The End

"I won't throw away this ribbon," Violet said, winding the slender piece of cloth through her fingertips. "I'm still going to invent things, no matter what Ishmael says."

"I'm not throwing away my commonplace book," Klaus said, holding the dark blue notebook. "I'll still research things, even if there's no library here."

"No throw this," Su

"What is that?" Violet asked.

"Whisk," Su

"Yes," Klaus said. "I remember our father used to use it when he prepared scrambled eggs. But where did it come from?"

"Gal Friday," Su

"She knows Su

"I guess she's not so eager to follow all of the colony's customs," Klaus said.

" Guesso," Su

The word "ferment," like the words "bear," "yarn," and "hard," can mean two completely different things. One meaning is the chemical process by which the juice of certain fruits becomes sweeter and stronger, as Klaus explained to his siblings on the coastal shelf. But the other meaning of «ferment» refers to something building inside someone, like a secret that may be eventually found out, or a scheme that someone has been pla

Chapter Four

By the time the Baudelaire orphans returned to Ishmael's tent, the joint was hopping, a phrase which here means "full of islanders in white robes, all holding items they had scavenged from the coastal shelf." The sheep were no longer napping but standing stiffly in two long lines, and the ropes tying them together led to a large wooden sleigh—an unusual form of transportation in such warm weather. Friday led the children through the colonists and sheep, who stepped aside and looked curiously at the three new castaways. Although this was the first time that the Baudelaires were castaways, they were accustomed to being strangers in a community, from their days at Prufrock Preparatory School to their time spent in the Village of Fowl Devotees, but they still did not enjoy being stared at. But it is one of the strange truths of life that practically nobody likes to be stared at and that practically nobody can stop themselves from staring, and as the three children made their way toward Ishmael, who was still sitting on his enormous clay chair, the Baudelaires could not help looking back at the islanders with the same curiosity, wondering how so many people could become castaways on the same island. It was as if the world was full of people with lives as unfortunate as that of the Baudelaires, all ending up in the very same place.

Friday led the Baudelaires to the base of Ishmael's chair, and the facilitator smiled down at the children as they sat at his clay-covered feet. "Those white robes look very handsome on you Baudelaires," he said. "Much better than those uniforms you were wearing earlier. You're going to be wonderful colonists, I am sure of it."

" Pyrrhonic?" Su

"I can't tell you how much we appreciate this," Violet said, careful not to lean against the mounds of clay that hid Ishmael's toes. "We didn't know what would happen to us after the storm, and we're grateful to you, Ishmael, for taking us in."

"Everyone is taken in here," Ishmael said, apparently forgetting that Count Olaf had been abandoned. "And please, call me Ish. Would you like some cordial?"

"No, thank you," said Klaus, who could not bring himself to call the facilitator by his nickname. "We'd like to meet the other colonists, if that's all right."

"Of course," Ishmael said, and clapped his hands for attention. "Islanders!" he cried. "As I'm sure you've noticed, we have three new castaways with us today—Violet, Klaus, and Su

"Good idea, Ishmael," said someone from the back of the tent.

"Call me Ish," said Ishmael, stroking his beard. "Now then, who's first?"

"I suppose I am," said a pleasant-looking man who was holding what looked like a large, metal flower. "It's nice to meet you three. My name is Alonso, and I've found the propeller of an airplane. The poor pilot must have flown straight into the storm."

"What a shame," Ishmael said. "Well, there's no airplane to be found on the island, so I don't think a propeller will be of much use."

"Excuse me," Violet said hesitantly, "but I know something about mechanical devices. If we rigged the propeller up to a simple hand-powered motor, we'd have a perfect fan for keeping cool on particularly hot days."

There was a murmur of appreciation from the crowd, and Alonso smiled at Violet. "It does get mighty hot around here," he said. "That's a good idea."

Ishmael took a sip of cordial from his seashell, and then frowned at the propeller. "It depends on how you look at it," he said. "If we only made one fan, then we'd all be arguing over who got to stand in front of it."

"We could take turns," Alonso said.

"Whose turn will it be on the hottest day of the year?" Ishmael countered, a word which here means "said in a firm and sensible tone of voice, even though it was not necessarily a sensible thing to say." "I'm not going to force you, Alonso, but I don't think building a fan is worth all the fuss it might cause."

"I suppose you're right," Alonso said, with a shrug, and put the propeller on the wooden sleigh. "The sheep can take it to the arboretum."

"An excellent decision," Ishmael said, as a girl perhaps one or two years older than Violet stepped forward.

"I'm Ariel," she said, "and I found this in a particularly shallow part of the shelf. I think it's a dagger."

"A dagger?" Ishmael said. "You know we don't welcome weapons on the island."

Klaus was peering at the item Ariel was holding, which was made of carved wood rather than metal. "I don't think that's a dagger," Klaus said. "I believe it's an old tool used for cutting the pages of books. Nowadays most books are sold with their pages already separated, but some years ago each page was attached to the next, so you needed an implement to slice open the folds of paper and read the book."