The Adventures of Tintin (9 page)

“He lost his eyelids?” Tintin said. How was he going to sneak up on a man with no eyelids?

“Aye,” Haddock said. “Now that was a card game to remember.” For a moment he was lost in thought. Then he shook himself out of his reverie. “I’d do this myself, Tintin, but you’ve a lighter tread and less chance of waking the boys.”

Tintin was not at all convinced. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“You’ve nothing to worry about,” Haddock said.

The ship began to roll as Tintin squatted to give Snowy a little scratch under the chin and tell him to stay put. The ship must have been entering rougher seas again.
What luck
, Tintin thought.
Just as I have to tiptoe among sleeping sailors to lift a set of keys from a man with no eyelids, the floor starts to move. I might as well have stayed tied up in the hold!

But there was not much choice, so he set off down the narrow aisle between the rows of bunks and hammocks. He could see the bunk Haddock had pointed out. He could even see the faint gleam of the keys in Mr. Jaggerman’s hand.

“Provided,” Haddock added helpfully, “they all stay asleep.”

Yes
, Tintin thought.
That would help
.

He waved back at Haddock to hush him but teetered at the pitch of the floor. Haddock saw the motion and misunderstood it. “Don’t!” he whispered, too loudly. “I wouldn’t get too close to Mr. Hobbs. He’s very handy with a razor.” Haddock kept up with the hoarsely whispered advice as Tintin crept on, dodging the sleeping sailors who moved about constantly. They got in his way, rolled out of their bunks, got up and stumbled to other bunks—all without waking. Tintin had never seen a group of people sleep so deeply.

He got to Mr. Jaggerman’s bunk and looked up. He would have to climb to reach it; the bunks were stacked four high, and the highest of them was well beyond Tintin’s reach even if he stood on tiptoes. He glanced around and didn’t see anything he could use to snag the keys out of Mr. Jaggerman’s hand. There was a motion near Tintin’s feet. He looked and saw Snowy, who wagged his tail apologetically. Tintin glared at him but then thought about it and realized that Snowy might be better able to get to Mr. Jaggerman’s bunk than Tintin himself.

He climbed part of the way up the rack of bunks, keeping his toes on the edge of the bottom one and reaching up to hold on to the frame of the third. Snowy got the idea immediately. He skipped right up to the top bunk just as Tintin stretched out and Mr. Jaggerman shifted in his sleep. Tintin’s fingertips brushed against the keys. One more stretch and he would have them!

Then the entire ship rolled again, more violently than before, and the whole rack of bunks broke away from the wall, with Tintin clinging to it and Snowy standing on Mr. Jaggerman’s bunk suddenly digging into the covers. He came up with a sandwich in his jaws. “Not the sandwich!” Tintin whispered. “The keys!”

He shoved Snowy across the bunk toward Mr. Jaggerman’s flailing arm. The sailor hadn’t awakened, but even asleep he was responding to the motion of the bunk and the ship.

Then the rack of bunks collided with the next. Both toppled, taking a third and fourth with them. An avalanche of sleeping sailors buried Tintin, followed by whatever had been in their bunks with them: empty bottles, lost shoes, various guns and knives, a number of fish, and a single large shark that had apparently had its own bunk. All of this collapsed onto the floor of the sleeping quarters as Haddock watched.

Snowy ended up on top of the pile. He had lost the sandwich and was sniffing at the shark. Tintin’s fist, holding the keys, burst through the pile, and he slowly worked himself free. He shot Haddock a glance. Apparently there had been no need for all the sneaking around; these men would not have awakened if lightning had struck inside the room.

Haddock clapped, slowly and quietly, as Tintin made his way across the landscape of sprawled sailors. Outside, he took the keys from Tintin and said, “You’re a brave lad. My heart was in my mouth, I don’t mind telling you.”

They hurried through the ship back to the locked door. “Well, something was in my mouth, anyway,” Haddock went on. “My stomach’s been a bit unsettled lately . . .” He went through the keys and selected one.

“Hurry up, Captain,” Tintin said. He was still tense from his misadventures in the bunk room. “We’ve no time to lose.”

Then, as Haddock opened the door, Tintin saw what was inside. It wasn’t a way out. It wasn’t a way anywhere. It was a storeroom, and Haddock went rooting through the shelves, stuffing his pockets with all the bottles he could carry. “Bingo!” he said. “Just the necessities, of course.”

Tintin stood aghast. All of this, for bottles of whiskey? What about the mutiny? What about Sakharine? What about the secret of the
Unicorn
? Tintin was starting to think that he might have made better progress if he’d never met Captain Haddock. It was on the tip of his tongue to say so.

But then Captain Haddock looked at him, his pockets filled with little bottles, and Tintin couldn’t say anything. Suddenly the captain looked like a man filled with purpose. He shot Tintin a wink. “To the lifeboats!” he said.

By the time they got to the hatch that led out onto the deck, Captain Haddock was halfway through one of the bottles he had liberated from the storeroom. He was muttering something about needing to calm his stomach in such stormy seas. Tintin just hoped he would remember where the lifeboats were.

They paused by the hatch to listen. Occasionally Tintin saw a sweep of light around the edges of the hatch. He thought he also heard voices. Putting two and two together, he figured out that the
Karaboudjan
’s crew—those who weren’t sleeping in a pile below deck—were still looking for him and Captain Haddock. It was going to be a tricky trek to the lifeboats.

Captain Haddock apparently felt differently. “Let’s go, lad,” he said, and flung the hatch open, plunging out onto the deck . . . and almost running straight into a sailor, who happened to be passing by on a search sweep. Tintin pulled Captain Haddock back as the sailor made a grab for him. Taking the bottle from Captain Haddock’s hand, Tintin cocked his arm to knock the man out with it.

As he swung, the bottle disappeared. Tintin’s momentum carried him forward, though, and just as the hapless sailor figured out what was happening, Tintin knocked him out cold with a single punch.

Shaking his sore hand, Tintin glared at Haddock. “My stomach,” Haddock said, and took a drink. Then he pointed across the deck. “There are the lifeboats!”

The
Karaboudjan
rocked on the stormy sea as Tintin, Snowy, and Haddock made their way toward the lifeboats, unhooked one, and started to shove it toward the edge of the deck. Held in place by a rope sling, it teetered at the edge of a gap in the deck railing above the churning water. The ropes went up over a gantry like a small crane and were wound around the gantry frame. A single person could unwind them and hang on to them while getting into the boat. Then, when the ropes were released, the boat would fall away from the
Karaboudjan
. Tintin looked at the sea and was suddenly uncertain about whether jumping into a lifeboat was the best course of action. A wave crest crashed around the
Karaboudjan
’s bow, wetting all three of them.

Captain Haddock unwound the ropes and braced one foot on the lifeboat’s gunwale. He looked as if he was ready to cast off and jump right then, but he was distracted at that moment by a door that opened nearby, spilling light out onto the deck along with the unmistakable beeping of Morse code. Tintin and Haddock ducked behind the lifeboat, uncomfortably close to the edge of the deck and the frothing sea below, as Allan and Tom went through the door and shut it behind them. “It’s Allan!” Haddock said in a quiet fury. “Traitor! Mutineer!”

“Is that the bridge?” Tintin asked.

“Aye,” Haddock growled. “On the other side of the radio room.”

Radio room
, Tintin thought. He had an idea. “Wait here, Captain,” he said. “Sound the alarm if anyone comes.”

Haddock looked relieved that Tintin didn’t want him to go along. “Careful, Tintin!” he warned, lifting a bottle to his lips.

Tintin and Snowy crossed the deck toward the steps that led up to the radio-room door where Allan and Tom had entered. He heard a sailor complaining somewhere on the deck. “There’s no one here!” the sailor grumbled, sweeping his flashlight lazily across the lifeboat and completely failing to notice that the ropes were all undone. “Who are we looking for, anyway?”

The sailor passed around the bridge, still complaining, and Tintin risked a glance through the window next to the door. Allan and Tom were huddled over a transmitter inside. Tintin could just make out what they were saying.

“Message just come through, boss,” Tom said. “The Milanese Nightingale has landed. Waiting in the wings for action.”

Milanese Nightingale
, Tintin thought. It must be a code name. What could it mean? A mystery within a mystery.

He looked in again as Allan plucked the message from Tom’s hand. “Maybe this’ll cheer him up,” Allan said as he and Tom left the radio room through an interior door. Tintin figured they were going to report to Sakharine.

After they left, he and Snowy sneaked into the radio room. Snowy immediately spotted a plate of sandwiches on a table next to a coffeepot. He jumped up onto the table and dug in as Tintin rummaged through the radio desk. He looked at charts, flipped through pads filled with scribbled notations and Morse code notes . . . and stopped when he came across a brochure. bagghar, it said, over a picture of a sunlit seaside city. Behind it, mountains rose around a gleaming white palace built at the base of a dam. Beyond the dam was a shimmering expanse of water, surprising in the midst of the dry country that surrounded it. A portrait of a smiling, bearded man was inset over part of the water. Tintin read the brochure quickly:
The Sultanate of Bagghar
. . .

He turned the page . . .
Ruled over by Sheik Omar Ben Salaad, whose love of music and culture is matched only by his love of
. . .

He turned another page and couldn’t believe what he saw. “Great snakes, Snowy!” he said. He stuck the brochure in his pocket and looked again at a chart tacked to the wall next to the radio desk.
Bagghar
. . .

Tintin had an idea. He went to the transmitter, found the frequency he needed, and started tapping out a message. Good thing he knew Morse code, he thought. There was no time to waste, and only one way he could think of to get help.

OUT ON THE
deck, Captain Haddock had finished his bottle and decided it was time to make the final preparations for their departure by lifeboat. He shoved the boat through the gap in the railing and out over the water. It rocked back and forth, hanging by some ropes slung over pulleys built on the side of the
Karaboudjan
’s deck. Captain Haddock held on to the other ends of those ropes, waiting for Tintin and the dog to come back so they could get going. His hand was getting cramped from gripping the ropes.

“Tintin!” he called out, throwing the empty bottle into the boat. It landed with a clonk. What was the lad up to in there?

Someone sat up in the boat, nearly giving Captain Haddock a heart attack. It was a sailor, rubbing his head. Captain Haddock realized he must have hit him in the head with his discarded bottle.
Barnacles
, he thought. Just his luck.

Seeing the captain, the sailor drew a pistol from his belt and said, “Hey! Put your hands up!”

Captain Haddock had never been the kind of person to argue with someone who was pointing a gun at him. Not even a scurvy mutineer. He put his hands up, letting go of the ropes in the process. The ropes whipped against the bottom of the boat and snapped around the sailor’s legs as the boat fell out from underneath him, splashing into the waves. The sailor flipped upside down and dropped until the ropes tangled in the pulleys, bringing him just a few feet above the water. He lost his gun as he grabbed for the ropes.

“Let that be a lesson to you!” Captain Haddock shouted down at him.

He looked around the deck. The search parties appeared to have moved on. He sighed and began to untie the next lifeboat.