The Exploits of Moominpappa (Moominpappa's Memoirs) (11 page)

We moored ship in the cove (the map will show you), and Hodgkins remained aboard and started inventing trap doors for the Autocrat. The Joxter settled down in an apple tree on the eastern side, and I moved the Moominhouse from the boat to the western shore. The Muddler's tin was rolled up on the hill in the middle of the island, because he was a little scared to live near the edges, he said. The rest of the island belonged to the Mymble's daughter - except the tip of the heart which we chose for a secret meeting-place.

We held the first council (to make laws for the colony) on a Thursday at dusk. Each of us had a large sea-shell to sit on, and Hodgkins pulled the bung from a hollow tree that we had filled with a supply of Daddy Jones's home made palm wine.

The Muddler served us corn cobs (my favourite food) and plum cake. A bright orange moon was poking its head over the horizon. The night was quite warm.

'And now, what is a colonist, please?' I asked.

'Colonists are strangers in a country that do not quite like to live alone,' explained the Joxter. 'So they move together in the wilderness and start quarrelling, I believe. I suppose they like that better than not to have anybody to quarrel with.'

'Do we have to quarrel?' asked the Muddler. 'I wouldn't like it Excuse me! Ifssosad!'

'Bless me, no,' said Hodgkins. 'We're going to live in peace.'

"Exactly,' said the Joxter. 'And sometimes we'll make something unusual and sudden happen. Then peace again. What?'

'Exactly!' we all said.

'My tree on the sunside,' the Joxter continued dreamily. 'Songs and apples and sleeping late, you know. Nobody buzzing around and telling me that things cannot be postponed.... I'm going to let things run themselves.'

'And do they?' asked the Muddler.

'Do
they?' exclaimed the Joxter. 'Just leave them alone and you'll be surprised. The oranges grow, and the flowers open, and now and then a new Joxter is born to eat them and smell them. And the sun shines on it all.'

'Great big oranges,' said the Nibling. (He sat by himself drinking milk, because he was too small for palm wine.)

'You, little Nibling,' said Hodgkins kindly. 'You're going home to your mother. Tomorrow morning on the packet boat.'

'You don't say,' said the Nibling and sipped his milk.

'But I'll stay,' said the Mymble's daughter. 'Until I'm grown-up. Hodgkins, can't you invent anything to make Mymbles grow terribly big?'

'A small one's enough,' I said.

'That's what mother says, too,' she replied. 'D'you know, I was born in a clam and wasn't bigger than a water-flea when mother found me in her aquarium!'

'Fibbing again,' I said. 'I know perfectly well that people grow inside their mothers, like apple seeds.'

'Any way you like,' said the Mymble's daughter.

Just then the Joxter half-rose and said:

'Wait a bit! Here's something funny...'

A ragged cloud passed across the moon. We listened intently. Everything was silent.

'You're trying to scare us!' said the Muddler. 'We're the only colonists on this island.'

'Perhaps,' said the Joxter and sat down again. 'I just had a kind of feeling that somebody went sneaking over the sand. Like apple seeds, did you say?'

'Yes, or a plum-stone,' I replied. 'Are you sure you're mistaken? Didn't you see anybody?'

'Something grey and misty, perhaps - I don't really know,' mumbled the Joxter. 'It glided, sort of.'

'I'm cold,' said the Muddler nervously. 'Excuse me, won't anybody take me home?'

'You can stay with me tonight,' said the Mymble's daughter. 'I'm terribly brave.'

'Is your house strong?' asked the Muddler.

'Concrete and stone!' she answered.

(Of course we all knew that she was lodging under a big leaf.)

But the Muddler felt easier, and they walked off together with the Nibling, as soon as we had tied an address label to his tail for the voyage and kissed him on the nose. (It was greatly to his honour that he didn't bite anybody's snout for a farewell.)

'Best regards to your mother,' Hodgkins said. 'And don't sink the packet boat.'

'I shan't,' said the Nibling happily, and so he went.

'Well,' Hodgkins said and drained his wine cup. 'I suppose we'll call it a day, too. The laws can wait.'

'Couldn't we have an outlaw colony?' asked the Joxter. 'Laws are always a bother.'

'Ought to break them first, of course,' Hodgkins said. 'I mean, something has to go wrong before you know a law is called for.'

'But if you do something the wrong way and nothing goes wrong afterwards?' I asked. 'It happens, you know. Does that call for a law, too?'

'A poser, that,' Hodgkins said. 'Good night, everybody!'

We separated at the Muddler's tin, that stood empty and abandoned on the hill-top (as usual he had forgotten to put the lid on).

I walked on alone to my house.

It stood beautifully outlined against the sky between the cliff-tops by the beach. The sand glittered in the moonlight, and all the shadows were pitch-black. I mounted the stairs to the former steering-cabin and opened the window. The night was so silent that you could hear the big furry moths brushing their wings.

Then the door downstairs gave a creak.

A cold draught swept up from below and breathed down my neck.

Now, afterwards, I'm sure I wasn't scared; I simply took natural precautions. Determinedly I crawled under the bed and waited.

Soon the stairs began to creak also. One small creak, and then another. There were nineteen steps, I knew, because the staircase had been quite a complicated affair to build (it was a winding staircase, of course). I counted nineteen creaks, then everything was silent once more, and I thought: 'It's standing by the door.'

*

Here Moominpappa stopped reading. The thrill was intense.

'Sniff,' he said, 'turn up the wick, please. Do you know, my paws become all wet when I read about that ghastly experience!'

'Then it was a ghost?' asked Moomintroll who had pulled his quilt up to his ears.

'It was a ghost,' replied Moominpappa seriously.

'Did my daddy the Joxter like that Mymble very much?' Snufkin suddenly asked.

'I think he did,' said Moominpappa a little thoughtfully.

'More than me?' asked Snufkin.

'He never saw you, you know,' said Moominpappa. 'I mean - if he'd seen you I suppose he'd liked you more still. But Snufkin dear, don't look so downcast Wait a bit, I'll show you something!'

Moominpappa went to the big corner cabinet and started a search on the lowest shelf. After a while he returned and laid a glistening white shark's tooth on Snufkin's bed.

'It's yours,' he said. 'Your daddy used to admire it.'

'What a good taste he had. Thanks a lot!' Snufkin said. He was happy again.

'What became of the other lottery prizes?' asked Sniff. 'The meerschaum tram's under the drawing-room pier-glass, but what about the others?'

'Well, we never had any champagne,' Moominpappa thoughtfully replied. 'So I expect the whisk is still somewhere at the back of the kitchen drawer. And the smoked-ring evaporated in a few years...'

'But the organ-grinding handle!' cried Sniff.

Moominpappa looked at him.

'If I only knew your birthday,' he said. 'Your daddy the Muddler always was a careless one with calendars.'

'I can choose any day,' Sniff said.

'All right, you may expect a mysterious parcel any day,' Moominpappa said. 'Shall I read some more?'

Moomintroll nodded.

And Moominpappa started to read again.

*

The door opened slightly and very slowly, and a little grey wisp of smoke floated through the crack and curled up on my carpet. Two pale and shining eyes blinked at the top of the curl. I saw it all very clearly from my hiding-place under the bed.

'It's a ghost,' I said to myself. And funnily enough it was much less frightening to look at him than it had been to listen to him coming up the stairs.

The room had suddenly grown cold with an icy draught, and the ghost sneezed.

I don't know how you'd have felt, but for my part I immediately lost much of my respect. So I crawled out from under the bed and said: 'Cold night, sir!'

'Yes,' replied the ghost in an annoyed tone. 'A bleak night of fate resounding with the horrible wails of the phantoms of the gorge!'

'What can I do for you?' I asked politely.

'On a night of fate like this,' the ghost continued stubbornly, 'the forgotten bones are rattling on the silent beach!'

'Whose bones?' I asked (still very politely).

'The
forgotten
bones,' said the ghost, 'Pale horror grins over the damned island! Mortal, beware!' The ghost uncurled, gave me a terrible look and floated back towards the half-open door. The back of his head met the door-jamb with a resounding bang.

'Oop!' said the ghost.

I didn't hide my delight.

With a last hiss the ghost glided downstairs and out into the moonlight. Down on the ground he turned and bade me farewell with three horrible laughs.

'I'll have to tell the others tomorrow,' I said to myself. 'Perhaps Hodgkins can invent a ghost-proof lock to put on my door.'

Hodgkins took the matter more seriously than I had expected. 'That kind of a ghost can be troublesome enough,' he said. 'If you laugh at him. When he would like to frighten you.'

'Do you know what he's done tonight?' asked the Joxter. 'He's painted a skull and crossbones and the word "poison" on the Muddler's tin, and the Muddler's feeling very offended and says he isn't that kind of person.'

'How childish,' I said.

'Yes, and then there are all kinds of warnings in red paint all over
The Oshun Oxtra,'
continued the Joxter, 'and I suppose he hasn't finished yet.'

He hadn't.

The Island Ghost pestered us all the week; every night became filled with owl-hoots and knocks and tables jumping around and breaking. And when he finally found a piece of chain in Hodgkins's tool chest and ratttled it for four hours at a stretch the situation became unbearable. We decided to invite the ghost to a secret council and talk some sense into him. So we nailed a message to the palm-wine tree:

Dear Island Ghost,

For obvious reasons a special Ghost Council will be held at this place on Tuesday before sunset Members' complaints will be attended to. Bring no chains, please.

Board of the Royal Colony

'Since when are we royal?' asked the Muddler.

'Since I became Inventor to the King,' answered Hodgkins.

'I must ask mother to embroider crowns on all my undies,' said the Mymble's daughter.

'It was more fun to have an Outlaw Colony,' I said. 'I'm feeling royal anyway.'

The ghost replied in the afternoon, with red paint on parchment (The parchment was found to be Hodgkins's old raincoat, nailed to the tree with the Mymble's daughter's breadknife.)

Hodgkins read the message aloud:

'The Hour of Fate is nearing. Tuesday,
but
at midnight, when the Hounds of Death are howling in the lonely wilderness! Vain creatures, hide your snouts in the cold earth that rings with the heavy tread of the Invisible! Your Fate is written in blood on the walls of the Chambers of Terror. I'll bring my chain if I like.