The Adventures of Tintin (12 page)

“Selfish,” Captain Haddock said.

“With no hope of rescue,” Tintin added.

“Hopeless!” Captain Haddock cried miserably.

“While Sakharine and his men are halfway to Bagghar,” Tintin went on, venting the last of his frustration.

“Poor, miserable wretch!” Captain Haddock said.

Tintin splashed water over the embers. “Yes, all right,” he said over the hiss. “That’s enough of that.” He couldn’t stand it when people wallowed in their own mistakes.

“It was his fault, you see,” Haddock said. “It was Sir Francis!”

“How do you work that one out?” Tintin asked. He was skeptical, and he could see that Snowy was, too. It was a cheeky move to blame your personal failings on an ancestor who died more than three centuries in the past.

Haddock held up his bottle, saw that it was empty, and slumped against the overturned lifeboat. “Because he was a man of great courage and bold exploits!” he exclaimed. “No one like him has ever existed in my family since!” He brandished the bottle. “I know I’ll never be like him!” Haddock banged his head against the boat. “No, it’s far better that I end it now. Put us both out of our misery.”

For his part, Tintin didn’t want to be put out of his misery. In fact, he wasn’t miserable. Snowy seemed to be, though. He was whining against Tintin’s shirtfront. Then he barked.

“What is it, Snowy?” Tintin asked. Snowy wasn’t usually the kind of dog who complained for no reason . . . unlike certain sea captains Tintin knew. Usually if he interrupted a conversation, it was because he had something important to say.

“I’m going to lower myself into the sea,” Haddock said theatrically. “Into the cold embrace of the big blue . . .”

Tintin looked up into the sky, rolling his eyes . . . and saw a seaplane! A rush of excitement ran through him, and then a pang of suspicion. “Those are Portuguese markings,” he said as the plane banked in their direction. It was bright yellow, with stubby wings and
CN
-3411 stenciled boldly across both sides of its fuselage. “Where is the
Karaboudjan
registered?”

Haddock seemed relieved that Tintin had changed the subject from Haddock’s failures and misery. He looked up and saw the plane, and then—with an agility Tintin would not have believed had he not seen it himself—jumped up on the overturned lifeboat and began waving. “We’re saved! We’re saved! It’s a sign from above!”

The seaplane’s engine revved up as it accelerated into a low approach. It wasn’t landing, Tintin thought. It was going much too fast for that . . . and then he saw flashes from one of its wings. A split second later, bullets slammed into the boat and churned up the waters around them as the sound of machine-gun fire battered their ears!

Tintin ducked behind the boat, Snowy hanging on to his sleeve. Captain Haddock, in a fury, shook his fists at the seaplane, which was banking around for another pass. “Troglodytes!”

“Captain, get down!” Tintin yelled.

“Mutant malingerers!” Haddock screamed. “Freshwater politicians!”

Something bumped into Tintin. A case. He thought he recognized it as something that was part of every lifeboat’s emergency supplies. Sure enough, when he opened it, he saw a flare gun inside, packed in foam, which had kept the case afloat. “Bad news, Captain!” he cried out. “This flare gun only has one flare!”

Haddock broke off his rant at the seaplane, which was nearly within firing range again. “What’s the good news?” he called out.

“We’ve got one flare,” Tintin said. He loaded the gun and flattened himself against the curve of the lifeboat’s hull, waiting for his chance.

Again, gunfire erupted. The seaplane’s second volley hit the lifeboat, reducing it to splinters. Captain Haddock tumbled off into the water, grasping at a piece of the boat to stay above the surface. Tintin braced both of his hands around the flare gun’s grip, resting them on the remains of the keel. Bullets zinged and whined around him, smacking into the water.

He aimed and fired with a
boomph!
The seaplane roared directly overhead, so low that Captain Haddock and Tintin both reflexively ducked under the water. When they surfaced again, Snowy was barking and Tintin saw a thick trail of black smoke coming from the seaplane’s engine.
Amazing
, he thought.

“Tintin, you got him!” Captain Haddock cheered. “Right in the blockhole! Well done, my boy.”

The plane’s engine sputtered out as it was in the middle of coming around for what surely would have been a last pass at Tintin and Captain Haddock. It landed in the water in a great wave of spray, then sat rocking on the waves. One of the pilots got out, stood on the pontoon, and worked his way to the front of the fuselage, popping open the cowling over the engine. A cloud of black smoke enveloped him.

Tintin and Captain Haddock, with Snowy between them, huddled against the remains of the lifeboat, kicking their feet to propel it a little closer to the seaplane. The pilot’s voice floated over the water, but they couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“Stay here, Captain,” Tintin said.

He dove under the water as Captain Haddock said something—he wasn’t sure what. For as long as he could hold his breath, he kicked along until he came to the rear of one of the seaplane’s floats. He surfaced and quietly gulped in air. “Don’t take your eyes off of them!” the pilot at the cowling was saying.

A second pilot, inside the cockpit, said, “Hurry up!”

The first pilot had waved away most of the smoke. “Just as I thought,” he grumbled. “The ignition lead’s been cut. Lucky shot.”

Tintin swam along under the plane as silently as he could.

“One more pass and we’ll finish them off,” the pilot inside the cockpit was saying.

Here we go
, Tintin thought. He could not let the two pilots get the seaplane back in the air . . . and if it was just an ignition lead, they would have it fixed in no time.

On the other hand, if he could get control of the plane, he could fix the ignition lead himself . . .

Fortune favors the bold
, Tintin told himself. He vaulted up onto the pontoon, the plane rocking with his weight and throwing the pilots off balance. Tintin leveled the flare gun at them and said, “Put your hands in the air!”

They stared at him, amazed. Before either of them had time to get a good look at the gun and figure out that it wouldn’t actually fire bullets, Tintin jammed it into the first pilot’s side. “
Now!
” he yelled.

The pilot’s hands shot into the air. Out of the corner of his eye, Tintin saw that the second pilot inside the cockpit had done the same. Just then, the remains of the lifeboat gently bumped into the pontoon. Snowy scrabbled up onto the plane, and a moment later came Captain Haddock. “Good work, lad,” he said. “Now all we have to do is fly to Bagghar!”

FIVE MINUTES LATER
, the pilots were tied up in the back of the plane and Tintin was puzzling over the flight manual. Captain Haddock peered over his shoulder while Snowy growled at the pilots. “You, ah, you
do
know what you’re doing?” Captain Haddock inquired hopefully. “Eh, Tintin?”

“Um,” Tintin said. “More or less.”

He had repaired the ignition lead himself. A wire was a wire; it was easy to fix. Flying a plane, however . . .

“Well, which is it?” Haddock pressed. “More or less?”

Tintin flipped a switch, and the plane’s propeller began to turn as the engine rumbled to life. “Relax,” Tintin said. “I interviewed a pilot once.”

Captain Haddock looked a little green around the gills. Tintin got the plane moving, looking from the instrument panel to the manual and back. From the rear of the plane, he heard one of the pilots say, “Oh, no.”

“Never fear,” Tintin said. He pulled the control stick back, and the seaplane lifted off the ocean’s surface, gaining altitude and arcing away from the drifting bits of the lifeboat, heading in the general direction that Tintin thought the plane had come from in the first place. Now they were back in the hunt! They would surely beat Sakharine to Bagghar by air!

“Which way to North Africa?” he called out over the sound of the engine and the air rushing past the open cockpit window. Snowy was hanging his head out, his ears flapping in the wind.

No one answered. The pilots were sulking in the back, and Captain Haddock was staring out the window. Tintin looked out to see what the captain was looking at. There was a speck on the water, far away, almost in the horizon. He banked toward it, keeping altitude for now. When they got a little closer, Tintin recognized the
Karaboudjan
!

“Captain, look!” he cried out. “We’ve caught up with them!”

Also, now they knew which way to go, since the
Karaboudjan
was steaming full speed for Bagghar. Tintin took a bearing and marked it on the compass set into the instrument panel. “North Africa, that way,” he said.

“Wonderful,” Captain Haddock said. Something about his tone of voice made Tintin look at him again as they passed over the big steel ship and then out over open ocean again. His eyes popped as he saw what the captain was seeing. “But do you think we might find another way?” Captain Haddock asked. “A way that doesn’t take us through that wall of death there?”

A storm front like a solid black wall streaked with lightning loomed ahead of them. “We can’t turn back!” Tintin said. “Not now.”

From the back of the plane, he heard the pilots. “Oh, no,” they were saying again.

“Don’t worry,” Tintin said. “Remember, you didn’t think I could fly this thing, either.”

Neither of them had anything to say to that.

The plane bucked when they hit the edge of the storm, bouncing Tintin in his seat. Haddock hit his head on the cockpit ceiling. The pilots in the back were thrown into each other. They started calling out advice to Tintin, in between cries of “Oh, no!”

Tintin kept control as lightning forked alarmingly close. The plane heaved and rolled through a cloud. A cabinet in the cockpit fell open and a bunch of bottles and little boxes fell out. Tintin glanced over and saw that Captain Haddock had seized one of the bottles. Its label read
MEDICINAL SPIRITS
. Tintin swatted the bottle out of the captain’s hands. “No, Captain!” he said, trying to look in two directions at once. Snowy barked in alarm. “Those are for medicinal purposes only!”

“Quite right, laddie,” Captain Haddock said. “Medicinal. Got it.”

The storm was getting worse. Tintin couldn’t believe it. As if a giant had caught it and thrown it like a paper airplane, the seaplane suddenly flipped into a barrel roll. Everyone banged and crashed in the cabin. Tintin righted the plane, but then it went into a steep dive. Tintin felt himself lifting away from the seat. He had a grip on the controls, which kept him anchored, but Captain Haddock floated up into the air. So did Snowy and the pilots. Somehow Captain Haddock had opened the bottle of medicinal spirits when Tintin wasn’t looking, and the liquid floated around the cabin in globules.

Captain Haddock strained toward them, but just then, Tintin regained control of the plane and everyone crashed back to the floor . . . but then it went into another dive. The spirits spilled from the floating bottle as Captain Haddock cried out in dismay.

“No!” Tintin shouted. Captain Haddock looked at him guiltily. But Tintin didn’t care about the spill. He was looking out the cockpit windows, watching as the plane’s propeller was fluttering to a stop.

On the instrument panel, a red light flashed next to the fuel gauge.

“Fuel tank!” Tintin said. “It’s almost empty. Captain, I’ve got a plan! The alcohol in that bottle might give us a few more miles. I need you to climb out onto the pontoons and pour it into the fuel tank.”

Captain Haddock looked stricken. “Christopher Columbus!” he said.

He stood up and buckled on a parachute. One hand holding on to his hat, he opened the cabin door. Immediately his beard started blowing in the wind. At his feet, the two pilots lay quiet. They’d been knocked out by the plane’s diving and bouncing. “There’s a storm out there!” Captain Haddock said, as if Tintin hadn’t noticed. “And lightning! And it’s raining!”

“Do you call yourself a Haddock?” Tintin challenged him.

Captain Haddock glared at him. He stuck out his chin, drew himself up to his full height, took a step out the door . . . and disappeared.

“Captain!” Tintin yelled.

Nothing. Tintin called out again and again. Captain Haddock was gone! Tintin felt sudden crushing guilt. He should have known better than to send the captain out onto the wing of a plane! Captain Haddock wasn’t bold and resourceful like his ancestors. Tintin had pushed him too hard, and now—

Captain Haddock’s face appeared at Tintin’s window!

“You’re doing fine, Captain!” Tintin shouted through the glass. He was excited all over again, his guilt forgotten. It was working. Captain Haddock might yet prove worthy of his name! “Now pour the bottle into the tank. We’re running on fumes!”

“Fumes!” Captain Haddock said, as if he had made a great discovery. Something hit Tintin’s foot, and he looked down to see the bottle of medicinal spirits. It was empty!