The Exploits of Moominpappa Page 4

  Yes, of course. But still…

  Great talent and an unquiet heart are often combined. My heart has always longed for new places and new acquaintances.

  I sat in the prow looking ahead, while I pondered over my experiences so far. They were as follows:

  1. Try to have your Moomin babies born at an astro-logically suitable moment, and give them a romantic entry into the world.

  2. People do not like to hear about Hemulens when they have other things to do.

  3. You never can tell what aneroid barometers may be caught in any net.

  4. Never paint a coffee tin simply because there’s some paint left over.

  5. All big animals are not dangerous.

  6. All small animals are not afraid.

  7. Try to avoid saving people in the dark.

  While I sat sorting out these remarkable truths of life the houseboat rounded the last of the small islands – and suddenly my heart took a jump straight into my throat and stuck there.

  Before us lay the Ocean, blue, wide and glittering!

  ‘Hodgkins!’ I shouted. ‘Ocean ahead!’

  ‘It’s too big!’ said the Muddler and vanished into his tin. ‘Excuse me! It tickles my eyes ana I don’t know what to think!’

  The Joxter came on deck and wondered. He had nevar seen the Ocean before.

  ‘How blue it is,’ he said. ‘Let’s steer straight ahead and just roll and sleep and never arrive anywhere!’

  ‘You’re talking like a Hattifattener,’ Hodgkins said.

  ‘A what?’ I asked.

  ‘A Hattifattener,’ answered Hodgkins. ‘Never seen one? No peace, no rest. Always travelling. Travel and travel without a word. Dumb.’

  ‘How strange,’ I said. ‘What a curious world it is.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Hodgkins.

  We found a harbour in a little round cove like a polished tub between the towering rocks and cliffs.

  And then we went ashore to gather sea-shells. The beach was full of red and yellow sea-weed, of transparent jelly-fish and crabs and sea-urchins.

  We admired the sand that was elegantly raked in little wavy stripes by the sea spooks. We climbed up and down among the cliffs that were smooth as silk and quite warm in the basking evening sun. The Muddler went wading along the beach to look for curious pebbles.

  I’m sure my son Moomintroll has inherited my taste for beaches. I feel proud of him when he goes pearl-diving or cave-discovering or salvaging wreckage! But to be out at sea and to have only the horizon before one’s eyes is often a little tedious to Moomins. We like changing things, all that is unexpected and strange and mixed-up, like beaches, and sunsets, and spring.

  Now evening came, very slowly and carefully, to give the day ample time to go to bed. Small clouds lay strewn

  over the sky like dabs of pink whipped cream. They were reflected in the ocean that rested calm and smooth. It looked quite harmless. ‘Have you ever seen a cloud really close?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Hodgkins. Damp and chilly, I expect.’

  ‘I think they’re more like blanc-mange,’ said the Joxter. We sat talking on a rock. The air was filled with the tang of sea-weed and of something else that could only have been the ocean smell.

  I felt so happy that I wasn’t even afraid it wouldn’t last

  ‘Don’t you feel good?’ I asked.

  ‘Rather,’ Hodgkins answered. (I knew by that that he was exceedingly and enormously happy.)

  In that moment I caught sight of a whole flotilla of small ships putting out to sea. Light as butterflies they went gliding away over their own reflections. All were manned by a silent crew: little grey-white beings huddled close together and staring out towards the horizon.

  ‘Hattifatteners,’ Hodgkins said.

  ‘Hattifatteners!’ I whispered excitedly. ‘Putting out on their endless voyages…’

  ‘Mind you don’t touch them if there’s a thunderstorm about,’ said Hodgkins. ‘Makes them electric. Sting like nettles.’

  ‘They used to live a wicked life,’ said the Joxter.

  ‘A wicked life?’ I repeated with interest. ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t quite know,’ said the Joxter. ‘Trampling down people’s gardens and drinking beer and so on, I suppose.’

  We sat there for a long time looking after the Hattifatteners sailing out towards the horizon. I really couldn’t help it, but I felt a vague desire to join them on their voyage and to share their wicked life for a while. But I didn’t say it.

  ‘Well, and what about tomorrow?’ asked the Joxter. ‘Do we sail?’

  Hodgkins looked at The Oshun Oxtra. ‘There might be a storm,’ he said a little dubiously.

  ‘Let’s toss,’ said the Joxter. ‘Muddler! Won’t you lend us a button from your collection?’

  The Muddler jumped out of the water and started to empty his pockets on the rock.

  ‘One’s enough, dear nephew,’ Hodgkins said.

  ‘Take your choice, folks,’ said the Muddler happily. ‘Two or four holes? Bone, plush, wood, glass, metal or mother-of-pearl? One-coloured, mottled, speckled, spotted, striped or checkered? Round, concave, convex, flat, octagonal, or…’

  ‘Just a trouser button,’ said the Joxter. ‘Here goes. Right side upwards: we sail. What’s upwards?’

  ‘The holes,’ said the Muddler, peering close at the button in the dusk.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but what else?’

  Just then the Muddler whisked his whiskers so that the button disappeared in a crack.

  ‘Excuse me!’ he exclaimed. ‘Have another, please.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said the Joxter. ‘You can’t toss more than once for anything. We’ll let fate decide, because I’m sleepy.’

  The night that followed aboard The Oshun Oxtra wasn’t very pleasant.

  When I went to bed I found my sheets all sticky and messy with some kind of treacly substance. The door handles were sticky, too, and so were my slippers and my tooth-brush, and Hodgkins’ logbook simply wouldn’t open at all.

  ‘Nephew,’ he said. ‘You haven’t done these cabins very well today.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ replied the Muddler reproachingly. ‘I haven’t done them at all!’

  ‘My tobacco’s a single horrible, smeary mess,’ exploded the Joxter, who loved to smoke a last pipe in bed.

  At last we calmed down and tried to curl up in the driest places. But all night we were disturbed by strange noises and thumpings that seemed to come from the steering cabin.

  I awoke to a terrible banging and clanging of the ship’s bell.

  ‘Rise up, rise up! All hands on deck!’ shouted the Muddler outside my door. ‘Water everywhere! So big! A lone, lone sea! And I left my best pen-wiper on the beach! My little pen-wiper’s laying there all alone…’

  We rushed out.

  The Oshun Oxtra lay drifting in the open sea. No land was in sight. Our anchor-rope was torn off.

  ‘Now I’m angry,’ Hodgkins said. ‘Really and truly. Angrier than ever before in my life. Somebody’s bitten off the anchor-rope.’

  We looked at each other in mute reproach.

  ‘You know my teeth aren’t big enough,’ I said.

  ‘And I’ve got a knife, so it wouldn’t have been very practical to gnaw at the rope, would it?’ said the Joxter.

  ‘It wasn’t me!’ cried the Muddler. We always took the Muddier at his word, because nobody had ever heard him tell a fib (not even about his collection). I expect he hadn’t the imagination.

  Just then we heard a little cough behind us, and when we turned round a small Nibling was sitting under the sun-tent.

  ‘I see,’ Hodgkins said grimly. ‘That explains the logbook. But why the anchor-rope?’

  ‘I’m teething,’ the little Nibling answered shyly. ‘I had to gnaw at something.’

  ‘But why the anchor-rope?’ Hodgkins repeated.

  ‘It looked so old and worn so I thought you wouldn’t mind, ‘said the Nibling.

  ‘Why did yo
u stow away when the other Niblings left?’ I asked.

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ answered the Nibling. ‘I’m often having ideas that I can’t explain.’

  ‘And where did you hide?’ the Joxter wondered.

  ‘In your excellent binnacle,’ said the Nibling. (Yes; the binnacle was quite sticky, too.)

  ‘Nibling,’ I said a little severely. ‘Whafll your mother say when she sees that you’ve run away?’

  ‘She’ll cry, I suppose,’ said the Nibling.

  CHAPTER 4

  In which the description of my Ocean voyage culminates in a magnificent tempest and ends in a terrible surprise.

  STRAIGHT across the Ocean The Oshun Oxtra ploughed her lonely wake. One day after another went bobbing by, each one as sunny and sleepy and blue as the next. Schools of sea spooks crossed our course, and now and then a tittering trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them with oatmeal.

  I liked to take my turn at the helm sometimes at night fall. Often I could see the Joxter’s pipe aglow in the dark when he came astern and sat down by my side.

  ‘You’ll have to admit that it’s fun to be lazy,’ he said one night, and knocked the ashes from his pipe against the railing.

  Who’s lazy?’ I asked. ‘I’m steering. And you’re smoking.’

  ‘Wherever you’re steering us,’ said the Joxter.

  ‘That’s quite another matter,’ I replied (I’ve always had a logical mind). ‘Don’t say you’re having Forebodings again.’

  ‘No,’ said the Joxter. ‘It’s all the same to me where we go. All places are all right. G’night.’

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ I said.

  When Hodgkins relieved me at dawn I asked him if he didn’t think it strange that the Joxter should take so little interest in things in general.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Hodgkins. ‘Perhaps he’s interested enough in everything. Only he doesn’t overdo it. To us there’s always something that is very important. When you were small you wanted to know. Now you want to become. I want to do. The Muddler likes his belongings. The Nibling likes other people’s belongings.’

  ‘And the Joxter likes to do forbidden things,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hodgkins. ‘But even they’re not very important to him. He’s just living.’

  ‘Mm,’ I replied.

  It was the first time Hodgkins had talked about anything but practical matters. But soon he became himself again.

  Later in the day the Muddler came up with the idea that we should send a wire to the Nibling’s mother.

  ‘No address. No telegraph office,’ Hodgkins said.

  ‘Oh, no, sure,’ said the Muddler. ‘How stupid of me! Excuse me!’ And he disappeared in his tin again. Although he was a little pink we could see that he blushed.

  ‘What’s a telegraph office?’ asked the Nibling, who now shared the tin with the Muddler. ‘Can you eat it?’

  ‘Don’t ask me!’ said the Muddler. ‘It’s something big and intricate. It’s where you can send all kinds of little signs to other places from.… And then they change into words.’

  ‘How do you send them?’ asked the Nibling.

  ‘Through the air!’ said the Muddler gesticulating. ‘Not a single one gets lost on the way!’

  ‘Dear me,’ said the Nibling.

  After that he sat for the rest of the day craning his neck to catch sight of some telegraph signs. That was why he was the first to see the three clouds.

  They came flapping towards us in a small, frightened huddle – and after them came a black cloud looking very sharp and evil.

  ‘It’s a wolf chasing three little lambs,’ said the Joxter lazily.

  ‘How terrible! Can’t we save them?’ cried the Muddler. (He was only a child and believed all that was said to him.)

  But Hodgkins wanted to amuse his nephew. He made a running noose on a light rope, and when the first of the clouds came sailing over us he threw the rope like a lariat after it. (Which shows once again that Hodgkins wasn’t always his usual self.)

  We were a bit surprised when the rope caught the cloud round the middle and held it!

  ‘Well, I say,’ said Hodgkins.

  ‘Pull!’ cried the Muddler. ‘Save the lamb from the wolf! Save all three of them!’

  And Hodgkins pulled the cloud aboard, and then he caught the other two also.

  The black wolf continued his course, so near that he brushed against the gilded knob on the boat-house.

  There lay our three clouds in safety. They nearly

  covered all the free space on deck. And at close quarters they weren’t very unlike whipped cream.

  The Nibling chewed at one of them a little and said it tasted like his pencil eraser at home.

  The clouds completely covered the Muddler’s tin, and this worried him. Hodgkins was worried, too. No captain likes unnecessary things on his deck, and he found it difficult even to walk astern to the helm. He sank up to his ears at every step.

  Only the Joxter was pleased.

  ‘Fomenting compresses,’ he said, and crept into one of the clouds to sleep.

  We tried to push the things into the hold, but as soon as we had stowed down one corner another popped out again. So we had to give it up.

  (Afterwards we wondered why we hadn’t thought of heaving them overboard. Thank goodness we didn’t do that!)

  In the afternoon, just before sunset, the sky changed to a curious yellow. It wasn’t a friendly colour but a dirty and uncanny yellow. Over the horizon appeared a row of narrow, black and frowning clouds.

  ‘The whole pack’s out a-hunting,’ said the Joxter.

  We were sitting together under the sun-tent. The Muddler and the Nibling had succeeded in excavating their tin and had carried it astern where the deck was still cloudless.

  The rolling sea had turned black and grey, and the sun grew hazy. The wind whistled anxiously in the stays. All the sea spooks and mermaids had disappeared. We felt slightly worried by it all.

  ‘Moomin,’ said Hodgkins. ‘What does the glass say?’

  I crept ahead over the clouds and climbed the stairs to the steering cabin. I stared at the aneroid barometer. The needle pointed at twenty-five; obviously it had tried to go still lower but had stuck.

  I felt my face become stiff with suspense, and thought: ‘I’m turning pale – exactly like you read in books.’ I looked in the mirror. Quite right. I was white as cottonwoosd,

  or chalk, or newly washed Moomin feet. It was exciting.

  I hurried back and said: ‘Do you see that I’m deathly pale?’

  ‘No,’ said the Joxter. ‘You’re rather red in the face.’

  ‘Well, what did it say?’ Hodgkins asked.

  ‘It’s gone again, then,’ I said a little crossly. ‘Twenty-five.’

  Hodgkins didn’t turn pale. He said at once in a steady voice:

  ‘Joxter! Furl the sail. Moomin! Make fast all stays, sheets, hawsers, hatches, handles, bundles and everything you can lay your hands on! The Muddler and the Nibling are to keep in their tin and put the lid on. We’re in for a gale.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ we all shouted, and with a calm and manly glance at the now pale-purple sea under the yellow sky, we went to our important duties.

  The gale was over us in an instant, so suddenly that The Oshun Oxtra dived on her nose and nearly stood on her head for a while.

  I hadn’t had time to take down the sun-tent, and it was torn away like a leaf and flapped out to sea. (It was a nice sun-tent. I hope somebody found it and enjoyed it.)

  ‘Start the engine!’ Hodgkins shouted through the gale. But the hatch was deep under the clouds, and I suppose the cogwheels wouldn’t have fitted in anyway just then. The engine had been freakish lately.

  The Muddler’s tin had jammed and stuck under the railing, and every time The Oshun Oxtra took a dive or was lifted high on a wave-crest all his buttons, suspenders, tin-openers, and glass pearls made a terrible clatter inside. The Muddler cried that
he was feeling sick, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. We could only cling to the holds we had and stare out over the darkening ocean.

  The sun was gone. The horizon was gone. We were in the midst of a black and frightening turmoil with flecks of white foam flying past us everywhere like hissing ghosts.

  Hodgkins clung steadily to the helm, and the Joxter and I clung to each other. The Joxter tried to shout something, but I could hear nothing but the roar of the wind. He pointed ahead.

  I looked and saw a large, inflated balloon carrying us forwards with great speed. But it wasn’t our sail – it was one of our clouds.

  ‘That’s the end of it,’ I thought dizzily.

  Then the second cloud moved. It flattened out, and in a second the gale had blown into it and stretched it to a big sail.

  But it didn’t burst. It stretched like another rubber balloon, and The Oshun Oxtra plunged forward shaking and creaking in every seam. Now we were rushing along as fast as the gale itself.

  Then the third cloud took to the air, and it lifted the houseboat almost clear of the water. Like an albatross, like the Flying Dutchman, like a Moomin ghost ship we sailed on.

  It all resembled a dream or a huge merry-go-round. My fright passed, and I intoned a song of victory about invincible Moomins.

  When the darkness finally began to change to a morning grey I was aware that I was cold and that the Joxter had grabbed my tail in a smarting grip.

  The wild roar of the hurricane had toned down to an even whistling, and the movements of The Oshun Oxtra told me that she was in the water once more. Two of the clouds had furled themselves again, and I could hear the buttons rattling about inside the Muddler’s tin.

  Another day was dawning.

  I carefully moved one leg and then the other one. Both were safe and sound. Then I politely asked the Joxter to let go of my tail.

  ‘Oh, was it yours,’ he said. ‘I thought it was the backstay all the time.’

  A pale light was spreading over the sea and exposed the sad state of The Oshun Oxtra. The mast was broken. The paddles gone. My beautiful house was badly demolished, most of all the fretwork on the verandah. Worst of all, the gilt knob had disappeared from the roof top.