Far away, the Groke decided towards morning that she would set off. The island under her was black and transparent, with a sharp bowsprit of ice pointing south. She gathered up her dark skirts, hanging round her like the leaves of a faded rose. They opened out and rustled, lifting themselves like wings. So the Groke's slow journey over the sea began. 
     She moved her skirts upwards, outwards and downwards, like slow swimming-strokes, in the frozen air. The water drew back in scared, choppy waves, and she floated on into the dawn, with a cloud of drifting snow behind her. Against the horizon she looked like a large reeling bat. She found it slow going, but somehow she managed. She had time. She had nothing else but time.

     The family continued all night and all the next day until it was night again. Moominpappa still sat at the rudder waiting to catch sight of his lighthouse. But the night was just deep blue, and no lighthouse could he seen flashing on the horizon.
     "We're on the right course," said Moominpappa. "I know we're set on the right course. With this wind we ought to get there by midnight, but we should have seen the lighthouse when it began to get dark."
     "Maybe some rotter's put it out," suggested Little My.
     "Do you think anyone would put a lighthouse out?" said Moominpappa. "You can depend on it that the lighthouse is working all right. There are some things one can he absolutely sure of: sea currents, the seasons, the rising of the sun, for example. And that lighthouses always work, too."
     "We shall see it soon," said Moominmamma. Her head was full of little thoughts that she couldn't really get organized. "I do hope it's working," she thought. "He's so happy. I do hope there really is a lighthouse somewhere out there, and not just a fly-speck after ali. We can't possibly go home now, particularly after such a grand start ... You can find big pink shells, but the white ones look very nice against black soil. I wonder whether the roses will grow out there ?"
     "Shush! I can hear something," said Little My from the bow. "Be quiet, all of you! Something's happening."
     They all lifted their noses and stared into the night. The sound of oars reached their ears. The unknown boat gradually came nearer, gliding out of the darkness. It was a little grey boat, and the man rowing it was resting on his oars, looking at them undismayed. He looked very scruffy, but appeared to he quite calm. The light shone on his large blue eyes, which were as transparent as water. He had some fishingrods in the bow of his boat.
     "Do the fish bite at night?" asked Moominpappa.
     The fisherman turned and looked straight past them. He wasn't going to say anything.
     "Isn't there an island with a big lighthouse somewhere near here?" Moominpappa continued. "Why isn't it working? We ought to have seen it a long time ago."
     The fisherman glided past them in his boat. They could hardly hear him when he finally said something. "Can't say, really ... Go back, home ? You've come too far ?"
     He disappeared behind them. They listened for the sound of his oars, but could hear nothing in the silent night.  
     "He was a little odd, wasn't he?" said Moominpappa uncertainly.
     "Very odd, if you ask me," said Little My. "Quite nuts."
     Moominmamma sighed and tried to straighten her legs. "But so are most of the people we know - more or less," she said.
     The wind had dropped. Moominpappa sat bolt upright at the rudder with his nose in the air. "Now," he said, "I have a feeling we're there. We're coming in on the leeward side of the island. But I just don't understand why the lighthouse isn't working."

Moominpappa at Sea (Pappan och havet, 1965)

Translated by Kingsley Hart