The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events 11)

"Time?" Captain Widdershins repeated. "We don't have time for fungus books! Aye! We don't have time for you two to do all that flirting, either!"

"We're not flirting!" Fiona said. "We're having a conversation."

"It looked like flirting to me," the captain said. "Aye!"

"Why don't you tell us about your research," Violet said to Klaus, knowing that her brother would rather talk about the tidal charts than his personal life.

Klaus gave her a grateful smile and pointed to a point on the chart. "If my calculations are correct," he said, "the sugar bowl would have been carried down the sane tributary we went down in the toboggan. The prevailing currents of the stream lead all the way down here, where the sea begins."

"So it was carried out to sea," Violet said.

"I think so," Klaus said. "And we can see here that the tides would move it away from Sontag Shore in a northeasterly direction."

"Sink?" Sunny asked, which meant something like, "Wouldn't the sugar bowl just drift to the ocean floor?"

"It's too small," Klaus said. "Oceans are in constant motion, and an object that falls into the sea could end up miles away. It appears that the tides and currents in this part of the ocean would take the sugar bowl past the Gulag Archipelago here, and then head down toward the Mediocre Barrier Reef before turning at this point here, which is marked 'A.A.' Do you know what that is, Captain? It looks like some sort of floating structure."

The captain sighed, and raised one finger to fiddle with the curl of his mustache. "Aye," he said sadly. "Anwhistle Aquatics. It's a marine research center and a rhetorical advice service – or it was. It burned down."

"Anwhistle?" Violet asked. "That was Aunt Josephine's last name."

"Aye," the captain said. "Anwhistle Aquatics was founded by Gregor Anwhistle, the famous ichnologist and Josephine's brother-in-law. But all that's ancient history. Where did the sugar bowl go next?"

The Baudelaires would have preferred to learn more, but knew better than to argue with the captain, and Klaus pointed to a small oval on the chart to continue his report. "This is the part that confuses me," he said. "You see this oval, right next to Anwhistle Aquatics? It's marked but there's no other explanation."

Captain Widdershins said, and stroked his mustache thoughtfully. "I've never seen an oval like that on a chart like this."

"There's something else confusing about it," Klaus said, peering at the oval. There are two different arrows inside it, and each one points in a different direction."

"It looks like the tide is going two ways at once," Fiona said.

Violet frowned. "That doesn't make any sense," she said.

"I'm confused, too," Klaus said. "According to my calculations, the sugar bowl was probably carried right to this place on the map. But where it went from there I can't imagine."

"I guess we should set a course for G.G., whatever it might be," Violet said, "and see what we can find when we get there."

"I'm the captain!" the captain cried. "I'll give the orders around here! Aye! And I order that we set a course for that oval, and see what we can find when we get there! But first I'm hungry! And thirsty! Aye! And my arm itches! I can scratch my own arm, but Cookie and Sunny, you are responsible for food and drink! Aye!"

"Sunny helped me make a chowder that should be ready in a few minutes," Phil said. "Her teeth were very handy in dicing the boiled potatoes."

"Flush," Sunny said, which meant "Don't worry – I cleaned my teeth before using them as kitchen implements."

"Chowder? Aye! Chowder sounds delicious!" the captain cried. "And what about dessert? Aye? Dessert is the most important meal of the day! Aye! In my opinion! Even though it's not really a meal! Aye!"

"Tonight, the only dessert we have is gum," Phil said. "I still have some left from my days at the lumbermill."

"I think I'll pass on dessert," Klaus said, who'd had such a terrible time at Lucky Smells Lumbermill that he no longer had a taste for gum.

"Yomhuledet," Sunny said. She meant "Don't worry – Phil and I have arranged a surprise dessert for tomorrow night," but of course only her siblings could understand the youngest Baudelaire's unusual way of talking.

Nevertheless, as soon as Sunny spoke, Captain Widdershins stood up from the table and began crying out in astonishment. "Aye!" he cried. "Dear God! Holy Buddha! Charles Darwin! Duke Ellington! Aye! Fiona – turn off the engines! Aye! Cookie – turn off the stove! Aye! Violet – make sure the telegram device is off! Aye! Klaus! Gather your materials together so nothing rolls around! Aye! Calm down! Work quickly! Don't panic! Help! Aye!"

"What's going on?" Phil asked.

"What is it, stepfather?" Fiona asked.

For once, the captain was silent, and merely pointed at a screen on the submarine wall. The screen looked like a piece of graph paper, lit up in green light, with a glowing letter Q in the center.

"That looks like a sonar detector," Violet said.

"It is a sonar detector," Fiona said. "We can tell if any other undersea craft are approaching us by detecting the sounds they make. The Q represents the Queequeg and –"

The mycologist gasped, and the Baudelaires looked at where she was pointing. At the very top of the panel was another glowing symbol, which was moving down the screen at a fast clip, a phrase which here means "straight toward the Queequeg." Fiona did not say what this green symbol stood for, and the children could not bear to ask. It was an eye, staring at the frightened volunteers and wiggling its long, skinny eyelashes, which protruded from every side.

"Olaf!" Sunny said in a whisper.

"There's no way of knowing for sure," Fiona said, "but we'd better follow my stepfather's orders. If it's another submarine, then it has a sonar detector too. If the Queequeg is absolutely silent, they'll have no idea we're here."

"Aye!" the captain said. "Hurry! He who hesitates is lost!"

Nobody bothered to add "Or she" to the captain 's personal philosophy, but instead hurried to silence the submarine. Fiona climbed up the rope ladder and turned off the whirring engine. Violet wheeled back into the machinery of the telegram device and turned it off. Phil and Sunny ran into the kitchen to turn off the stove, so even the bubbling of their homemade chowder would not give the Queequeg away. And Klaus and the captain gathered up the materials on the table so that nothing would make even the slightest rattle. Within moments the submarine was silent as a grave, and all the volunteers stood mutely at the table, looking out the porthole into the gloomy water of the sea.

As the eye on the sonar screen drew closer to the Q,

they could see something emerge from the darkened waters – a strange shape that became clearer as it got closer and closer to the Queequeg. It was, indeed, another submarine, the likes of which the Baudelaires had never seen before, even in the strangest of books. It was much, much bigger than the Queequeg, and as it approached, the children had to cover their mouths so their gasps could not be heard.

The second submarine was in the shape of a giant octopus, with an enormous metal dome for a head and two wide portholes for eyes. A real octopus, of course, has eight legs, but this submarine had many more. What had appeared to be eyelashes on the sonar screen were really small metal tubes, protruding from the body of the octopus and circling in the water, making thousands of bubbles that hurried toward the surface as if they were frightened of the underwater craft.

The octopus drew closer, and all six passengers on the Queequeg stood as still as statues, hoping the submarine had not discovered them. The strange craft was so close the Baudelaires could see a shadowy figure inside one of the octopus's eyes – a tall, lean figure, and although the children could not see any further details, they were positive the figure had one eyebrow instead of two, filthy fingernails instead of good grooming habits, and a tattoo of an eye on its left ankle.

"Count Olaf," Sunny whispered, before she could stop herself.

The figure in the porthole twitched, as if Sunny's tiny noise had caused the Queequeg to be detected. Spouting more bubbles, the octopus drew closer still, and any moment it seemed that one of the legs of the octopus would be heard scraping against the outside of the Queequeg. The three children looked down at their helmets, which they had left on the floor, and wondered if they should put them on, so they might survive if the submarine collapsed.

Fiona grabbed her stepfather 's arm, but Captain Widdershins shook his head silently, and pointed at the sonar screen again. The eye and the Q were almost on top of one another on the screen, but that was not what the captain was pointing at. There was a third shape of glowing green light, this one the biggest of all, a huge curved tube with a small circle at the end of it, slithering toward the center of the screen like a snake. But this third underwater craft didn't look like a snake. As it approached the eye and the Q, the small circle leading the enormous curved tube toward the Queequeg and its frightened volunteer crew, the shape looked more like a question mark.