“Maybe if I hadn’t hesitated,” the captain continued, “the Queequeg would have been repaired by now! Aye! The Submarine Q and Its Crew of Two is not in the best of shape, I’m afraid! Aye! We’ve been attacked by villains and leeches, by sharks and realtors, by pirates and girlfriends, by torpedoes and angry salmon! Aye!” He stopped at a thick metal door, turned to the Baudelaires, and sighed. “Everything from the radar mechanisms to my alarm clock is malfunctioning! Aye! That’s why I’m glad you’re here, Violet Baudelaire! We’re desperate for someone with mechanical smarts!”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Violet said.
“Well, take a look!” Captain Widdershins cried, and swung open the door. The Baudelaires followed him into an enormous, cavernous room that echoed when the captain spoke. There were pipes on the ceiling, pipes on the floor, and pipes sticking out of the walls at all angles. Between the pipes was a bewildering array of panels with knobs, gears, and tiny screens, as well as tiny signs saying things like, DANGER!, WARNING!, and HE OR SHE WHO HESITATES IS LOST! Here and there were a few green lights, and at the far end was an enormous wooden table piled with books, maps, and dirty dishes, which stood beneath an enormous porthole, a word which here means “round window through which the Baudelaires could see the filthy waters of the Stricken Stream.”
“This is the belly of the beast!” the captain said. “Aye! It’s the center of all operations aboard the Queequeg! This is where we control the submarine, eat our meals, research our missions, and play board games when we’re tired of working!” He strode over to one panel and ducked his head beneath it. “Fiona!” he called. “Come out of there!”
There was a faint rattling sound, and then the children saw something race out from under the panel and halfway across the floor. In the dim green light it took a moment to see it was a girl a bit older than Violet, who was lying faceup on a small wheeled platform. She was wearing a suit just like Captain Widdershins’s, with the same portrait of the bearded man on the front, and had a flashlight in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other. Smiling, she handed the pliers to her stepfather, who helped her up from the platform as she put on a pair of eyeglasses with triangular frames.
“Baudelaires,” the captain said, “this is Fiona, my stepdaughter. Fiona, this is Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire.”
“Charmed,” she said, extending a gloved hand first to Violet, then to Klaus, and finally to Sunny, who gave Fiona a big toothy smile. “I’m sorry I wasn’t upstairs to meet you. I’ve been trying to repair this telegram device, but electrical repairwork is not my specialty.”
“Aye!” the captain said. “For quite some time we’ve stopped receiving telegrams, but Fiona can’t seem to make heads or tails of the device! Violet, get to work!”
“You’ll have to forgive the way my stepfather speaks,” Fiona said, putting an arm around him. “It can take some getting used to.”
“We don’t have time to get used to anything!” Captain Widdershins cried. “This is no time to be passive! He who hesitates is lost!”
“Or she,” Fiona corrected quietly. “Come on, Violet, I’ll get you a uniform. If you’re wondering whose portrait is on the front, it’s Herman Melville.”
“He’s one of my favorite authors,” Klaus said. “I really enjoy the way he dramatizes the plight of overlooked people, such as poor sailors or exploited youngsters, through his strange, often experimental philosophical prose.”
“I should have known you liked him,” Fiona replied. “When Josephine’s house fell into the lake, my stepfather and I managed to save some of her library before it became too soaked. I read some of your decoding notes, Klaus. You’re a very perceptive researcher.”
“It’s very kind of you to say so,” Klaus said.
“Aye!” the captain cried. “A perceptive researcher is just what we need!” He stomped over to the table and lifted a pile of papers. “A certain taxi driver managed to smuggle these charts to me,” he said, “but I can’t make head or tail of them! They’re confusing! They’re confounding! They’re conversational! No—that’s not what I mean!”
“I think you mean convoluted,” Klaus said, peering at the charts. “‘Conversational’ means ‘having to do with conversations,’ but ‘convoluted’ means ‘complicated.’ What kind of charts are they?”
“Tidal charts!” the captain cried. “We have to figure out the exact course of the predominant tides at the point where the Stricken Stream meets the sea! Klaus, I want you to find a uniform and then get to work immediately! Aye!”
“Aye!” Klaus said, trying to get into the spirit of the Queequeg.
“Aye!” the captain answered in a happy roar.
“I?” Sunny asked.
“Aye!” the captain said. “I haven’t forgotten you, Sunny! I’d never forget Sunny! Never in a million years! Not that I will live that long! Particularly because I don’t exercise very much! But I don’t like exercising, so it’s worth it! Why, I remember when they wouldn’t let me go mountain climbing because I hadn’t trained properly, and—”
“Perhaps you should tell Sunny what you have in mind for her to do,” Fiona said gently.
“Of course!” the captain cried. “Naturally! Our other crewman has been in charge of cooking, but all he does is make these terrible damp casseroles! I’m tired of them! I’m hoping your cooking skills might improve our meal situation!”
“Sous,” Sunny said modestly, which meant something like, “I haven’t been cooking for very long,” and her siblings were quick to translate.
“Well, we’re in a hurry!” the captain replied, walking over to a far door marked KITCHEN. “We can’t wait for Sunny to become an expert chef before getting to work! He or she who hesitates is lost!” He opened the door and called inside. “Cookie! Get out here and meet the Baudelaires!”
The children heard some quiet, uneven footsteps, as if the cook had something wrong with one leg, and then a man limped through the door, wearing the same uniform as the captain and a wide smile on his face.
“Baudelaires!” he said. “I always believed I would see you again someday!”
The three siblings looked at the man and then at one another in stupefaction, a word which here means “amazement at seeing a man for the first time since their stay at Lucky Smells Lumbermill, when his kindness toward them had been one of the few positive aspects of that otherwise miserable chapter in their lives.” “Phil!” Violet cried. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“He’s the second of our crew of two!” the captain cried. “Aye! The original second in the crew of two was Fiona’s mother, but she died in a manatee accident quite a few years ago.”
“I’m not so sure it was an accident,” Fiona said.
“Then we had Jacques!” the captain continued. “Aye, and then what’s-his-name, Jacques’s brother, and then a dreadful woman who turned out to be a spy, and finally we have Phil! Although I like to call him Cookie! I don’t know why!”
“I was tired of working in the lumber industry,” Phil said. “I was sure I could find a better job, and look at me now—cook on a dilapidated submarine. Life keeps on getting better and better.”
“You always were an optimist,” Klaus said.
“We don’t need an optimist!” Captain Widdershins said. “We need a cook! Get to work, Baudelaires! All of you! Aye! We have no time to waste! He who hesitates is lost!”
“Or she,” Fiona reminded her stepfather. “And do we really have to start right this minute? I’m sure the Baudelaires are exhausted from their journey. We could spend a nice quiet evening playing board games—”
“Board games?” the captain said in astonishment. “Amusements? Entertainments? We don’t have time for such things! Aye! Today’s Saturday, which means we only have five days left! Thursday is the V.F.D. gathering, and I don’t want anyone at the Hotel Denouement to say that the Queequeg hasn’t performed its mission!”
“Mission?” Sunny asked.
“Aye!” Ca
ptain Widdershins said. “We mustn’t hesitate! We must act! We must hurry! We must move! We must search! We must investigate! We must hunt! We must pursue! We must stop occasionally for a brief snack! We must find that sugar bowl before Count Olaf does! Aye!”
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 Count 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 Queequeg’s engines, and I’ll show the Baudelaires where our spare uniforms are?”
“I’m the captain!” the captain announced. “Aye! 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, Baudelaires,” 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 Esmé 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 I’ll 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 then 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 Queeq
ueg 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—”