If Nils Holgersson had immediately cried for help, the white goosey-gander certainly would have been able to save him; but the boy probably thought that he could protect himself, unaided, against a couple of crows.  He kicked and struck out, but the crows didn’t let go their hold, and they soon succeeded in raising themselves into the air with him.  To make matters worse, they flew so recklessly that his head struck against a branch.  He received a hard knock over the head, it grew black before his eyes, and he lost consciousness.

When he opened his eyes once more, he found himself high above the ground.  He regained his senses slowly; at first he knew neither where he was, nor what he saw.  When he glanced down, he saw that under him was spread a tremendously big woolly carpet, which was woven in greens and reds, and in large irregular patterns.  The carpet was very thick and fine, but he thought it was a pity that it had been so badly used.  It was actually ragged; long tears ran through it; in some places large pieces were torn away.  And the strangest of all was that it appeared to be spread over a mirror floor; for under the holes and tears in the carpet shone bright and glittering glass.

The next thing the boy observed was that the sun unrolled itself in the heavens.  Instantly, the mirror-glass under the holes and tears in the carpet began to shimmer in red and gold.  It looked very gorgeous, and the boy was delighted with the pretty colour-scheme, although he didn’t exactly understand what it was that he saw.  But now the crows descended, and he saw at once that the big carpet under him was the earth, which was dressed in green and brown cone-trees and naked leaf-trees, and that the holes and tears were shining fiords and little lakes.

He remembered that the first time he had travelled up in the air, he had thought that the earth in Skane looked like a piece of checked cloth.  But this country which resembled a torn carpet—­what might this be?

He began to ask himself a lot of questions.  Why wasn’t he sitting on the goosey-gander’s back?  Why did a great swarm of crows fly around him?  And why was he being pulled and knocked hither and thither so that he was about to break to pieces?

Then, all at once, the whole thing dawned on him.  He had been kidnapped by a couple of crows.  The white goosey-gander was still on the shore, waiting, and to-day the wild geese were going to travel to Oestergoetland.  He was being carried southwest; this he understood because the sun’s disc was behind him.  The big forest-carpet which lay beneath him was surely Smaland.

“What will become of the goosey-gander now, when I cannot look after him?” thought the boy, and began to call to the crows to take him back to the wild geese instantly.  He wasn’t at all uneasy on his own account.  He believed that they were carrying him off simply in a spirit of mischief.

The crows didn’t pay the slightest attention to his exhortations, but flew on as fast as they could.  After a bit, one of them flapped his wings in a manner which meant:  “Look out!  Danger!” Soon thereafter they came down in a spruce forest, pushed their way between prickly branches to the ground, and put the boy down under a thick spruce, where he was so well concealed that not even a falcon could have sighted him.