The Baudelaires remain on the island for a year as they raise baby Beatrice. By this time, they’ve just read their parents’ last entry of them being kicked off the island and that their mom’s pregnant. If the baby was a girl, she intended to name  her Violet. If it was a boy, she as going to name him Lemony. Thank God, Violet turned out to be a girl or she would’ve been saddled with the name of her mom’s ex who was presumed dead at the time. Then again, I think the Baudelaire parents named their son Klaus two years later was either because they knew Lemony was alive at the time or that it was Bertrand’s turn and didn’t want to saddle a name like Lemony on a kid. Also, that their dad built a boat they named after her. Anyway, Violet decides that despite all the treachery in the world, it’s time to get off the island and back to the mainland. And since a flood is due on the coastal shelf, they don’t have long. Violet patches up the boat and takes off the sign with “Count Olaf” on it revealing it to be the very boat the Baudelaire parents set sail on. They decide to leave the chronicle behind on the island since it might be useful to future castaways who come along. And as soon as the Baudelaires and baby Beatrice get on the boat, the little baby says her own name which is the boat’s name, Mrs. Baudelaire’s, and the name of whom Lemony dedicates each book to. Though Lemony Snicket doesn’t exactly know what happened to the Baudelaires after that, earlier books and The Beatrice Letters strongly imply that all three survived and are now adults (though Beatrice is about 10 when she wrote her letters to her Uncle Lemony, meaning that Sunny would’ve been at least 12 years old at the time.)

 

Thus, I end the series with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Southern Cross” which is about a man sailing the Pacific after a failed love affair. Though he admires the sea’s beauty, music is his final consolation. The last lyric is filled with the sad irony that he’s trying to convince himself that he’ll eventually forget about his lover. But he knows that this will never happen any more than he can forget the beauty of the Southern Cross. In this version, I have the Baudelaires discuss leaving the island and taking baby Beatrice in tow.

 

“Southern Cross” (ASOUE Version)

Sung by Violet and Klaus Baudelaire

Violet:
Get on our boat, it is time, to depart from the island
To sail a reach before a following sea
Decision Day’s coming in with the high tide
To wash us up on the Briny Beach

Our dad built this boat for their island departure
Named it after our mom as Ishmael drove them away
How the hell would Mom know a Lemony?
Though we somehow we realize why they kept some things at bay

Think about
Think about how many times we have fallen
World’s full of treachery, but we can’t hide out
What Heaven brought us right here cannot be forgotten

Around the way (We have been around the way)
Lookin’ (lookin’ for a peaceful place)
Where we’re left alone (we know it’s quite secure)
And we know it will

Klaus:
When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small
But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a comin’ day

So we’re sailing for the mainland our dreams are a-dyin’
There are questions still unanswered to (and unanswered they remain)
So I’m sailing for tomorrow my dreams are a-dyin’
We have our ship and all her flags are a-flyin’
She is all that we left and Beatrice is her name

Think about
Think about how many times we have fallen
World’s full of treachery, but we can’t hide out
What Heaven brought us right here cannot be forgotten

Around the way (We have been around the way)
Lookin’ (lookin’ for a peaceful place)
Where we’re left alone (we know it’s quite secure)
And we know it will
And we know it will

So we cheated and we lied and we bested
And we never failed to fail it was the easiest thing to do
We will survive being tested
We’ll make a life, we’ll raise Beatrice, and find our friends when we all could
At the southern cross