Comet in Moominland (3 page)

silk-monkey, who found all this very easy, having four legs herself.

'I'm never afraid,' answered Sniff. 'But I think the view is better from here.'

The silk-monkey grinned jeeringly, and pranced off with her tail in the air. After a time Sniff heard her laugh. 'Hallo!' she shouted. 'I've found a house for myself - not a bad house either!'

Sniff hesitated a moment, but he couldn't resist the thought of the house. (He had always loved houses in unusual places.) So he shut his eyes tightly and set off along the ledge. The spray drenched him several times, and he offered up a prayer to the-Protector-of-all-Small-Beasts. Never in his life had he been so frightened or felt so brave as he did creeping along that ledge. Suddenly, he tripped over the silk-monkey's tail and opened his eyes. She was lying on her tummy with her head stuck into a hole in the rock, talking and laughing nineteen to the dozen.

'Well?' said Sniff, 'where's this house you were talking about?'

'In here!' screeched the silk-monkey, and she disappeared completely into the rock. Then Sniff saw that it was a cave, a real cave, such as he had always dreamed of finding. Its mouth was rather small, but inside it opened out into a big room. The rocky walls rose smoothly up to a gap in the roof which let in the sunlight, and the floor was covered with smooth white sand.

The silk-monkey scuttled off to a cranny in one corner of the cave and started to sniff and poke at the sand.

'There may be a lot of crabs here,' she cried. 'Come and help me look!'

'Don't disturb me,' said Sniff solemnly. 'This is the biggest moment of my life so far, and it's my first cave.' He smoothed the sand with his tail and sighed. 'I shall live here for ever,' he thought. 'I shall put up little shelves and dig a sleeping-hole in the sand, and have a lamp burning in the evenings. And perhaps I'll make a rope-ladder so that I can go up to the roof and look at the sea. Moomintroll
will
be surprised.'

And then he suddenly remembered Moomintroll's pearl-fishing and the box. 'I say, silk-monkey,' he said, 'what about that box? Do you think Moomintroll really needs it?'

'What box?' asked the silk-monkey, whose memory was exceedingly short. 'Come on! I think it's beginning to get boring here.' And in a twinkling she was out of the cave, back along the ledge, and down on the sand again.

Sniff followed slowly. Several times he turned round and looked back at the cave proudly. He was so full of it that he quite forgot to be afraid on the dangerous ledge, and he was still deep in thought as he trudged along the beach to the place where they had left Moomintroll, pearl-fishing.

There was already a row of shining pearls, and out in the breakers Moomintroll was bobbing up and down like a cork, while the silk-monkey sat on the sand busily scratching herself.

'I am the treasurer,' she said importantly. 'Now I've counted these pearls five times, and each time it comes to a different answer. Isn't that extraordinary?'

Moomintroll waded out of the water with his arms full of oysters; he even had several on his tail. 'Phew!' he said, shaking the sea-weed out of his eyes. 'That'll do for today. Where's that box?'

'There weren't so very many good boxes on this beach,' said Sniff. 'But I've made a great discovery.'

'What was that?' asked Moomintroll, for a discovery (next to Mysterious Paths, Bathing and Secrets) was what he liked most of all. Sniff paused and then said dramatically:

'A cave!'

'A real cave?' asked Moomintroll, 'with a hole to creep in through,
and
rocky walls,
and
a sandy floor?'

'Everything!' answered Sniff proudly. 'A real cave that I found myself.' He winked at the silk-monkey, but she was counting the pearls for the eighth time, and wasn't bothering herself about the cave any more.

'That's splendid!' said Moomintroll. 'Wonderful news. A cave is much better than a box. We'll take the pearls there at once.'

'That's just what I had thought of doing myself,' said Sniff.

So they carried the pearls to the cave and arranged them neatly on the floor, and then lay down on their backs looking up at the sky through the gap in the roof.

'Do you know something?' said Moomintroll. 'If you fly hundreds and hundreds of miles up into the sky you come to where it isn't blue any more. It's quite black. In the day time too.'

'Why's that?' asked Sniff.

'It just is,' answered Moomintroll. 'And up there in the dark are great sky-monsters, such as scorpions, bears and rams.'

'Are they dangerous?' asked Sniff.

'Not to us,' replied Moomintroll. 'They only snap up a few stars now and again.'

Sniff pondered this deeply and after a while they stopped talking and just lay watching the sunlight, which poured through the roof, creep over the sand and shine on Moomintroll's pearls.

It was late in the evening when Moomintroll and Sniff got back to the blue house in the valley. The river flowed with hardly a ripple under the bridge, which showed up

vividly in its new coat of paint, and Moominmamma was arranging shells round the flower-beds.

'We've had supper,' she said. 'You'd better see what you can find in the larder, my dears.'

Moomintroll was hopping with excitement. 'We've been at least a hundred miles from here!' he said. 'We followed a Mysterious Path, and I found something terribly valuable that begins with R and ends with L, but I can't tell you what it is because I'm bound by a swear.'

'And I found something that begins with C and ends with E!' squeaked Sniff. 'And somewhere in the middle there's an A and a V - but I won't say any more.'

'Well!' said Moominmamma. 'Fancy that! Two big discoveries in one day! Now run and get your supper, dears. The soup is keeping hot on the stove. And don't clatter about too much because pappa is writing.'

And she went on laying out shells, one blue, two white and a red, in turns, and it looked very fine indeed. She whistled quietly to herself and thought there was rain in the air. A wind was getting up, and now and again a strong gust shook the trees turning their leaves inside out, and Moominmamma noticed an army of clouds massing on the horizon and beginning to march up the sky. 'I do hope there isn't going to be another flood,' she thought, picking up some shells that were left over, and going into the house as the first drops of rain began to fall.

In the kitchen she found Moomintroll and Sniff curled up together in a corner, tired out by their adventures. She spread a blanket over them and sat down by the window to darn Moominpappa's socks.

The rain was pattering on the roof, and rustling outside, while far away it dripped into Sniff's cave. And deep in the forest the silk-monkey crept farther down into her hollow tree and folded her tail round her neck to keep warm.

Late that night when everybody had gone to bed Moominpappa heard a plaintive noise. He sat up and listened. The rain gushed down the drain-pipes, and somewhere a shutter banged in the wind. Then came the pitiful sound again. He put on his dressing-gown and went to have a look round the house.

He looked into the sky-blue room, into the sun-yellow one and into the spotted one, and everywhere it was silent. At last he drew the heavy bolt of the door and looked out in the rain. His torch lit up a strip of the path and raindrops glittered like diamonds in the light.

'What in the world have we here?' exclaimed Moominpappa, for on the steps sat something wet and miserable, with shiny black eyes.

'I am the Muskrat,' said the wretched creature faintly. 'A philosopher, you know. I should just like to point out that your bridge-building activities have completely ruined my house in the river bank, and although ultimately it doesn't matter
what
happens, I must say even a philosopher does not care for being soaked to the skin.'

'I am most extremely sorry,' said Moominpappa.' I had no idea that you lived under the bridge. Please do come in. I'm sure my wife can make a bed up for you.'

'I'm not a great one for beds,' said the Muskrat, 'they are unnecessary furniture really. It was only a hole I lived in, but I was happy there. Of course it's all the same to a philosopher whether he is happy or not, but it was a good hole...' After these words, which were not intended to be ungracious, he managed to gather enough energy and enthusiasm to go into the house, where he shook the water off him and said: 'What an extraordinary house this is!'

'It's a Moominhouse,' said Moominpappa, who realized that he was talking to an extraordinary person. 'I built it myself in another place, but it floated here in a great flood we had some months ago. I hope you will be happy here. I find it a very good place to work in.'

'I can work anywhere,' said the Muskrat. 'It's all a matter of thinking. I sit and think about how unnecessary everything is.'

'Really?' said Moominpappa, much impressed. 'Perhaps I might offer you a glass of wine? Against the cold?'

'Wine, I am bound to say, is unnecessary,' replied the Muskrat, 'but a small drop nevertheless would not be unwelcome.'

So Moominpappa stole into the kitchen and opened the wine-cupboard in the dark. He was stretching up for a bottle of palm-tree wine on the top shelf, stretching and stretching, when all at once there was a terrible crash: he had knocked over a vegetable-dish. In a moment the house came to life. People shouted and banged doors, and Moominmamma came running downstairs with a candle in her paw.

'Oh! It's
you'
she said. 'I thought someone must have broken in.'

'I wanted to get the palm-tree wine down,' said Moominpappa, 'and some silly fool had put that stupid vegetable dish right on the edge of the shelf.'

'Never mind,' said Moominmamma. 'It's really a good thing it's broken - it was so ugly. Climb up on a stool dear - it will be easier.'

So Moominpappa climbed up on a stool and got down the bottle and three glasses.

'Who is the third one for?' asked Moominmamma.

'The Muskrat,' answered Moominpappa. 'A great man. He's coming to live here - with your approval, my dear.' And he called the Muskrat in and introduced him to Moominmamma.

Then they sat on the veranda and drank each other's health, and Moomintroll and Sniff were allowed down too although it was the middle of the night. It was still raining, and the wind had got trapped in the chimney and was howling eerily.