Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grim Grotto (3 page)

Chapter Three 

The expression "Shiver me timbers!" comes from the society of pirates, who enjoy using interesting expressions almost as much as jumping aboard other people's ships and stealing their valuables. It is an expression of extreme amazement, used in circumstances when one feels as if one's very bones, or timbers, are shivering. I have not used the expression since one rainy night when it was necessary to pose as a pirate experiencing amazement, but when Captain Widdershins told the Baudelaire orphans where the Queequeg was going and what it was searching for, there was a perfect opportunity to utter these words. "Shiver me timbers!" Sunny cried. "Your timbers!" the captain cried back. "Are the Baudelaires practicing piracy? Aye! My heavens! If your parents knew that you were stealing the treasures of others..." "We're not pirates, Captain Widdershins," Violet said hastily. "Sunny is just using an expression she learned from an old movie. She just means that we're surprised.' "Surprised?" The captain paced up and down in front of them, his waterproof suit crinkling with every step. "Do you think the Queequeg made its difficult way up the Stricken Stream just for my own personal amusement? Aye? Do you think I would risk such terrible danger simply because I had no other plans for the afternoon? Aye? Do you think it was a crazy coincidence that you ran into our periscope? Aye? Do you think this uniform makes me look fat? Aye? Do you think members of V.F.D. would just sit and twiddle their thumbs while fount Olaf's treachery covers the land like crust covers the filling of a pie? Aye?" "You were looking for us?" Klaus asked in amazement. He was tempted to cry "Shiver me timbers!" like his sister, but he did not want to alarm Captain Widdershins any further. "For you!" the captain cried. "Aye! For the sugar bowl! Aye! For justice! Aye! And liberty! Aye! For an opportunity to make the world quiet! Aye! And safe! Aye! And we may only have until Thursday! Aye! We're in terrible danger! Aye! So get to work!" "Bamboozle!" Sunny cried. "My sister is confused," Violet said, "and so are we, Captain Widdershins. If we could just stop for a moment, and hear your story from the beginning..." "Stop for a moment?" the captain repeated in astonishment. "I've just explained our desperate circumstances, and you're asking me to hesitate? My dear girl, remember my personal philosophy! Aye! 'He or she who hesitates is lost'! Now let's get moving!" The children looked at one another in frustration. They did not want to get moving. It felt to the Baudelaire orphans that they had been moving almost constantly since that terrible day at the beach when their lives had been turned upside down. They had moved into Count Olaf's home, and then into the homes of various guardians. They had moved away from a village intent on burning them at the stake, and they had moved into a hospital that had burst into flames around them. They had moved to the hinterlands in the trunk of Count Olaf's car, and they had moved away from the hinterlands in disguise. They had moved up the Mortmain Mountains hoping to find one of their parents, and they had moved down the Mortmain Mountains thinking they would never see their parents again, and now, in a tiny submarine in the Stricken Stream, they wanted to stop moving, just for a little while, and receive some answers to questions they had been asking themselves since all this moving began. "Stepfather," Fiona said gently, "why don't you start up the Queegueg's engines, and I'll show the Baudelaires where our spare uniforms are?" "I'm the captain!" the captain announced. "Ave! I'll give the orders around here!" Then he shrugged, and squinted up toward the ceiling. The Baudelaires noticed for the first time a ladder of rope running up the side of wall. It led up to a small shelf, where the children could see a large wheel, probably for steering, and a few rusty levers and switches that were Byzantine in their design, a phrase which here means "so complicated that perhaps even Violet Baudelaire would have trouble working them." "I order myself to go up the ladder," the captain continued a bit sheepishly, "and start the engines of the Queequeg.'" With one last "Aye!" the captain began hoisting himself toward the ceiling, and the Baudelaires were left alone with Fiona and Phil. "You must be overwhelmed, Baudelaire '- Phil said. "I remember my first day aboard the Queequeg, it made Lucky Smells Lumbermill seem calm and quiet!" "Phil, why don't you get the Baudelaires some soda, while I find them some uniforms?" Fiona said. "Soda?" Phil said, with a nervous glance at the captain, who was already halfway up the ladder. "We're supposed to save the soda for a special occasion." "It is a special occasion," Fiona said. "We're welcoming three more volunteers on board. What kind of soda do you prefer, Baudelaires?" "Anything but parsley," Violet said, referring to a beverage enjoyed by Esme Squalor. "I'll bring you some lemon-lime," Phil said. "Sailors should always make sure there's plenty of citrus in their system. I'm so glad to see you, children. You know, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. I was so horrified after what happened in Paltryville that I couldn't stay at Lucky Smells and since then my life has been one big adventure!" "I'm sorry that your leg never healed," Klaus said, referring to Phil's limp. "I didn't realize the accident with the stamping machine was so serious," "That's not why I'm limping," Phil said. "I was bitten by a shark last week. It was very painful, but I'm quite lucky. Most people never get an opportunity to get so close to such a deadly animal!" The Baudelaires watched him as he limped back through the kitchen door, whistling a bouncy tune. "Was Phil always optimistic when you knew him?" Fiona asked. "Always," Violet said, and her siblings nodded in agreement. "We've never known anyone who could remain so cheerful, no matter what terrible things occurred," "To tell you the truth, I sometimes find it a bit tiresome," Fiona said, adjusting her triangular glasses, "Shall we find you some uniforms?" The Baudelaires nodded, and followed Fiona out of the Main Hall and back into the narrow corridor. "I know you have a lot of questions," she said, "so Ill try to tell you everything I know. My stepfather believes that he or she who hesitates is lost, but I have a more cautious personal philosophy." "We'd be very grateful if you might tell us a few things," Klaus said. "First, how do you know who we are? Why were you looking for us? How did you know how to find us?" "That's a lot of firsts," Fiona said with a smile. "I think you Baudelaires are forgetting that your exploits haven't exactly been a secret. Nearly every day there's been a story about you in one of the most popular newspapers." "The Daily Punctilio?" Violet asked.' "I hope you haven't been believing the dreadful lies they've been printing about us." "Of course not," Fiona said. "But even the most ridiculous of stories can contain a grain of truth. The Daily Punctilio said that you'd murdered a man in the Village of Fowl Devotees, and set fires at Heimlich Hospital and Caligari Carnival. We knew, of course, that you hadn't committed these crimes, but we could tell that you had been there. My stepfather and I figured that you'd found the secret stain on Madame Lulu's map, and were headed for the V.F.D. headquarters." Klaus gasped. "You know about Madame Lulu," he said, "and the coded stain?" "My stepfather taught that code to Madame Lulu," Fiona explained, "a long time ago, when they were both young. Well, we heard about the destruction of the headquarters, so we assumed that you'd be heading back down the mountain. So I set a course for the Queequeg to journey up the Stricken Stream." "You traveled all the way up here," Klaus said, "just to find us?" Fiona looked down. "Well, no," she said. "You weren't the only thing at V.F.D. headquarters. One of our Volunteer Factual Dispatches told us that the sugar bowl was there as well" "Dephinpat?" Sunny asked. "What are Volunteer Factual Dispatches exactly?" Violet translated. "They're a way of sharing information," Fiona said. "It's difficult for volunteers to meet up with one another, so when they unlock a mystery they can write it in a telegram. That way, important information gets circulated, and before long our commonplace books will be full of information we can use to defeat our enemies. A commonplace book is a..." "We know what a commonplace book is," Klaus said, and removed his dark blue notebook from his pocket. "I've been keeping one myself." Fiona smiled, and drummed her gloved fingers on the cover of Klaus's book. "I should have. known," she said. "If your sisters want to start books themselves, we should have a few spares. Everything's in our supply room." "So are we going up to the ruins of the headquarters," Violet asked, "to get the sugar bowl? We didn't see it there." "We think someone threw it out the window," Fiona answered, "when the fire began. If they threw the sugar bowl from the kitchen, it would have landed in the Stricken Stream and been carried by the water cycle all the way down the mountains. We were seeing if it could be found at the bottom of the stream when we happened upon you three." "The stream probably carried it much further than this," Klaus said thoughtfully. "I think so too," Fiona agreed. "I'm hoping that you can discover its location by studying my stepfather's tidal charts. I can't make head or tail of them." "I'll show you how to read them," Klaus said. "It's not difficult." "That's what frightens me," Fiona said. "If those charts aren't difficult to read, then Count Olaf might have a chance of finding the sugar bowl before we do. My stepfather says that if the sugar bowl falls into his hands, then all of the efforts of all the volunteers will be for naught." The Baudelaires nodded, and the four children made their way down the corridor in silence. The phrase "for naught" is simply a fancy way of saying "for nothing," and it doesn't matter which phrase you use, for they arc both equally difficult to admit. Later this afternoon, for instance, I will enter a large room full of sand, and if I do not find the test tube I am looking for, it will be difficult to admit that I have sifted through all that sand for nothing. If you insist on finishing this book, you will find it difficult to admit, between bouts of weeping, that you have read this story for naught, and that it would have been better to page through tedious descriptions of the water cycle. And the Baudelaires did not want to find themselves admitting that all of their troubles had been for naught, that all their adventures meant nothing, and that their entire lives were naught and nothing, if Count Olaf managed to find this crucial sugar bowl before they did. The three siblings followed Fiona down the dim corridor and hoped that their time aboard the Queequeg would not be another terrifying journey ending in more disappointment, disillusionment, and despair. For the moment, however, their journey ended at a small door where Fiona stopped and turned to face the Baudelaires. "This is our supply room," she said, "Inside you'll find uniforms for the three of you, although even our smallest size might be too big for Sunny." "Pinstripe," Sunny said. She meant something like, "Don't worry, I'm used to ill-fitting clothing," and her siblings were quick to translate. "You'll need diving helmets, too," Fiona said. "This is an old submarine, and it could spring a leak. If the leak is serious, the pressure of the water could cause the walls of the Queequeg to collapse, filling all these rooms and corridors with water. The oxygen systems contained in the diving helmets enable you to breathe underwater, for a short time, anyway." "Your stepfather said that the helmets would be too big for Sunny, and that she'd have to curl up inside one," Violet said. "Is that safe?" "Safe but uncomfortable," Fiona said, "like everything else on the Queequeg. This submarine used to be in wonderful shape, but without anyone who knows about mechanics, it's not quite up to its former glory. Many of the rooms have flooded, so I'm sorry to say that we'll be sleeping in very tight quarters. I hope you like bunk beds." "We've slept on worse," Klaus said. "So I hear," Fiona replied. "I read a description of the Orphans Shack at Prufrock Preparatory School. That sounded terrible." "So you knew about us, even then?" Violet asked. "Why didn't you find us sooner?" Fiona sighed. "We knew about you," she said. "Every day I would read terrible stories in the newspaper, but my stepfather said we couldn't do anything about all the treachery those stories contained." "Why not?" Klaus asked. "He said your troubles were too enormous," she replied. "I don't understand," Violet said. "I don't really understand, either," Fiona admitted. "My stepfather said that the amount of treachery in this world is enormous, and that the best we could do was one small noble thing. That's why we're looking for the sugar bowl. You'd think that accomplishing such a small task would be easy, but we've been looking for ages and still haven't found it." "But what's so important about the sugar bowl?" Klaus asked. Fiona sighed again, and blinked several times behind her triangular glasses. She looked so sad that the middle Baudelaire almost wished he hadn't asked. "I don't know," she said. "He won't tell me." "Whyno?" Sunny asked. "He said it was better I didn't know," Fiona said. "I guess that's enormous, too, an enormous secret. He said people had been destroyed for knowing such enormous secrets, and that he didn't want me in that sort of danger." "But you're already in danger," Klaus said. "We're all in danger. We're on board an unstable submarine, trying to find a tiny, important object before a nefarious villain gets his hands on it." Fiona turned the handle of the door, which opened with a long, loud creak that made the Baudelaires shiver. The room was very small and very dim, lit only by one small green light, and for a moment, it looked like the room was full of people staring silently at the children in the corridor. But then the siblings saw it was just a row of uniforms, hanging limply from hooks along the wall. "I guess there are worse dangers," Fiona said quietly. "I guess there are dangers we simply can't imagine." The Baudelaires looked at their companion and then at the eerie row of empty uniforms. On a shelf above the waterproof suits was a row of large diving helmets, round spheres of metal with small circular windows in the middle so the children would be able to see out when they put them on. In the dim green light, the helmets looked a bit like eyes, glaring at the Baudelaires from the supply room just as the eye on Count Olaf's ankle had glared at them so many times before. Although they
still weren't pirates, the siblings were tempted to say "shiver me timbers" once again as they stepped inside the small, cramped room, and felt themselves shiver down to their bones. They did not like to think about the Queequeg springing a leak or collapsing, or to imagine themselves frantically attaching the diving helmets to their heads or, in Sunny's case, frantically stuffing herself inside. They did not like to think about where Count Olaf might be, or imagine what would happen if he found the sugar bowl before they did. But most of all, the Baudelaire orphans did nor like to think about the dangers Fiona had mentioned, danger worse than the ones they faced, or dangers they simply couldn't imagine.