Chapter Type-Ups

[angelicbabigirl]

If anyone could please write up the second chapter, that would be great. Since I live in Europe it takes almost 2 weeks for books from the US to get here. I REALLY want to read the second chapter (have read the first one already). Thanks.

[TheQuietWorld]

Just wait.
It's worth it.

[Dante]

If anyone is feeling generous enough to type up the second chapter, though, that's okay with me. I think in the past we've allowed up to four chapters to be typed up for people who don't have the book yet or can't get it; I don't see a problem until it gets to about halfway.

[Edwin]

I'll upload it soon, but it won't be finished for ages.

[Sora]

More soon. I'm just over halfway through the chapter.

Chapter 2:

It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus and even Sunny felt in the hours that followed. Most people who have survived a storm at sea are so shaken by the experience that they never want to speak of it again, and so if a writer wishes to describe a storm at sea, his only method of research is to stand on a large, wooden boat with a notebook and pen, ready to take notes should a storm suddenly strike, and by the time the storm cleared I was so shaken by the experience that I never wanted to speak of it again. So it is useless for me to describe the force of the wind that tore through the sails as if they were paper, and sent the boat spinning like an ice-skater showing off. It is impossible for me to convey the volume of rain that fell drenching the Baudelaires in freezing water so their concierge uniforms clung to them like an extra layer of soaked and icy skin. It is futile for me to portray the streaks of lightning that clattered down from the swirling clouds, striking the mast of the boat and sending it toppling into the churning sea. It is inadequate for me to report on the deafening thunder that rang in the Baudelaires' ears, and it is superfluous for me to recount how the boat began to tilt back and forth, sending all of its contents tumbling into the ocean; first the jars of beans, hitting the surface of the water with a loud glop!, and then the spatulas, the lightning reflecting off their mirrored surfaces as they disappeared into the swirling tides, and lastly the sheets Violet had taken from the hotel laundry room and fashioned into a drag chute so the boat would survive its drop from the rooftop sunbathing salon, billowing in the stormy air like jellyfish before sinking into the sea. It is worthless for me to specify the increasing size of the waves rising out of water, first like shark fins, and then like tents, and then finally like glaciers, their icy peaks climbing higher and higher until they finally came crashing down on the soaked and crippled boat with an unearthly roar like the laughter of some terrible beast. It is bootless for me to render an account of the Baudelaire orphans clinging to one another in fear and desperation, certain that at any moment they would be dragged away and tossed to their watery graves, while Count Olaf clung to the harpoon gun and the wooden figurehead, as if a terrible weapon and a deadly fungus were the only things he loved in the world, and it is of no earthly use to provide a report on the front of the figurehead detaching from the boat with a deafening crackle, sending the Baudelaires spinning in one direction and Olaf spinning in the other, or the sudden jolt as the rest of the boat abruptly stopped spinning, and a horrible scraping sound came from beneath the shuddering wood floor of the craft, as if a gigantic hand were grabbing the remains of the Count Olaf from below, and holding the trembling siblings in its strong and steady grip. Certainly the Baudelaires did not find it necessary to wonder what happened now, after all those terrible whirling hours in the heart of the storm, but simply crawled together to a far corner of the boat, and huddled against one another, too stunned to cry, as they listened to the sea rage around them, and heard the frantic cries of Count Olaf wondering if he were being torn limb from limb by the furious storm, or if he, too, had found strange safety, and not knowing which fate they wished upon the man who had flung so much misfortune on the three of them. There is no need for me to describe this storm, as it would only be another layer of this unfortunate onion of a story, and in any case by the time the sun rose the next morning, the swirling black clouds were already scurying away from the bedraggled Baudelaires, and the air was silent and still, as if the whole evening had only been a ghastly nightmare.
The children stood up unsteadily in their piece of the boat, theirs limbs aching from clinging to one another all night, and tried to figure out where in the world they were, and how in the world they had survived. But as they gazed around at their surroundings, they could not answer these questions, as they had never seen anything in the world like the sight that awaited them.
At first, it appeared that the Baudelaire orphans were still in the middle of the ocean, as all the children could see was a flat and wet landscape stretching out in all directions, fading into the grey morning mist. But as they peered over the side of their ruined boat, the children saw that the water was not much deeper than a puddle, and this enourmous puddle was littered with detritus, a word which here means “all sorts of strange items.” There were large pieces of wood sticking out of the water like jagged teeth, and long lengths of rope tangled into damp and complicated knots. There were great heaps of seaweed, and thousands of fish wriggling and gaping at the sun as seabirds swooped down from the misty sky and helped themselves to a seafood breakfast. There were what looked like pieces of other boats- anchors and portholes, railings and masts, scattered every which way like broken toys- and other objects that might have been from the boats’ cargo, including shattered lanterns, smashed barrels, soaked documents, and the ripped remains of all sorts of clothing, from top hats to roller skates. There were an old-fashioned typewriter leaning against a large, ornate bird cage, with a family of guppies wriggling through its keys. There was a large, brass cannon, with a large crab clawing its way out of the barrel, and there was a hopelessly torn net caught in the blades of a propeller. It was as if the storm had swept away the entire sea, leaving all of its contents scattered on the ocean floor.
“What is this place?” Violet said in a hushed whisper. “ What happened?”
Klaus took his glasses out of his pocket, where he had poot them for safekeeping, and was relieved to see they were unharmed. “I think we’re on a coastal shelf,” he said. “There are places in the sea where the water is suddenly very shallow, usually near land. The storm must have thrown our boat onto the shelf, along with all this other wreckage.”
“Land?” Sunny asked, holding her tiny hand over her eyes so she might see farther. “Don’t see.”
Klaus stepped carefully over the side of the boat. The dark water only came up to his knees, and he began to walk around the boat in careful strides. “ Coastal shelves are usually much smaller than this,” he said, “but there must be an island somewhere close by. Let’s look for it.”
Violet followed her brother out of the boat, carrying her sister who was still quite short.
“Which direction do you think we should go?” she asked “We don’t want to get lost.”
Sunny gave her siblings a small smile. “Already lost,” she pointed out.
“Sunny’s right,” Klaus said. “Even if we had a compass, we don’t know where we are or where we are going. We might as well head in any direction at all.”
“Then I vote we head west,” Violet said, pointing in the opposite direction of the rising sun. “If we’re going to be walking for a while, we don’t want the sun in out eyes.”
“unless we find our concierge sunglasses.” Klaus said. “The storm blew them away, but they might have landed on the same shelf.”
“We could find anything here, Violet said, and the Baudelaires had walked only a few steps before they saw this was so, for floating in the water was one piece of detritus they wished had blown away from them forever. Floating in a particularly filthy part of the water, stretched out flat on his back with his harpoon gun leaning across one shoulder, was Count Olaf. The villain’s eyes were closed underneath his one eyebrow, and he did not move. In all their miserable times with the count, the Baudelaires had never seen Olaf so calm.
“I guess we didn’t need to throw him overboard,” Violet said. “The storm did it for us.”
Klaus leaned down to peer closer to Olaf, but the villain still did not stir. “It must have been terrible,” he said, “to try and ride out the storm with no kind of shelter whatsoever.”
“Kikbucit?” Sunny asked, but at that moment Count Olaf’s eyes opened and the youngest Baudelaire’s question was answered. Frowning, the villain moved his eyes in one direction and then the other.
“Where am I?” he muttered, spitting a piece of seaweed out of his mouth. “Where’s my figurehead?”
“Coastal shelf,” Sunny replied.
At the sound of Sunny’s voice, Count Olaf blinked and sat up, glaring at the children and shaking water out of his ears. “Get me some coffee orphans!” he ordered. “I had a very unpleasant evening, and I’d like a nice, hearty breakfast before deciding what to do with you.”
“There’s no coffee here,” Violet said, although there was in fact an espresso machine about twenty feet away. “We’re walkingwest, in the hopes of finding an island.”
“You’ll walk where I tell you to walk,” Olaf growled. “Are you forgetting that I’m the captain of this boat?”
“The boat is stuck in the sand,” Klaus said. “It’s quite damaged.”
“Well, you’re still my henchpeople,” the villain said, “and my orders are that we walk west, in the hopes of finding an island. I’ve heard about islands in the distant parts of the sea. The primitive inhabitants have never seen civilized people, so they will probably revere me as a god.”
The Baudelaires looked at one another and sighed. “Revere” is a word which here means “praise highly, and have a great deal of respect for,” and there was no person the children revered less than the dreadful man who was standing before them, picking his teeth with a bit of seashell and referring to people who lived in a certain region of the world as “primitive.” Yet it seemed that no matter where the Baudelaires traveled, there were people either as greedy that they respected and praised Olaf for his evil ways, or so foolish that they didn’t notice how dreadful he really was. It was enough to make the children want to abandon Olaf there on the coastal shelf, but it is difficult to abandon someone in a place where everything is already abandoned, and so the three orphans and the one villain trudged together westward across the cluttered coastal shelf in silence, wondering what was in store for them. Count Olaf led the way, balancing the harpoon gun on one shoulder, and interrupting the silence every so often to demand coffee, fresh juice, and other equally unobtainable breakfast items. Violet walked behind him, using a broken banister she found as a walking stick and poking at interesting mechanical scraps she found in the muck, and Klaus walked alongside his sister, jotting the occasional note in his commonplace book. Sunny climbed on top of Violet;s shoulders to serve as a sort of lookout, and it was the youngest Baudelaire who broke the silence with a triumphant cry.
“Land ho!” she cried, pointing into the mist, and the three Baudelaires could see the faint shape of an island rising out of the shelf. The island looked narrow and long, like a freight train, and if they squinted they could see clusters of trees and what looked like enormous sheets of white cloth billowing in the wind.

[Tigerclaw can drive a car :B]

personally my favorite chapter is Chp. 12. It has a bit more action.

[Dante]

Edwin's posted the complete Chapter Two here, although this is really the thread for future type-ups or otherwise online versions of the chapters of The End.

[Tigerclaw can drive a car :B]

isn't typing up a whole book on the net illegal?

[Sugary Snicket]

it's not a whole book, perse... but that is plaigerism, you're right.

[Sora]

Here's the start:

Chapter Three:

As I'm sure you know, there are many words in our mysterious and confusing language than can mean two completely different things. The word "bear", for instance, can refer to a rather husky mammal found in the woods, as in teh sentence "The bear moved quietly toward the camp counselor, who was too busy putting on lipstick to notice," but it can also refer to how much someone can handle, as in the sentence "The loss of my camp counselor is more than I can bear." The word "yarn" can refer both to a colorful strand of wool, as in the sentence "His sweater was made of yarn," and to a long and rambling story, as in the sentence "His yarn about how he lost his sweater almost put me to sleep." The word "hard" can refer both to something that is difficult and something that is firm to the touch, and unless you come across a sentence like "The bears bear hard hard yarn yarns" you are unlikely to be confused. But as the Baudelaire orphans followed Friday across the coastal shelf toward the island where she lived, they experienced both definitions of the word "cordial," which can refer both to a person who is friendly and to a drink that is sweet, and the more they had of one the more they were confused about the other.
"Perhaps you would care for some coconut cordial," Friday said. in a cordial tone of voice, and she reached down to the seashell that hung around her neck. With one slim finger she plucked out a stopper, and the children could see that the shell had been fashioned into a sort of canteen. "You must be thirsty from your journey through the storm."
"We are thirsty," Violet admitted, "but isn't fresh water better for your thirst?"
"There's no fresh water on the island." Friday said. "There's some saltwater falls that we use for washing, and a saltwater pool that's perfect for swimming. But all we drink is coconut cordial. We drain the milk from coconuts and allow it to ferment."
"Ferment?" Sunny asked.
"Friday means that the coconut milk sits around for some time, and undergoes a chemical process making it sweeter and stronger," Klaus explained, having learned about fermentation in a book about a vineyard his parents had kept in the Baudelaire library.
"The sweetness will wash away the taste of teh storm," Friday said, and passed the seashell to the three children. One by one they each took a sip of the cordial. As Friday had said, the cordial was quite sweet, but there was another taste beyond the sweetness, something odd and strong that made them a bit dizzy. Violet and Klaus both winced as the cordial slipped thickly down their throats, and Sunny coughed as soon as the first drop reached her tongue.
"It's a little stong for us, Friday," Violet said handing the seashell back to Friday.
"You'll get used to it," Friday said with a smile, "when you drink it at every meal. That's one of the customs here."
"I see," Klaus said, making a note in his commonplace book. "What other customs do you have her?
"Not too many," Friday said, looking first as Klaus's notebook and then around her, where the Baudelaires could see the distant figures of other islanders, all dressed in white, walking around the coastal shelf and poking at the wreckage they found. "Every time there's a storm, we go storm scavenging and present what we've found to a man named Ishmael. Ishmael has been on this island longer than any of us, and he injured his feet some time ago and keeps them covered in island clay, which has healing powers. Ishmael can't even stand, but he serves as the island's facilitator."
"Demarc?" Sunny asked Klaus.
"A facilitator is someone who helps other people make decisions," the middle Baudelaire explained.
Friday nodded in agreement. "Ishmael decides what detritus what detritus might be of use to us, and what the sheep should drag away."


More later.