Although it was pretty down on the shore, the boy liked it still better on the mountain height.  It was ghastly down here; for everywhere they came across dead sheep.  It was here that the foxes had held their orgies.  He saw skeletons whose flesh had been eaten, and bodies that were half-eaten, and others which they had scarcely tasted, but had allowed to lie untouched.  It was heart-rending to see how the wild beasts had thrown themselves upon the sheep just for sport—­just to hunt them and tear them to death.

The big ram did not pause in front of the dead, but walked by them in silence.  But the boy, meanwhile, could not help seeing all the horror.

Then the big ram went up on the mountain height again; but when he was there he stopped and said:  “If someone who is capable and wise could see all the misery which prevails here, he surely would not be able to rest until these foxes had been punished.”  “The foxes must live, too,” said the boy.  “Yes,” said the big ram, “those who do not tear in pieces more animals than they need for their sustenance, they may as well live.  But these are felons.”  “The peasants who own the island ought to come here and help you,” insisted the boy.  “They have rowed over a number of times,” replied the ram, “but the foxes always hid themselves in the grottoes and crevices, so they could not get near them, to shoot them.”  “You surely cannot mean, father, that a poor little creature like me should be able to get at them, when neither you nor the peasants have succeeded in getting the better of them.”  “He that is little and spry can put many things to rights,” said the big ram.

They talked no more about this, and the boy went over and seated himself among the wild geese who fed on the highland.  Although he had not cared to show his feelings before the ram, he was very sad on the sheep’s account, and he would have been glad to help them.  “I can at least talk with Akka and Morten goosey-gander about the matter,” thought he.  “Perhaps they can help me with a good suggestion.”

A little later the white goosey-gander took the boy on his back and went over the mountain plain, and in the direction of Hell’s Hole at that.

He wandered, care-free, on the open mountain roof—­apparently unconscious of how large and white he was.  He didn’t seek protection behind tufts, or any other protuberances, but went straight ahead.  It was strange that he was not more careful, for it was apparent that he had fared badly in yesterday’s storm.  He limped on his right leg, and the left wing hung and dragged as if it might be broken.

He acted as if there were no danger, pecked at a grass-blade here and another there, and did not look about him in any direction.  The boy lay stretched out full length on the goose-back, and looked up toward the blue sky.  He was so accustomed to riding now, that he could both stand and lie down on the goose-back.

When the goosey-gander and the boy were so care-free, they did not observe, of course, that the three foxes had come up on the mountain plain.