The Grim Grotto

'You must be overwhelmed, Baudelaire '-• Phil said. 'I remember my first day aboard the Queequeg – it made Lucky Smells Lumbermill seem calm and quiet!'

'Phil, why don't you get the Baudelaires some soda, while I find them some uniforms?' Fiona said.

'Soda?' Phil said, with a nervous glance at the captain, who was already halfway up the ladder. 'We're supposed to save the soda for a special occasion.'

'It is a special occasion,' Fiona said. 'We're welcoming three more volunteers on board. What kind of soda do you prefer, Baudelaires?'

'Anything but parsley,' Violet said, referring to a beverage enjoyed by Esmй Squalor.

'I'll bring you some lemon-lime,' Phil said. 'Sailors should always make sure there's plenty of citrus in their system. I'm so glad to see you, children. You know, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. I was so horrified after what happened in Paltryville that I couldn't stay at Lucky Smells and since then my life has been one big adventure!'

'I'm sorry that your leg never healed,' Klaus said, referring to Phil's limp. 'I didn't realize the accident with the stamping machine was so serious,'

'That's not why I'm limping,' Phil said. 'I was bitten by a shark last week. It was very painful, but I'm quite lucky. Most people never get an opportunity to get so close to such a deadly animal!'

The Baudelaires watched him as he limped back through the kitchen door, whistling a bouncy tune. 'Was Phil always optimistic when you knew him?' Fiona asked.

'Always,' Violet said, and her siblings nodded in agreement. 'We've never known anyone who could remain so cheerful, no matter what terrible things occurred,'

'To tell you the truth, I sometimes find it a bit tiresome,' Fiona said, adjusting her triangular glasses, 'Shall we find you some uniforms?'

The Baudelaires nodded, and followed Fiona out of the Main Hall and back into the narrow corridor. 'I know you have a lot of questions,' she said, 'so Ill try to tell you everything I know. My stepfather believes that he or she who hesitates is lost, but I have a more cautious personal philosophy.'

'We'd be very grateful if you might tell us a few things,' Klaus said. 'First, how do you know who we are? Why were you looking for us? How did you know how to find us?'

'That's a lot of firsts,' Fiona said with a smile. 'I think you Baudelaires are forgetting that your exploits haven't exactly been a secret. Nearly every day there's been a story about you in one of the most popular newspapers.'

'The Daily Punctilio?' Violet asked.' 'I hope you haven't been believing the dreadful lies they've been printing about us.'

'Of course not,' Fiona said. 'But even the most ridiculous of stories can contain a grain of truth. The Daily Punctilio said that you'd murdered a man in the Village of Fowl Devotees, and set fires at Heimlich Hospital and Caligari Carnival. We knew, of course, that you hadn't committed these crimes, but we could tell that you had been there. My stepfather and I figured that you'd found the secret stain on Madame Lulu's map, and were headed for the V.F.D. headquarters.'

Klaus gasped. 'You know about Madame Lulu,' he said, 'and the coded stain?'

'My stepfather taught that code to Madame Lulu,' Fiona explained, 'a long time ago, when they were both young. Well, we heard about the destruction of the headquarters, so we assumed that you'd be heading back down the mountain. So I set a course for the Queequeg to journey up the Stricken Stream.'

'You traveled all the way up here,' Klaus said, 'just to find us?'

Fiona looked down. 'Well, no,' she said. 'You weren't the only thing at V.F.D. headquarters. One of our Volunteer Factual Dispatches told us that the sugar bowl was there as well'

'Dephinpat?' Sunny asked.

'What are Volunteer Factual Dispatches exactly?' Violet translated.

'They're a way of sharing information,' Fiona said. 'It's difficult for volunteers to meet up with one another, so when they unlock a mystery they can write it in a telegram. That way, important information gets circulated, and before long our commonplace books will be full of information we can use to defeat our enemies. A commonplace book is a –'

'We know what a commonplace book is,' Klaus said, and removed his dark blue notebook from his pocket. 'I've been keeping one myself.'

Fiona smiled, and drummed her gloved fingers on the cover of Klaus's book. 'I should have. known,' she said. 'If your sisters want to start books themselves, we should have a few spares. Everything's in our supply room.'

'So are we going up to the ruins of the headquarters,' Violet asked, 'to get the sugar bowl? We didn't see it there.'

'We think someone threw it out the window,' Fiona answered, 'when the fire began. If they threw the sugar bowl from the kitchen, it would have landed in the Stricken Stream and been carried by the water cycle all the way down the mountains. We were seeing if it could be found at the bottom of the stream when we happened upon you three.'

'The stream probably carried it much further than this,' Klaus said thoughtfully.

'I think so too,' Fiona agreed. 'I'm hoping that you can discover its location by studying my stepfather's tidal charts. I can't make head or tail of them.'

'I'll show you how to read them,' Klaus said. 'It's not difficult.'

'That's what frightens me,' Fiona said. 'If those charts aren't difficult to read, then Count Olaf might have a chance of finding the sugar bowl before we do. My stepfather says that if the sugar bowl falls into his hands, then all of the efforts of all the volunteers will be for naught.'

The Baudelaires nodded, and the four children made their way down the corridor in silence. The phrase 'for naught' is simply a fancy way of saying 'for nothing,' and it doesn't matter which phrase you use, for they arc both equally difficult to admit. Later this afternoon, for instance, I will enter a large room full of sand, and if I do not find the test tube I am looking for, it will be difficult to admit that I have sifted through all that sand for nothing. If you insist on finishing this book, you will find it difficult to admit, between bouts of weeping, that you have read this story for naught, and that it would have been better to page through tedious descriptions of the water cycle. And the Baudelaires did not want to find themselves admitting that all of their troubles had been for naught, that all their adventures meant nothing, and that their entire lives were naught and nothing, if Count Olaf managed to find this crucial sugar bowl before they did. The three siblings followed Fiona down the dim corridor and hoped that their time aboard the Queequeg would not be another terrifying journey ending in more disappointment, disillusionment, and despair.

For the moment, however, their journey ended at a small door where Fiona stopped and turned to face the Baudelaires. 'This is our supply room,' she said, 'Inside you'll find uniforms for the three of you, although even our smallest size might be too big for Sunny.'

'Pinstripe,' Sunny said. She meant something like, 'Don't worry – I'm used to ill-fitting clothing,' and her siblings were quick to translate.

'You'll need diving helmets, too,' Fiona said. 'This is an old submarine, and it could spring a leak. If the leak is serious, the pressure of the water could cause the walls of the Queequeg to collapse, filling all these rooms and corridors with water. The oxygen systems contained in the diving helmets enable you to breathe underwater – for a short time, anyway.'

'Your stepfather said that the helmets would be too big for Sunny, and that she'd have to curl up inside one,' Violet said. 'Is that safe?'

'Safe but uncomfortable,' Fiona said, 'like everything else on the Queequeg. This submarine used to be in wonderful shape, but without anyone who knows about mechanics, it's not quite up to its former glory. Many of the rooms have flooded, so I'm sorry to say that we'll be sleeping in very tight quarters. I hope you like bunk beds.'

'We've slept on worse,' Klaus said.

'So I hear,' Fiona replied. 'I read a description of the Orphans Shack at Prufrock Preparatory School. That sounded terrible.'

'So you knew about us, even then?' Violet asked. 'Why didn't you find us sooner?'