‘Help!’ screamed Sniff. ‘He’s going to gobble us up!’
The Adventure’s bows dipped alarmingly, but she righted herself again and set off at a terrific speed towards the open sea. The painter was stretched out, tight as a bow-string, in front of her and disappeared in a flurry of foam below the surface.
The Mameluke obviously liked pancake!
‘Keep calm!’ yelled the Snork. ‘Calm in the boat! Every man to his post!’
‘As long as he doesn’t dive…’ thought Snufkin creeping into the bows.
But the Mameluke set a course straight out to sea, and soon the shore lay, like the sweep of a paintbrush, far behind them.
‘How long do you think he will be able to hold on?’ asked the Hemulen.
‘If the worst comes to the worst we can cut the line,’ said Sniff.
‘Never,’ declared the Snork Maiden shaking her curly fringe.
And then the Mameluke gave his huge tail a whisk and swung round making for the coast again.
‘He’s going a little slower now,’ shouted Moomintroll, who was on his knees in the bows. ‘He’s beginning to get tired!’
The Mameluke was tired, but he had also begun to get angry. He gave the line a jerk and then tore off again so that The Adventure rocked about in the most alarming way.
Sometimes he lay quite still trying to fool them, and then suddenly he would set off with such speed that a tidal wave almost swamped them. So Snufkin took his mouth-organ and played his hunting-song, while the others beat time with so much energy that the deck shook. And then, when they had almost given up hope, the Mameluke floated over on his back turning his huge lifeless belly up to the light.
They had never seen such a big fish! They contemplated it for a moment in silence and then the Snork said: ‘Well, I got him at last, didn’t I?’ And his sister proudly agreed.
While the Mameluke was being towed to land it began to rain, and soon the Hemulen’s dress got wet through, and Snufkin’s hat lost what was left of its shape – which wasn’t much.
‘It’ll probably be pretty wet in the cave now,’ said Moomintroll, who sat freezing at the oars.
‘Mother may be worried,’ he added after a while.
‘You mean that we could sort of go home presently?’ said Sniff, trying not to sound too hopeful.
‘Yes, and show them the fish,’ said the Snork.
‘We will go home,’ said the Hemulen. ‘Strange adventures, and getting wet, and carrying on alone and that sort of thing are all very well, but they’re not comfortable in the long run.’
So they put boards under the Mameluke and everyone helped to carry him through the wood. His wide-open mouth was so big that the branches caught in his teeth, and he weighed so many hundreds of pounds that they had to rest every few minutes. Meanwhile the rain got worse and worse, until, when they got to their valley, it hid the whole house.
‘What about leaving him here for a bit?’ suggested Sniff.
‘Not on your life!’ said Moomintroll, indignantly, and they plunged on through the garden. Suddenly the Snork stood stock still. ‘We’ve come the wrong way!’ he said.
‘Nonsense!’ said Moomintroll. ‘Isn’t that the wood-shed? And down there’s the bridge.’
‘Yes, but where’s the house?’ asked the Snork.
It was most extraordinary. Moominhouse had vanished. Quite simply – it wasn’t there. They laid down the Mameluke in front of the. steps – at least that is to say – where the steps ought to have been. Instead…
But first I must explain what had happened in the Valley while they were out on the Mameluke Hunt.
Moominmamma had gone upstairs for a snooze, but before doing so she had dropped the ball of poisonous pink perennials into the Hobgoblin’s Hat in an absent-minded moment. The trouble was she should never have tidied up really, for while the house lay deep in its after-lunch nap the ball of poisonous pink perennials began to grow in a strange and bewitched fashion. It twisted slowly up out of the hat, and crept down on to the floor. Tendrils and shoots groped their way up the walls, clambered round the curtains and blind-cords, and scrambled through the cracks, ventilators, and keyholes. In the damp air flowers came out and fruit began to ripen, and huge leafy shoots blotted out the stairs, pushed their way between the legs of the furniture and hung in festoons from the chandelier.
The house was filled with a soft rustling sound: sometimes the pop of an opening bud could be heard, or the thud of ripe fruit falling on the carpet. But Moominmamma thought it was only the rain and turned over on her other side and went to sleep again.
In the next room Moominpappa sat writing his memoirs. Nothing amusing had happened since he had built the landing-stage, so he went on with the story of his childhood, and this brought such memories that he nearly burst into tears. He had always been a bit out of the ordinary as a child, and nobody had ever understood him. When he got older it was the same, and he had had a frightful time in every way. Moominpappa wrote and wrote thinking how sorry everyone would be when they read his story, and this cheered him up again, and he said to himself: ‘It will serve them jolly well right!’
Just then a ripe plum fell on to his paper and made a big, sticky blot.
‘Bless my tail!’ burst out Moominpappa. ‘Moomintroll and Sniff must be home again!’ And he turned round to scold them. But nobody was behind him: instead he found himself staring at a thick bush covered with yellow berries. He jumped up, and at once blue plums rained down on him from every side. Then he noticed that a great branch was growing slowly towards the window with green shoots sprouting out in all directions.
‘Hello!’ yelled Moominpappa. ‘Wake up, everybody! Come quickly!’
Moominmamma woke up with a start, and, to her amazement, saw that her room was full of small, white flowers, hanging down from the ceiling in leafy garlands.
‘Oh, how beautiful!’ she said. ‘Moomintroll must have done this as a surprise for me.’ And she carefully drew aside the thin curtain of flowers by her bed and stepped on to the floor.
‘Hullo!’ Moominpappa was still yelling on the other side of the wall. ‘Open the door! I can’t get out!’
But Moominmamma couldn’t open the door into his room because it was completely overgrown with creepers. So she broke a pane of glass in her own door and, with enormous difficulty squeezed through on to the landing. There was a small forest on the staircase, and the drawing-room was a positive jungle.
‘Dear me!’ said Moominmamma. ‘Of course it’s that hat again.’ And she sat down and fanned herself with a palm-leaf.
And the shoots grew up through the chimneys and climbed down over the roof covering the whole of Moominhouse with a thick green carpet, while out in the rain Moomintroll stood and stared at the big, green mound where the flowers went on opening their petals and the fruit ripened from green to yellow, from yellow to red.
‘It used to be here anyhow,’ said Sniff.
‘It’s inside,’ said Moomintroll miserably. ‘But we can’t get in and they can’t get out.’
Snufkin went off to explore the green mound: there was no window or door: only a dense wild mass of vegetation. He took hold of a creeper which turned out to be as tough as rubber and impossible to move, but as he went by it threw a loop, as if on purpose, round his hat and lifted it right off his head.
‘More hobgoblinery’ muttered Snufkin. ‘It’s beginning to get tiresome.’
Meanwhile Sniff ran across the overgrown veranda and, with a delighted squeak, discovered that the door to the cellar was still open. Moomintroll hurried after him and peered in through the black hole. ‘In with you all!’ he said, ‘but hurry up before it gets overgrown here, too,’ and they crawled into the dark cellar, one after another.
‘Hi!’ shouted the Hemulen who was last. ‘I can’t get through.’
‘Then you can stay outside and guard the Mameluke,’ said the Snork. ‘You can botanize on the house now, can’t you?’
And while the poor Hemulen
whimpered outside in the rain, the others groped their way up the cellar steps.
‘We’re in luck,’ said Moomintroll when he reached the top. ‘The door’s open. It pays to be careless sometimes.’
‘I’m the culprit,’ squeaked Sniff. ‘So you can thank me!’
As they pushed through the door a remarkable sight met their eyes: the Muskrat was sitting in the fork of a tree eating a pear.
‘Where’s mother?’ asked Moomintroll.
‘She’s trying to get your father out of his room,’ replied the Muskrat, bitterly. ‘This is what comes of collecting plants. I’ve never quite trusted that Hemulen. Well, I hope the Muskrat heaven is a peaceful place, because I shan’t be here much longer.’
They listened for a moment to the sound of enormous axe blows coming from upstairs. Then came a crash and a whoop of joy. Moominpappa was free!
‘Mamma! Pappa!’ shouted Moomintroll, pushing his way through the jungle to the bottom of the stairs. ‘What have you been doing while I was away?’
‘Well, dear,’ replied Moominmamma. ‘We must have been careless with the Hobgoblin’s Hat again. But come up here – I’ve found a gooseberry bush in the wardrobe.’
It was a thrilling afternoon. They played a jungle game in which Moomintroll was Tarzan and the Snork Maiden was Jane. Sniff was Tarzan’s Son, and Snufkin was the chimpanzee Cheeta, while the Snork crawled about in the undergrowth, with huge teeth made of orangepeel,* pretending to be the Enemy.
‘Now I shall steal Jane away,’ he cried, dragging the Snork Maiden by the tail to a hole under the dining-room table, so that Moomintroll, when he came home to their house in the chandelier, and discovered what had happened, had to lower himself to the ground on a creeper and dash off to the rescue. Then he produced a Tarzan roar from the top of the airing cupboard, and Jane and the rest of them roared back.
‘Well, things can’t get much worse – that’s one consolation,’ the Muskrat groaned. He had hidden himself in a forest of bracken in the bathroom, and had wrapped his head in a handkerchief so that nothing should grow into his ears.
But Moominmamma was quite unperturbed. ‘Well, well!’ she said, ‘it seems to me that our guests are having a very good time.’
‘I hope so,’ replied Moominpappa. ‘Pass me a banana, please dear.’
And so it went on until the evening. Nobody bothered about whether the cellar-door was getting overgrown, and nobody even thought about the poor Hemulen. He still sat, with his wet dress flapping round his legs, guarding the Mameluke. Sometimes
he ate an apple or counted the stamens on a jungle flower, but in between he mostly sighed.
It had stopped raining, and night began to fall. And at the moment that the sun went down something happened to the green mound that was Moominhouse: it began to wither as quickly as it had grown; the fruit shrivelled and fell to the ground; the flowers drooped and the leaves curled up, and once more the house was filled with rustlings and cracklings.
The Hemulen watched for a bit, and then he went and pulled gently at a branch. It came off at once and was as dry as tinder. Then the Hemulen had an idea. He collected a huge pile of sticks and branches, went to the woodshed for matches, and then lit a crackling bonfire in the middle of the garden path.
Pleased and happy he sat himself down beside the blaze to dry his dress, and after a while he had another idea. With super-Hemulenish strength he dragged the Mameluke’s tail into the fire. Baked fish was the best thing he had ever tasted.
Thus it was that when the Moomin family and their friends pushed their way through the veranda and burst the door open, they found a very happy Hemulen who had already eaten up one-seventh of the Mameluke.
‘You wretch!’ said the Snork. ‘How can I weigh my fish now?’
‘Weigh me and add it on,’ suggested the Hemulen. It was one of his brighter days.
‘Now we’ll burn up the jungle,’ said Moominpappa. And they carried out all the rubbish from the house and made a bigger bonfire than anyone had ever seen in the valley before.
The Mameluke was baked whole in the embers and eaten up from tip to tail. But long afterwards
there were quarrels about how long he had been: had he stretched from the bottom of the veranda steps to the wood-shed, or only as far as the lilac bushes?
Chapter six
In which Thingumy and Bob, bringing a mysterious suitcase and followed by the Groke, come into the story, and in which the Snork leads a Court Case.
EARLY one morning at the beginning of August Thingumy and Bob came walking over the mountain, and stopped just where Sniff had found the Hobgoblin’s Hat. Thingumy wore a red cap and Bob carried an enormous suitcase. They had come a very long way and were rather tired, so they rested for a bit and looked down over the Valley of the Moomins, where the smoke from Moominhouse was rising between the silver poplars and plum trees.
‘Smoke,’ said Thingumy
‘Foke means smood,’ said Bob nodding. And they began to wander down to the valley talking in the strange way that Thingumies and Bobs do talk. (It isn’t clear to everyone, but the main thing is that they understand each other.)
Very cautiously they tiptoed up to the house and stood shyly by the front steps. ‘Do you think we could go in?’ asked Thingumy. ‘It depends,’ said Bob. ‘Don’t be frightened if they’re gross and crumpy.’
‘Shall we dock on the knoor?’ suggested Thingumy. ‘But imagine if somebody comes out and screams!’
Just then Moominmamma stuck her head out of the window and shouted: ‘Coffee!’
Thingumy and Bob were so dreadfully frightened that they jumped into the opening of the potato-cellar.
‘Oh!’ said Moominmamma with a start, ‘I believe those were mice disappearing into the cellar. Sniff, run down with a little milk for them.’ Then she caught sight of the suitcase which stood by the steps. ‘Luggage, too,’ thought Moominmamma. ‘Dear me – then they’ve come to stay.’ And she went off to look for Moominpappa to ask him to put up two more beds – very, very small ones. Meanwhile Thingumy and Bob had dug themselves into the potatoes so that only their eyes could be seen, and there they waited in terror for what might happen to them.
‘Anyway I can fell smood,’ muttered Thingumy.
‘Somebody’s coming,’ whispered Bob. ‘Sot a nound!’
The cellar door creaked and at the top of the steps stood Sniff with a lantern in one paw and a saucer of milk in the other.
‘Hi! where are you?’ he shouted.
Thingumy and Bob crept still farther down and held on to each other tight.
‘Will you have some milk?’ said Sniff.
‘Don’t nake any totice,’ whispered Bob.
‘If you think I’m going to stand here half the day,’ said Sniff angrily, ‘you’re mistaken. I suppose you don’t know any better. Silly old mice who haven’t the sense to come in by the front door!’
‘Milly old souse yourself!’ retorted Thingumy and Bob, who were seriously upset by this.
‘Oh! So they’re foreigners,’ thought Sniff. ‘I’d better fetch Moominmamma.’ And he locked the cellar door and ran into the kitchen.
‘Well? Did they like the milk?’ Moominmamma asked.
‘They talk a foreign language,’ said Sniff. ‘Nobody can understand what they say.’
‘What’s it like?’ asked Moomintroll, who was shelling peas with the Hemulen.
‘“Milly old souse yourself!”’ said Sniff.
Moominmamma sighed. ‘This is going to be a nice mix-up,’ she said. ‘How shall I be able to find out what they want for pudding on their birthday, or how many pillows they like to have?’
‘We’ll soon learn their language,’ said Moomintroll.’ It sounds easy.’
‘I think I understand them,’ said the Hemulen reflectively ‘Didn’t they tell Sniff he was a silly old mouse?’
Sniff blushed and tossed his head.
‘Go and talk to them yourself if you’re so clever,’ he said.
So the Hemulen lumbered away to the cellar steps and called out kindly: ‘Welcome to Hoominmouse!’
Thingumy and Bob stuck their heads out of the potato pile and looked at him.
‘Mere’s some hilk,’ continued the Hemulen.
Then they scampered up the steps and into the drawing-room.
Sniff looked at them and noticed that they were much smaller than he was, so he felt kinder and said, condescendingly, ‘Hullo. Nice to see you.’
‘Thanks. Yame to sou,’ said Thingumy.
‘Did I fell smood?’ enquired Bob.
‘What do they say now?’ asked Moominmamma. ‘They’re hungry’ said the Hemulen. ‘But they still don’t seem to take to Sniff.’
‘Give them my compliments then,’ said Sniff, hotly, ‘and say that never in my life have I seen two such herring-faces. And now I’m going out.’
‘Piff is sneevish,’ said the Hemulen. ‘Nake no totice.’
‘Anyway come in and have some coffee,’ said Moominmamma nervously, and she showed Thingumy and Bob out on to the veranda. The Hemulen, who was very proud of his new rank as interpreter, followed them.
*
And that was how Thingumy and Bob came to live at Moominhouse. They didn’t make much noise, spent most of the time hand-in-hand, and never lost sight of their suitcase. But towards dusk on that first day they began to get very worried: they ran frantically up and down stairs several times, and eventually hid under the drawing-room carpet.
‘Mot’s the waiter?’ asked the Hemulen.
‘The Groke is coming!’ whispered Bob.
‘Groke? Who’s that?’ asked the Hemulen, getting a bit frightened.
‘Tig and brim and gerrible!’ said Bob. ‘Lock the door against her.’
The Hemulen ran to Moominmamma and told her the awful news.
‘They say that a big and grim and terrible Groke is coming here. We must lock all the doors tonight.’
‘But I don’t think any of the doors have keys, except the cellar,’ said Moominmamma in a worried voice. ‘Dear me! It’s always the same with foreigners.’ And she went to talk to Moominpappa about it.