, lived her parents and her brothers and sisters.
"But this concerns the life of the goosey-gander," he said to himself "he who has been my best friend ever since I last stood here." In a twinkling the boy remembered all that he and the goosey-gander had suffered on ice-bound lakes and stormy seas and among wild beasts of prey. His heart swelled with gratitude; he conquered himself and knocked on the door.
At last, when the tourists were gone, and the boy could crawl from his hiding place, he saw no wild geese, and no Morten Goosey-Gander came to fetch him. He called, "Here am I, where are you?" as loud as he could, but his travelling companions did not appear.
But the farmer's lad was about the worst thing the goosey-gander knew anything about, and as soon as it dawned on him that this puny creature actually believed that he couldn't make the trip, he decided to stick it out.
When the goosey-gander and the boy were so care-free, they did not observe, of course, that the three foxes had come up on the mountain plain. And the foxes, who knew that it was well-nigh impossible to take the life of a goose on an open plain, thought at first that they wouldn't chase after the goosey-gander.
He darted forward as though he'd been shot; grabbed a goose by the wing, and ran toward land again. But this night the wild geese were not alone on the ice, for they had a human being among them little as he was. The boy had awakened when the goosey-gander spread his wings. He had tumbled down on the ice and was sitting there, dazed.
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