Comet in Moominland (15 page)

'Are you there?' he cried anxiously.

'Yes, I'm here,' piped the Snork maiden.

'Are you all right?' asked Moomintroll, jumping down to her, and finding with a shock that the water came up to his middle, and that it had a horrible stagnant smell.

'I'm all right,' said the Snork maiden, 'Only so frightened.'

'Sniff is an absolute pest,' said Moomintroll furiously. 'Always wanting to run after everything that shines or glitters.'

'Well, I do understand him,' said the Snork maiden. 'Ornaments are such fun, especially if they are made of gold and jewels. Don't you think we might find some more treasure in here...?'

'It's so dark,' said Moomintroll, 'and there may be dangerous animals about.'

'Yes, I suppose you're right,' said the Snork maiden obediently. 'Be a kind Moomintroll then and help me out of here.'

So Moomintroll lifted her up onto the edge of the hatchway.

The Snork maiden immediately took out her looking-glass to see if it was broken, but, thank goodness, the glass was whole and all the rubies were still on the back. But as she was titivating herself, a horrifying picture came into the looking-glass. There was the dark hold, and there was Moomintroll who was just climbing out - but behind in a dark corner there was something else. Something that moved. Something that crept slowly nearer to Moomintroll.

The Snork maiden threw down the looking-glass and yelled with all her might: 'Look out! There's something behind you!'

Moomintroll looked over his shoulder, and what he saw was a huge octopus, the most dangerous of deep-sea creatures, squirming slowly out of a corner towards him. He tried desperately to clamber up and reach the Snork maiden's, paw, but he slid back on the slimy planks and

splashed into the water again. By this time Snufkin and the others had come up on the deck to see what was happening, and they tried to poke the octopus with their stilts, but it didn't have the slightest effect on him: he just crept relentlessly nearer to Moomintroll, his long tentacles already groping after his prey.

Then the Snork maiden had an idea. She had often played with a looking-glass in the sun, making its reflection shine into her brother's eyes to dazzle him. So now she picked up her ruby looking-glass and tried the same thing against the octopus, only shining the comet instead of the sun into his eyes. It was most successful. The octopus stopped at once, and while he was dazzled and didn't know what to do, Moomintroll clambered up by his stilts and was hauled on deck by the others.

They left that dreadful ship without wasting any time, and hardly drew breath before they were several sea-miles away from it.

Then Moomintroll said to the Snork maiden: 'You saved my life you know! And in such a clever way too! I shall ask Snufkin to write a poem in your honour, because I'm afraid I can't write poetry myself.'

The Snork maiden lowered her eyes and began to change colour with pleasure.

'I was very happy to do it,' she whispered. 'I would save your life eight times a day if only I could.'

'And I wouldn't mind eight octopuses attacking me every day if I could only be saved from them by you,' said Moomintroll gallantly.

'If you've quite finished babbling to each other,' said Sniff, 'perhaps we could go on.'

The sand had got more even now, and there were huge shells, with horns and spirals, in the most wonderful colours, such as purple, midnight-blue, and sea-green, strewn about all over the place.

The Snork maiden wanted to stay and admire every one, and listen to the call of the sea which lay hidden inside them, but the Snork hurried her on.

Enormous crabs were sidling in and out between the shells, telling each other how strange it was that the water had disappeared. They wondered who had taken it away and when it would come back. 'Thank goodness I'm not a jelly-fish!' said one. 'Out of the water they are nothing but miserable little splodges, but
we
of course are equally happy wherever we are.'

'I feel so sorry for anybody who wasn't born a crab,' said another. 'It's quite possible that this drying-up of the sea has been arranged especially so that we shall have more space to live in.'

'What an excellent thought! Why not a world peopled entirely by crabs?' exclaimed a third, waving his claws.

'Self-satisfied creatures!' muttered Snufkin. 'Try dazzling
them
with the looking-glass, and see if they know what to do then.'

The Snork maiden fixed the comet's reflection again, and shone it in the crabs' eyes. There was a terrible upheaval. Chattering with fright, the crabs rushed wildly in all directions, knocking each other over on the way, and buried their heads in pools of water.

Moomintroll and the others had a good laugh and went on their way, and after a while Snufkin thought he would play a time. But not a sound could he get out of his mouth-organ; the steam had rusted it up.

'Oh dear!' he said sadly, 'this is about the worst thing that could happen.'

'Pappa will mend it for you when we get home,' said Moomintroll. 'He can mend anything, if only he gets around to it.'

All about them stretched the strange sea landscape, which had been covered by millions of tons of water since the beginning of the world.

'You know it's rather solemn to be down here,' said the Snork. 'We must be pretty near the deepest part of the ocean by now.'

But when they reached the biggest chasm of all they didn't dare go down. The sides sloped steeply and the bottom was obscured in green gloom. Perhaps there
was
no bottom! Perhaps the biggest octopuses in the world lived down there, brooding in the slime; creatures that nobody had ever seen, far less imagined. But the Snork maiden gazed longingly at an enormous and beautiful shell that was poised on the very brink of the chasm. It was a lovely pale colour, only to be found in the depths of the sea where no light penetrates, and its dusky heart glowed temptingly. The shell sang softly to herself the age-old song of the sea.

'Oh!' sighed the Snork maiden. 'I should like to live in that shell. I want to go inside and see who is whispering in there.'

'It's only the sea,' said Moomintroll. 'Every wave that dies on the beach sings a little song to a shell. But you mustn't go inside because it's a labyrinth and you may never come out again.'

So she was at last persuaded to go on, and they started to hurry, as dusk was falling, and they had not found anywhere to sleep. They could only see soft outlines of each other through the damp sea mist, and it was uncannily silent. There were none of the small sounds that liven up the evening on land: the pattering of small animal feet, leaves moving in the night breeze, the cry of a bird, of a stone dislodged by somebody's foot.

A fire would never draw on that damp ground, and they dared not sleep amongst the unknown dangers that might be lurking about, so in the end they decided to pitch camp on a high pointed rock, which they could just reach by their stilts. They had to keep watch, so Moomintroll took the first and decided to take the Snork maiden's too, and while the others curled up tightly together and slept, he sat staring out over the desolate sea bottom. It was lit by the red glow of the comet, and shadows like black velvet lay across the sand.

Moomintroll thought how frightened the earth must be feeling with that great ball of fire coming nearer and nearer to her. Then he thought about how much he loved everything; the forest and the sea, the rain and the wind, the sunshine, the grass and the moss, and how impossible it would be to live without them all, and this made him feel very, very sad. But after a while he stopped worrying.

'Mamma will know what to do,' he said to himself.

CHAPTER 10

Which is about a Hemulen's stamp-collection, a swarm of grass-hoppers and a horrible tornado.

W
HEN
Sniff woke up next day the first thing he said was:
'It's
coming tomorrow!'

'It's so big!' said the Snork maiden. 'Nearly as big as a house.'

All the steam had disappeared in the heat of the comet, and they could see right across to the other side where the bottom of the sea gradually sloped up to the beach again. They hadn't far to go.

'Trees!' shouted Snufkin, pointing, and they all set off in a tremendous hurry to get there, without even waiting to put their stilts on.

'Silver poplars!' puffed Moomintroll as he stumped up the sandy beach. 'Moomin Valley can't be far off now.'

The Snork began to whistle, and they were all so pleased to be on dry land again that they hugged each other in their excitement.

Then they set off again for home.

As they were going along they met a house-troll coming towards them on a bicycle. He was red in the face with heat (for house-trolls can never take off their fur coats). On the carrier he had two or three suitcases, and packages and parcels of all kinds dangled from the handlebars. On his back sat a baby house-troll in a bag.

'Are you leaving?' shouted Sniff.

The house-troll climbed off his bicycle and said: 'You may well ask, little animal. Everybody who lives in the neighbourhood of Moomin Valley is leaving. I don't think there's a single person who intends to stay there and wait for the comet.'

'How is it you all think the comet is going to fall just there?' asked the Snork.

'Well, you might say, by word of beak,' said the house-troll. 'The Muskrat sent the information round through the birds, and it is quite obvious to any self-respecting house-troll that the comet will fall in Moomin Valley.'

'Oh, by the way,' said Moomintroll. 'I believe our families are distantly related, and when I left home my mother told me to give you her kind regards if we happened to meet.'

'Thank you, thank you,' said the house-troll hurriedly. 'And the same to your poor mother. It may be the last time I shall be able to send greetings to her, because she and your father absolutely refuse to leave the valley. They said they had to wait until you and Sniff got back!'

'Then we had better hurry,' said Moomintroll in a worried voice. 'If you go past a post office will you please send a telegram home saying that we are on the way and coming as fast as we can? Make it a greetings telegram please!'