Chapter Text
For Beatrice
You are like the stars,
far away from me.
If someone is said to be at sea, it does not necessarily mean that they are out on a large body of salt water, as the phrase at sea is often used in a figurative sense to refer to someone who is confused and unable to decide what to do: for example, someone who has recently received a 200 page manuscript from the love of their life describing why they could not be married could be said to be at sea, even if they were in fact in a poorly lit motel room, or a wooden box that had once contained shrimp.
The Baudelaire orphans, however, were at sea in both senses, for while they had been sailing for some days, they were also unsure of what to do next, for they had become becalmed – a nautical phrase meaning that the wind had died and they were unable to move. Violet, the eldest, had tied back her hair with a ribbon, and was considering their supplies with an inventor’s eye, putting things together in her mind to see if she could create some sort of propulsion system. Klaus, the next oldest, was deep in thought, trying to remember if any of the books he had read on sailing had covered what to do in such a situation. Sunny, the youngest of the siblings, was looking over the food they had brought from the island and considering how long she could make it last while Beatrice, who at just over a year old was too young to be planning anything, was singing a repetitive tune that she had written herself.
However, as it turns out, none of this planning turned out to be necessary, for on the horizon, a storm was brewing. It was Beatrice who spotted the storm first, shouting “ecce”, which probably meant something like “Look over there!”. The other Baudelaires turned and saw the storm, and swiftly moved from rectifying the problem of not enough wind, to preparing for the problem of having rather too much. “We need to reef the sail,” Klaus said, “or else the wind might capsize us.” As he and Violet began to do so, a normal person may have been tempted to say something motivating like “I’m sure we’ll be fine, after all, we survived Hurricane Herman.” The Baudelaires, however, knew that to do so was to invite disaster. On the one hand, this may seem to be an illogical way of thinking, for how could a few words change the effect of a storm several miles across? On the other hand, the children’s lives had been filled with so much misfortune that it seemed only logical to expect the worst.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been prudent at this stage to have donned life jackets, but the Baudelaires’ boat did not have any. After all it had once belonged to Count Olaf. The Count was many things, normal was not one of them, and neither was cautious. The best that the siblings could do was to place Beatrice in a wooden pot, hoping that if the ship sank, she would at least float to safety. They did not manage to do much else before the storm hit them, for although it had been spotted some way out, it was fast moving, and the boat was soon being battered by gale force winds. “This is worse than Hurricane Herman!” shouted Violet. Klaus only grunted in response, for all his strength was being expended in keeping their little boat pointed in the right direction; if they strayed too far from their course, they would surely run out of supplies before reaching land.
Many years ago, Klaus had read a book about sailing. It was an informative, and well-illustrated text with pages of advice on every conceivable scenario. The chapter on how to safely sail a small boat through a storm had just two words. You can’t. At the time, Klaus had been highly irritated at this lack of detail, but now he understood: there was simply no way to ensure safety. It would be luck just as much as skill that determined their survival. For every moment of the next hour, Klaus expected to be capsized, he expected water to fill the boat faster than Violet could bail it out, and he expected a wave to drag them off the boat and to their deaths. What he did not expect was for the storm to die down. Soon the winds began to reduce, the waves calmed and the sky cleared. The Baudelaires thought that they had made it.
They were wrong.
In the end, all it took was a single gust of wind hitting the sail at just the wrong angle, and the sail tore, the mast creaked, and the boat capsized. There was a moment of sheer terror, of water and darkness, and then the Baudelaires surfaced. Violet had learned how to swim in the years before the fire, and she was competent, if not particularly skilled. She had taught Klaus and Sunny to swim in the year on the island, neither of the two was confident, but together they managed to reach the upturned boat and grab on. Beatrice, who could neither walk nor swim, might have been in trouble, but, in a stroke of extraordinary luck, she had remained in the pot, which remained the right way up and kept her above the water. Violet swam out, grabbed the edge of the pot and pulled Beatrice back to the boat.
Many years later, Klaus would look back on this moment with a renewed perspective. In retrospect it was hard to decide if the storm had been just one more of a series of unfortunate events, or the first in a series of fortunate ones. For although the storm had capsized them, although they had come very close to losing their lives, they had survived, and now, they saw perhaps the most beautiful sight in their lives so far.
“Land!” shouted Sunny, and the Baudelaires turned and saw, less than 100 metres from their position, a sandy beach. After a moment of planning, Klaus took Beatrice and her pot, and Violet took hold of Sunny, and the children swam towards the shore.
Upon pulling themselves out of the water and taking note of their surroundings, Violet, Klaus and Sunny were struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu, a phrase which means the feeling of having already experienced their current situation, a phrase which means the feeling of having already experienced their current situation. This was because, for the third time in their story, they found themselves on Briny Beach. It was on Briny Beach that Mr Poe had told them the news of their parents’ deaths, and it was on Briny Beach that they had landed upon leaving the Queequeg for the Last Safe Place. Furthermore, it was once more a dull, cloudy day. If not for their sodden clothes, and the presence of young Beatrice, the Baudelaire siblings could have almost believed that they had travelled back in time to one of those fateful days. All they needed now was for Mr Poe to step through the fog.
A figure stepped through the fog. Klaus’ heart sank, for the last thing they needed now was an encounter with the incompetent banker who had caused so many of their problems. But it was not Mr Poe. It was not a policeman, coming to arrest them, nor was it Esme Squalor, or Carmelita Spats, or any other members of the fire-starting side of the VFD. It was Justice Strauss.
“Baudelaires! Oh, Baudelaires it is you!” cried Justice Strauss, “Violet, Klaus, Sunny! And who is this?”
“This is Beatrice” explained Klaus, “She’s… the daughter of a dear friend.”
“It’s good to see you again Justice Strauss” said Violet, and she meant it. Sunny opened her mouth to speak, but only a chattering noise came out: for while swimming is generally good for you, swimming in the freezing cold ocean is not. Indeed, all three of the Baudelaire siblings were beginning to feel the symptoms of hypothermia. (Beatrice, being significantly drier than the others was, if not exactly all right, not in immediate danger) Noticing this, Justice Strauss bundled the four children into her car and drove them home.
Several hours later, the Baudelaires were beginning to feel better. They had changed into dry clothing and were now huddled together under blankets in a spare bedroom in Justice Strauss’ house. One by one, they drifted off to sleep and, for the first time in weeks, all of them slept soundly until the morning.