Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson Page A

to put them in? Or perhaps it was something about it being nice to have porridge for a change. Something like that anyway.
    Moominpappa had put his fishing-rod in the corner and gone out for a walk along the edge of the water, but not near the fisherman’s point.
    It was a cloudy and completely calm day. You could hardly see the surface of the water heaving in a slow swell after the east wind, and it was as grey as the sky and looked like silk. Some ducks were flying close to the water, very quickly and obviously going about their own business. Moominpappa walked with one paw on the rock and the other in the water, dragging his tail in the sea. The lighthouse-keeper’s hat was pulled down over his nose and he was wondering whether there would be a storm or not. A real storm. One would have to rush round saving things and making sure that the family wasn’t swept away. Then climb the lighthouse tower and see how strong the wind was… come down again and say: ‘The wind’s force thirteen. We must keep quite calm. There’s nothing to get worked up about…’
    Little My was catching sticklebacks.
    ‘Why aren’t you fishing?’ she asked.
    ‘I’ve given up fishing,’ Moominpappa answered.
    ‘That must be a relief for you,’ Little My remarked. ‘You must have found it an awful bore after a while.’
    ‘You’re quite right!’ said Moominpappa, surprised. ‘It did become terribly boring. Why didn’t I notice it myself ?’

    He went and sat on the lighthouse-keeper’s little ledge and thought: ‘I must do something different, something new. Something tremendous.’
    But he didn’t know what it was he wanted to do. He was quite bewildered and confused. It reminded him of the time long ago when the Gafsan’s daughter had pulled the mat from under his feet. Or like sitting in the air next to a chair but not on it. No it wasn’t like that either. It was as if he had been taken in by something.
    As he sat there looking at the silky-grey surface of the sea that seemed to refuse to work itself up into a storm, the feeling of being taken in by somebody or something got stronger and stronger. ‘Just you wait,’ he muttered to himself, ‘I’ll find out, I’ll get to the bottom of this…’ He didn’t know whether he meant the sea, the island or the black pool. Perhaps he meant the lighthouse or the lighthouse-keeper. In any case it sounded very menacing. He shook his perplexed head and went and sat by the black pool. There he continued to think, his nose in his paws. From time to time the breakers washed in over the threshold and disappeared in the black, mirror-like water.
    ‘This is where storms have washed in for hundreds of years,’ he thought. ‘Cork floats and pieces of bark and small sticks have been carried in by the waves and then carried out again, it must have happened like that many, many times… Until one day…’ Moominpappa lifted his nose and an extraordinary idea suddenly occurred to him.
    ‘Imagine if suddenly one day something really big
and heavy, something from a wreck, was swept in and sank there and stayed at the bottom for ever and ever!’
    Moominpappa got up. Treasure trove, perhaps. A case of contraband whisky. The skeleton of a pirate. Anything! The whole pool might be full of the most incredible things!
    He felt tremendously happy. He immediately became full of life. Something seemed to wake up inside him as if a steel spring had suddenly been released like a jack-in-the-box, setting him in motion. He rushed home, flew up the stairs two at a time, pushed open the door and shouted: ‘I’ve got an idea!’
    ‘You haven’t!’ exclaimed Moominmamma, who was standing by the stove. ‘Is it a good one?’
    ‘Of course it is,’ Moominpappa answered. ‘It’s a grand idea. Come and sit down and I’ll tell you all about it.’
    Moominmamma sat down on one of the empty boxes and Moominpappa began to tell her all about his idea. When he had finished Moominmamma said: ‘Why,