“Entro!” Sunny shrieked, which meant something along the lines of “And we don’t have enough time to walk around the lake, either.”
“There must be other boats on this lake,” Klaus said, “besides the ferry. Motorboats, or fishing boats, or—” He trailed off, and his eyes met those of his sisters. All three orphans were thinking the same thing.
“Or sailboats,” Violet finished for him. “Captain Sham’s Sailboat Rentals. He said it was right on Damocles Dock.”
The Baudelaires stood under the awning of the ticket booth and looked down at the far end of the deserted dock, where they could see a metal gate that was very tall and had glistening spikes on the top of it. Hanging over the metal gate was a sign with some words they couldn’t read, and next to the sign there was a small shack, scarcely visible in the rain, with a flickering light in the window. The children looked at it with dread in their hearts. Walking into Captain Sham’s Sailboat Rentals in order to find Aunt Josephine would feel like walking into a lion’s den in order to escape from a lion.
“We can’t go there,” Klaus said.
“We have to,” Violet said. “We know Captain Sham isn’t there, because he’s either on his way to Aunt Josephine’s house or still at the Anxious Clown.”
“But whoever is there,” Klaus said, pointing to the flickering light, “won’t let us rent a sailboat.”
“They won’t know we’re the Baudelaires,” Violet replied. “We’ll tell whoever it is that we’re the Jones children and that we want to go for a sail.”
“In the middle of a hurricane?” Klaus replied. “They won’t believe that.”
“They’ll have to,” Violet said resolutely, a word which here means “as if she believed it, even though she wasn’t so sure,” and she led her siblings toward the shack. Klaus clasped the atlas close to his chest, and Sunny, whose turn it was for Klaus’s coat, clutched it around herself, and soon the Baudelaires were shivering underneath the sign that read: CAPTAIN SHAM’S SAILBOAT RENTALS—EVERY BOAT HAS IT’S OWN SAIL. But the tall metal gate was locked up tight, and the Baudelaires paused there, anxious about going inside the shack.
“Let’s take a look,” Klaus whispered, pointing to a window, but it was too high for him or Sunny to use. Standing on tiptoe, Violet peered into the window of the shack and with one glance she knew there was no way they could rent a sailboat.
The shack was very small, with only room for a small desk and a single lightbulb, which was giving off the flickering light. But at the desk, asleep in a chair, was a person so massive that it looked like an enormous blob was in the shack, snoring away with a bottle of beer in one hand and a ring of keys in the other. As the person snored, the bottle shook, the keys jangled, and the door of the shack creaked open an inch or two, but although those noises were quite spooky, they weren’t what frightened Violet. What frightened Violet was that you couldn’t tell if this person was a man or a woman. There aren’t very many people like that in the world, and Violet knew which one this was. Perhaps you have forgotten about Count Olaf’s evil comrades, but the Baudelaires had seen them in the flesh—lots of flesh, in this comrade’s case—and remembered all of them in gruesome detail. These people were rude, and they were sneaky, and they did whatever Count Olaf—or in this case, Captain Sham—told them to do, and the orphans never knew when they would turn up. And now, one had turned up right there in the shack, dangerous, treacherous, and snoring.
Violet’s face must have shown her disappointment, because as soon as she took a look Klaus asked, “What’s wrong? I mean, besides Hurricane Herman, and Aunt Josephine faking her own death, and Captain Sham coming after us and everything.”
“One of Count Olaf’s comrades is in the shack,” Violet said.
“Which one?” Klaus asked.
“The one who looks like neither a man nor a woman,” Violet replied.
Klaus shuddered. “That’s the scariest one.”
“I disagree,” Violet said. “I think the bald one is scariest.”
“Vass!” Sunny whispered, which probably meant “Let’s discuss this at another time.”
“Did he or she see you?” Klaus asked.
“No,” Violet said. “He or she is asleep. But he or she is holding a ring of keys. We’ll need them, I bet, to unlock the gate and get a sailboat.”
“You mean we’re going to steal a sailboat?” Klaus asked.
“We have no choice,” Violet said. Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it. “We have to get to Curdled Cave as quickly as possible,” Violet continued, “and the only way we can do it is to steal a sailboat.”
“I know that,” Klaus said, “but how are we going to get the keys?”
“I don’t know,” Violet admitted. “The door of the shack is creaky, and I’m afraid if we open it any wider we’ll wake him or her up.”
“You could crawl through the window,” Klaus said, “by standing on my shoulders. Sunny could keep watch.”
“Where is Sunny?” Violet asked nervously.
Violet and Klaus looked down at the ground and saw Klaus’s coat sitting alone in a little heap. They looked down the dock but only saw the Fickle Ferry ticket booth and the foamy waters of the lake, darkening in the gloom of the late afternoon.
“She’s gone!” Klaus cried, but Violet put a finger to her lips and stood on tiptoe to look in the window again. Sunny was crawling through the open door of the shack, flattening her little body enough so as not to open the door any wider.
“She’s inside,” Violet murmured.
“In the shack?” Klaus said in a horrified gasp. “Oh no. We have to stop her.”
“She’s crawling very slowly toward that person,” Violet said, afraid even to blink.
“We promised our parents we’d take care of her,” Klaus said. “We can’t let her do this.”
“She’s reaching toward the key ring,” Violet said breathlessly. “She’s gently prying it loose from the person’s hand.”
“Don’t tell me any more,” Klaus said, as a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky. “No, do tell me. What is happening?”
“She has the keys,” Violet said. “She’s putting them in her mouth to hold them. She’s crawling back toward the door. She’s flattening herself and crawling through.”
“She’s made it,” Klaus said in amazement. Sunny came crawling triumphantly toward the orphans, the keys in her mouth. “Violet, she made it,” Klaus said, giving Sunny a hug as a huge boom! of thunder echoed across the sky.
Violet smiled down at Sunny, but stopped smiling when she looked back into the shack. The thunder had awoken Count Olaf’s comrade, and Violet watched in dismay as the person looked at its empty hand where the key ring had been, and then down on the floor where Sunny had left little crawl-prints of rainwater, and then up to the window and right into Violet’s eyes.
“She’s awake!” Violet shrieked. “He’s awake! It’s awake! Hurry, Klaus, open the gate and I’ll try to distract it.”
Without another word, Klaus took the key ring from Sunny’s mouth and hurried to the tall metal gate. There were three keys on the ring—a skinny one, a thick one, and one with teeth as jagged as the glistening spikes hanging over the children. He put the atlas down on the ground and began to try the skinny key in the lock, just as Count Olaf’s comrade came lumbering out of the shack.
Her heart in her throat, Violet stood in front of the creature and gave it a fake smile. “Good afternoon,” she said, not knowing whether to add “sir” or “madam.” “I seem to have gotten lost on this dock. Could you tell me the way to the Fickle Ferry?”
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Count Olaf’s comrade did not answer, but kept shuffling toward the orphans. The skinny key fit into the lock but didn’t budge, and Klaus tried the thick one.
“I’m sorry,” Violet said, “I didn’t hear you. Could you tell me—”
Without a word the mountainous person grabbed Violet by the hair, and with one swing of its arm lifted her up over its smelly shoulder the way you might carry a backpack. Klaus couldn’t get the thick key to fit in the lock and tried the jagged one, just as the person scooped up Sunny with its other hand and held her up, the way you might hold an ice cream cone.
“Klaus!” Violet screamed. “Klaus!”
The jagged key wouldn’t fit in the lock, either. Klaus, in frustration, shook and shook the metal gate. Violet was kicking the creature from behind, and Sunny was biting its wrist, but the person was so Brobdingnagian—a word which here means “unbelievably husky”—that the children were causing it minimal pain, a phrase which here means “no pain at all.” Count Olaf’s comrade lumbered toward Klaus, holding the other two orphans in its grasp. In desperation, Klaus tried the skinny key again in the lock, and to his surprise and relief it turned and the tall metal gate swung open. Just a few feet away were six sailboats tied to the end of the dock with thick rope—sailboats that could take them to Aunt Josephine. But Klaus was too late. He felt something grab the back of his shirt, and he was lifted up in the air. Something slimy began running down his back, and Klaus realized with horror that the person was holding him in his or her mouth.
“Put me down!” Klaus screamed. “Put me down!”
“Put me down!” Violet yelled. “Put me down!”
“Poda rish!” Sunny shrieked. “Poda rish!”
But the lumbering creature had no concern for the wishes of the Baudelaire orphans. With great sloppy steps it turned itself around and began to carry the youngsters back toward the shack. The children heard the gloppy sound of its chubby feet sloshing through the rain, gumsh, gumsh, gumsh, gumsh. But then, instead of a gumsh, there was a skittle-wat as the person stepped on Aunt Josephine’s atlas, which slipped from under its feet. Count Olaf’s comrade waved its arms to keep its balance, dropping Violet and Sunny, and then fell to the ground, opening its mouth in surprise and dropping Klaus. The orphans, being in reasonably good physical shape, got to their feet much more quickly than this despicable creature, and ran through the open gate to the nearest sailboat. The creature struggled to right itself and chase them, but Sunny had already bitten the rope that tied the boat to the dock. By the time the creature reached the spiky metal gate, the orphans were already on the stormy waters of Lake Lachrymose. In the dim light of the late afternoon, Klaus wiped the grime of the creature’s foot off the cover of the atlas, and began to read it. Aunt Josephine’s book of maps had saved them once, in showing them the location of Curdled Cave, and now it had saved them again.
CHAPTER
Ten
The good people who are publishing this book have a concern that they have expressed to me. The concern is that readers like yourself will read my history of the Baudelaire orphans and attempt to imitate some of the things they do. So at this point in the story, in order to mollify the publishers—the word “mollify” here means “get them to stop tearing their hair out in worry”—please allow me to give you a piece of advice, even though I don’t know anything about you. The piece of advice is as follows: If you ever need to get to Curdled Cave in a hurry, do not, under any circumstances, steal a boat and attempt to sail across Lake Lachrymose during a hurricane, because it is very dangerous and the chances of your survival are practically zero. You should especially not do this if, like the Baudelaire orphans, you have only a vague idea of how to work a sailboat.
Count Olaf’s comrade, standing at the dock and waving a chubby fist in the air, grew smaller and smaller as the wind carried the sailboat away from Damocles Dock. As Hurricane Herman raged over them, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny examined the sailboat they had just stolen. It was fairly small, with wooden seats and bright orange life jackets for five people. On top of the mast, which is a word meaning “the tall wooden post found in the middle of boats,” was a grimy white sail controlled by a series of ropes, and on the floor was a pair of wooden oars in case there was no wind. In the back, there was a sort of wooden lever with a handle for moving it this way and that, and under one of the seats was a shiny metal bucket for bailing out any water in case of a leak. There was also a long pole with a fishing net at the end of it, a small fishing rod with a sharp hook and a rusty spying glass, which is a sort of telescope used for navigating. The three siblings struggled into their life vests as the stormy waves of Lake Lachrymose took them farther and farther away from the shore.
“I read a book about working a sailboat,” Klaus shouted over the noise of the hurricane. “We have to use the sail to catch the wind. Then it will push us where we want to go.”
“And this lever is called a tiller,” Violet shouted. “I remember it from studying some naval blueprints. The tiller controls the rudder, which is below the water, steering the ship. Sunny, sit in back and work the tiller. Klaus, hold the atlas so we can tell where we’re going, and I’ll try to work the sail. I think if I pull on this rope, I can control the sail.”
Klaus turned the damp pages of the atlas to page 104. “That way,” he called, pointing to the right. “The sun is setting over there, so that must be west.”
Sunny scurried to the back of the sailboat and put her tiny hands on the tiller just as a wave hit the boat and sprayed her with foam. “Karg tem!” she called, which meant something along the lines of “I’m going to move the tiller this way, in order to steer the boat according to Klaus’s recommendation.”
The rain whipped around them, and the wind howled, and a small wave splashed over the side, but to the orphans’ amazement, the sailboat moved in the exact direction they wanted it to go. If you had come across the three Baudelaires at this moment, you would have thought their lives were filled with joy and happiness, because even though they were exhausted, damp, and in very great danger, they began to laugh in their triumph. They were so relieved that something had finally gone right that they laughed as if they were at the circus instead of in the middle of a lake, in the middle of a hurricane, in the middle of trouble.
As the storm wore itself out splashing waves over the sailboat and flashing lightning over their heads, the Baudelaires sailed the tiny boat across the vast and dark lake. Violet pulled ropes this way and that to catch the wind, which kept changing direction as wind tends to do. Klaus kept a close eye on the atlas and made sure they weren’t heading off course to the Wicked Whirlpool or the Rancorous Rocks. And Sunny kept the boat level by turning the tiller whenever Violet signaled. And just when the evening turned to night, and it was too dark to read the atlas, the Baudelaires saw a blinking light of pale purple. The orphans had always thought lavender was a rather sickly color, but for the first time in their lives they were glad to see it. It meant that the sailboat was approaching the Lavender Lighthouse, and soon they’d be at Curdled Cave. The storm finally broke—the word “broke” here means “ended,” rather than “shattered” or “lost all its money”—and the clouds parted to reveal an almost-full moon. The children shivered in their soaking clothes and stared out at the calming waves of the lake, watching the swirls of its inky depths.
“Lake Lachrymose is actually very pretty,” Klaus said thoughtfully. “I never noticed it before.”
“Cind,” Sunny agreed, adjusting the tiller slightly.
“I guess we never noticed it because of Aunt Josephine,” Violet said. “We got used to looking at the lake through her eyes.” She picked up the spying glass and squinted into it, and she was just able to see the shore. “I think I can see the lighthouse over there. There’s a dark hole in the cliff right next to it. It must be the mouth of Curdled Cave.”
Sure enough, as the sailboat drew closer and closer, the children could just make out the Lavender Lighthouse and the mout
h of the nearby cave, but when they looked into its depths, they could see no sign of Aunt Josephine, or of anything else for that matter. Rocks began to scrape the bottom of the boat, which meant they were in very shallow water, and Violet jumped out to drag the sailboat onto the craggy shore. Klaus and Sunny stepped out of the boat and took off their life jackets. Then they stood at the mouth of Curdled Cave and paused nervously. In front of the cave there was a sign saying it was for sale, and the orphans could not imagine who would want to buy such a phantasmagorical—the word “phantasmagorical” here means “all the creepy, scary words you can think of put together”—place. The mouth of the cave had jagged rocks all over it like teeth in the mouth of a shark. Just beyond the entrance the youngsters could see strange white rock formations, all melted and twisted together so they looked like moldy milk. The floor of the cave was as pale and dusty as if it were made of chalk. But it was not these sights that made the children pause. It was the sound coming out of the cave. It was a high-pitched, wavering wail, a hopeless and lost sound, as strange and as eerie as Curdled Cave itself.
“What is that sound?” Violet asked nervously.
“Just the wind, probably,” Klaus replied. “I read somewhere that when wind passes through small spaces, like caves, it can make weird noises. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
The orphans did not move. The sound did not stop.
“I’m afraid of it, anyway,” Violet said.
“Me too,” Klaus said.
“Geni,” Sunny said, and began to crawl into the mouth of the cave. She probably meant something along the lines of “We didn’t sail a stolen sailboat across Lake Lachrymose in the middle of Hurricane Herman just to stand nervously at the mouth of a cave,” and her siblings had to agree with her and follow her inside. The wailing was louder as it echoed off the walls and rock formations, and the Baudelaires could tell it wasn’t the wind. It was Aunt Josephine, sitting in a corner of the cave and sobbing with her head in her hands. She was crying so hard that she hadn’t even noticed the Baudelaires come into the cave.