" Incredi!" Sunny cried, and it was true, for the enormous snake that was wrapping itself around the Baudelaires was, incredibly, a creature they had not seen for quite some time and never thought they would see again in their lives.
"It's the Incredibly Deadly Viper!" Klaus said in amazement. "How in the world did it end up here?"
"Ishmael said that everything eventually washes up on the shores of this island," Violet said, "but I never thought I'd see this reptile again."
"Deadly?" Friday asked nervously. "Is it poisonous? It seemed friendly to me."
"It is friendly," Klaus reassured her. "It's one of the least deadly and most friendly creatures in the animal kingdom. Its name is a misnomer."
"How can you be sure?" Friday asked.
"We knew the man who discovered it," Violet said. "His name was Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, and he was a brilliant herpetologist."
"He was a wonderful man," Klaus said. "We miss him very much."
The Baudelaires hugged the snake, particularly Sunny, who'd had a special attachment to the playful reptile, and thought for a moment of kind Uncle Monty and the days the children had spent with him. Then, slowly, they remembered how those days had ended, and they turned to look at Count Olaf, who had slaughtered Monty as part of a treacherous plot. Count Olaf frowned, and looked back at them. It was strange to see the villain just sitting there, shuddering at a snake, after his murderous scheme to get the orphans in his clutches. Now, so far from the world, it was as if Olaf no longer had clutches, and his murderous schemes were as useless as the harpoon gun that lay in his hands.
"I've always wanted to meet a herpetologist," said Friday, who of course did not know the whole story of Monty and his murder. "The island doesn't have an expert on snakes. There's so much of the world I'm missing by living here."
"The world is a wicked place," Count Olaf said quietly, and now it was the Baudelaires who shuddered. Even with the hot sun beating down on them, and the weight of the Incredibly Deadly Viper in their laps, the children felt a chill at the villain's words, and everyone was silent, watching the islanders approach along with the sheep, who had Ishmael in tow, a phrase which here means "dragged along on the sleigh behind them, sitting on his white chair as if he were a king, with his feet still covered in hunks of clay and his woolly beard billowing in the wind." As the colonists and sheep walked closer and closer, the children could see that the sheep had something else in tow, too, which sat on the sleigh behind the facilitator's chair. It was the large, ornate bird cage that had been found after the previous storm, shining in the sunlight like a small fire.
"Count Olaf," Ishmael said in a booming voice, as soon as his chair arrived. He stared down at the villain scornfully but also carefully, as if memorizing his face.
"Ishmael," Count Olaf said, in his disguised tone.
"Call me Ish," Ishmael said.
"Call me Kit Snicket," Olaf said.
"I'm not going to call you anything," Ishmael growled. "Your reign of treachery is over, Olaf." In one swift motion, the facilitator leaned down and snatched the seaweed wig off Olaf's head. "I've been told of your schemes and disguises, and we won't stand for it. You'll be locked up immediately."
Jonah and Sadie lifted the bird cage from the sleigh, set it on the ground, and pushed open its door, glaring meaningfully at Count Olaf. With a nod from Ishmael, Weyden and Ms. Marlow stepped toward the villain, wrestled the harpoon gun from his hands, and dragged him toward the bird cage, as the Baudelaire orphans looked at one another, unsure exactly how they felt. On one hand, it seemed as if the children had been waiting their entire lives for someone to utter precisely the words Ishmael had uttered, and they were eager for Olaf to finally be punished for his dreadful acts, from his recent kidnapping of Justice Strauss to the time, long ago, when he had thrown Sunny into a bird cage and dangled her from his tower window. But they weren't convinced that Count Olaf should be locked in a cage himself, even a cage as large as the one that had washed ashore. It wasn't clear to the children. If what was happening now, on the coastal shelf, was the arrival of justice at last, or just another unfortunate event. Throughout their history the Baudelaires had always hoped that Count Olaf would end up in the hands of the authorities, and would be punished by the High Court after a trial. But members of the High Court had turned out to be as corrupt and sinister as Olaf himself, and the authorities were far, far away from the island, and looking for the Baudelaires in order to charge them with arson and murder. It was difficult to say, so far from the world, how the three children felt about Count Olaf being dragged into a bird cage, but as was so often the case, it did not matter how the three children felt about it, because it happened anyway. Wey-den and Ms. Marlow dragged the struggling villain to the door of the bird cage and forced him to duck inside. He snarled, and wrapped his arms around his false pregnancy, and rested his head against his knees, and hunched his back, and the Bellamy siblings shut the door of the cage and latched it securely. The villain fit in the cage, but just barely, and you had to look closely to see that the mess of limbs and hair and orange and yellow cloth was a person at all. "This isn't fair," Olaf said. His voice was muffled from inside the cage, although the children noticed that he was still using a high-pitched tone, as if he could not help pretending to be Kit Snicket. "I'm an innocent pregnant woman, and these children are the real villains. You haven't heard the whole story."
"It depends on how you look at it," Ishmael said firmly. "Friday told me you were unkind, and that's all we need to hear. And this seaweed wig is all we need to see!"
"Ishmael's right," Mrs. Caliban said firmly. "You've been nothing but treacherous, Olaf, and the Baudelaires have been nothing but good!"
"'Nothing but good,'" Olaf repeated. "Ha! Why don't you look in the baby's pockets if you think she's so good. She's hiding a kitchen implement that one of your precious islanders gave her!"
Ishmael peered down at the youngest Baudelaire from his vantage point, a phrase which here means "chair perched on a sleigh dragged by sheep." "Is that true, Sunny?" he asked. "Are you keeping a secret from us?"
Sunny looked up at the facilitator, and then at the bird cage, remembering how uncomfortable was to be locked up. "Yes," she admitted, and took the whisk out of her pocket as the islanders gasped.
"Who gave this to you?" Ishmael demanded.
"Nobody gave it to her," Klaus said quickly, not daring to look at Friday. "It's just something that survived the storm along with us." He reached into his pocket and brought out his commonplace book. "Each of us has something, Ishmael. I have this notebook, and my sister has a ribbon she likes to use to tie up her hair."
There was another gasp from the assembled colonists, and Violet took the ribbon out of her pocket.
"We didn't mean any harm," she said.
"You were told of the island's customs," the facilitator said sternly, "and you chose to ignore them. We were very kind to you, giving you food and clothing and shelter, and even letting you keep your glasses. And in turn, you were unkind to us."
"They made a mistake," Friday said, swiftly gathering the forbidden items from the Baudelaires and giving Sunny a brief and grateful look. "We'll let the sheep take these things away, and forget all about it."