Selma Lagerlöf - The Greatest Works of Selma Lagerlöf

Down there in the glen Gorgo passed the summer in company with the little goslings, and was a good comrade for them. Since he regarded himself as a gosling, he tried to live as they lived; when they swam in the lake he followed them until he came near drowning. It was most embarrassing to him that he could not learn to swim, and he went to Akka and complained of his inability.

"Why can't I swim like the others?" he asked.

"Your claws grew too hooked, and your toes too large while you were up there on the cliff," Akka replied. "But you'll make a fine bird all the same."

The eaglet's wings soon grew so large that they could carry him; but not until autumn, when the goslings learned to fly, did it dawn upon him that he could use them for flight. There came a proud time for him, for at this sport he was the peer of them all. His companions never stayed up in the air any longer than they had to, but he stayed there nearly the whole day, and practised the art of flying. So far it had not occurred to him that he was of another species than the geese, but he could not help noting a number of things that surprised him, and he questioned Akka constantly.

"Why do grouse and lemming run and hide when they see my shadow on the cliff?" he queried. "They don't show such fear of the other goslings."

"Your wings grew too big when you were on the cliff," said Akka. "It is that which frightens the little wretches. But don't be unhappy because of that. You'll be a fine bird all the same."

After the eagle had learned to fly, he taught himself to fish, and to catch frogs. But by and by he began to ponder this also.

"How does it happen that I live on fish and frogs?" he asked. "The other goslings don't."

"This is due to the fact that I had no other food to give you when you were on the cliff," said Akka. "But don't let that make you sad. You'll be a fine bird all the same."

When the wild geese began their autumn moving, Gorgo flew along with the flock, regarding himself all the while as one of them. The air was filled with birds who were on their way south, and there was great excitement among them when 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.

Table of Contents

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.