“Aunt Josephine,” Klaus said hesitantly, “we’re here.”
Aunt Josephine looked up, and the children could see that her face was wet from tears and chalky from the cave. “You figured it out,” she said, wiping her eyes and standing up. “I knew you could figure it out,” she said, and took each of the Baudelaires in her arms. She looked at Violet, and then at Klaus, and then at Sunny, and the orphans looked at her and found themselves with tears in their own eyes as they greeted their guardian. It was as if they had not quite believed that Aunt Josephine’s death was fake until they had seen her alive with their own eyes.
“I knew you were clever children,” Aunt Josephine said. “I knew you would read my message.”
“Klaus really did it,” Violet said.
“But Violet knew how to work the sailboat,” Klaus said. “Without Violet we never would have arrived here.”
“And Sunny stole the keys,” Violet said, “and worked the tiller.”
“Well, I’m glad you all made it here,” Aunt Josephine said. “Let me just catch my breath and I’ll help you bring in your things.”
The children looked at one another. “What things?” Violet asked.
“Why, your luggage of course,” Aunt Josephine replied. “And I hope you brought some food, because the supplies I brought are almost gone.”
“We didn’t bring any food,” Klaus said.
“No food?” Aunt Josephine said. “How in the world are you going to live with me in this cave if you didn’t bring any food?”
“We didn’t come here to live with you,” Violet said.
Aunt Josephine’s hands flew to her head and she rearranged her bun nervously. “Then why are you here?” she asked.
“Stim!” Sunny shrieked, which meant “Because we were worried about you!”
“‘Stim’ is not a sentence, Sunny,” Aunt Josephine said sternly. “Perhaps one of your older siblings could explain in correct English why you’re here.”
“Because Captain Sham almost had us in his clutches!” Violet cried. “Everyone thought you were dead, and you wrote in your will and testament that we should be placed in the care of Captain Sham.”
“But he forced me to do that,” Aunt Josephine whined. “That night, when he called me on the phone, he told me he was really Count Olaf. He said I had to write out a will saying you children would be left in his care. He said if I didn’t write what he said, he would drown me in the lake. I was so frightened that I agreed immediately.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Violet asked. “Why didn’t you call Mr. Poe? Why didn’t you call somebody who could have helped?”
“You know why,” Aunt Josephine said crossly. “I’m afraid of using the phone. Why, I was just getting used to answering it. I’m nowhere near ready to use the numbered buttons. But in any case, I didn’t need to call anybody. I threw a footstool through the window and then sneaked out of the house. I left you the note so that you would know I wasn’t really dead, but I hid my message so that Captain Sham wouldn’t know I had escaped from him.”
“Why didn’t you take us with you? Why did you leave us all alone by ourselves? Why didn’t you protect us from Captain Sham?” Klaus asked.
“It is not grammatically correct,” Aunt Josephine said, “to say ‘leave us all alone by ourselves.’ You can say ‘leave us all alone,’ or ‘leave us by ourselves,’ but not both. Do you understand?”
The Baudelaires looked at one another in sadness and anger. They understood. They understood that Aunt Josephine was more concerned with grammatical mistakes than with saving the lives of the three children. They understood that she was so wrapped up in her own fears that she had not given a thought to what might have happened to them. They understood that Aunt Josephine had been a terrible guardian, in leaving the children all by themselves in great danger. They understood and they wished more than ever that their parents, who never would have run away and left them alone, had not been killed in that terrible fire which had begun all the misfortune in the Baudelaire lives.
“Well, enough grammar lessons for today,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’m happy to see you, and you are welcome to share this cave with me. I don’t think Captain Sham will ever find us here.”
“We’re not staying here,” Violet said impatiently. “We’re sailing back to town, and we’re taking you with us.”
“No way, José,” Aunt Josephine said, using an expression which means “No way” and has nothing to do with José, whoever he is. “I’m too frightened of Captain Sham to face him. After all he’s done to you I would think that you would be frightened of him, too.”
“We are frightened of him,” Klaus said, “but if we prove that he’s really Count Olaf he will go to jail. You are the proof. If you tell Mr. Poe what happened, then Count Olaf will be locked away and we will be safe.”
“You can tell him, if you want to,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’m staying here.”
“He won’t believe us unless you come with us and prove that you’re alive,” Violet said.
“No, no, no,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’m too afraid.”
Violet took a deep breath and faced her frightened guardian. “We’re all afraid,” she said firmly. “We were afraid when we met Captain Sham in the grocery store. We were afraid when we thought that you had jumped out the window. We were afraid to give ourselves allergic reactions, and we were afraid to steal a sailboat and we were afraid to make our way across this lake in the middle of a hurricane. But that didn’t stop us.”
Aunt Josephine’s eyes filled up with tears. “I can’t help it that you’re braver than I,” she said. “I’m not sailing across that lake. I’m not making any phone calls. I’m going to stay right here for the rest of my life, and nothing you can say will change my mind.”
Klaus stepped forward and played his trump card, a phrase which means “said something very convincing, which he had saved for the end of the argument.” “Curdled Cave,” he said, “is for sale.”
“So what?” Aunt Josephine said.
“That means,” Klaus said, “that before long certain people will come to look at it. And some of those people”—he paused here dramatically—“will be realtors.”
Aunt Josephine’s mouth hung open, and the orphans watched her pale throat swallow in fear. “Okay,” she said finally, looking around the cave anxiously as if a realtor were already hiding in the shadows. “I’ll go.”
CHAPTER
Eleven
“Oh no,” Aunt Josephine said.
The children paid no attention. The worst of Hurricane Herman was over, and as the Baudelaires sailed across the dark lake there seemed to be very little danger. Violet moved the sail around with ease now that the wind was calm. Klaus looked back at the lavender light of the lighthouse and confidently guided the way back to Damocles Dock. And Sunny moved the tiller as if she had been a tiller-mover all her life. Only Aunt Josephine was scared. She was wearing two life jackets instead of one, and every few seconds she cried “Oh no,” even though nothing frightening was happening.
“Oh no,” Aunt Josephine said, “and I mean it this time.”
“What’s wrong, Aunt Josephine?” Violet said tiredly. The sailboat had reached the approximate middle of the lake. The water was still fairly calm, and the lighthouse still glowed, a pinpoint of pale purple light. There seemed to be no cause for alarm.
“We’re about to enter the territory of the Lachrymose Leeches,” Aunt Josephine said.
“I’m sure we’ll pass through safely,” Klaus said, peering through the spying glass to see if Damocles Dock was visible yet. “You told us that the leeches were harmless and only preyed on small fish.”
“Unless you’ve eaten recently,” Aunt Josephine said.
“But it’s been hours since we’ve eaten,” Violet said soothingly. “The last thing we ate were peppermints at the Anxious Clown. That was in the afternoon, and now it’s the middle of the night.”
Aunt Josephine looke
d down, and moved away from the side of the boat. “But I ate a banana,” she whispered, “just before you arrived.”
“Oh no,” Violet said. Sunny stopped moving the tiller and looked worriedly into the water.
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” Klaus said. “Leeches are very small animals. If we were in the water, we might have reason to fear, but I don’t think they’d attack a sailboat. Plus, Hurricane Herman may have frightened them away from their territory. I bet the Lachrymose Leeches won’t even show up.”
Klaus thought he was done speaking for the moment, but in the moment that followed he added one more sentence. The sentence was “Speak of the Devil,” and it is an expression that you use when you are talking about something only to have it occur. For instance, if you were at a picnic and said, “I hope it doesn’t snow,” and at that very minute a blizzard began, you could say, “Speak of the Devil” before gathering up your blanket and potato salad and driving away to a good restaurant. But in the case of the Baudelaire orphans, I’m sure you can guess what happened to prompt Klaus to use this expression.
“Speak of the Devil,” Klaus said, looking into the waters of the lake. Out of the swirling blackness came skinny, rising shapes, barely visible in the moonlight. The shapes were scarcely longer than a finger, and at first it looked as if someone were swimming in the lake and drumming their fingers on the surface of the water. But most people have only ten fingers, and in the few minutes that followed there were hundreds of these tiny shapes, wriggling hungrily from all sides toward the sailboat. The Lachrymose Leeches made a quiet, whispering sound on the water as they swam, as if the Baudelaire orphans were surrounded by people murmuring terrible secrets. The children watched in silence as the swarm approached the boat, each leech knocking lightly against the wood. Their tiny leech-mouths puckered in disappointment as they tried to taste the sailboat. Leeches are blind, but they aren’t stupid, and the Lachrymose Leeches knew that they were not eating a banana.
“You see?” Klaus said nervously, as the tapping of leech-mouths continued. “We’re perfectly safe.”
“Yes,” Violet said. She wasn’t sure they were perfectly safe, not at all, but it seemed best to tell Aunt Josephine they were perfectly safe. “We’re perfectly safe,” she said.
The tapping sound continued, getting a little rougher and louder. Frustration is an interesting emotional state, because it tends to bring out the worst in whoever is frustrated. Frustrated babies tend to throw food and make a mess. Frustrated citizens tend to execute kings and queens and make a democracy. And frustrated moths tend to bang up against lightbulbs and make light fixtures all dusty. But unlike babies, citizens, and moths, leeches are quite unpleasant to begin with. Now that the Lachrymose Leeches were getting frustrated, everyone on board the sailboat was quite anxious to see what would happen when frustration brought out the worst in leeches. For a while, the small creatures tried and tried to eat the wood, but their tiny teeth didn’t really do anything but make an unpleasant knocking sound. But then, all at once, the leeches knocked off, and the Baudelaires watched them wriggle away from the sailboat.
“They’re leaving,” Klaus said hopefully, but they weren’t leaving. When the leeches had reached a considerable distance, they suddenly swiveled their tiny bodies around and came rushing back to the boat. With a loud thwack! the leeches all hit the boat more or less at once, and the sailboat rocked precariously, a word which here means “in a way which almost threw Aunt Josephine and the Baudelaire youngsters to their doom.” The four passengers were rocked to and fro and almost fell into the waters of the lake, where the leeches were wriggling away again to prepare for another attack.
“Yadec!” Sunny shrieked and pointed at the side of the boat. Yadec, of course, is not grammatically correct English, but even Aunt Josephine understood that the youngest Baudelaire meant “Look at the crack in the boat that the leeches have made!” The crack was a tiny one, about as long as a pencil and about as wide as a human hair, and it was curved downward so it looked as if the sailboat were frowning at them. If the leeches kept hitting the side of the boat, the frown would only get wider.
“We have to sail much faster,” Klaus said, “or this boat will be in pieces in no time.”
“But sailing relies on the wind,” Violet pointed out. “We can’t make the wind go faster.”
“I’m frightened!” Aunt Josephine cried. “Please don’t throw me overboard!”
“Nobody’s going to throw you overboard,” Violet said impatiently, although I’m sorry to tell you that Violet was wrong about that. “Take an oar, Aunt Josephine. Klaus, take the other one. If we use the sail, the tiller, and the oars we should move more quickly.”
Thwack! The Lachrymose Leeches hit the side of the boat, widening the crack in the side and rocking the boat again. One of the leeches was thrown over the side in the impact, and twisted this way and that on the floor of the boat, gnashing its tiny teeth as it looked for food. Grimacing, Klaus walked cautiously over to it and tried to kick the leech overboard, but it clung onto his shoe and began gnawing through the leather. With a cry of disgust, Klaus shook his leg, and the leech fell to the floor of the sailboat again, stretching its tiny neck and opening and shutting its mouth. Violet grabbed the long pole with the net at the end of it, scooped up the leech, and tossed it overboard.
Thwack! The crack widened enough that a bit of water began to dribble through, making a small puddle on the sailboat’s floor. “Sunny,” Violet said, “keep an eye on that puddle. When it gets bigger, use the bucket to throw it back in the lake.”
“Mofee!” Sunny shrieked, which meant “I certainly will.” There was the whispering sound as the leeches swam away to ram the boat again. Klaus and Aunt Josephine began rowing as hard as they could, while Violet adjusted the sail and kept the net in her hand for any more leeches who got on board.
Thwack! Thwack! There were two loud noises now, one on the side of the boat and one on the bottom, which cracked immediately. The leeches had divided up into two teams, which is good news for playing kickball but bad news if you are being attacked. Aunt Josephine gave a shriek of terror. Water was now leaking into the sailboat in two spots, and Sunny abandoned the tiller to bail the water back out. Klaus stopped rowing, and held the oar up without a word. It had several small bite marks in it—the work of the Lachrymose Leeches.
“Rowing isn’t going to work,” he reported to Violet solemnly. “If we row any more these oars will be completely eaten.”
Violet watched Sunny crawl around with the bucket full of water. “Rowing won’t help us, anyway,” she said. “This boat is sinking. We need help.”
Klaus looked around at the dark and still waters, empty except for the sailboat and swarms of leeches. “Where can we get help in the middle of a lake?” he asked.
“We’re going to have to signal for help,” Violet said, and reached into her pocket and took out a ribbon. Handing Klaus the fishing net, she used the ribbon to tie her hair up, keeping it out of her eyes. Klaus and Sunny watched her, knowing that she only tied her hair up this way when she was thinking of an invention, and right now they needed an invention quite desperately.
“That’s right,” Aunt Josephine said to Violet, “close your eyes. That’s what I do when I’m afraid, and it always makes me feel better to block out the fear.”
“She’s not blocking out anything,” Klaus said crossly. “She’s concentrating.”
Klaus was right. Violet concentrated as hard as she could, racking her brain for a good way to signal for help. She thought of fire alarms. With flashing lights and loud sirens, fire alarms were an excellent way to signal for assistance. Although the Baudelaire orphans, of course, sadly knew that sometimes the fire engines arrived too late to save people’s lives, a fire alarm was still a good invention, and Violet tried to think of a way she could imitate it using the materials around her. She needed to make a loud sound, to get somebody’s attention. And she needed to make a bright light, so that
person would know where they were.
Thwack! Thwack! The two teams of leeches hit the boat again, and there was a splash as more water came pouring into the sailboat. Sunny started to fill the bucket with water, but Violet reached forward and took it from Sunny’s hands. “Bero?” Sunny shrieked, which meant “Are you crazy?” but Violet had no time to answer “No, as a matter of fact I’m not.” So she merely said “No,” and, holding the bucket in one hand, began to climb up the mast. It is difficult enough to climb up the mast of a boat, but it is triple the difficulty if the boat is being rocked by a bunch of hungry leeches, so allow me to advise you that this is another thing that you should under no circumstances try to do. But Violet Baudelaire was a wunderkind, a German word which here means “someone who is able to quickly climb masts on boats being attacked by leeches,” and soon she was on the top of the swaying mast of the boat. She took the bucket and hung it by its handle on the tip of the mast so it swung this way and that, the way a bell might do in a bell tower.
“I don’t mean to interrupt you,” Klaus called, scooping up a furious leech in the net and tossing it as far as he could, “but this boat is really sinking. Please hurry.”
Violet hurried. Hurriedly, she grabbed ahold of a corner of the sail and, taking a deep breath to prepare herself, jumped back down to the floor of the boat. Just as she had hoped, the sail ripped as she hurtled to the ground, slowing her down and leaving her with a large piece of torn cloth. By now the sailboat had quite a lot of water in it, and Violet splashed over to Aunt Josephine, avoiding the many leeches that Klaus was tossing out of the boat as quickly as he could.
“I need your oar,” Violet said, wadding the piece of sail up into a ball, “and your hairnet.”
“You can have the oar,” Aunt Josephine said, handing it over. “But I need my hairnet. It keeps my bun in place.”