The Exploits of Moominpappa (Moominpappa's Memoirs) (4 page)

And the Muddler clutched his box tightly under his arm and rushed off.

'Somebody hold the verandah,' said Hodgkins. 'I think we'll manage. We'll take the boathouse to the houseboat and have breakfast afterwards.'

'Isn't the Joxter going to help?' I asked (because I was still a little cross with him).

'Born lazy,' explained Hodgkins. 'Has to be forbidden to lend a hand. Then does it. Possibly.'

And then the auxiliary engine wouldn't work. The paddles refused to turn the screw, and not even my mind was able to cope successfully with the problem. (My modesty compels me to admit that there are three fields where my genius appears to feel somewhat cramped, namely, engineering, mathematics, and cookery.)

The Muddler had fried us an omelette, because he had lost the pudding somewhere.

'O.K.?' he asked anxiously and looked at Hodgkins.

Hodgkins was chewing most carefully with a strange look on his face. Finally he said: 'These knobbly things. Stuffing, what?'

'Knobbly things!' cried the Muddler. 'That must be something from my collection. Spit them out, please!'

Hodgkins deposited them on his plate. They were black and bevelled and prickly.

'Oh,
please
excuse me!' cried the Muddler. 'It's my cogwheels. What luck you didn't swallow them!'

But Hodgkins didn't answer him. He frowned deeply and sat looking down at his plate.

Then the Muddler started to cry.

'Hodgkins, you'll have to forgive the Muddler,' said the Joxter. 'Can't you see that he's really sorry?'

'Forgive him?' said Hodgkins. 'My nephew has earned a medal.' And he produced a pencil and some paper and showed us where the bevelled cogwheels would make the screw turn. He drew it like this:

(I saw the point at once, but the others had to study it for a while.)

'You don't mean that you need
my
cogwheels for your invention?' cried the Muddler blissfully. 'Then I've almost built the auxiliary engine myself!'

The Muddler was so inspired by this that he donned his largest pinafore and started to paint
The Ocean Orchestra
at once. He painted with all his might. The houseboat was quite red when he had finished, and so was the ground, and most of the shipyard, too; and never in my life have I seen anything redder than the Muddler himself.

When it was all finished Hodgkins came for an inspection.

'Isn't it beautiful?' the Muddler said nervously, 'I've worked very carefully.'

Hodgkins looked at the water-line and said: 'Mphm.' Then he looked at the name on the prow and said: 'Mphm, mphm.'

'Is the spelling wrong?' asked the Muddler. 'Please say something or else I shall start crying again. Excuse me! It wasn't an easy name!'

'The Oshun, Oxtra,' spelled Hodgkins. 'Well. Well, well. Oh, yes. And why not? The water-line... I suppose the waves will fit in quite nicely. I see there's some paint left. Keep it.'

Then the Muddler was happy again and rushed away to paint his house.

And in the evening Hodgkins tried his net in the brook. And what did he find? You couldn't guess. A small binnacle, and inside it a brand new aneroid barometer! How strange to find such things in our little brook!

*

'Strange indeed,' said Moomintroll. He lay on his back beneath the lilac bushes looking at the bumblebees.

'Father,' he continued. 'Is it really quite true, all that you have written? Every word?'

'Every single word of it, my boy,' Moominpappa replied solemnly. 'I may have
stressed
some of the events a little, but that's only to make them more convincing.'

'I wonder what became of my father's collection,' Sniff said.

'Eh?' said Moomintroll.

'Father's button collection,' Sniff said. 'The Muddler was my father, wasn't he?'

'Certainly,' replied Moominpappa.

'Well, then, I'm just wondering,' Sniff said. 'I ought to have inherited it.'

'And what became of
my
father?' asked Snufkin.

'The Joxter?' said Moominpappa. 'Well, children, one doesn't always know what happens to daddies... or to their collections. Still, I have saved yours for posterity by writing about them.'

'He didn't like park keepers either,' mumbled Snufkin. 'Just think of that...'

They all stretched out their legs in the grass and lazily flapped their ears to drive the flies away. The weather was nice and sleepy.

'Have you written any more of it?' asked Moomintroll.

'Not yet,' replied Moominpappa. 'But if you can keep quiet now I'll finish the chapter and read it to you after dinner. Where's my memoir-pen?'

'Here,' said Snufkin. 'Please promise that you'll write the full truth and nothing but the truth about the Joxter! Even if he gets nabbed by the police.'

'I promise,' said Moominpappa, and continued his writing.

*

The day of the launching was unusually warm. Wonderful to behold
The Oshun Oxtra
resting in the shipyard on its four rubber wheels (for climbing sand banks), and on the roof of the boathouse shone a gilded knob.

'So you're moving again,' said the Joxter and yawned. 'What a life! No end of changing and building-up and pulling down again and jumping about. Such a lot of work may turn out to be really harmful. Oh, I'm dejected just to think of all the people who work and buzz and bumble about, and of what it all leads to. I had a cousin once who studied trigonometry until his whiskers drooped, and when he had learnt it all a Groke came and ate him up. When do we start?'

'Are you coming, too?' I asked.

'Of course!' said the Joxter in an astonished voice.

'Please excuse me,' said the Muddler, 'but as it happens I had also something like that in mind... I can't bear to live in my coffee tin any longer.'

'No?' I said.

'That red paint never dries!' explained the Muddler. 'Excuse me! It gets in my food and in the bed and in my whiskers. I'm going plumb crazy, Hodgkins, plumb crazy!'

'By all means don't,' said Hodgkins. 'Go and pack. Because we are launching
The Oshun Oxtra
today.'

'Gee!' cried the Muddler. 'Dear me, I have lots and lots to do! Such along journey... such a new life...' And the Muddler rushed off spattering paint in all directions.

But the launching gave us much to think about. The wheels of the houseboat were sunk deep in the moss, and the mast was hopelessly stuck in the fig thicket.

We dug up the ground. We pulled down the shipyard. Still
The Oshun Oxtra
didn't move.

Hodgkins sat down and put his head in his paws.

'Don't grieve. We'll find a way' I said.

'I'm not grieving. I'm thinking,' replied Hodgkins soberly. 'This is the problem. A ship is stuck. Un-movable. You can't push it in the river. Then the river must be pushed to the ship. How? You change its course. How? You damn it up. How? You pile stones in it.'

'How?' I asked.

'NO!' Hodgkins exclaimed with a force that made me jump. 'No stones. Edward the Booble. Sits down in the river. Fills it up. Makes a dam.'

'Is his behind so big?' I asked.

'Bigger,' Hodgkins said. 'Biggest animal in the world. Next to his brother. Have you a calendar?'

'No,' I said, beginning to feel excited.

'Pea-soup, day before yesterday
^*
Bathing-day today
⁺
,' mused Hodgkins. 'All clear then. Come along, Moomin.'

'Are Boobies nice?' I asked carefully as we walked along down the river beach.

'Not very. But not dangerous either,' said Hodgkins. 'Tread on you only by mistake. Then weep for a week afterwards. And pay for the funeral too.'

'No great help, that,' I said, feeling rather brave (for if you're not afraid how can you be really brave?).

'Here he is,' said Hodgkins suddenly.

'Where?' I said. 'Does he live in this tower?'

'No tower. It's his leg,' replied Hodgkins. 'Keep quiet now, please. I'll have to shout.'

And then he shouted at the top of his voice: 'Ahoy, up there! Hodgkins down here! Mr Edward, where are you bathing this fine day?'

'In the sea, of course, you sand flea,' replied a thunder somewhere in the sky.

'In the river! Running water! Excellent sand bottom!' roared Hodgkins.

'Lies and trumpery,' said Edward the Booble. 'Every mouseling knows the river is all full of stones.'

'No, no! Nice and smooth!' shouted Hodgkins back.

The Booble grumbled like a faraway thunderstorm. Then he said: 'All right. I'll bathe in the river. Get out of my way, I haven't the money for any more funerals. And if you've tricked me you'll have to pay for it yourself. You know I have such sensitive feet.'

'Now!' Hodgkins panted when we went running back. 'He'll sit down... in the river... angry... the water will rise... flooding the wood... and...'

'Here it comes!' I shouted, hearing a great splash in the distance.

We almost stumbled over the Joxter, who had curled himself up peacefully in the tool chest.

'All aboard!' cried Hodgkins. 'Sleeping on my tools, indeed!'

And no sooner had we lifted our tails inside the railing

when the flood wave reached our houseboat. In a whirling cascade of white foam
The Oshun Oxtra
was carried free from all its entanglements and was ploughing along through the wood. The paddles swished, the screw turned. The Muddler's cogs were functioning perfectly.