Moominpappa at Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

gazed at the dark and deserted lighthouse for a long time, and gradually it began to grow smaller and more like the picture he had carried in his mind for so long.
    ‘In any case, it’s mine,’ he thought, and lit his pipe. ‘I’ll capture the lighthouse. I’ll present it to my family and say: “This is where you’re going to live. When we are safe inside, nothing dangerous can happen to us.”’
    *
    Little My sat on the lighthouse steps watching the dawn. Below her, the island lay in the half-light, looking like a big grey cat stretching itself, with its claws spread out; both its paws were resting in the sea and its tail was a long, narrow point at the other end of the island. The cat’s back was bristling, but its eyes were invisible.
    ‘Huh!’ said Little My. ‘This is no ordinary island. It goes down to the bottom of the sea quite differently from other islands. I bet things’ll happen here!’
    She huddled up and waited. The sun came up over
the sea and shadows and colours began to appear. The island began to take shape and draw in its claws. Everything began to shine, and the chalk-white gulls circled over the point. The cat vanished. But right across the island lay the shadow of the lighthouse like a broad dark ribbon stretching down to the beach where the boat was.
    There they all were, far below her like small ants. Moominpappa and Moomintroll carrying as much as they could, striding out of the alder bushes and into the shadow of the lighthouse. There they became even smaller, and stopped, three little white dots turning their noses upwards to look at what was above them.
    ‘Oh! How big it is!’ said Moominmamma, and froze to the spot.
    ‘Big?’ shouted Moominpappa. ‘It’s enormous! It’s probably the biggest lighthouse that was ever built. And do you realize that this is the very last island, nobody lives beyond it – there’s nothing but sea. We’re looking the sea straight in the face, so to speak, and far behind us are all those people who live on islands much nearer to the mainland. It’s a wonderful thought, don’t you think?’
    ‘Yes, wonderful, Pappa!’ Moomintroll cried.
    ‘Can’t I carry the basket for a while?’ Mamma asked.
    ‘No, no,’ said Moominpappa. ‘You’re not to carry a thing. All you’ve got to do is to walk straight into your new house – but wait, you must have some flowers to take in with you – wait a moment…’ He disappeared
in among the poplar trees and began to pick some flowers.

    Moominmamma looked around. How poor the soil was! And there were so many stones everywhere, masses of them all over the place. It certainly wasn’t going to be an easy matter to make a garden there.
    ‘What a sad sound, Mamma,’ said Moomintroll. ‘What is it?’
    Moominmamma listened. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘It does sound sad. But it’s only the aspens, they always sound like that.’
    Tiny wind-swept aspens were growing between the stones, their leaves rustling in the gentle breeze blowing off the sea. They were trembling violently, and one shudder after another passed through them.
    The island was different by day; it seemed to have turned its back on them. It wasn’t looking at them the
way it had during the warmth of the night; instead it was gazing far out to sea.
    ‘Here you are,’ said Moominpappa. ‘They’re terribly small, but they’ll open all right if you put them in the sun. Now we must push on. Soon there’ll be a proper path from the beach right up to the house. And there’ll be a jetty for the boat. There’s so much to be done here! Just think! Fancy being able to build all one’s life and turn the island into a miracle of perfection!’ He picked up the baskets and hurried on ahead through the heather towards the lighthouse.
    In front of them lay age-old rocks with steep and sharp sides and they stumbled past precipice after precipice, grey and full of crevices and fissures.
    ‘Everything’s much too big here,’ thought