Some people say, Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," but I say that having both friends and enemies in close proximity is far too dangerous for the friends. Instead I keep far from both friends and enemies, only tracking them at a distance. The Baudelaires, Dewey, and Duchess R were pursuing the more dangerous policy.
"We should be close," Dewey told the others after a few hours of underwater sailing. "Unfortunately, the bathysphere can only surface once. If we aren't close enough to our enemies we'll have to go forward on the surface and we'll lose the advantage of surprise. Shall I go ahead?"
"Once?" Sunny asked.
"The Kit isn't like a submarine; it can't surface and submerge over and over," Dewey said. "Above us are floatation tanks filled with gasoline, which is lighter than water and also serves as fuel. Below us are submersion tanks. We filled some of them with water to make us heavy enough to stay under. To come up we jettison lead ballast, but we can only do that once. If we submerged again without taking on more ballast we'd be stuck."
"Violet would have loved this," said Klaus with a sigh.
"Go ahead and take us up, Dewey," said the Duchess.
The first thing they saw when they surfaced was not a close enemy, but a close friend. A helicopter was hovering overhead, and when the Baudelaires emerged from the hatch the pilot called down to them, "Ahoy there, Baudelaires!"
"Quigley Quagmire!" yelled Klaus. "It's good to see you!"
"Just a second, I'll lower a ladder so you can climb up," said Quigley.
Klaus and Sunny were both excellent climbers after their adventures in elevators and on slippery slopes. They scaled the ladder and hugged Quigley.
"Where's Violet?" Quigley asked.
Klaus gulped. "I'm afraid I have some bad news... Violet is dead. Olaf murdered her with a harpoon gun."
"No!" Quigley cried. The helicopter quivered and lost altitude, but he regained control of it a moment later.
"True. Sorry," said Sunny sadly.
"If only I had stayed with Kit and met you at the Briny Beach!" said Quigley. "That's what I planned, but then a message came that Duncan and Isadora were in danger. I've been useless to them so far. I made a net to catch eagles, but I lost it in a storm and I had to make another one. I wish I had stayed and protected Violet."
"Did your best," said Sunny comfortingly.
"We'll stay up here and help you with the net," said Klaus. He called down to the Duchess and Dewey below to tell them of this change in plans.
"All right, we'll carry on the attack by sea while you attack from the air," said Dewey.
"Look over there! I see eagles in the air!" yelled the Duchess.
The helicopter charged ahead, leaving the bathysphere behind.
"Quigley, we got a report this morning that Olaf's submarine, the Carmelita, might be attacking your siblings too," said Klaus. "Though the source isn't completely reliable."
"Swatter," warned Sunny.
"That's right, Sunny," said Klaus. "Olaf once said the Carmelita has a giant fly-swatter for knocking his enemies out of the sky."
They saw an aerie of eagles swarming around the self-sustaining hot-air mobile home which housed Hector (the skittish V.F.D. agent from the village of V.F.D.) and Quigley's two siblings Duncan and Isadora. (An "aerie of eagles" is a phrase which here refers to a large collection of eagles, just as a "murder of crows" refers to a large collection of crows.)
There were two vessels below them. One was a large ship with William Shakespeare as the figurehead. The other was the octopus-shaped Carmelita, and Fernald the hook-handed man was standing on the head of the octopus, deploying the dreaded giant fly-swatter.
Quigley pointed to the ship, "That's the Prospero, a V.F.D. vessel. Kit was hoping it might be able to reach the fight in time."
"Let's try to net the eagles and drop them on top of Fernald and the Carmelita," said Klaus. "That will prevent him from using the swatter."
"Fiona?" asked Sunny.
"Either she's in this with Fernald or he's taken her prisoner," said Klaus grimly. "Either way, Fernald has got to be stopped."
With both Baudelaires helping with the net plus Quigley's expert flying, they managed to do exactly what they planned: they scooped up the eagles and dropped the net with them on top of Fernald and his submarine.
"Hey, what did you do that for?" Fernald yelled. "I was trying to help!" He ducked back into the hatch to avoid the squawking, clawing eagles. The many legs of the Carmelita were snared by the net so that it couldn't get away.
"Sure you were!" Quiqley yelled back. He brought the helicopter in for a landing on a large open spot on the deck of the Prospero, avoiding the many open crates scattered around the deck.
A moment later, the diving-suited figure of Duchess R. appeared over the side of the ship. Quigley, Klaus, and Sunny walked over to her.
"Good work, you three," she said heartily. "You've removed a pest that was interfering with our prey. It's too bad you had to harm the eagles, though."
"Prey?" asked Sunny.
"What are you talking about?" asked Quigley.
"Where's Dewey?" asked Klaus.
"He went down with his ship. I scuttled the bathyscape just now," said R. "Without ballast he won't be able to come up again."
"Why?" cried Sunny.
The Duchess gave a whistle and from behind the crates came a motley crew (which here means a gang of women in outlandish and colorful garments, waving cutlasses).
The three children were surrounded, and they abruptly realized that an enemy had been keeping very close indeed.
"I'm not really the Duchess of Winnipeg," said R. "Like my crewmates here who have captured the Prospero, I am a Female Finnish Pirate."