The Adventures of Tintin Read online

  He was about to dismiss them when another crew member, Pedro, came running up, calling Sakharine’s name. He looked panicked. “Mr. Sakharine!” he said. “All infierno has broken loose! It’s a disaster! The captain has come around—”

  “What?” Allan interjected. Sakharine was equally surprised. He never expected the Karaboudjan’s real captain would awaken before the end of the voyage.

  “He’s conscious!” Pedro insisted. “He’s accusing you of mutiny! He says you turned the crew against him.”

  “Sounds like he’s sobered up again,” Allan said, which was also what Sakharine was thinking.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, you fool,” Sakharine said. “Get him another bottle.”

  “Sí, señor,” Pedro said. Allan and Tom both chimed in, “Yes, sir!”

  Shaking his head over the quality of his henchmen, Sakharine stomped into his cabin and slammed the door. He did not wish to be disturbed until someone brought him news that Tintin had told them where the parchment was hidden.

  It took only a few minutes for Snowy to chew through the ropes binding Tintin, and after that it was easy to flip the latch on the cage where Sakharine’s goons had put him. But getting out of the hold? That looked to be a trickier proposition. Tintin looked around the hold, peering into the shadowy crevices between stacks of crates for any kind of tool, or something he could put to use.

  “A crowbar, Snowy,” he said, finding one left behind a stack of crates stenciled with Chinese characters. “That’s something, perhaps.”

  He took the crowbar and worked it into the wheel that controlled the deadbolt on the door, jamming it tight. If he couldn’t get out, at least he could make sure that Sakharine couldn’t get in. Then he pulled the top off a nearby crate and propped it up so it covered the steel door’s small window. As he did this, he heard a growl from somewhere in the hold. “Snowy?” he said.

  But it wasn’t Snowy. Snowy, in fact, was sniffing at a particular crate, and the growl was coming from inside it. Hmmm, thought Tintin. What sort of strange cargo was this ship carrying? He filed the question away in case it came in handy later. Right now, however, he needed that crate simply to stand on.

  He pushed it over to the nearest porthole and climbed on top of the crate so he could pry the porthole open. Snowy jumped up next to him and tried to peer out the porthole, but Tintin wouldn’t let him. “Not yet, Snowy. Let me see what’s out there first.”

  With a grunt, Tintin opened the porthole. A gust of cool, salty air blew in, and he inhaled deeply. He loved the sea. He didn’t like being kidnapped and caged, though. And he especially didn’t like being threatened.

  Leaning out the porthole, he saw that the ship was huge, an almost endless wall of steel hull receding fore and aft. He could see the name of the ship painted on the hull: Karaboudjan. Tintin wasn’t even surprised as the connection was revealed. Barnaby had tried to warn him. At least one mystery was solved.

  The ocean stretched endlessly toward the horizon, rough and tumbling and gray. He was a fair distance above the water, but when he looked up, he saw that he was a fair distance below the main deck, too.

  At first it seemed that there was nowhere Tintin could even think about escaping to. Then he took another look and began to consider the row of portholes directly above his. Perhaps . . .

  A clank and a groaning sound from the door made Tintin jump. He looked back and saw that the crowbar was holding where he had wedged it into the wheel. The wheel turned a little back and forth, and Tintin heard voices from the other side, out in the hall. “Jiggle it a little bit,” Tom was saying. “It’s just stuck.”

  There was a smack and a yelp from Tom. “It’s not stuck, you idiot!” Allan said. “He’s bolted it from the inside.”

  Tintin knew he would have to act fast now that they knew he had removed the ropes that were binding him. He started looking around the room to see what else might be of use. “So you want to play it like that, do you?” Allan called from outside. “Tintin!”

  Tintin didn’t answer.

  Then he heard Allan say, “Get the dynamite.”

  Uh-oh, Tintin thought. Now he was really going to have to move fast. “Broken crates, rope, champagne,” he said, looking around. “What else do we have, Snowy?”

  Snowy growled at whatever was in the crate Tintin had pushed over to the porthole. An answering growl came from within and Snowy backed away.

  “There are other ways to open this door, Tintin!” Allan roared from the hall. “They’ll be swabbing the decks with your innards when we’re done with you!”

  Points for originality, thought Tintin. But he doubted his innards would be very useful in getting the decks clean. He pushed a crate of champagne away from a corner and positioned it directly in front of the door, perhaps ten feet away. He tipped the crate on its side so all the bottles were aimed at the door, then carefully—very carefully—worked the top off the crate. Part one of the plan was in place, but it wouldn’t do any good if he couldn’t make part two work.

  He started breaking up an empty crate. Allan was yelling at someone to hurry up, and a hubbub of voices out in the hall told Tintin that more of Sakharine’s goons were gathering.

  Something thunked against the door. Tintin guessed it was those explosives Allan had mentioned. “This had better work, Snowy,” Tintin said, and went back to the porthole, dragging with him a number of planks tied together and tethered to a long rope fashioned from shorter pieces of rope tied together. He fed the planks out the porthole and then the rope until the whole string of them was twisting and waving in the wind.

  He leaned back into the hold to check on Snowy and see that the rest of his arrangements were in place. Everything looked about right. Then he started smelling the scent of a burning fuse.

  “Here we go,” Tintin said. He started to swing the length of knotted-together rope back and forth, building momentum, until he let the planks at the end fly straight up toward an open porthole above him. The bundle of planks went up, up . . . and missed!

  And then, before Tintin could duck out of the way, the planks came straight back down and conked him right on the head, exactly where Nestor had hit him with the candlestick.

  Tintin saw stars, but he was able to hold on to the rope. This was no time to be knocked out! If Allan and Tom got into the hold, Tintin wasn’t ever going to wake up again.

  He took a couple of deep breaths. Behind him, on the floor, Snowy whined. Everything was quiet out in the hall. Tintin figured that the henchmen were all hiding away from the impending explosion. He hefted the planks, waited as they banged off the hull of the ship below him near the churning waterline, and then tossed the bundle up again.

  The rope extended and looped away from the ship in the wind, and Tintin snapped his wrist to arc the planks toward the porthole above him. He almost overbalanced and fell out the porthole. Behind him, Snowy grabbed his pants leg and held on.

  The snap of Tintin’s wrist sent the planks right through the porthole above, and then he yanked on the rope to twist them against the window. It worked! The planks turned and functioned as an anchor to the porthole above, and Tintin now had a rope he could climb up to safety.

  And that was when the bomb went off.

  OUT IN THE hallway, Allan and the rest of the goons stood up, guns in hand. “Move!” Allan yelled. Everyone’s ears were ringing, but they could tell what he was saying by the way he waved. “Let’s go!”

  The men started to charge into the hold to look for Tintin, but everything was hidden by the smoke from the explosion. It had blown the door right off its hinges and left debris all over the immediate area, and right as they stepped through the doorway, they heard gunshots!

  All of them ducked behind the fallen door or around the edges of the doorway. “He’s got a big shooter!” Tom said. He jumped out, brandishing his gun, and was hit and knocked down. Rolling around, he moaned, “Got me . . .”

  Then they all noticed the champagne cork that fell ont
o the floor next to him. Allan picked it up. “Hold your fire,” he said, and peered around the edge of the door frame.

  Rows of champagne bottles were aimed at the doorway. Many of them had popped their corks from the vibrations of the explosion. Foamy champagne spilled from the open bottles into a widening puddle on the floor. Allan didn’t see Tintin anywhere.

  Tom stuck his head out next to Allan. “He ain’t here!” he said. “He’s vanished!”

  The sound of his voice shook loose a couple more corks. One of them ricocheted off the fallen door, and another nailed Tom square in the forehead, knocking him out cold.

  Allan looked down at him for a moment, unable to quite believe what was happening. How could they all have been outsmarted by a kid they’d left tied up in a locked hold? “He’s hiding,” Allan said. He ducked another popping cork, which shot past him into the hall. “Search the ship!”

  Tintin heard some of this as he dangled from the rope, trying to brace his feet against the ship’s hull so he could climb. He couldn’t help laughing at the champagne corks. Snowy, hanging by his teeth from the cuff of Tintin’s pants, didn’t see what was so funny. Tintin got his feet braced and pulled them up so he was leaning away from the hull. He held on with one hand and reached down with the other to help Snowy.

  Once Snowy had his teeth on Tintin’s jacket and his back feet hooked into Tintin’s belt, Tintin started climbing. It took only a minute for him to get to the next porthole above. He reached one arm in and got himself arranged so the bottom lip of the porthole was wedged between his elbow and his side. Then he boosted Snowy into the stateroom, which was warmly lit. There was a smell of whiskey and wool inside.

  Tintin followed Snowy in through the porthole and saw they were entering what must have been the captain’s cabin. It was a dark-paneled room, chock-full of seagoing knickknacks and bric-a-brac. Sextants, models, charts, strange skulls and artifacts, a birdcage in which a parrot turned a single beady eye toward these strange intruders . . . and in the middle of it all, lying flat on his face, was a man who could only have been the captain himself. Around him were the pieces of a chair he had apparently fallen on, either because of the explosion or after dodging the planks that had come flying in through the window.

  Tintin made a mental note to apologize for the planks. He was sure the captain would understand.

  Unless, of course, the captain was in league with Sakharine; then they would be at odds. Tintin wasn’t sure what to think yet. As he crawled in through the porthole, his foot caught on part of the rope and he fell. He sprawled on the floor, barely missing Snowy, who glanced over at him briefly and then looked back at the captain with a curious expression on his furry face.

  The captain stirred and began to sit up. Tintin got a good look at him for the first time. The captain had a blunt and honest face with a big red nose and a bushy black beard. He straightened the collar of his blue wool turtleneck sweater, which he wore under a black wool coat. Unruly hair stuck out from under his gold-braided cap. He resettled the cap on his head, rubbing the spot where the plank had apparently hit him.

  Then he saw Snowy, sitting on the cabin floor watching him, and the captain rocketed to his feet, punching his head straight through the floor of the birdcage so he was suddenly wearing it like a mask. “Arggghhh!” he cried. “The giant rat of Sumatra!”

  In the next moment he saw Tintin, who was just getting to his feet. “Aha!” the captain said. He snatched up one of the broken chair legs and shifted into a swordsman’s posture, holding the chair leg out at an angle toward Tintin. “Thought you could sneak in here and catch me with me trousers down, eh?”

  Snowy growled and lowered his head, offended by being compared to a rat. Tintin got hold of another chair leg and brought it up just in time to parry a lunge from the captain. They circled each other, the captain hacking wildly at Tintin, who jumped and dodged out of reach. From the top of a sea chest, Tintin said, “I’d rather you kept your trousers on, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “I know your game,” the captain snarled. “You’re one of them!”

  Tintin parried a thrust and hopped back to the floor. “I’m sorry?”

  “They sent you here to kill me, eh?” the captain said. Snowy lunged and caught the captain’s pants leg in his teeth, shaking hard enough to unbalance the captain for a moment.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are,” Tintin began, but the captain’s rant went on.

  “That’s how he planned to bump me off. Murdered in my bed by a baby-faced assassin! And his killer dog!”

  “Assassin?” Tintin said. “Look, you’ve got it all wrong.” He parried yet again. “I was kidnapped by a gang of thugs.”

  The captain stopped and glared at Tintin. “The filthy swine!” he said. “He’s turned the whole crew against me!”

  “Who?”

  “A sour-faced man with a sugary name,” the captain growled, as if pronouncing a curse. “He bought them all off. Every last man!”

  “Sakharine!” said Tintin. Now he understood what was happening aboard the Karaboudjan.

  “Nobody takes my ship!” the captain raged.

  “Sshhhh,” Tintin said. He pointed toward the door. The captain appeared to understand.

  He slumped against a case filled with nautical relics, suddenly feeling sorry for himself. “I’ve been locked in this room for days,” he groaned, “with only whiskey to sustain my mortal soul.”

  You’re certainly well sustained, then, Tintin thought, as it was clear the captain had been drinking. But it would have been rude to say it. On a whim, just to be sure, Tintin tried the door.

  It opened. Tintin looked back at the captain, arching one eyebrow.

  “Oh,” the captain said. “Well, I assumed it was locked.”

  “Well, it’s not,” Tintin said. “Now you must excuse me. If they find me here, they’ll kill me. I have to keep moving and try to find my way off this drunken tub.”

  He slipped out into the corridor with Snowy, shutting the door behind him and walking straight into a sailor he hadn’t seen coming. A guard, or someone just passing by? It didn’t matter. The sailor caught Tintin in a bear hug and they wrestled as, from inside the cabin, Tintin heard, “Tub? Tub!? Tub!??”

  The door opened just as Tintin and the sailor spun around in the corridor, banging into the wall next to it. In a rage, the captain knocked the sailor down with a single punch. He fell to his hands and knees, trying to get up. When he lunged for the captain’s legs, the captain slammed the door into him, knocking him out cold. Tintin caught the sailor as he fell over and, with the captain’s help, dragged him into the cabin.

  “Thanks,” Tintin panted when they had laid the sailor out.

  “Pleasure,” the captain said.

  Tintin offered his hand. “I’m Tintin, by the way.”

  The captain shook Tintin’s hand. “Haddock. Archibald Haddock. There’s a longboat up on deck. Follow me.”

  With that, he went into the corridor. Tintin did a double take as he registered what the captain had said. He couldn’t believe it! Had he narrowly escaped death only to stumble right into the cabin of the one man on Earth who could unlock the secret of the Unicorn?

  “Hang on a second,” he called, hurrying after the captain with Snowy right at his heels. “Did you say Haddock?”

  ON THE BRIDGE, Allan and Tom were weathering a storm. Not from the ocean, which was beginning to calm a bit, but from Sakharine, who was enraged at Tintin’s escape.

  “Champagne bottles!” he roared. “You hid from champagne bottles. You let the boy escape and now Haddock is out, too? Because the boy climbed the outside of the ship? Find them! Find them both!”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll kill ’em, sir,” Allan said.

  “No. You can kill the boy. Not Haddock,” Sakharine said. He tapped Allan with his cane to make sure Allan got the message.

  “Oh, he’s just a hopeless old drunk,” Tom said. “We shoulda killed him long since.”


  Now it was Tom’s turn to take a couple of pokes from Sakharine’s cane. “You think it’s an accident that I chose Haddock’s ship, Haddock’s crew?” Sakharine demanded. Looking back at Allan, he added, “Haddock’s treacherous first mate? Nothing is an accident.”

  He let the tip of his cane fall back to the floor and looked out to sea as Allan and Tom exchanged perplexed glances. Wind ruffled his hair and beard, and as Sakharine raised his arm, his hunting falcon spiraled down out of the sky and landed on his forearm. “We go back a long way, Captain Haddock and I. We have unfinished business, and this time I’m going to make him pay.”

  Tintin followed Captain Haddock through the maze of the Karaboudjan’s lower decks. They stopped every so often to wait for running footsteps to pass as the crew searched for them. “We have to reach the door at the end of this corridor and up the stairs,” Haddock said as they peered around a corner down a long stretch of hallway with no cover. “This is going to be tricky.”

  Indeed it was, Tintin thought. Despite the urgent situation, though, he couldn’t help asking questions. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to the Haddocks of Marlinspike Hall, would you?”

  Haddock squinted at him. The question made him wary, Tintin could tell. “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s for a story I’ve been working on,” Tintin said. “An old shipwreck that happened off the coast of Barbados. A man-of-war, triple-masted, fifty guns.”

  Before Tintin could say more, Haddock grabbed him by the shirtfront and slammed him up against the wall. “What do you know of the Unicorn?” he hissed.

  “Not a lot,” Tintin said. “That’s why I’m asking you.”

  This answer appeared to calm Haddock somewhat. “The secret of that ship is known only to my family. It has been passed down from generation to generation. My granddaddy himself with his dying breath told me the tale.” Haddock’s gaze grew distant as he reminisced.