“You misunderstood me,” Klaus said quickly. “All I meant was that it’s easier to research something that’s interesting.”
“You sound like Fiona,” the captain said. “When I want her to research the life of Herman Melville, she works slowly, but she’s quick as a whip when the subject is mushrooms.”
“Mushrooms?” Klaus asked. “Are you a mycologist?”
Fiona smiled, and her eyes grew wide behind her triangular glasses. “I never thought I’d meet someone who knew that word,” she said. “Besides me. Yes, I’m a mycologist. I’ve been interested in fungi all my life. If we have time, I’ll show you my mycological library.”
“Time?” Captain Widdershins repeated. “We don’t have time for fungus books! Aye! We don’t have time for you two to do all that flirting, either!”
“We’re not flirting!” Fiona said. “We’re having a conversation.”
“It looked like flirting to me,” the captain said. “Aye!”
“Why don’t you tell us about your research,” Violet said to Klaus, knowing that her brother would rather talk about the tidal charts than his personal life. Klaus gave her a grateful smile and pointed to a point on the chart.
“If my calculations are correct,” he said, “the sugar bowl would have been carried down the same tributary we went down in the toboggan. The prevailing currents of the stream lead all the way down here, where the sea begins.”
“So it was carried out to sea,” Violet said.
“I think so,” Klaus said. “And we can see here that the tides would move it away from Sontag Shore in a northeasterly direction.”
“Sink?” Sunny asked, which meant something like, “Wouldn’t the sugar bowl just drift to the ocean floor?”
“It’s too small,” Klaus said. “Oceans are in constant motion, and an object that falls into the sea could end up miles away. It appears that the tides and currents in this part of the ocean would take the sugar bowl past the Gulag Archipelago here, and then head down toward the Mediocre Barrier Reef before turning at this point here, which is marked ‘A.A.’ Do you know what that is, Captain? It looks like some sort of floating structure.”
The captain sighed, and raised one finger to fiddle with the curl of his mustache. “Aye,” he said sadly. “Anwhistle Aquatics. It’s a marine research center and a rhetorical advice service—or it was. It burned down.”
“Anwhistle?” Violet asked. “That was Aunt Josephine’s last name.”
“Aye,” the captain said. “Anwhistle Aquatics was founded by Gregor Anwhistle, the famous ichnologist and Josephine’s brother-in-law. But all that’s ancient history. Where did the sugar bowl go next?”
The Baudelaires would have preferred to learn more, but knew better than to argue with the captain, and Klaus pointed to a small oval on the chart to continue his report. “This is the part that confuses me,” he said. “You see this oval, right next to Anwhistle Aquatics? It’s marked ‘G.G.,’ but there’s no other explanation.”
“G.G.?” Captain Widdershins said, and stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “I’ve never seen an oval like that on a chart like this.”
“There’s something else confusing about it,” Klaus said, peering at the oval. There are two different arrows inside it, and each one points in a different direction.”
“It looks like the tide is going two ways at once,” Fiona said.
Violet frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.
“I’m confused, too,” Klaus said. “According to my calculations, the sugar bowl was probably carried right to this place on the map. But where it went from there I can’t imagine.”
“I guess we should set a course for G.G., whatever it might be,” Violet said, “and see what we can find when we get there.”
“I’m the captain!” the captain cried. “I’ll give the orders around here! Aye! And I order that we set a course for that oval, and see what we can find when we get there! But first I’m hungry! And thirsty! Aye! And my arm itches! I can scratch my own arm, but Cookie and Sunny, you are responsible for food and drink! Aye!”
“Sunny helped me make a chowder that should be ready in a few minutes,” Phil said. “Her teeth were very handy in dicing the boiled potatoes.”
“Flosh,” Sunny said, which meant “Don’t worry—I cleaned my teeth before using them as kitchen implements.”
“Chowder? Aye! Chowder sounds delicious!” the captain cried. “And what about dessert? Aye? Dessert is the most important meal of the day! Aye! In my opinion! Even though it’s not really a meal! Aye!”
“Tonight, the only dessert we have is gum,” Phil said. “I still have some left from my days at the lumbermill.”
“I think I’ll pass on dessert,” Klaus said, who’d had such a terrible time at Lucky Smells Lumbermill that he no longer had a taste for gum.
“Yomhuledet,” Sunny said. She meant “Don’t worry—Phil and I have arranged a surprise dessert for tomorrow night,” but of course only her siblings could understand the youngest Baudelaire’s unusual way of talking. Nevertheless, as soon as Sunny spoke, Captain Widdershins stood up from the table and began crying out in astonishment.
“Aye!” he cried. “Dear God! Holy Buddha! Charles Darwin! Duke Ellington! Aye! Fiona— turn off the engines! Aye! Cookie—turn off the stove! Aye! Violet—make sure the telegram device is off! Aye! Klaus! Gather your materials together so nothing rolls around! Aye! Calm down! Work quickly! Don’t panic! Help! Aye!”
“What’s going on?” Phil asked.
“What is it, stepfather?” Fiona asked.
For once, the captain was silent, and merely pointed at a screen on the submarine wall. The screen looked like a piece of graph paper, lit up in green light, with a glowing letter Q in the center.
“That looks like a sonar detector,” Violet said.
“It is a sonar detector,” Fiona said. “We can tell if any other undersea craft are approaching us by detecting the sounds they make. The Q represents the Queequeg and—”
The mycologist gasped, and the Baudelaires looked at where she was pointing. At the very top of the panel was another glowing symbol, which was moving down the screen at a fast clip, a phrase which here means “straight toward the Queequeg.” Fiona did not say what this green symbol stood for, and the children could not bear to ask. It was an eye, staring at the frightened volunteers and wiggling its long, skinny eyelashes, which protruded from every side.
“Olaf!” Sunny said in a whisper.
“There’s no way of knowing for sure,” Fiona said, “but we’d better follow my stepfather’s orders. If it’s another submarine, then it has a sonar detector too. If the Queequeg is absolutely silent, they’ll have no idea we’re here.”
“Aye!” the captain said. “Hurry! He who hesitates is lost!”
Nobody bothered to add “Or she” to the captain’s personal philosophy, but instead hurried to silence the submarine. Fiona climbed up the rope ladder and turned off the whirring engine. Violet wheeled back into the machinery of the telegram device and turned it off. Phil and Sunny ran into the kitchen to turn off the stove, so even the bubbling of their homemade chowder would not give the Queequeg away. And Klaus and the captain gathered up the materials on the table so that nothing would make even the slightest rattle. Within moments the submarine was silent as the grave, and all the volunteers stood mutely at the table, looking out the porthole into the gloomy water of the sea. As the eye on the sonar screen drew closer to the Q, they could see something emerge from the darkened waters—a strange shape that became clearer as it got closer and closer to the Queequeg. It was, indeed, another submarine, the likes of which the Baudelaires had never seen before, even in the strangest of books. It was much, much bigger than the Queequeg, and as it approached, the children had to cover their mouths so their gasps could not be heard.
The second submarine was in the shape of a giant octopus, with an enormous metal dome for a head and two wide portholes for eyes. A real octopus,
of course, has eight legs, but this submarine had many more. What had appeared to be eyelashes on the sonar screen were really small metal tubes, protruding from the body of the octopus and circling in the water, making thousands of bubbles that hurried toward the surface as if they were frightened of the underwater craft. The octopus drew closer, and all six passengers on the Queequeg stood as still as statues, hoping the submarine had not discovered them. The strange craft was so close the Baudelaires could see a shadowy figure inside one of the octopus’s eyes—a tall, lean figure, and although the children could not see any further details, they were positive the figure had one eyebrow instead of two, filthy fingernails instead of good grooming habits, and a tattoo of an eye on its left ankle.
“Count Olaf,” Sunny whispered, before she could stop herself. The figure in the porthole twitched, as if Sunny’s tiny noise had caused the Queequeg to be detected. Spouting more bubbles, the octopus drew closer still, and any moment it seemed that one of the legs of the octopus would be heard scraping against the outside of the Queequeg. The three children looked down at their helmets, which they had left on the floor, and wondered if they should put them on, so they might survive if the submarine collapsed. Fiona grabbed her stepfather’s arm, but Captain Widdershins shook his head silently, and pointed at the sonar screen again. The eye and the Q were almost on top of one another on the screen, but that was not what the captain was pointing at.
There was a third shape of glowing green light, this one the biggest of all, a huge curved tube with a small circle at the end of it, slithering toward the center of the screen like a snake. But this third underwater craft didn’t look like a snake. As it approached the eye and the Q, the small circle leading the enormous curved tube toward the Queequeg and its frightened volunteer crew, the shape looked more like a question mark. The Baudelaires stared at this new, third shape approaching them in eerie silence, and felt as if they were about to be consumed by the very questions they were trying to answer.
Captain Widdershins pointed at the porthole again, and the children watched the octopus stop, as if it too had detected this strange third shape. Then the legs of the octopus began whirring even more furiously, and the strange submarine began to recede from view, a phrase which here means “disappear from the porthole as it hurried away from the Queequeg.” The Baudelaires looked at the sonar screen, and watched the question mark follow the glowing green eye in silence until both shapes disappeared from the sonar detector and the Queequeg was alone. The six passengers waited a moment and then sighed with relief.
“It’s gone,” Violet said. “Count Olaf didn’t find us.”
“I knew we’d be safe,” Phil said, optimistic as usual. “Olaf is probably in a good mood anyway.”
The Baudelaires did not bother to say that their enemy was only in a good mood when one of his treacherous plans was succeeding, or when the enormous fortune, left behind by the Baudelaire parents, appeared to be falling into his grubby hands.
“What was that, Stepfather?” Fiona said. “Why did he leave?”
“What was that third shape?” Violet asked.
The captain shook his head again. “Something very bad,” he said. “Even worse than Olaf, probably. I told you Baudelaires that there is evil you cannot even imagine.”
“We don’t have to imagine it,” Klaus said. “We saw it there on the screen.”
“That screen is nothing,” the captain said. “It’s just a piece of equipment, aye? There was a philosopher who said that all of life is just shadows. He said that people were just sitting in a cave, watching shadows on the cave wall. Aye—shadows of something much bigger and grander than themselves. Well, that sonar detector is like our cave wall, showing us the shape of things much more powerful and terrifying.”
“I don’t understand,” Fiona said.
“I don’t want you to understand,” the captain said, putting his arm around her. “That’s why I haven’t told you why the sugar bowl is so very crucial. There are secrets in this world too terrible for young people to know, even as those secrets get closer and closer. Aye! In any case, I’m hungry. Aye! Shall we eat?”
The captain rang his bell again, and the Baudelaires felt as if they had awoken from a deep sleep. “I’ll serve the chowder,” Phil said. “Come on, Sunny, why don’t you help me?”
“I’ll turn the engines back on,” Fiona said, and began climbing the rope ladder. “Violet, there’s a drawer in the table full of silverware. Perhaps you and your brother could set the table.”
“Of course,” Violet said, but then frowned as she turned to her brother. The middle Baudelaire was staring at the tidal chart with a look of utter concentration. His eyes were so bright behind his glasses that they looked a bit like the glowing symbols on the sonar detector. “Klaus?” she said.
Klaus didn’t answer his sister, but turned his gaze from the chart to Captain Widdershins. “I may not know why the sugar bowl’s important,” he said, “but I’ve just figured out where it is.”
CHAPTER
Five
When you are invited to dine, particularly with people you do not know very well, it always helps to have a conversational opener, a phrase which here means “an interesting sentence to say out loud in order to get people talking.” Although lately it has become more and more difficult to attend dinner parties without the evening ending in gunfire or tapioca, I keep a list of good and bad conversational openers in my commonplace book in order to avoid awkward pauses at the dinner table. “Who would like to see an assortment of photographs taken while I was on vacation?” for instance, is a very poor conversational opener, because it is likely to make your fellow diners shudder instead of talk, whereas good conversational openers are sentences such as “What would drive a man to commit arson?,” “Why do so many stories of true love end in tragedy and despair?,” and “Madame diLustro, I believe I’ve discovered your true identity!,” all of which are likely to provoke discussions, arguments, and accusations, thus making the dinner party much more entertaining. When Klaus Baudelaire announced that he’d discovered the location of the sugar bowl, it was one of the best conversational openers in the history of dinner gatherings, because everyone aboard the Queequeg began talking at once, and dinner had not even been served.
“Aye?” Captain Widdershins shouted. “You’ve figured out where the tide took it? Aye? But you just said you didn’t know! Aye! You said you were confused by the tidal charts, and that oval marked ‘G.G.’! Aye! And yet you’ve figured it out! Aye! You’re a genius! Aye! You’re a smarty-pants! Aye! You’re a bookworm! Aye! You’re brilliant! Aye! You’re sensational! Aye! If you find me the sugar bowl, I’ll allow you to marry Fiona!”
“Stepfather!” Fiona cried, blushing behind her triangular glasses.
“Don’t worry,” the captain replied, “we’ll find a husband for Violet, too! Aye! Perhaps we’ll find your long-lost brother, Fiona! He’s much older, of course, and he’s been missing for years, but if Klaus can locate the sugar bowl he could probably find him! Aye! He’s a charming man, so you’d probably fall in love with him, Violet, and then we could have a double wedding! Aye! Right here in the Main Hall of the Queequeg! Aye! I would be happy to officiate! Aye! I have a bow tie I’ve been saving for a special occasion!”
“Captain Widdershins,” Violet said, “let’s try to stick to the subject of the sugar bowl.” She did not add that she was not interested in getting married for quite some time, particularly after Count Olaf had tried to marry her in one of his early schemes.
“Aye!” the captain cried. “Of course! Naturally! Aye! Tell us everything, Klaus! We’ll eat while you talk! Aye! Sunny! Cookie! Serve the chowder!”
“Chowder is served!” announced Phil, as he hurried from the kitchen carrying two steaming bowls of thick soup. The youngest Baudelaire trailed behind him. Sunny was still a bit too young to carry hot food by herself, but she had found a pepper grinder, and circled the table offering fresh ground pepper to anyone who wanted some
.
“Double pepper for me, Sunny!” Captain Widdershins cried, snatching the first bowl of chowder, although it is more polite to let one’s guests be served first. “A nice hot bowl of chowder! A double helping of pepper! The location of the sugar bowl! Aye! That’ll blow the barnacles off me! Aye! I’m so glad I scooped you Baudelaires out of the stream!”
“I’m glad, too,” Fiona said, smiling shyly at Klaus.
“I couldn’t be happier about it,” Phil said, serving two more bowls of chowder. “I thought I’d never see you Baudelaires again, and here you are! All three of you have grown up so nicely, even though you’ve been constantly pursued by an evil villain and falsely accused of numerous crimes!”
“You certainly have had a harrowing journey,” Fiona said, using a word which here means “frantic and extremely distressing.”
“I’m afraid we may have another harrowing journey ahead of us,” Klaus said. “When Captain Widdershins was talking about the philosopher who said that all of life is just shadows in a cave, I realized at once what that oval must be.”
“A philosopher?” the captain asked. “That’s impossible! Aye!”
“Absurdio,” Sunny said, which meant “Philosophers live at the tops of mountains or in ivory towers, not underneath the sea.”
“I think Klaus means a cave,” Violet said quickly, rather than translating. “The oval must mark the entrance to a cave.”
“It begins right near Anwhistle Aquatics,” Klaus said, pointing to the chart. “The currents of the ocean would have brought the sugar bowl right to the entrance, and then the currents of the cave would have carried it far inside.”
“But the chart only shows the entrance to the cave,” Violet said. “We don’t know what it’s like inside. I wish Quigley was here. With his knowledge of maps, he might know the path of the cave.”
“But Quigley isn’t here,” Klaus said gently. “I guess we’ll be traveling in uncharted waters.”