Next morning he came to the village where he lived, and he wanted to tell his friends how hungry he was; but at the first word he spoke they all burst out laughing, and as he went on they laughed louder and louder—it seemed so funny, though they couldn’t hear a word he said, they made so much noise themselves. Then they got to laughing so hard that they rolled over and over on the ground, and squeezed their sides, and cried with laughing, till they had to run away into their houses and shut their doors, or they would have been killed with laughing. He called to them to come out and give him something to eat, but as soon as they heard him they began to laugh again; and at last they shouted that if he didn’t go away they would kill him. So he went away into the woods and lived by himself; and whenever he wanted to hunt he had to tie a strap over his mouth, or the mock-bird would hear him and begin to laugh, and all the other birds and beasts would hear the mock-bird and laugh and run away.
The second brother said to Goose-cap; “I want to be the greatest of hunters without the trouble of hunting. Why should I go after the animals if I could make them come to me?”
Goose-cap knew why; still, he gave the man a little flute, saying: “Be sure you don’t use it till after you have got home.”
Then the hunter set off; but on the sixth day he was getting so near home that he said to himself: “I’m sure Goose-cap couldn’t hear me now if I blew the flute very gently, just to try it.” So he pulled out the flute and breathed into it as gently as ever he could—but as soon as his lips touched it the flute whistled so long and loud that all the beasts in the country heard it and came rushing from north and south and east and west to see what the matter was. The deer got there first, and when they saw it was a man with bow and arrows they tried to run away again; but they couldn’t, for the bears were close behind, all round, and pushed and pushed till the deer were all jammed up together and the man was squeezed to death in the middle of them.
The eldest brother, when the other two had set off for home, said to Goose-cap: “Give me great wisdom, so that I can marry the Mohawk chief’s daughter without killing her father or getting killed myself.” You see, the eldest brother was an Algonquin, and the Mohawks always hated the Algonquins.
Goose-cap stooped down on the shore and picked up a hard clam-shell; and he ground it and ground it, all that day and all the next night, till he had made a beautiful wampum bead of it. “Hang this round your neck by a thread of flax,” he said, “and go and do whatever the chief asks you.”
The eldest brother thanked him, and left the beautiful island, and traveled seven days and seven nights till he came to the Mohawk town. He went straight to the chief’s house, and said to him, “I want to marry your daughter.”
“Very well,” said the chief, “you can marry my daughter if you bring me the head of the great dragon that lives in the pit outside the gate.”
The eldest brother promised he would, and went out and cut down a tree and laid it across the mouth of the pit. Then he danced round the pit, and sang as he danced a beautiful Algonquin song, something like this: “Come and eat me, dragon, for I am fat and my flesh is sweet and there is plenty of marrow in my bones.” The dragon was asleep, but the song gave him beautiful dreams, and he uncoiled himself and smacked his lips and stretched his head up into the air and laid his neck on the log. Then the eldest brother cut off the head; snick-snack, and carried it to the chief.
“That’s right,” said the chief; but he was angry in his heart, and next morning, when he should have given away his daughter, he said to the Algonquin: “I will let you marry her if I see that you can dive as well as the wild duck in the lake.”