“Aye,” Klaus said, running his finger over one of the charts. “We need to travel straight north to Briny Beach. It shouldn’t be far. But how are we going to get out of the Carmelita?”
“I guess we’ll just fire up the engines,” Violet said, “and I’ll try to steer us back through the tunnel.”
“Have you ever steered a submarine before?” Klaus asked nervously.
“Of course not,” Violet said. “We’re in uncharted waters, aye?”
“Aye,” Klaus said, and looked proudly up at his sister. The two Baudelaires could not help grinning for a moment before Violet pulled a large lever, and the familiar, whirring sound of the Queequeg’s engines filled the Main Hall.
“Gangway!” Sunny cried, squeezing past Klaus as she raced toward the kitchen. Violet and Klaus heard their sister fumbling around for a moment, and then the youngest Baudelaire returned, carrying two boxes the siblings recognized from their time in the town of Paltryville. “Gum!” she cried triumphantly, already ripping the wrappers off several pieces and sticking them into her mouth.
“Good idea, Sunny,” Violet called. “The gum can act as an adhesive, and stick the porthole back together.”
“That thing is getting closer,” Klaus said, pointing to the sonar screen. “We’d better get the submarine moving. Sunny can do the repair work while we move through the tunnel.”
“I’ll need your help, Klaus,” Violet said. “Stand at the porthole and let me know which way to turn. Aye?”
“Aye!” Klaus replied.
“Aye!” Sunny cried, her mouth full of gum. The elder Baudelaires remembered that their sibling had been too young for gum when the children were working at the lumbermill, and they could hardly believe she had grown up enough to be stuffing handfuls of the sticky substance into her mouth.
“Which way do I go?” Violet called from the controls.
Klaus peered out of the porthole. “Right!” he called back, and the Queequeg lurched to the right, traveling with difficulty in the little water at the bottom of the tunnel. There was an enormous scraping sound, and the Baudelaires heard a loud splashing from inside one of the pipes. “I mean, left!” Klaus said quickly. “You and I are facing opposite directions! Left!”
“Aye!” Violet cried, and the submarine lurched in the opposite direction. Through the porthole, the Baudelaires could see that they were moving away from the platform where Olaf had first greeted them. Sunny spat a huge wad of gum onto the glass circle, and spread it around with her hands on the circle’s edge.
“Right!” Klaus cried, and Violet turned the Queequeg again, narrowly missing a turn in the passageway. The eldest Baudelaire looked nervously at the sonar screen, where the sinister shape was moving closer and closer to them.
“Left!” Klaus cried. “Left and down!” The submarine lurched and sank, and through the porthole the middle Baudelaire caught a brief glimpse of the rowing room, with Esmé holding the tagliatelle grande threateningly in one fake tentacle. Sunny hurriedly stuffed more gum into her mouth, moving her enormous teeth furiously to soften the candy.
“Left again!” Klaus cried. “And then a very sharp right when I say ‘Now’!”
“Now?” Violet called back.
“No,” Klaus said, and held up one hand as Sunny spit more gum onto the glass circle. “Now!”
The submarine lurched violently to the right, sending several objects tumbling from the wooden table. Sunny ducked to avoid being knocked on the head by the poetry of T. S. Eliot. “Sorry for the bumps,” Violet called, from the top of the rope ladder. “I’m still getting the hang of these controls. What’s next?”
Klaus peered out of the porthole. “Keep going straight,” he said, “and we should exit the octopus.”
“Help!” Sunny cried, spreading the rest of the gum on the edge of the circle. Klaus hurried to her side, and Violet raced down the rope ladder to help, leaving the submarine’s controls alone so the Queequeg would travel in a straight line. Together, the three Baudelaires picked up the glass circle and climbed onto the wooden table so they could put the porthole back together.
“I hope it holds,” Violet said.
“If it doesn’t,” Klaus said, “we’ll know soon enough.”
“On three,” Sunny said, which meant something like, “After I say one and two.” “One! Due!”
“Three!” the Baudelaire orphans said in unison, and pressed the glass circle against the hole Olaf had cut, smoothing the gum over the crack so that it might hold firm, just as the Queequeg tumbled out of the mechanical octopus into the chilly waters of the ocean. The Baudelaires pushed against the porthole together, their arms stretched out against the glass as if they were trying to keep someone from coming in a door. A few rivulets—a word which here means “tiny streams of water”—dripped through the gum, but Sunny hurriedly patted the sticky substance into place to stop the leaks. Her tiny hands smoothed the gum over the edge of the circle, making sure her handiwork was strong enough that the children wouldn’t drown, but when she heard her siblings gasp she looked up from her work, looked through the repaired porthole, and stared in amazement at what she saw.
In the final analysis—a phrase which here means “after much thought, and some debate with my colleagues”—Captain Widdershins was wrong about a great many things. He was wrong about his personal philosophy, because there are plenty of times when one should hesitate. He was wrong about his wife’s death, because as Fiona suspected, Mrs. Widdershins did not die in a manatee accident. He was wrong to call Phil “Cookie” when it is more polite to call someone by their proper name, and he was wrong to abandon the Queequeg, no matter what he heard from the woman who came to fetch him. Captain Widdershins was wrong to trust his stepson for so many years, and wrong to participate in the destruction of Anwhistle Aquatics, and he was wrong to insist, as he did so many years ago, that a story in The Daily Punctilio was completely true, and to show this article to so many volunteers, including the Baudelaire parents, the Snicket siblings, and the woman I happened to love. But Captain Widdershins was right about one thing. He was right to say that there are secrets in this world too terrible for young people to know, for the simple reason that there are secrets in this world too terrible for anyone to know, whether they are as young as Sunny Baudelaire or as old as Gregor Anwhistle—secrets so terrible that they ought to be kept secret, which is probably how the secrets became secrets in the first place, and one of those secrets is the long, strange shape the Baudelaire orphans saw, first on the Queequeg’s sonar, and then as they held the porthole in place and stared out into the waters of the sea. Night had fallen—Monday night—so the view outside was very dark, and the Baudelaires could scarcely see this enormous and sinister shape. They could not even tell, just as I will not tell, if it was some horrifying mechanical device, such as a submarine, or some ghastly creature of the sea. They merely saw an enormous shadow, curling and uncurling in the water, as if Count Olaf’s one eyebrow had grown into an enormous beast that was roaming the sea, a shadow as chilling as the villain’s glare and as dark as villainy itself. The Baudelaire orphans had never seen anything so utterly eerie, and they found themselves sitting still as statues, pressing against the porthole in an utter hush. It was probably this hush that saved them, for the sinister shape curled once more, and began to fade into the blackness of the water.
“Shh,” Violet said, although no one had spoken. It was the gentle, low shushing one might do to comfort a baby, crying in the middle of the night over whatever tragedy keeps babies awake in their cribs, and keeps the other members of the baby’s family standing vigil, a phrase which here means “keeping nearby, to make sure everyone is safe.” It does not really mean anything, this shushing sound, and yet the younger Baudelaires did not ask their sister what she meant, and merely stood vigil with her, as the shape disappeared into the ocean of the night, and the children were safe once more. Without a word, Violet took her hands off the glass, climbed off the table, and resumed her place a
t the Queequeg’s controls. For the rest of their journey, none of the children spoke, as if the unearthly spell of that terrible secret shape were still lingering over them. All night long and into the morning, Violet worked the levers and switches of the submarine, to make sure it stayed on course, and Klaus marked their path on the charts, to make sure they were heading to the right place, and Sunny served slices of Violet’s birthday cake to her fellow volunteers, but none of the three Baudelaires spoke until a gentle bump! rocked the Queequeg, and the submarine came to a gentle stop. Violet climbed down the rope ladder and ducked underneath a pipe to peer through the periscope, just as Captain Widdershins must have peered at the Baudelaires up in the Mortmain Mountains.
“We’re here,” she said, and the three Baudelaires left the Main Hall and walked down the leaky corridor to the room where they had first climbed aboard the submarine.
“Valve?” Sunny asked.
“We shouldn’t have to activate the valve,” Violet said. “When I looked through the periscope, I saw Briny Beach, so we can simply climb up the ladder—”
“And end up where we were,” Klaus finished, “a long time ago.”
Without any further discussion the Baudelaire children climbed up the ladder, their steps echoing down the narrow passageway, until they reached the hatch. Violet grabbed the handle to open it, and found that her siblings had each grabbed the handle, too, so all three children turned the handle together, and opened the hatch together, and together they climbed out of the passageway, down the outside of the submarine, and lowered themselves onto the sand of Briny Beach. It was morning—the same time of morning as the last time the Baudelaire children had been there, receiving the dreadful news about the fire, and it was just as gray and foggy as that terrible day. Violet even saw a slender, smooth stone on the sand, and picked it up, just as she had done so long ago, skipping rocks into the water without ever imagining she would soon be exploring its terrible depths. The siblings blinked in the morning sun, and felt as if some cycle were about to begin all over again—that once more they would receive terrible news, and that once more they would be taken to a new home, only to have villainy surround them once more, as had happened so many times since their last visit to Briny Beach, just as you might be wondering if the Baudelaires’ miserable story will begin all over again for you, with my warning you that if you are looking for happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. It is not a pleasant feeling, to imagine that the tables will never turn and that a tedious cycle will begin all over again, and it made the Baudelaires feel passive, just as they had in the waters of the Stricken Stream, accepting what was happening without doing anything about it as they looked around at the unchanged shore.
“Gack!” Sunny said, which meant “Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!” and the Baudelaires watched as a familiar shape stopped in front of them, took off a tall top hat, and coughed into a white handkerchief.
“Baudelaires!” Mr. Poe said, when he was done coughing. “Egad! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe you’re here!”
“You?” Klaus asked, gazing at the banker in astonishment. “You’re the one we’re supposed to meet?”
“I guess so,” Mr. Poe said, frowning and taking a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “I received a message saying that you’d be here at Briny Beach today.”
“Who sent the message?” Klaus asked.
Mr. Poe coughed once more, and then shrugged his shoulders wearily. The children noticed that he looked quite a bit older than the last time they had seen him, and wondered how much older they looked themselves. “The message is signed J.S.,” Mr. Poe said. “I assume that it’s that reporter from The Daily Punctilio—Geraldine Julienne. How in the world did you get here? Where in the world have you been? I must admit, Baudelaires, I had given up all hope of ever finding you again! It was a shame to think that the Baudelaire fortune would just sit in the bank, gathering interest and dust! Well, never mind that now. You’d better come with me—my car’s parked nearby. You have a great deal of explaining to do.”
“No,” Violet said.
“No?” Mr. Poe said in amazement, and coughed violently into his handkerchief. “Of course you do! You’ve been missing for a very long time, children! It was very inconsiderate of you to run away without telling me where you were, particularly when you’ve been accused of murder, arson, kidnapping, and some assorted misdemeanors! We’re going to get right in my car, and I’ll drive you to the police station, and—”
“No,” Violet said again, and reached into the pocket of her uniform. She held up the telegram to her siblings and read:
“At the pink hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a pony throbbing party…
“That’s what’s in the telegram.” She paused, and scanned the horizon of the beach. Something caught her eye, and she gave her siblings a faint smile. “The real poem,” she said, “goes like this:
“At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting.”
“Verse Fluctuation Declaration,” Klaus said.
“Code,” Sunny said.
“What are you talking about?” Mr. Poe demanded. “What is going on?”
“The missing words,” Violet said to her siblings, as if the coughing banker had not spoken, “are ‘violet,’ ‘taxi,’ and ‘waiting.’ We’re not supposed to go with Mr. Poe. We’re supposed to get into a taxi.” She pointed across the beach, and the children could see, scarcely visible in the fog, a yellow car parked at a nearby curb. The Baudelaires nodded, and Violet turned to address the banker at last.
“We can’t go with you,” Violet said. “There’s something else we need to do.”
“Don’t be absurd!” Mr. Poe sputtered. “I don’t know where you’ve been, or how you got here, or why you’re wearing a picture of Santa Claus on your shirts, but—”
“It’s Herman Melville,” Klaus said. “Goodbye, Mr. Poe.”
“You are coming with me, young man!” Mr. Poe ordered.
“Sayonara,” Sunny said, and the three Baudelaires walked quickly across the beach, leaving the banker coughing in astonishment.
“Wait!” he ordered, when he put his handkerchief away. “Come back here, Baudelaires! You’re children! You’re youngsters! You’re orphans!”
Mr. Poe’s voice grew fainter and fainter as the children made their way across the sand. “What do you think the word ‘violet’ means?” Klaus murmured to his sister. “The taxi isn’t purple.”
“More code,” Sunny guessed.
“Maybe,” Violet said. “Or maybe Quigley just wanted to write my name.”
“Baudelaires!” Mr. Poe’s voice was almost inaudible, as if the Baudelaires had only dreamed he was there on the beach.
“Do you think he’s in the taxi, waiting for us?” Klaus asked.
“I hope so,” Violet said, and broke into a run. Her siblings hurried behind her as she ran across the sand, her boots showering sand with each step. “Quigley,” she said quietly, almost to herself, and then she said it louder. “Quigley! Quigley!”
At last the Baudelaires reached the taxi, but the windows of the car were tinted, a word which here means “darkened, so the children could not see who was inside.” “Quigley?” Violet asked, and flung open the door, but the children’s friend was not inside the taxi. In the driver’s seat was a woman the Baudelaires had never seen before, dressed in a long, black coat buttoned up all the way to her chin. On her hands were a pair of white cotton gloves, and in her lap were two slim books, probably to keep her company while she waited. The woman looked startled when the door opened, but when she spied the children she nodded politely, and gave them a very slight smile, as if she were not a stranger at all—but also not a friend. The smile she gave them was one you might give to an associate, or another me
mber of an organization to which you belong. “Hello, Baudelaires,” she said, and gave the children a small wave. “Climb aboard.”
The Baudelaires looked at one another cautiously. They knew, of course, that one should never get into the car of a stranger, but they also knew that such rules do not necessarily apply in taxis, when the driver is almost always a stranger. Besides, when the woman had lifted her hand to wave, the children had spied the name of the books she had been reading to pass the time. There were two books of verse: The Walrus and the Carpenter, and Other Poems, by Lewis Carroll, and The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot. Perhaps if one of the books had been by Edgar Guest, the children might have turned around and run back to Mr. Poe, but it is rare in this world to find someone who appreciates good poetry, and the children allowed themselves to hesitate.
“Who are you?” Violet asked, finally.
The woman blinked, and then gave the children her slight smile once more, as if she had expected the Baudelaires to answer the question themselves. “I’m Kit Snicket,” she said, and the Baudelaire orphans climbed aboard, turning the tables of their lives and breaking their unfortunate cycle for the very first time.
To My Kind Editor
A Series of Unfortunate Events
THE BAD BEGINNING
THE REPTILE ROOM
THE WIDE WINDOW
THE MISERABLE MILL
THE AUSTERE ACADEMY
THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR
THE VILE VILLAGE
THE HOSTILE HOSPITAL
THE CARNIVOROUS CARNIVAL
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
THE GRIM GROTTO
Credits
Cover art © 2004 by Brett Helquist
Cover design by Alison Donalty
Cover © 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, The Grim Grotto, Copyright © 2004 by Lemony Snicket Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Brett Helquist. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
A Series of Unfortunate Events Box: The Complete Wreck Page 131
