The Grim Grotto

are both volatile people, and we're both trying to get to the Hotel Denouement before Thursday. The only difference between us is the portraits on our uniforms.'

'We're wearing Herman Melville,' Klaus said. 'He was a writer of enormous talent who dramatized the plight of overlooked people, such as poor sailors or exploited youngsters, through his strange, often experimental philosophical prose. I'm proud to display his portrait. But you're wearing Edgar Guest. He was a writer of limited skill, who wrote awkward, tedious poetry on hopelessly sentimental topics. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

'Edgar Guest isn't my favorite poet,' the hook-handed man admitted. 'Before I joined up with Count Olaf, I was studying poetry with my stepfather. We used to read to one another in the Main Hall of the Queequeg. But it's too late now. I can't return to my old life.'

'Maybe not,' Klaus said. 'But you can return us to the Queequeg, so we can save Sunny.'

'Please,' the children heard Sunny say, from inside the helmet, although her voice was quite hoarse, as if she would not be able to speak for much longer, and for a moment the only sound in the brig was Sunny's desperate coughing as the minutes in her crucial hour ticked away, and the muttering of the hook-handed man as he paced back and forth, twiddling his hooks in thought.

Violet and Klaus watched his hooks, and thought of all the times he had used them to threaten the siblings. It is one thing to believe that people have both good and bad inside them, mixed together like ingredients in a salad bowl. But it is quite another to look at a cohort of a despicable villain, who has tried again and again to cause so much harm, and try to see where the good parts are buried, when all you can remember is the pain and suffering he has caused. As the hook-handed man circled the brig, it was as if the Baudelaires were picking through a chef's salad consisting mostly of dreadful – and perhaps even poisonous – ingredients, trying desperately to find the one noble crouton that might save their sister, just as I, between paragraphs, am picking through this salad in front of me, hoping that my waiter is more noble than wicked, and that my sister, Kit, might be saved by the small, herbed piece of toast I hope to retrieve from my bowl. After much hemming and hawing, however – a phrase which here means 'muttering, and clearing of one's throat, used to avoid making a quick decision ' – Count Olaf's henchman stopped in front of the children, put his hooks on his hips, and offered them a Hobson's choice.

'I'll return you to the Queequeg,' he said, 'if you take me with you.'

Chapter Eleven

'Aye!' Fiona said. 'Aye! Aye! Aye! We'll take you with us, Fernald! Aye!'

Violet and Klaus looked at one another. They were grateful, of course, that the hook-handed man was letting them save Sunny from the Medusoid Mycelium, but they couldn't help but wish Fiona had uttered fewer 'Aye!'s. Inviting Count Olaf's henchman to join them on the Queequeg, even if he was Fiona's long-lost brother, seemed like a decision they might regret.

'I'm so glad,' the hook-handed man said, giving the two siblings a smile they found inscrutable, a word which here means 'either pleasant or nasty, but it was hard to tell.'

'I have lots of ideas about where we could go after we get off the Carmelita.'

'Well, I'd certainly like to hear them,' Fiona said. 'Aye!'

'Perhaps we could discuss such things later,' Violet said. 'I don't think now is a good time to hesitate.'

'Aye!' Fiona said. 'She who hesitates is lost!'

'Or he,' Klaus reminded her. 'We've got to get to the Queequeg right away.'

The hook-handed man opened the door of the brig and looked up and down the corridor. 'This will be tricky,' he said, beckoning to the children with one of his hooks. 'The only way back to the Queequeg is through the rowing room, but that room is filled with children we've kidnapped. Esmй took my tagliatelle grande and is whipping them so they'll row faster.'

The elder Baudelaires did not bother to point out that the hook-handed man had threatened the Baudelaires with the very same noodle, when the children had worked at Caligari Carnival, along with a few other individuals who had ended up joining Olaf's troupe.

'Is there any way to sneak past them?' Violet asked.

'We'll see,' Olaf's henchman said. 'Follow me.' The hook-handed man strode quickly down the empty corridor, with Fiona behind him and the two Baudelaires behind her, carrying the diving helmet in which Sunny still coughed. Violet and Klaus purposefully lagged behind so they might have a word with the mycologist.

'Fiona, are you sure you want to take him with us?' Klaus asked, leaning in close to murmur in her ear. 'He's a very dangerous and volatile man.'

'He's my brother,' Fiona replied in a fierce whisper, 'and I'm your captain. Aye! I'm in charge of the Queequeg. So I get to choose its crew.

'We know that,' Violet said, 'but we just thought you might want to reconsider.'

'Never,' Fiona said firmly. 'With my stepfather gone, Fernald may be the only person I have left in my family. Would you ask me to abandon my own sibling?'

As if replying, Sunny coughed desperately from inside her helmet, and the elder Baudelaires knew that Fiona was right. 'Of course we wouldn't,' Klaus said.

'Stop muttering back there,' the hook-handed man ordered, as he led the children around another twist in the corridor. 'We're approaching the rowing room, and we don't want anyone to hear us.'

The children stopped talking, but as the henchman stopped at the door to the rowing room, and held his hook over an eye on the wall which would open the door, Violet and Klaus could hear that there was no reason to be quiet. Even through the thick metal of the rowing room entrance, they could hear the loud, piercing voice of Carmelita Spats.

'For my third dance,' she was saying, 'I will twirl around and around while all of you clap as hard as you can. It is a dance of celebration, in honor of the most adorable tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian in the world!'

'Please, Carmelita,' begged the voice of a child. 'We've been rowing for hours. Our hands are too sore to clap.' There was a faint, damp sound, like someone dropping a washcloth, and the elder Baudelaires realized that Esmй was whipping the children with her enormous noodle.

'You will participate in Carmelita's recital,' the treacherous girlfriend announced, 'or you will suffer the sting of my tagliatelle grande! Ha ha hoity-toity!'

'It's not really a sting,' said one brave child. 'It's more of a mild, wet slap.'

'Shut up, cakesniffer!' Carmelita ordered, and the children heard the rustle of her pink tutu as she began to twirl. 'Start clapping!' she shrieked, and then the children heard a sound they had never heard before.

There is nothing wicked about having a dreadful singing voice, any more than there is something wicked about having dreadful posture, dreadful cousins, or a dreadful pair of pants. Many noble and pleasant people have any number of these things, and there are even one or two kind individuals who have them all. But if you have something dreadful, and you force it upon someone else, then you have done something quite wicked indeed. If you force your wicked posture on someone, for instance, by leaning so far back that they are forced to carry you down the street, then you have wickedly ruined their afternoon walk, and if you force your dreadful cousins on someone, by dropping them off to play at their house so you can escape from their dreadful presences and spend some time alone, then you have wickedly ruined their entire day, and only a very wicked person indeed would force a dreadful pair of pants on the legs and lower torso of somebody else. But to force your dreadful singing voice on somebody, or even a crowd of people, is one of the world's most wicked crimes, and at that moment Carmelita Spats opened her mouth and afflicted the crew of the Carmelita with her wickedness. Carmelita's singing voice was loud, like a siren, and high-pitched, like a squeaky door, and extremely off-pitch, as if all of the notes in the musical scale were pushing up against one another, all trying to sound at the same time. Her singing voice was mushy, as if someone had filled her mouth with mashed potatoes before she sang, and filled with vibrato, which is the Italian term for a voice that wavers as it sings, as if someone were shaking Carmelita very vigorously as she began her song. Even the most dreadful of voices can be tolerated if it is performing a good song, but I'm sad to say that Carmelita Spats had written the song herself and that it was just as dreadful as her singing voice.