Free Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson Page B

visitors had been blown out onto the slope in their nightshirts and stood there all huddled together and had no idea at all what to do. But Mummy and Daddy went down to the beach and watched the jetty floating away towards Reed Island with all the boats pushing and nudging each other as though they were alive, and the fish-cage had broken adrift and all the pit-props were floating out through the sound. It was marvellous!

    The grass was under water, the sea was rising all the time, and the storm and the night made the whole landscape look quite different.
    Old Charlie ran to fetch the clothesline and Fanny stood there shouting and banging a tin can and her white hair was flying in all directions. Daddy rowed out to the jetty with a line and Mummy stood on the shore holding it.
    Everything lying on the slope below the house had floated out to sea and the off-shore wind was carrying it out towards the sound and the wind was getting stronger and stronger and the water was rising higher and higher. I was shouting with glee, too, as I waded up and down and felt the floating grass getting tangled round my legs. I was trying to save planks and from time to time Daddy ran past hauling logs and shouting: what do you think of this! The wind’s getting stronger all the time! He flung a rope to the visitors and shouted: take hold of this, damn you! We must get the jetty up into the field! Do something! Don’t just stand there!
    And the visitors hauled on the rope and were soaked to the skin in their nightshirts and had no idea what fun the whole thing was, which served them right.
    In the end we saved everything that could be saved and Mummy went into the house to make tea. I pulled off my clothes and was wrapped in a blanket and sat and watched Mummy lighting thefire. The window-panes rattled and were quite dark and it started to rain.
    Then Daddy burst in and went into the kitchen and shouted: Damn it! Can you imagine what’s happened! The water has risen nearly two feet in the boathouse! The clay looks like porridge. It’s a damned nuisance, but there’s nothing to be done about it!
    How terrible, said Mummy, looking just as pleased as Daddy.
    I’ve been down to the first bay, Daddy said, and it’s blowing hard down there and a whole load of logs is floating in. I’ve no time for tea now. I’ll be back later.
    All right, said Mummy. I’ll keep it warm.
    Then Daddy went out again. Mummy poured out tea for us all. It was the best storm we had ever had.

Jeremiah
    O NE YEAR TOWARDS AUTUMN a geologist was living in the pilot’s hut. He couldn’t speak either Finnish or Swedish, he just smiled and flashed his black eyes. He would look at people and immediately make them feel how surprised and happy he was to meet them at last and then he just walked on with his hammer and hammered a rock here and there. His name was Jeremiah.
    He borrowed a boat to row out to the islands and Old Charlie stood and sniggered at Jeremiah because he rowed so miserably. One felt embarrassed for Jeremiah when he took to the water and Daddy wondered what the pilots thought when they saw him rowing.
    Jeremiah and I were together every day. We walked around the bays and I was allowed to carry his little box while he hammered away at the rocks. Sometimes I was allowed to stand guard over the boat.
    It was very sensible of me to look after Jeremiah. He couldn’t even tie a proper half-hitch – when he tried to it looked more like some kind of bow. Sometimes he even forgot to tie the boat up. But it was because he didn’t care about anything else in the world except stones. They didn’t have to be pretty and round or odd in any way. He had ideas of his own about stones and they were quite different from anybody else’s.
    I never got in his way and I only showed him my collection of stones once. Then he put on such a great show of admiring them that I was embarrassed. He overdid things in the wrong