"V.F.D.!" Sunny cried, as the toboggan drew even closer.
"What is it?" Klaus asked.
"It's a periscope!" Violet said. "Submarines use them to look at things above the water!"
"Does that mean," Klaus cried, "that there's a submarine beneath us?"
Violet did not have to answer, because the eye rose further out of the water, and the orphans could see that the pole was attached to a large, flat piece of metal, most of which was under the water. The toboggan drew closer until the periscope was in reach, and then stopped, the way a raft will stop when it hits a large rock.
"Look!" Violet cried as the stream rushed around them. She pointed to a hatch just at the bottom of the periscope. "Let's knock maybe they can hear us!"
"But we have no idea who's inside," Klaus said.
"Taykashans!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "It's our only chance to travel safely through these waters," and she leaned down to the hatch and scraped at it with her teeth. Her siblings joined her, preferring to use their fists to pound on the metal hatch.
"Hello!" Violet cried.
"Hello!" Klaus yelled.
"Shalom!" Sunny shrieked.
Over the sound of the rushing stream, the Baudelaires heard a very dim sound coming from behind the hatch. The sound was a human voice, very deep and echoey as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. "Friend or foe?" it said.
The Baudelaires looked at one another. They knew, as I'm sure you know, that "friend or foe" is a traditional greeting directed at visitors who approach an important place, such as a royal palace or a fiercely guarded shoe store, and must identify themselves as either a friend or a foe of the people inside. But the siblings did not know if they were friends or foes for the simple reason that they had no idea who was talking.
"What should we say?" Violet asked, lowering her voice. "The eye might mean that it's Count Olaf's submarine, in which case we're foes."
"The eye might mean that it's V.F.D.'s submarine," Klaus said, "in which case we're friends."
"Obvio!" Sunny said, which meant "There's only one answer that will get us into the submarine," and she called down to the hatch, "Friend!"
There was a pause, and the echoey voice spoke again. "Password, please," it said.
The Baudelaires looked at one another again. A password, of course, is a certain word or phrase that one utters in order to receive information or enter a secret place, and the siblings of course had no idea what they should say in order to enter a submarine. For a moment none of the children said anything, merely tried to think, although they wished it were quieter so they could think without the distractions of the sounds of the rushing of water and the coughing of fish. They wished that instead of being stranded on a toboggan in the middle of the Stricken Stream, they were in some quiet room, such as the Baudelaire library, where they could sit in silence and read up on what the password might be. But as the three siblings thought of one library, one sibling remembered another: the ruined V.F.D. library, up in the Valley of Four Drafts where the headquarters had once stood. Violet thought of an iron archway, one of the few remnants of the library, and the motto that was etched into it. The eldest Baudelaire looked at her siblings and then leaned down to the hatch and repeated the mysterious words she had seen, and that she hoped would bring her and her siblings to safety.
"The world is quiet here," she said.
There was a pause, and with a loud, metallic creak, the hatch opened, and the siblings peered into a dark hole, which had a ladder running along the side so they could climb down. They shivered, and not just from the icy chill of the mountain winds and the rushing dark waters of the Stricken Stream. They shivered because they did not know where they were going, or who they might meet if they climbed down into the hole. Instead of entering, the Baudelaires wanted to call something else down the hatch the same words that had been called up to them. "Friend or foe?" they wanted to say. "Friend or foe?" Would it be safer to enter the submarine, or safer to risk their lives outside, in the rushing waters of the Stricken Stream?
"Enter, Baudelaires," the voice said, and whether it belonged to friend or foe, the Baudelaires decided to climb inside.
Chapter Two
"Right down here!" the echoey voice said, as the Baudelaire orphans began their journey down the ladder. "Aye! Mind the ladder! Close the hatch behind you! Don't rush! No take your time! Don't fall! Mind your step! Aye! Don't trip! Don't make noise! Don't scare me! Don't look down! No look where you're going! Don't bring any flammable liquids with you! Watch your feet! Aye! No watch your back! No watch your mouth! No watch yourselves! Aye!"
"Aye?" Sunny whispered to her siblings.
"'Aye,'" Klaus explained quietly, "is another word for yes.'"
"Aye!" the voice said again. "Keep your eyes open! Look out below! Look out above! Look out for spies! Look out for one another! Look out! Aye! Be very careful! Be very aware! Be very much! Take a break! No keep going! Stay awake! Calm down! Cheer up! Keep climbing! Keep your shirt on! Aye!"
As desperate as their situation was, the Baudelaires almost found themselves giggling. The voice was shouting out so many instructions, and so few of them made sense, that it would have been impossible for the children to follow them, and the voice was quite cheerful and a bit scattered, as if whoever was talking did not really care if their instructions were followed and had probably forgotten them already. "Hold on to the railing!" the voice continued, as the Baudelaires spotted a light at the end of the passageway. "Aye! No hold on to yourselves! No hold on to your hats! No hold on to your hands! No hold on! Wait a minute! Wait a second! Stop waiting! Stop war! Stop injustice! Stop bothering me! Aye!"
Sunny had been the first to enter the passageway, and so she was the first to reach the bottom and lower herself carefully into a small, dim room with a very low ceiling. Standing in the center of the room was an enormous man dressed in a shiny suit made of some sort of slippery-looking material with equally slippery-looking boots on his feet. On the front of the suit was a portrait of a man with a beard, although the man himself had no beard, merely a very long mustache curled up at both ends like a pair of parentheses. "One of you is a baby!" he cried, as Klaus and Violet lowered themselves next to their sister. "Aye! No both of you are babies! No there's three of you! No none of you are babies! Well, one of you sort of is a baby! Welcome! Aye! Hello! Good afternoon! Howdy! Shake my hand! Aye!"
The Baudelaires hurriedly shook the man's hand, which was covered in a glove made of the same slippery material. "My name is Violet B " Violet started to say.
"Baudelaire!" the man interrupted. "I know! I'm not stupid! Aye! And you're Klaus and Sunny! You're the Baudelaires! The three Baudelaire children! Aye! The ones The Daily Punctilio blames for every crime they can think of but you're really innocent but nevertheless in a big heap of trouble! Of course! Nice to meet you! In person! So to speak! Let's go! Follow me! Aye!"
The man whirled around and stomped out of the room, leaving the bewildered Baudelaires little else to do but follow him down a corridor. The corridor was covered in metal pipes that ran along the walls, floor, and ceiling, so that the Baudelaires sometimes had to duck, or step very high, in order to make their way. Occasionally drops of water would drip from one of the pipes and land on their heads, but they were already so damp from the Stricken Stream that they scarcely noticed. Besides, they were far too busy trying to follow what the man was saying to think of anything else.