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"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?"
Fiona sighed. "We knew about you," she said. "Every day I would read terrible stories in the newspaper, but my stepfather said we couldn't do anything about all the treachery those stories contained."
"Why not?" Klaus asked.
"He said your troubles were too enormous," she replied.
"I don't understand," Violet said.
"I don't really understand, either," Fiona admitted. "My stepfather said that the amount of treachery in this world is enormous, and that the best we could do was one small noble thing. That's why we're looking for the sugar bowl. You'd think that accomplishing such a small task would be easy, but we've been looking for ages and still haven't found it."
"But what's so important about the sugar bowl?" Klaus asked.
Fiona sighed again, and blinked several times behind her triangular glasses. She looked so sad that the middle Baudelaire almost wished he hadn't asked. "I don't know," she said. "He won't tell me."
"Whyno?" Sunny asked. "He said it was better I didn't know," Fiona said. "I guess that's enormous, too – an enormous secret. He said people had been destroyed for knowing such enormous secrets, and that he didn't want me in that sort of danger."
"But you're already in danger," Klaus said. "We're all in danger. We're on board an unstable submarine, trying to find a tiny, important object before a nefarious villain gets his hands on it."
Fiona turned the handle of the door, which opened with a long, loud creak that made the Baudelaires shiver. The room was very small and very dim, lit only by one small green light, and for a moment, it looked like the room was full of people staring silently at the children in the corridor. But then the siblings saw it was just a row of uniforms, hanging limply from hooks along the wall. "I guess there are worse dangers," Fiona said quietly. "I guess there are dangers we simply can't imagine."
The Baudelaires looked at their companion and then at the eerie row of empty uniforms. On a shelf above the waterproof suits was a row of large diving helmets, round spheres of metal with small circular windows in the middle so the children would be able to see out when they put them on. In the dim green light, the helmets looked a bit like eyes, glaring at the Baudelaires from the supply room just as the eye on Count Olaf's ankle had glared at them so many times before. Although they still weren't pirates, the siblings were tempted to say "shiver me timbers" once again as they stepped inside th
e small, cramped room, and felt themselves shiver down to their bones. They did not like to think about the Queequeg springing a leak or collapsing, or to imagine themselves frantically attaching the diving helmets to their heads – or, in Sunny's case, frantically stuffing herself inside. They did not like to think about where Count Olaf might be, or imagine what would happen if he found the sugar bowl before they did. But most of all, the Baudelaire orphans did nor like to think about the dangers Fiona had mentioned – danger worse than the ones they faced, or dangers they simply couldn't imagine.
Chapter Four
The expression "fits like a glove" is an odd one, because there are many different types of gloves and only a few of them are going to fit the situation you are in. If you need to keep your hands warm in a cold environment, then you'll need a fitted pair of insulated gloves, and a glove made to fit in the bureau of a dollhouse will be of no help whatsoever. If you need to sneak into a restaurant in the middle of the night and steal a pair of chopsticks without being discovered, then you'll need a sheer pair of gloves that leave no marks, and a glove decorated with loud bells simply will not do. And if you need to pass unnoticed in a shrubbery-covered landscape, then you'll need a very, very large glove made of green and leafy fabric, and an elegant pair of silk gloves will be entirely useless.
Nevertheless, the expression "fits like a glove" simply means that something is very suitable, the way a custard is suitable for dessert, or a pair of chopsticks is a suitable tool to remove papers from an open briefcase, and when the Baudelaire orphans put on the uniforms of the Queequeg they found that they fitted the children like a glove, despite the fact that they did not actually fit that well.
Violet was so pleased that the uniforms had several loops around the waist, just perfect for holding tools, that she didn't care that her sleeves bagged at the elbows. Klaus was happy that there was a waterproof pocket for his commonplace hook, and didn't care that his hoots were a bit too tight. And Sunny was reassured that the shiny material was sturdy enough to resist cooking spills as well as water, and didn't mind rolling up the legs of the suit almost all the way so she could walk.
