nd. Perhaps he would
be lost out on the great sea. What should he do?

When he had shouted until he was tired and no one heard him, he put his
two little hands together and said, 'Good God, do not be angry with
Little Lasse.' And then he went to sleep. For although it was daylight,
old Nukku Matti was sitting on the shores of the 'Land of Nod,' and was
fishing for little children with his long fishing rod. He heard the low
words which Little Lasse said to God, and he immediately drew the boat
to himself and laid Little Lasse to sleep on a bed of rose leaves.

Then Nukku Matti said to one of the Dreams, 'Play with Little Lasse, so
that he does not feel lonesome.'

It was a little dream-boy, so little, so little, that he was less than
Lasse himself; he had blue eyes and fair hair, a red cap with a silver
band, and white coat with pearls on the collar. He came to Little Lasse
and said, 'Would you like to sail round the world?'

'Yes,' said Lasse in his sleep, 'I should like to.'

'Come, then,' said the dream-boy, 'and let us sail in your pea-shell
boats. You shall sail in _Hercules_ and I shall sail in _The Flea_.'

So they sailed away from the 'Land of Nod,' and in a little while
_Hercules_ and _The Flea_ were on the shores of Asia away at the other
end of the world, where the Ice Sea flows through Behring Straits into
the Pacific Ocean. A long way off in the winter mist they could see the
explorer Nordenskioeld with his ship _Vega_ trying to find an opening
between the ice. It was so cold, so cold; the great icebergs glittered
strangely, and the huge whales now lived under the ice, for they could
not make a hole through with their awkward heads. All around on the
dreary shore there was snow and snow as far as the eye could see; little
grey men in shaggy skins moved about, and drove in small sledges through
the snow drifts, but the sledges were drawn by dogs.

'Shall we land here?' asked the dream-boy.

'No,' said Little Lasse. 'I am so afraid that the whales would swallow
us up, and the big dogs bite us. Let us sail instead to another part of
the world.'

'Very well,' said the dream-boy with the red cap and the silver band;
'it is not far to America'--and at the same moment they were there.

The sun was shining and it was very warm. Tall palm trees grew in long
rows on the shore and bore coconuts in their top branches. Men red as
copper galloped over the immense green prairies and threw their arrows
at the buf