"We shall travel to Öland; but we have never been there before," said
Akka. She thought that this was a bird to be trusted.
"It's too bad," said the swan. "They have lured you in the wrong direction. You're on the road to Blekinge. Now come with me, and I'll put you right!"
And so he flew off with them; and when he had taken them so far away from the track that they heard no calls, he disappeared in the mist.
They flew around for a while at random. They had barely succeeded in finding the birds again, when a duck approached them. "It's best that you lie down on the water until the mist clears," said the duck. "It is evident that you are not accustomed to look out for yourselves on journeys."
Those rogues succeeded in making Akka's head swim. As near as the boy could make out, the wild geese flew round and round for a long time.
"Be careful! Can't you see that you are flying up and down?" shouted a loon as he rushed by. The boy positively clutched the goosey-gander around the neck. This was something which he had feared for a long time.
No one can tell when they would have arrived, if they hadn't heard a rolling and muffled sound in the distance.
Then Akka craned her neck, snapped hard with her wings, and rushed on at full speed. Now she had something to go by. The gray goose had told her not to light on Öland's southern point, because there was a cannon there, which the people used to shoot the mist with. Now she knew the way, and now no one in the world should lead her astray again.
ÖLAND'S SOUTHERN POINT
April third to sixth.