“Give her the hairnet!” Klaus cried, hopping up on one of the seats as a leech tried to bite his knee.
“But I’m scared of having hair in my face,” Aunt Josephine whined, just as another pair of thwack!s hit the boat.
“I don’t have time to argue with you!” Violet cried. “I’m trying to save each of our lives! Give me your hairnet right now!”
“The expression,” Aunt Josephine said, “is saving all of our lives, not each of our lives,” but Violet had heard enough. Splashing forward and avoiding a pair of wriggling leeches, the eldest Baudelaire reached forward and grabbed Aunt Josephine’s hairnet off of her head. She wrapped the crumpled part of the sail in the hairnet, and then grabbed the fishing pole and attached the messy ball of cloth to the fishhook. It looked like she was about to go fishing for some kind of fish that liked sailboats and hair accessories for food.
Thwack! Thwack! The sailboat tilted to one side and then to the other. The leeches had almost smashed their way through the side. Violet took the oar and began to rub it up and down the side of the boat as fast and as hard as she could.
“What are you doing?” Klaus asked, catching three leeches in one swoop of his net.
“I’m trying to create friction,” Violet said. “If I rub two pieces of wood enough, I’ll create friction. Friction creates sparks. When I get a spark, I’ll set the cloth and hairnet on fire and use it as a signal.”
“You want to set a fire?” Klaus cried. “But a fire will mean more danger.”
“Not if I wave the fire over my head, using the fishing pole,” Violet said. “I’ll do that, and hit the bucket like a bell, and that should create enough of a signal to fetch us some help.” She rubbed and rubbed the oar against the side of the boat, but no sparks appeared. The sad truth was that the wood was too wet from Hurricane Herman and from Lake Lachrymose to create enough friction to start a fire. It was a good idea, but Violet realized, as she rubbed and rubbed without any result, that it was the wrong idea. Thwack! Thwack! Violet looked around at Aunt Josephine and her terrified siblings and felt hope leak out of her heart as quickly as water was leaking into the boat. “It’s not working,” Violet said miserably, and felt tears fall down her cheeks. She thought of the promise she made to her parents, shortly before they were killed, that she would always take care of her younger siblings. The leeches swarmed around the sinking boat, and Violet feared that she had not lived up to her promise. “It’s not working,” she said again, and dropped the oar in despair. “We need a fire, but I can’t invent one.”
“It’s okay,” Klaus said, even though of course it was not. “We’ll think of something.”
“Tintet,” Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of “Don’t cry. You tried your best,” but Violet cried anyway. It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety. The boat rocked back and forth, and water poured through the cracks, and Violet cried because it looked like they would never get to safety. Her shoulders shaking with sobs, she held the spying glass up to her eye to see if, by any chance, there was a boat nearby, or if the tide had happened to carry the sailboat to shore, but all she could see was the moonlight reflecting on the rippling waters of the lake. And this was a lucky thing. Because as soon as Violet saw the flickering reflection, she remembered the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light.
The scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light are very confusing, and quite frankly I can’t make head or tail of them, even when my friend Dr. Lorenz explains them to me. But they made perfect sense to Violet. Instantly, she thought of a story her father had told her, long ago, when she was just beginning to be interested in science. When her father was a boy, he’d had a dreadful cousin who liked to burn ants, starting a fire by focusing the light of the sun with her magnifying glass. Burning ants, of course, is an abhorrent hobby—the word “abhorrent” here means “what Count Olaf used to do when he was about your age”—but remembering the story made Violet see that she could use the lens of the spying glass to focus the light of the moon and make a fire. Without wasting another moment, she grabbed the spying glass and removed the lens, and then, looking up at the moon, tilted the lens at an angle she hastily computed in her head.
The moonlight passed through the lens and was concentrated into a long, thin band of light, like a glowing thread leading right to the piece of sail, held in a ball by Aunt Josephine’s hairnet. In a moment the thread had become a small flame.
“It’s miraculous!” Klaus cried, as the flame took hold.
“It’s unbelievable!” Aunt Josephine cried.
“Fonti!” Sunny shrieked.
“It’s the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light!” Violet cried, wiping her eyes. Stepping carefully to avoid onboard leeches and so as not to put out the fire, she moved to the front of the boat. With one hand, she took the oar and rang the bucket, making a loud sound to get somebody’s attention. With the other hand, she held the fishing rod up high, making a bright light so the person would know where they were. Violet looked up at her homemade signaling device that had finally caught fire, all because of a silly story her father had told her. Her father’s ant-burning cousin sounded like a dreadful person, but if she had suddenly appeared on the sailboat Violet would have given her a big grateful hug.
As it turned out, however, this signal was a mixed blessing, a phrase which means “something half good and half bad.” Somebody saw the signal almost immediately, somebody who was already sailing in the lake, and who headed toward the Baudelaires in an instant. Violet, Klaus, Sunny, and even Aunt Josephine all grinned as they saw another boat sail into view. They were being rescued, and that was the good half. But their smiles began to fade as the boat drew closer and they saw who was sailing it. Aunt Josephine and the orphans saw the wooden peg leg, and the navy-blue sailor cap, and the eye patch, and they knew who was coming to their aid. It was Captain Sham, of course, and he was probably the worst half in the world.
CHAPTER
Twelve
“Welcome aboard,” Captain Sham said, with a wicked grin that showed his filthy teeth. “I’m happy to see you all. I thought you had been killed when the old lady’s house fell off the hill, but luckily my associate told me you had stolen a boat and run away. And you, Josephine—I thought you’d done the sensible thing and jumped out the window.”
“I tried to do the sensible thing,” Aunt Josephine said sourly. “But these children came and got me.”
Captain Sham smiled. He had expertly steered his sailboat so it was alongside the one the Baudelaires had stolen, and Aunt Josephine and the children had stepped over the swarming leeches to come aboard. With a gurgly whoosh! their own sailboat was overwhelmed with water and quickly sank into the depths of the lake. The Lachrymose Leeches swarmed around the sinking sailboat, gnashing their tiny teeth. “Aren’t you going to say thank you, orphans?” Captain Sham asked, pointing to the swirling place in the lake where their sailboat had been. “If it weren’t for me, all of you would be divided up into the stomachs of those leeches.”
“If it weren’t for you,” Violet said fiercely, “we wouldn’t be in Lake Lachrymose to begin with.”
“You can blame that on the old woman,” he said, pointing to Aunt Josephine. “Faking your own death was pretty clever, but not clever enough. The Baudelaire fortune—and, unfortunately, the brats who come with it—now belong to me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Klaus said. “We don’t belong to you and we never will. Once we tell Mr. Poe what happened he will send you to jail.”
“Is that so?” Captain Sham said, turning the sailboat around and sailing toward Damocles Dock. His one visible eye was shining brightly as if he were telling a joke. “Mr. Poe will send me to jail, eh? Why, Mr. Poe is putting finishing touches on your adoption papers this very moment. In a few hours, you orphans
will be Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Sham.”
“Neihab!” Sunny shrieked, which meant “I’m Sunny Baudelaire, and I will always be Sunny Baudelaire unless I decide for myself to legally change my name!”
“When we explain that you forced Aunt Josephine to write that note,” Violet said, “Mr. Poe will rip up those adoption papers into a thousand pieces.”
“Mr. Poe won’t believe you,” Captain Sham said, chuckling. “Why should he believe three runaway pipsqueaks who go around stealing boats?”
“Because we’re telling the truth!” Klaus cried.
“Truth, schmuth,” Captain Sham said. If you don’t care about something, one way to demonstrate your feelings is to say the word and then repeat the word with the letters S-C-H-M replacing the real first letters. Somebody who didn’t care about dentists, for instance, could say “Dentists, schmentists.” But only a despicable person like Captain Sham wouldn’t care about the truth. “Truth, schmuth,” he said again. “I think Mr. Poe is more likely to believe the owner of a respectable sailboat rental place, who went out in the middle of a hurricane to rescue three ungrateful boat thieves.”
“We only stole the boat,” Violet said, “to retrieve Aunt Josephine from her hiding place so she could tell everyone about your terrible plan.”
“But nobody will believe the old woman, either,” Captain Sham said impatiently. “Nobody believes a dead woman.”
“Are you blind in both eyes?” Klaus asked. “Aunt Josephine isn’t dead!”
Captain Sham smiled again, and looked out at the lake. Just a few yards away the water was rippling as the Lachrymose Leeches swam toward Captain Sham’s sailboat. After searching every inch of the Baudelaires’ boat and failing to find any food, the leeches had realized they had been tricked and were once again following the scent of banana still lingering on Aunt Josephine. “She’s not dead yet,” Captain Sham said, in a terrible voice, and took a step toward her.
“Oh no,” she said. Her eyes were wide with fear. “Don’t throw me overboard,” she pleaded. “Please!”
“You’re not going to reveal my plan to Mr. Poe,” Captain Sham said, taking another step toward the terrified woman, “because you will be joining your beloved Ike at the bottom of the lake.”
“No she won’t,” Violet said, grabbing a rope. “I will steer us to shore before you can do anything about it.”
“I’ll help,” Klaus said, running to the back and grabbing the tiller.
“Igal!” Sunny shrieked, which meant something along the lines of “And I’ll guard Aunt Josephine.” She crawled in front of the Baudelaires’ guardian and bared her teeth at Captain Sham.
“I promise not to say anything to Mr. Poe!” Aunt Josephine said desperately. “I’ll go someplace and hide away, and never show my face! You can tell him I’m dead! You can have the fortune! You can have the children! Just don’t throw me to the leeches!”
The Baudelaires looked at their guardian in horror. “You’re supposed to be caring for us,” Violet told Aunt Josephine in astonishment, “not putting us up for grabs!”
Captain Sham paused, and seemed to consider Aunt Josephine’s offer. “You have a point,” he said. “I don’t necessarily have to kill you. People just have to think that you’re dead.”
“I’ll change my name!” Aunt Josephine said. “I’ll dye my hair! I’ll wear colored contact lenses! And I’ll go very, very far away! Nobody will ever hear from me!”
“But what about us, Aunt Josephine?” Klaus asked in horror. “What about us?”
“Be quiet, orphan,” Captain Sham snapped. The Lachrymose Leeches reached the sailboat and began tapping on the wooden side. “The adults are talking. Now, old woman, I wish I could believe you. But you hadn’t been a very trustworthy person.”
“Haven’t been,” Aunt Josephine corrected, wiping a tear from her eye.
“What?” Captain Sham asked.
“You made a grammatical error,” Aunt Josephine said. “You said ‘But you hadn’t been a very trustworthy person,’ but you should have said, ‘you haven’t been a very trustworthy person.’”
Captain Sham’s one shiny eye blinked, and his mouth curled up in a terrible smile. “Thank you for pointing that out,” he said, and took one last step toward Aunt Josephine. Sunny growled at him, and he looked down and in one swift gesture moved his peg leg and knocked Sunny to the other end of his boat. “Let me make sure I completely understand the grammatical lesson,” he said to the Baudelaires’ trembling guardian, as if nothing had happened. “You wouldn’t say ‘Josephine Anwhistle had been thrown overboard to the leeches,’ because that would be incorrect. But if you said ‘Josephine Anwhistle has been thrown overboard to the leeches,’ that would be all right with you.”
“Yes,” Aunt Josephine said. “I mean no. I mean—”
But Aunt Josephine never got to say what she meant. Captain Sham faced her and, using both hands, pushed her over the side of the boat. With a little gasp and a big splash she fell into the waters of Lake Lachrymose.
“Aunt Josephine!” Violet cried. “Aunt Josephine!”
Klaus leaned over the side of the boat and stretched his hand out as far as he could. Thanks to her two life jackets, Aunt Josephine was floating on top of the water, waving her hands in the air as the leeches swam toward her. But Captain Sham was already pulling at the ropes of the sail, and Klaus couldn’t reach her. “You fiend!” he shouted at Captain Sham. “You evil fiend!”
“That’s no way to talk to your father,” Captain Sham said calmly.
Violet tried to tug a rope out of Captain Sham’s hand. “Move the sailboat back!” she shouted. “Turn the boat around!”
“Not a chance,” he replied smoothly. “Wave good-bye to the old woman, orphans. You’ll never see her again.”
Klaus leaned over as far as he could. “Don’t worry, Aunt Josephine!” he called, but his voice revealed that he was very worried himself. The boat was already quite a ways from Aunt Josephine, and the orphans could only see the white of her hands as she waved them over the dark water.
“She has a chance,” Violet said quietly to Klaus as they sailed toward the dock. “She has those life jackets, and she’s a strong swimmer.”
“That’s true,” Klaus said, his voice shaky and sad. “She’s lived by the lake her whole life. Maybe she knows of an escape route.”
“Legru,” Sunny said quietly, which meant “All we can do is hope.”
The three orphans huddled together, shivering in cold and fear, as Captain Sham sailed the boat by himself. They didn’t dare do anything but hope. Their feelings for Aunt Josephine were all a tumble in their minds. The Baudelaires had not really enjoyed most of their time with her—not because she cooked horrible cold meals, or chose presents for them that they didn’t like, or always corrected the children’s grammar, but because she was so afraid of everything that she made it impossible to really enjoy anything at all. And the worst of it was, Aunt Josephine’s fear had made her a bad guardian. A guardian is supposed to stay with children and keep them safe, but Aunt Josephine had run away at the first sign of danger. A guardian is supposed to help children in times of trouble, but Aunt Josephine practically had to be dragged out of the Curdled Cave when they needed her. And a guardian is supposed to protect children from danger, but Aunt Josephine had offered the orphans to Captain Sham in exchange for her own safety.
But despite all of Aunt Josephine’s faults, the orphans still cared about her. She had taught them many things, even if most of them were boring. She had provided a home, even if it was cold and unable to withstand hurricanes. And the children knew that Aunt Josephine, like the Baudelaires themselves, had experienced some terrible things in her life. So as their guardian faded from view and the lights of Damocles Dock approached closer and closer, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny did not think “Josephine, schmosephine.” They thought “We hope Aunt Josephine is safe.”
Captain Sham sailed the boat right up to the shore and tied it expertly to the
dock. “Come along, little idiots,” he said, and led the Baudelaires to the tall metal gate with the glistening spikes on top, where Mr. Poe was waiting with his handkerchief in his hand and a look of relief on his face. Next to Mr. Poe was the Brobdingnagian creature, who gazed at them with a triumphant expression on his or her face.
“You’re safe!” Mr. Poe said. “Thank goodness! We were so worried about you! When Captain Sham and I reached the Anwhistle home and saw that it had fallen into the sea, we thought you were done for!”
“It is lucky my associate told me that they had stolen a sailboat,” Captain Sham told Mr. Poe. “The boat was nearly destroyed by Hurricane Herman, and by a swarm of leeches. I rescued them just in time.”
“He did not!” Violet shouted. “He threw Aunt Josephine into the lake! We have to go and rescue her!”
“The children are upset and confused,” Captain Sham said, his eye shining. “As their father, I think they need a good night’s sleep.”
“He’s not our father!” Klaus shouted. “He’s Count Olaf, and he’s a murderer! Please, Mr. Poe, alert the police! We have to save Aunt Josephine!”
“Oh, dear,” Mr. Poe said, coughing into his handkerchief. “You certainly are confused, Klaus. Aunt Josephine is dead, remember? She threw herself out the window.”
“No, no,” Violet said. “Her suicide note had a secret message in it. Klaus decoded the note and it said ‘Curdled Cave.’ Actually, it said ‘apostrophe Curdled Cave,’ but the apostrophe was just to get our attention.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Mr. Poe said. “What cave? What apostrophe?”
“Klaus,” Violet said, “show Mr. Poe the note.”
“You can show it to him in the morning,” Captain Sham said, in a falsely soothing tone. “You need a good night’s sleep. My associate will take you to my apartment while I stay here and finish the adoption paperwork with Mr. Poe.”
“But—” Klaus said.
“But nothing,” Captain Sham said. “You’re very distraught, which means ‘upset.’”