"We don't trust him," Klaus said. "Not really. But Fiona trusts him, and we trust Fiona."
"Volatile," Sunny said.
"Yes," Violet admitted, "but we don't have much choice. We're in the middle of the ocean "
"And we need to get to the beach," Klaus said, and held up the book of Lewis Carroll's poetry. "I think I've solved part of the Verse Fluctuation Declaration. Lewis Carroll has a poem called 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' "
"There was something about a walrus in the telegram," Violet said.
"Yes," Klaus said. "It took me a while to find the specific stanza, but here it is. Quigley wrote:
'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' The Walrus did beseech. 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the movie theater.' "
"Yes," Violet said. "But what does the actual poem say?"
Klaus read,
"'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' The Walrus did beseech. 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach.' "
Klaus closed the book and looked up at his sisters. "Quigley wants us to meet him tomorrow," he said, "at Briny Beach."
"Briny Beach," Violet repeated quietly. The eldest Baudelaire did not have to remind her siblings, of course, of the last time they were at Briny Beach, learning from Mr. Poe that the tables of their lives had turned. The three siblings sat and thought of that terrible day, which felt as blurred and faded as the photograph of Fiona's family or the photograph of their own parents, pasted into Klaus's commonplace book. Returning to Briny Beach after all this time felt to the Baudelaires like an enormous step backward, as if they would lose their parents and their home again, and Mr. Poe would take them once more to Count Olaf's house, and all the unfortunate events would crash over them once more, like the waves of the ocean crashing on the tidepools of Briny Beach and the tiny, passive creatures who lived inside them.
"How would we get there?" Klaus asked.
"In the Queequeg," Violet said. "This submarine should have a location device, and once we know where we are, I think I could set a course for Briny Beach."
"Distance?" Sunny asked.
"It shouldn't be far," Klaus said. "I'd have to check the charts. But what would we do when we got there?"
"I think I have the answer to that," Violet said, turning to her book of T. S. Eliot poems. "Quigley used lines from a very long poem in this book called The Waste Land."
"I tried to read that," Klaus said, "but I found T. S. Eliot too opaque. I scarcely understood a word."
"Maybe it's all in code," Violet said. "Listen to this. Quigley wrote:
'At the pink hour when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a pony throbbing party.'
"But the real poem reads:
"At the violet hour when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a "
"Blah blah blah ha ha ha!" interrupted a cruel, mocking voice. "Ha blah ha blah ha blah! Tee hee snaggle sniggle tee hee hee! Hubba hubba giggle diddle denouement!"
The Baudelaires looked up from their books to face Count Olaf, who was already stepping through the porthole and onto the wooden table. Behind him was Esm Squalor, sneering beneath the hood of her octopus outfit, and the children could hear the unpleasant slapping footsteps of the horrid pink shoes of Carmelita Spats, who peeked her heart-decorated face into the submarine and giggled nastily.
"I'm happier than a pig eating bacon!" Count Olaf cried. "I'm tickled pinker than a sunburned Caucasian! I'm in higher spirits than a brand-new graveyard! I'm so happy-go-lucky that lucky and happy people are going to heat me with sticks out of pure, unbridled jealousy! Ha ha jicama! When I stopped by the brig to see how my associate was progressing, and found that you orphans had flown the coop, I was afraid you were escaping, or sabotaging my submarine, or even sending a telegram asking for help! But I should have known you were too dim-witted to do anything useful! Look at yourselves, orphans, snacking and reading poetry, while the powerful and good-looking people of the world cackle in triumph! Cackle cackle cutthroat!"
"In just a few minutes," Esm bragged, "we will arrive at the Hotel Denouement, thanks to our bratty rowing crew. Tee hee triumphant! V.F.D.'s last safe place will soon be in ashes just like your home, Baudelaires!"
"I'm going to do a special tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital," Carmelita bragged, "on the graves of all those volunteers!" Carmelita leaped through the porthole, her pink tutu fluttering as if it were trying to escape, and joined Olaf on the table to begin a dance of triumph. "C is for 'cute!', " Carmelita sang, "A is for 'adorable'! R is for 'ravishing'! M is for 'gor' "
"Now, now, Carmelita," Count Olaf said, giving the tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian a tense smile. "Why don't you save your dance recital for later? I'll buy you all the dance costumes in the world. With V.F.D. out of the way, all the fortunes of the world can be mine the Baudelaire fortune, the Quagmire fortune, the Widdershins fortune, the "
"Where is Fiona?" Klaus asked, interrupting the villain. "What have you done with her? If you've hurt her "
"Hurt her?" Count Olaf asked, his eyes shining bright beneath his one scraggly eyebrow. "Hurt Triangle Eyes? Why would I hurt a clever girl like that? Tee hee troupe member!" With one of his tiresome dramatic gestures, Count Olaf pointed behind him, and Esm clapped the tentacles of her outfit as two people appeared in the porthole. One was the hook-handed man, who looked as wicked as he ever had. And the other was Fiona, who looked slightly different. One difference was the expression on her face, which looked resigned, a word which here means "as if the mycologist had given up entirely on defeating Count Olaf." But the other difference was printed on the slippery-looking uniform she was wearing, right in the center.
"No," Klaus said quietly, as he stared at his friend.
"No," Violet said firmly, and looked at Klaus.
"No!" Sunny said angrily, and bared her teeth as Fiona stepped through the porthole and stood beside Count Olaf on the wooden table.
Her boot brushed against the poetry books Violet and Klaus had taken from the sideboard, including books by Lewis Carroll and T. S. Eliot. There are some who say that the poetry of Lewis Carroll is too whimsical, a word which here means "full of comic nonsense," and other people complain that T. S. Eliot's poetry is too opaque, which refers to something that is unnecessarily complicated. But while everyone may not agree on the poets represented on the wooden table, every noble reader in the world agrees that the poet represented on Fiona's uniform was a writer of limited skill, who wrote awkward, tedious poetry on hopelessly sentimental topics.
"Yes," Fiona said quietly, and the Baudelaire orphans looked up at the portrait of Edgar Guest, smiling on the front of her uniform, and felt the tables turn once more.
Chapter Thirteen
The water cycle consists of three phenomena evaporation, precipitation, and collection and collection, the third of these phenomena, is the third of the phenomena that make up what is generally known as "the water cycle." This phenomenon, known as "collection," is the process of the gathering of water in the oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, reservoirs, and puddles of the world, so that it will eventually go through the phenomena of evaporation and precipitation, thus beginning the water cycle all over again. It is a tedious thing for a reader to find in a book, of course, and I hope that my descriptions of the water cycle have bored you enough that you have put this book down long ago, and will not read Chapter Thirteen of The Grim Grotto any more than the Baudelaire orphans will ever read Chapter "Thirty-Nine of Mushroom Minutiae, no matter how crucial such a chapter might be. But however tedious the water cycle is to readers, it must be very tedious indeed to the drops of water who must participate in the cycle over and over again. Occasionally, when I pause while writing my chronicle of the Baudelaire orphans, and my eyes and back turn upward from my desk to look out at the evening sky the purple color of which explains the expression "the violet hour" I imagine myself as a drop of water, especially if it is raining, or if my desk is floating in a reservoir. I think of how ghastly it would feel to be yanked away from my comrades, when we were gathered in a lake or puddle, and forced into the sky through the process of evaporation. I think how terrible it would feel to be chased out of a cloud by the process of precipitation, and tumble to the earth like a sugar bowl. And I think of how heartbroken I would feel to gather once more in a body of water and feel, during the process of collection, that I had reached the last safe place, only to have the tables turn, and evaporate into the sky once more as the tedious cycle started all over again. It is awful to contemplate this sort of life, in which one would always be forced into motion by a variety of mysterious and powerful forces, never staying anywhere for long, never finding a safe place one could call home, never able to turn the tables for very long, just as the Baudelaire orphans found it awful to contemplate their own lives as Fiona betrayed them, as so many of their companions had betrayed them before, just when it seemed they might break out of the tedious cycle of unfortunate events in which they found themselves trapped.