Knut Spelevink had never eaten collops, but however much he liked food, it seemed unbearable that he himself should become food for eagles.
The situation was indeed dangerous, but at this critical moment Knut felt something light as a flower creeping up his arm, up to his jacket collar, then to his chin and finally to his mouth. It was the little elf that had hidden in Knut's pocket, and was now creeping along and, with incredible difficulty, dragging after him the magic pipe which was seven times as long as himself.
"Blow!" said the elf.
Knut felt the pipe in his mouth and began to blow with a will. This time the tone was again pā.
The Forest King yawned, stretched out his branches, and mumbled something about having been disturbed in his midday nap. Then he threw himself down at full length beside the swamp, and in his fall crushed beneath his huge trunk the big ravenous eagle which the magic pipe had made too drowsy to fly away.
As Knut crept from among the branches, he heard a snoring through the forest as loud as if a hundred bears were growling their best for a wager; and he again took to his heels as nimbly as he could.
"I must certainly look out," thought Knut. "It is indeed dangerous here in the forest."
Without stopping for cloudberries or anything else, he continued to run and run while he could, but it was not easy, and by and by he had to walk slowly for the path was almost overgrown. The bramble-bushes seemed to have a spite against his trousers, tree branches caught hold of his jacket, and clung fast to it; the heather and the twigs of the blueberry-bushes pricked his bare feet But to The Ridge he meant to get and to The Ridge he did get without further adventure, arriving,—tired, hungry and blowsy,—at precisely four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Welcome, Knut Spelevink," said Mr. Peterman. "You look right cheerful this afternoon!"
"Why shouldn't I look cheerful when I have been offered feasts of hot bar iron, frozen quicksilver, a dewdrop and a gnat's leg, and seven cartloads of mud?" laughed Knut.