Moominpappa at Sea (20 page)

‘I’m sure there isn’t,’ replied his son, desperately hoping he had said the right thing.

Some gulls rose from the point, and began to circle over the island. They could feel the breakers underneath them, like someone breathing in the ground.

‘But the sea must be a living thing, then,’ mused
Moominpappa. ‘It can think. It behaves exactly as it feels inclined… it’s impossible to understand it… If the forest is afraid of the sea it must mean that the sea is alive, surely?’

Moomintroll nodded. His throat felt quite parched he was so excited.

Moominpappa was silent for a moment. Then he got up and said: ‘Then it’s the sea that’s breathing in the black pool. It’s the sea that tugs at the plumb-line. Everything’s quite clear. It went off with my
breakwater, it filled my nets with seaweed and tried to upset the boat…’

He stood staring at the ground, his nose all wrinkled with a frown. Then suddenly his face cleared and he said with a feeling of great relief: ‘Then I don’t
need
to understand! The sea’s just a weak character you can’t rely on…’

Moomintroll thought that Moominpappa was just talking to himself, so he said nothing. He watched him walk towards the lighthouse, leaving his exercise-book behind him in the heather.

There were lots more birds in the sky now, and they screamed as if possessed. Moomintroll had never seen so many birds all at once. The sky was almost black with them, little ones too, and they whirled round overhead wildly, more and more of them coming in from over the sea. Moomintroll gazed at them. He knew that they, too, were fleeing from the Groke and her dreadful coldness. But there was nothing he could do about it. But what did it matter, anyway? Pappa had talked to him in quite a new way, and he felt tremendously proud.

The others were standing outside the lighthouse, staring at the birds that seemed to fill the sky with their terrified cries. Then in a flash they flew off over the sea. The birds had gone, right out to sea, leaving nothing behind but the sound of the breakers.

The sea thundered in over the island, flinging the spray so high that it seemed to be snowing. Over at the western end of the island the waves looked like white dragons with gaping jaws.

‘I bet the fisherman’s pleased,’ Moomintroll thought.

Just at that moment it happened. He saw the fisherman’s little house of cement topple over, and the next wave washed away the walls.

The fisherman had managed to open the door in time, and dashed out like greased lightning through the foam. He crept under his boat, which was lying upside down on the rock. Nothing remained of the little house now except the iron clamps, sticking out of the rock like left-over teeth.

‘Well, bless my tail!’ Moomintroll thought. ‘Pappa was right. The sea is
really
bad-tempered!’

‘But he must be soaked to the skin!’ exclaimed Moominmamma. ‘And he may well be full of splinters of glass from the window… WE must look after him, now that he’s got nowhere to live!’

‘I’ll go and see how he is,’ said Moominpappa. ‘I fully intend to defend my island!’

‘But the whole point is under water, it’s dangerous!’ Moominmamma cried. ‘You might get washed away by the waves…’

Moominpappa leaped up and grabbed his plumb-line, which was hanging up under the stairs. He was exhilarated. He felt as light as air.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘The sea can do what it likes. Let it do its worst, I don’t care! I intend to protect every single person living on this island!’

Moominpappa went down the rock with Little My dancing round him. She shouted something, but it was
lost in the wind. Moomintroll stood in the heather gazing at the spot where the fisherman’s house had been.

‘You can come, too,’ said Moominpappa. ‘It’s high time you learned to defend yourself!’

They ran across to the island to the point, now under water. Little My was jumping up and down with excitement. Her hair, loosened by the wind, was blowing round her head like a halo.

Moominpappa looked at the angry sea, breaking over the island, throwing up spray and falling back again with a terrible sucking sound. And over the point the waves were thundering. It was here that they would have to cross. Moominpappa tied the rope round his waist and passed the end to his son.

‘Now hold on to this like grim death,’ he said. ‘Make a good knot and follow after me with the rope taut. We’ll fool the sea! The wind’s force seven! Force seven!’

Moominpappa waited until a huge wave had broken and then made for a rock sticking out of the water a little way away. It was dangerously slippery wherever he put his paws, but when the next wave broke he had passed the rock. The rope between him and Moomintroll tightened, the sea swirled under their paws, and turned them head over heels in the water. But the rope held.

When the wave had passed, they slid across the boulders and repeated the manoeuvre at the next big rock.

‘It’s high time you learned some manners!’ thought Moominpappa, meaning the sea, of course. ‘There’s a limit to everything… It doesn’t matter how much of a nuisance you make of yourself to us, we can put up with it. But to pick on that fisherman, poor wrinkled piece of seaweed that he is, when he admires you so much, is going a bit too far. It’s really quite upsetting…’

A mountainous wave broke over him, washing away his anger.

He was nearly across. The rope tightened round his waist. He grabbed the side of a rock and held on tight with all four paws. Yet another wave washed over him, and the rope went slack.

As soon as he got his nose out of the water, Moominpappa clambered up the point as quickly as he could. His paws were shaking. He began to haul the rope in with his son on the end. Moomintroll was bobbing up and down a little way off to leeward.

They sat next to each other on the rock shivering with cold. On the other side Little My was bouncing up and down like a ball, obviously cheering them like mad. Moomintroll looked at Moominpappa and they started to laugh. They had fooled the sea.

‘How goes it?’ shouted Moominpappa, sticking his nose under the fisherman’s boat. The fisherman turned his bright blue eyes towards him. He was drenched to the skin, but had escaped the flying glass from the window.

‘Do you feel like a nice cup of coffee?’ Moominpappa shouted above the noise of the wind.

‘I don’t know, it’s such a long time since I had one…’ The fisherman’s voice sounded like a cracked tin whistle. Suddenly Moominpappa felt terribly sorry for him. He was so small, he couldn’t possibly manage to get home by himself.

Moominpappa stood up and looked at Moomintroll.
He shrugged his shoulders and pulled a face, as if to say: ‘Well, that’s how it is; there’s nothing much we can do about it.’ Moomintroll nodded his head.

They began to walk as far as they could towards the point. The wind flattened their ears against the sides of their heads, and the salt spray made their faces smart. When they could walk no further Moominpappa and Moomintroll stopped and looked at the stately column of foam that rose in front of them with every wave, rising slowly, almost ceremoniously, and then falling back into the sea.

‘It’s an enemy worth fighting, anyway,’ shouted Moominpappa through the noise of the breakers.

Moomintroll nodded his head. He hadn’t heard what Moominpappa had said, but he understood all the same.

Something was being carried to the shore by the waves. It was a box. It was floating to leeward on one side of the point and was lying heavy in the water. It was strange how they understood each other without exchanging a word. Moomintroll jumped in and let himself be carried towards the box by a retreating wave while Moominpappa braced himself against the rock.

Moomintroll reached the box. It was heavy and had a handle made of rope. He could feel the line round his waist tighten as he was hauled to the shore again. It seemed to him that he was playing the most exciting and dangerous game he had ever played, and, what’s more, he was playing it with his own pappa.

They dragged the box ashore. It was intact. They discovered that it was a crate of whisky from some foreign land. They could tell from the outlandish designs on the outside in red and blue.

Moominpappa turned his eyes towards the sea, half in surprise and half in admiration. The waves were a deeper green now and the evening sun shone on their crests.

After the fisherman had fortified himself with a good strong whisky, they helped him across to the island. Moominmamma was standing there waiting for them with the lighthouse-keeper’s old clothes over her arm. She had found them in the bottom drawer of the desk.

‘I don’t like those trousers,’

said the fisherman, his teeth chattering.

‘I think they’re ugly’

‘You just go behind one of these boulders and put them on,’ said Moominmamma firmly. ‘It makes no difference whether you think they’re ugly or not.
They’re warm and, what’s more, they once belonged to a perfectly respectable lighthouse-keeper, and there’s nothing wrong with them, or with him for that matter, although he seems to have been a very melancholy sort of man.’

She put the clothes over the fisherman’s arm and made him go behind a boulder.

‘We’ve found a crate of whisky,’ Moomintroll told her.

‘Splendid!’ said Moominmamma. ‘Then we must go for a picnic!’

Moominpappa laughed. ‘You and your picnics,’ he said.

After a while the fisherman reappeared in a corduroy jacket and a pair of battered old trousers.

‘But they look as if they were made for you,’ exclaimed Moominmamma. ‘Now I think we should all go home and have a nice cup of coffee.’

Moominpappa noticed that she had said ‘home’ and not ‘the lighthouse’. It was the first time she had done it.

‘Oh, no!’ cried the fisherman. ‘Not there!’ He looked at his trousers in terror, and made off over the island as fast as his legs could carry him. They watched him disappear into the thicket.

‘You’ll have to take him some coffee in a thermos,’ said Moominmamma to Moomintroll. ‘Have you pulled that crate up so that it will be safe?’