Chapter One
by Dante
Nearly everyone, at some point in their life, has an experience where they mistake someone or something for another something or someone that looks nearly the same but is actually quite different. Maybe it has happened to you, and you have once been to a supermarket and bought what looked like your favourite kind of cake, only to get home and discover that it had too much cinnamon in it. It once happened to me, when I was mistaken for a short-haired woman, which caused a lot of trouble as the police were searching for the missing members of a notorious theatre troupe at the time. And certainly it has happened to the Baudelaires, who, you may recall, once heard that Count Olaf had been captured, only to learn that it was actually Jacques Snicket, and that mistake cost Jacques his life and the Baudelaires their freedom. And it is shortly about to happen to you and the Baudelaires again, and you will think you recognise their situation and where it is going only to discover that the truth is quite different, and all I can do is warn you in advance, and hope that you do not make the same mistake.
The Baudelaire orphans were adrift in the ocean, on a wooden boat not much larger than your bed, unless you are a prince or princess and sleep in a bed the size of a normal person’s sitting room, in which case the boat was not much larger than your pillow. When most people go sailing, they usually take a few items that will be of use to them, such as a fishing rod or the key to the motor, but the Baudelaires had no such items, and the only things they could call their own were the battered-looking concierge uniforms they had acquired in a hotel, a pair of enormous spatulas they had also acquired from that hotel, and the lingering smell of smoke, which, to their deep regret, they had once again acquired from that same hotel, when it had burnt down some hours earlier. But now the smoke from that fire was nothing but a distant pall on the horizon, and the Baudelaires could only see sea all around them, or, if they turned around, the gloating expression of Count Olaf.
Count Olaf was not the sort of companion they or anyone else would have chosen to accompany them while sailing on a small boat. This villain had pursued the Baudelaire children ever since their parents had died in a fire, and was intent on stealing the fortune they would one day inherit. He hadn’t had much luck in this, but Count Olaf was like a stubborn mule, and had no intention of changing his course, not even if somebody dangled a carrot in front of him or hit him from behind with a stick, although it would be a very brave or foolish person who would dare to do so. Count Olaf’s pursuit had ended at the Hotel Denouement, when he and the Baudelaires had been forced into the same boat to escape the burning building and the city authorities intent on capturing them, and that was how they had gotten into the middle of the ocean, with the Baudelaires rowing as hard as they cared to, and Count Olaf watching over them and occasionally making unhelpful comments.
“Row faster, orphans!” Olaf commanded, and took a glance over his shoulder. “The authorities could be pursuing us right now in helicopters and speedboats. If they catch us, I’ll never get my hands on your fortune.”
This was not an argument which held much water with the Baudelaires – a phrase which here means “would get them to do what Olaf wanted” – but they knew that, if the authorities did catch up with them, they would likely be thrown in prison for two murders they did not commit and one arson they did, which was why they kept on rowing, not because they were interested in obeying this awful man’s commands.
“We’re rowing as hard as we can, Olaf,” Violet, the eldest Baudelaire, answered. “Isn’t there a motor of some kind on this ship?” Violet, as you probably know, was a mechanical genius and brilliant inventor, and operating a complicated motor would be far easier for her than dipping a heavy spatula in the water over and over again.
“There’s no motor,” Olaf replied. “The people who built this boat weren’t allowed to use any mechanical devices. It’s rowing or nothing.”
Klaus, the middle child, frowned when Count Olaf mentioned that the builders hadn’t been allowed to use mechanical devices. He wondered if the boat had been built in the Village of Fowl Devotees, a small town he and his sisters had spent a few miserable days in not so long ago, where all mechanical devices were forbidden – but the Village of Fowl Devotees was nowhere near the coast, and its inhabitants would have no reason to build a boat. “Are there any better oars stored below decks?” he asked instead. “These spatulas aren’t very efficient.” Klaus had read more books in his young life than most adults, and retained nearly all of the information he had learned, and so of course he knew that spatulas were very rarely used as rowing devices.
“I had to throw out the oars when I was getting this ship to the roof of the hotel,” Count Olaf replied. “They were getting in the way. An orphan brat like you has no idea how hard it is to get a rowing boat up nine flights of stairs, even with henchmen doing most of the work.”
“Nourish?” Sunny, the youngest Baudelaire, asked. Sunny was only scarcely out of her infancy, and as such she could only usually make herself understood to people who knew her very well, like her siblings, who knew that this question meant “Is there any food aboard that we could eat to recover our strength?”
Count Olaf frowned, because unlike the elder Baudelaires, he couldn’t understand a word Sunny was saying. “What baby-talk are you babbling now?” he asked back. “I’ve heard that babies tend to make a lot of noise when they’re hungry. Well, too bad. There’s a clay pot that might have some food in it, but we’re in too much of a hurry to give you a break from rowing, and I ate not long ago.”
The Baudelaires sighed. They had not eaten anything since the previous evening, and could have used the vital food secured in the clay jar, and might have avoided a lot of trouble if they had discovered the even more vital food hidden at the bottom of the pot.
“Surely there’s a spyglass on this ship that you can use to see if we’re being followed?” Violet suggested. “If the authorities don’t know where we are, we could stop and eat something. My siblings and I can’t row for much longer without food, and then you might have to take your turn.”
Olaf scowled. “Rowing is for servants like you children, not a captain like me,” he said. “But navigation is the captain’s business, so I suppose I can take the time to use the spyglass, although it is really beneath me.”
If you say that a task is beneath you, you mean that you are too important to do that particular job, although the Baudelaires had long since learnt that nothing was beneath Count Olaf, and there was no low he would not stoop to when he was trying to steal something that he did not deserve. What the Baudelaires didn’t realise, of course, was that Olaf meant that the spyglass was literally beneath him, for he then bent down, opened a trapdoor in the deck, and pulled out a brass cylinder from the space where he had previously left his harpoon gun and the helmet full of deadly Medusoid Mycelium.
“This looks like a fine device for a great captain like me,” he said, admiring the spyglass, but scowling when he saw the faint lines of a certain insignia sketched on the glass, which stood for three initials, and scowled again when he saw the letter B. carved twice into the metal, which stood either for two initials or two people with the same initial. All the same, Olaf unfolded the spyglass, put it to his eye, and peered off the edge of the boat in the direction the Baudelaires had rowed them from.
“Hmm,” he muttered. “It doesn’t look like we’re being followed. All I can see is the cloud of smoke the four of us worked on.” He smiled wickedly at the memory of this evil deed. “I’d like to see the volunteers recover from that!”
“So can we stop rowing now?” Violet asked, and stopped rowing anyway.
“If you insist, orphan,” Olaf growled, spinning around and continuing to squint through the spyglass. “I suppose you’ll need all of your strength for another hard day’s rowing tomorrow. After all –”
But the Baudelaires never found out what Count Olaf had been about to say, for at that moment he stopped talking, which was very unusual, and stood very still. Looking at him, Violet was disturbed to be reminded of something that had happened when she was very young, and her father had taken her to visit the Verne Invention Museum. She and her father had just stepped into the Vaunted Flotation Dirigibles room when her father had stopped talking mid-sentence and stood very still, looking across the room at something or someone. Violet, who was a lot shorter than him at that age, couldn’t see where he was looking, as there was a large model of the
Hindenburg blocking her view, but after a few moments, her father had turned around and pulled her out of the room, telling her that they would go back later. Reflecting on that event, Violet realised that her father must have seen someone or something that he had hoped not to, and so too had Count Olaf, as he squinted through the spyglass at something on the horizon.
“Change course!” he barked abruptly, making the Baudelaires jump and nearly drop their spatulas into the ocean. “There’s a ship out there in the middle of our path! They must have circled around to intercept us.”
“Which way should we go?” asked Klaus, looking out into the horizon himself, where there was a distant shape just catching the rays of the evening sun.
“Oh, anywhere!” Olaf said, throwing down the spyglass. “West!”
“West is in the direction of that ship,” Violet pointed out, since it was in the same direction as the sunset.
“East, then!” Olaf cried.
While Olaf was babbling, Sunny Baudelaire picked up the spyglass, which had rolled across the deck towards her, and which she thought Olaf would be even angrier to lose overboard. Like her siblings, she was a curious youngster, and so she pointed the spyglass out in the direction everyone else was looking and focussed on the ship.
It was a fancy cruise liner, such as you might travel around the world or flee the country in, although its white paint didn’t quite gleam in the sunlight, and it had green marks spreading across its surface from the waterline, which is where a boat’s hull meets the ocean below. But there was something quite odd about the ship, and Sunny was not quite sure what.
“Strange,” she murmured.
“What is?” Olaf answered, having not been paying attention. “Oh, it’s you, Babblelaire. Put that spyglass down before you let it slip overboard!”
“Wait, Olaf,” Klaus said, taking the spyglass from his sister. “Sunny says that there’s something strange about that ship.”
“More than you know,” Olaf muttered, but nobody heard him, as Klaus was staring out at the ship, and Violet and Sunny were staring at Klaus.
“That
is strange, Sunny,” Klaus said. “That ship isn’t moving. There’s no smoke coming from its chimneys, and it’s not casting waves.”
“Maybe it’s had an engine failure, and is stranded out there,” Violet said. “If that’s the case, they’ve probably used the radio to call for help.”
“Oh, they won’t have,” Olaf said. The Baudelaires noticed that he was talking this time, and turned to him.
“What made you think that ship would be coming after us, Olaf?” Klaus asked. “It’s a cruise ship for holidays, not for hunting criminals.”
“That’s what you think,” Olaf answered. “Did you see the nameplate of that ship, orphan?”
Many ships have a nameplate to identify them, much like the ship the Baudelaires were on had a piece of cardboard taped to the side with the name “
Carmelita” scrawled onto it, although there were actually other nameplates hidden below this one which might have surprised them. Klaus took up the spyglass again, and focussed on the other ship’s nameplate.
“The
Moth II,” he said. “Is that important?”
Olaf frowned. “Did your parents never tell you about that ship, Baudelaires?”
Now it was the Baudelaire orphans’ turn to frown. Their parents had never mentioned any cruise ships to them, and certainly not the
Moth II, and I cannot blame them.
“I thought not,” Olaf sneered. “But if they’re stranded out there, I think we should take a look. Get back to rowing, orphans. I want to be at that ship by nightfall.”
“Signif?” Sunny asked.
“I don’t know what that means, but you probably want to know what your parents should have told you about that ship, don’t you?” Olaf said, looking down at Sunny as if she were something unpleasant he had just stepped in. “Well, I’ll tell you. That’s one of V.F.D.’s ships. But it was reported to have sunk five years ago.”
The Baudelaires felt a chill run through them that had nothing to do with the evening air. V.F.D. was the secret organisation whose mysterious activities the Baudelaires had gotten involved in, and which they understood their parents to have been members of. Unlike Olaf, they knew very little about the organisation, but for once they were like Olaf in wanting to find out more.
“So if it didn’t sink…” Violet asked, “what have they been hiding out here?”
“Now you’re learning to think like me, orphan,” Olaf said, and a wicked smile spread across his face, revealing his grimy teeth. “Other people's troubles are my opportunities. Now, pick up those spatulas and get rowing. Get us there quick enough and I might even let you have some food.”
The Baudelaires looked at one another, and then picked up their spatulas and got rowing. It was not just because Count Olaf had commanded them to, of course, or even because he had offered them some sustenance. What they were really hoping for – and that hope would be answered – was that they would find out more about their parents on the
Moth II, and learn a little more about their involvement with V.F.D. and why they had never told their children about it. They had already learnt that, although this boat looked just like a normal cruise ship, it was actually quite different, but it is my associates’ research, not mine, which will tell you exactly what the Baudelaires and Count Olaf found when they drew up alongside the
Moth II in the dead of night and found their way aboard.
<O>
Poll Question:a. Is the Moth II already abandoned, except for a few people or other intruders?b. Is the Moth II still fully staffed and will only be abandoned during the course of the story?Answers within twenty-four hours, and then I nominate the person to write the next chapter. If you
really, really want the next chapter, or
really, really don't, please post here, or else I'll make my own pick.