"Good evening, Baudelaires," Finn said. In the dim light of the flashlight she looked even younger than she was.

"We brought you some supper," Erewhon said, and held out the basket to the children. "We were concerned that you might be quite hungry out here."

"We are," Violet admitted. The Baudelaires, of course, wished that the islanders had expressed their concern in front of Ishmael and the others, when the colony was deciding to abandon the children on the coastal shelf, but as Finn opened the basket and the children smelled the island's customary dinner of onion soup, the children did not want to look a gift horse in the mouth, a phrase which here means "turn down an offer of a hot meal, no matter how disappointed they were in the person who was offering it."

"Is there enough for our friend?" Klaus asked. "She's regained consciousness."

"I'm glad to hear it," Finn said. "There's enough food for everyone."

"As long as you keep the secret of our coming here," Erewhon said. "Ishmael might not think it was proper."

"I'm surprised he doesn't forbid the use of flashlights," Violet said, as Finn handed her a coconut shell full of steaming soup.

"Ishmael doesn't forbid anything," Finn said. "He'd never force me to throw this flashlight away. However, he did suggest that I let the sheep take it to the arboretum. Instead I slipped it into my robe, as a secret, and Madame Nordoff has been secretly supplying me with batteries in exchange for my secretly teaching her how to yodel, which Ishmael says might frighten the other islanders."

"And Mrs. Caliban secretly slipped me this picnic basket," Erewhon said, "in exchange for my secretly teaching her the backstroke, which Ishmael says is not the customary way to swim."

"Mrs. Caliban?" said Kit, in the darkness. "Miranda Caliban is here?"

"Yes," Finn said. "Do you know her?"

"I know her husband," Kit said. "He and I stood together in a time of great struggle, and we're still very good friends."

"Your friend must be a little confused after her difficult journey," Erewhon said to the Baudelaires, standing on tiptoes so she could hand Kit some soup. "Mrs. Caliban's husband perished many years ago in the storm that brought her here."

"That's impossible," Kit said, reaching down to take the bowl from the young girl. "I just had Turkish coffee with him."

"Mrs. Caliban is not the sort to keep secrets," Finn said. "That's why she lives on the island. It's a safe place, far from the treachery of the world."

" Enigmorama," Sunny said, putting her coconut shell of soup on the ground so she could share it with the Incredibly Deadly Viper.

"My sister means that it seems this island has plenty of secrets," Klaus said, thinking wistfully of his commonplace book and all the secrets its pages contained.

"I'm afraid we have one more secret to discuss," Erewhon said. "Turn the flashlight off, Finn. We don't want to be seen from the island."

Finn nodded, and turned the flashlight off. The Baudelaires had one last glimpse of each other before the darkness engulfed them, and for a moment everyone stood in silence, as if afraid to speak.

Many, many years ago, when even the great-great-grandparents of the oldest person you know were not even day-old infants, and when the city where the Baudelaires were born was nothing more than a handful of dirt huts, and the Hotel Denouement nothing but an architectural sketch, and the faraway island had a name, and was not considered very far away at all, there was a group of people known as the Cimmerians. They were a nomadic people, which meant that they traveled constantly, and they often traveled at night, when the sun would not give them sunburn and when the coastal shelves in the area in which they lived were not flooded with water. Because they traveled in shadows, few people ever got a good look at the Cimmerians, and they were considered sneaky and mysterious people, and to this day things done in the dark tend to have a somewhat sinister reputation. A man digging a hole in his backyard during the afternoon, for instance, looks like a gardener, but a man digging a hole at night looks like he's burying some terrible secret, and a woman who gazes out of her window in the daytime appears to be enjoying the view, but looks more like a spy if she waits until nightfall. The nighttime digger may actually be planting a tree to surprise his niece while the niece giggles at him from the window, and the morning window watcher may actually be planning to blackmail the so-called gardener as he buries the evidence of his vicious crimes, but thanks to the Cimmerians, the darkness makes even the most innocent of activities seem suspicious, and so in the darkness of the coastal shelf, the Baudelaires suspected that the question Finn asked was a sinister one, even though it could have been something one of their teachers might have asked in the classroom.

"Do you know the meaning of the word mutiny?" she asked, in a calm, quiet voice.

Violet and Sunny knew that Klaus would answer, although they were pretty sure themselves what the word meant. "A mutiny is when a group of people take action against a leader."

"Yes," Finn said. "Professor Fletcher taught me the word."

"We are here to tell you that a mutiny will take place at breakfast," said Erewhon. "More and more colonists are getting sick and tired of the way things are going on the island, and Ishmael is the root of the trouble."

"Tuber?" Sunny asked.

'"Root of the trouble' means 'the cause of the islanders' problems,'" Klaus explained.

"Exactly," Erewhon said, "and when Decision Day arrives we will finally have the opportunity to get rid of him."

"Rid of him?" Violet repeated, the phrase sounding sinister in the dark.

"We're going to force him aboard the outrigger right after breakfast," Erewhon said, "and push him out to sea as the coastal shelf floods."

"A man traveling the ocean alone is unlikely to survive," Klaus said.

"He won't be alone," Finn said. "A number of islanders support Ishmael. If necessary, we'll force them to leave the island as well."

"How many?" Sunny asked.

"It's hard to know who supports Ishmael and who doesn't," Erewhon said, and the children heard the old woman sip from her seashell. "You've seen how he acts. He says he doesn't force anyone, but everyone ends up agreeing with him anyway. But no longer. At breakfast we'll find out who supports him and who doesn't."

" Erewhon says we'll fight all day and all night if we have to," Finn said. "Everyone will have to choose sides."

The children heard an enormous, sad sigh from the top of the raft of books. "A schism," Kit said quietly.

" Gesundheit," Erewhon said. "That's why we've come to you, Baudelaires. We need all the help we can get."

"After the way Ishmael abandoned you, we figured you'd be on our side," Finn said. "Don't you agree he's the root of the trouble?"

The Baudelaires stood together in the silence, thinking about Ishmael and all they knew about him. They thought of the way he had taken them in so kindly upon their arrival on the island, but also how quickly he had abandoned them on the coastal shelf. They thought about how eager he had been to keep the Baudelaires safe, but also how eager he was to lock Count Olaf in a bird cage. They thought about his dishonesty about his injured feet, and about his secret apple eating, but as the children thought of all they knew about the facilitator, they also thought about how much they didn't know, and after hearing both Count Olaf and Kit Snicket talk about the history of the island, the Baudelaire orphans realized they did not know the whole story. The children might agree that Ishmael was the root of the trouble, but they could not be sure.

"I don't know," Violet said.

"You don't know?" Erewhon repeated incredulously. "We brought you supper, and Ishmael left you out here to starve, and you don't know whose side you're on?"