The Adventures of Tintin (13 page)

He looked back outside to see that Captain Haddock had worked himself out onto the engine cowling. He opened the fuel cap, took a deep breath, and belched loudly into the tank. At the same time, Tintin flipped the ignition switch back and forth.

The propeller started to spin again as flames shot out from the engine compartment. “Captain, it’s working!” Tintin yelled at the top of his lungs. He didn’t know how, but Captain Haddock’s breath was apparently so saturated with alcohol that the plane’s engine could burn it!

At least for the moment. Captain Haddock sat up and blocked Tintin’s view. Tintin started yelling that he couldn’t see as Captain Haddock pointed ahead. “Land!” he sang out. “Land!”

Tintin shook his head. “We can’t! We’re not there yet!”

“No,
land
!”

A gigantic sand dune suddenly loomed into view through the part of the windshield Captain Haddock wasn’t blocking. The captain was hollering, “Turn! Turn!” Tintin pulled on the controls, jerking the plane to one side and barely missing the dune.

“Starboard! Starboard!” Captain Haddock shouted.

Tintin steered the plane to the right. He heard noises from behind him and looked back to see that the pilots had awakened and freed themselves.
Uh-oh
, he thought.

But the pilots were only concerned with saving themselves.

A flash of lightning blazed so close that Tintin could smell the ozone, and a loud thunderclap rang in his ears. Captain Haddock was catapulted off the plane’s nose, and the pilots grabbed their parachutes and jumped out.

The plane hit the top of another sand dune and flames shot out of its engine again. It skipped across the sand before plowing across the crest of a third dune and skidding to a stop, tail in the air. The impact threw Tintin through the windshield and he hung forward, the propeller spinning inches from his face!

“Hang on, Tintin! I’m coming!” Captain Haddock said from a nearby pile of sand.

Snowy got hold of Tintin’s pants and was trying to pull him to safety, but the boy was too big for the little terrier. The propeller zipped off some of Tintin’s hair. Snowy was still tugging at him as Captain Haddock clambered up the dune and pulled Tintin off the side of the plane’s nose. The propeller caught Captain Haddock’s parachute and flung him violently to the ground, but the tangled parachute lines finally brought the propeller to a halt.

Tintin sat up and shook his head. The first things he saw were Snowy lying on his side, passed out from exertion, and the two pilots hanging by their parachutes from the rusted wreckage of a cargo ship. Everything was quiet. The storm was passing, and sunlight started to break through the clouds.

“Well,” said Captain Haddock after a while. “What do we do now?”

Tintin didn’t have a good answer, so he said what he always said in situations like this. “We go on,” he said. “There’s a mystery to solve!”

LATER THAT DAY
, Tintin was wishing they were in the storm again. He was also regretting his decision to lead Captain Haddock and Snowy away from the wrecked plane. They had gone from an ocean of water to an ocean of sand. Tintin had the terrible feeling that he had led them on a charge to certain doom . . . but it was too late to go back.

They had been walking through the desert, the sun blazing down on them without mercy, for what seemed like years. “The land of thirst,” Haddock was muttering over and over again. He had been for hours. “The land of thirst . . . The land of thirst!”

“Will you stop saying that?” Tintin snapped. The heat and his own thirst were making him a little impatient.

“You don’t understand,” Captain Haddock groaned. “I’ve run out. I’ve run out.” He sank to his knees, and Tintin stopped to prevent him from falling face-first into the sand. “You don’t know what that means,” Captain Haddock said.

“Captain, we have to keep going,” Tintin said. “One step at a time. Come on, on your feet.” With Tintin’s help, Haddock staggered back to his feet. “Lean your weight on me,” Tintin said.

“A man can only hang on for so long without his vitals,” Haddock gasped.

“Captain, calm down,” Tintin said. “There are worse things than sobering up.”

Haddock froze, and Tintin thought perhaps he had made the captain angry. But then he said, “Look, Tintin! We’re saved!”

He shoved Tintin away and broke into a run across the sand, staring into the distance as Snowy bit down on Haddock’s dangling suspenders to try to slow him down. The suspenders stretched and broke, snapping back into Snowy’s face as Haddock ran faster, crying, “Water! Water!”

“Stop, Captain!” Tintin ran after him, with Snowy at his side. He couldn’t see any water. “It’s just a mirage!”

They caught up to Captain Haddock after a minute as the captain slowed to a dazed stagger and looked around in confusion. “But it was here,” he said. “I saw it.”

“It was just your mind playing tricks,” Tintin said, trying to soothe him. “It’s the heat.”

Captain Haddock gazed sadly out over the rolling expanse of sand. A single tear rolled down his cheek, and he said quietly, “I have to go home.”

“What?” Tintin didn’t understand.

“I have to go back to the sea.”

“Captain, you’re hallucinating,” Tintin said.

But as if Tintin had not spoken at all, Captain Haddock went on. He pointed toward a dune and said, “Look, did you ever see a more beautiful sight? She’s turning into the wind, all sails set!” He had fallen in the middle of his misery, but now he got up again and described his vision. “Triple-masted, double decks, fifty guns . . .”

Tintin had been about to take drastic measures to snap Captain Haddock out of his hallucination, but this description stopped him dead. Was the captain seeing . . .? “The
Unicorn
?” Tintin said softly.

Nodding, Haddock said, “Isn’t she a beauty?”

Could it be that the mirage would help Captain Haddock regain some of his lost memories and unravel part of the puzzle of the
Unicorn
? Even facing a blazing death in the middle of the desert, Tintin couldn’t pass up the chance to find another clue. “Yes, yes, she is,” he said, playing along to encourage Haddock to reveal more. “What else can you see?”

“She’s got the wind behind her!” the captain said joyously. “Look at the pace she’s setting! Barely a day out of Barbados, a hold full of rum and riches, and the hearts of the sailors set for home!”

“Yes,” Tintin said. He could almost see it, the sand becoming ocean and the
Unicorn
, flying the king’s ensign, surging into view, its sails billowing as it plowed through the high seas. The voice of a lookout called across the water, “Ship ahoy! Sail on the starboard bow!”

And Sir Francis Haddock, in the uniform of the royal navy, snapped his spyglass out to its full length, and through it saw the skull and crossbones unfurling from the other ship’s mast. “It’s the Jolly Roger!” the lookout shouted, but Sir Francis noticed something else: a red pennant flapping below the pirate flag.

In the desert, Captain Haddock turned to face Tintin, saying, “The blood of every sea captain who looks upon that flag runs cold, for he knows he’s facing a fight to the death. But Sir Francis is a Haddock, and Haddocks don’t flee.”

Then Captain Haddock peered through his empty bottle as if it were a spyglass, and Tintin was lost in the story once again.

“All hands on deck!” Sir Francis commanded. “Gunners to their stations. Let’s unload the king’s shot into these yellow-bellied, lily-livered sea slugs!” Turning to his first mate, he added, “Prepare to bring her about, Mr. Eckles!”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Eckles said. “Prepare to bring her about!”

The pirate ship was close behind them as the
Unicorn
crested a wave and slowly heaved about in the trough between that wave and the next. Cannon fire exploded between the two ships. The
Unicorn
’s sails were shredded! The pirate ship closed the distance between them, and the heaving sea tilted the ships toward each other, tangling their masts and yardarms. They rode the waves together, both ships crashing and groaning in the waves. Smoke and fire blew across both decks, stinging the sailors’ eyes.

“Mr. Eckles, secure the cargo!” Sir Francis bellowed. Then he issued a general order, his voice booming across the storm-tossed deck. “Prepare to repel boarders.”

Twisting up, the pirate ship leaned over, its keel briefly scraping along the edge of the
Unicorn
’s deck. Pirates leaped across the gap as others swung from the pirate ship’s deck into the
Unicorn
’s rigging. Still others landed on the upper decks. The shouts and cries of battle merged with the sounds of the storm and the groaning of ships’ timbers. The two ships collided, and the pirate ship was badly damaged. It began to sink, and Sir Francis feared that it would drag the
Unicorn
down with it. He leaped into the rigging. A knife flew past his head, slitting the upturned brim of his hat and clipping away part of the red plume. But no knife was going to stop him from saving his ship! Up the mast he climbed.

When he reached the horizontal yardarm, he clamped his legs around the mast and began sawing at the tangled ropes that bound the two ships together. The
Unicorn
was listing as the pirate ship dragged at it. Sir Francis looked over and saw that the rear decks of the pirate ship were already underwater.

He shinnied out onto the yardarm and over to the mast of the pirate ship, closing in on the last rope holding the two ships together. Reaching the pirate ship’s mast, he caught that rope and sawed through it with his cutlass. The loose end of the rope in his hand jerked him off the mast as the ships separated, and Sir Francis dangled free, one hand on the rope and the other brandishing his cutlass at the swarming deck below.

He swung back to the
Unicorn
’s mast and slid down to the deck, dispatching pirate after pirate. “Rally, ye sailors of the
Unicorn
!” he cried out. “Rally to the king and to Captain Haddock!”

His sailors answered with a cheer. On the deck, silhouetted by the smoke of muskets and a fire blazing somewhere on the rear decks, Sir Francis spotted the figure he’d been looking for . . .

“And then he saw him,” Captain Haddock whispered. His face was caked with sand, and his lips were parched and dry. “Rising from the dead!”

“Who?” Tintin asked.

But Haddock had fallen silent. He began to sweat as he struggled to hold on to the memory. “Captain!” Tintin said. “Captain, who did he see?”

The wind was the only sound for a minute or so. Then Captain Haddock said, “It’s gone . . .”

“What do you mean, gone?” Tintin protested. “What happened next?”

“By Jupiter, I have a beard,” Captain Haddock said, fingering his chin. “Since when did I have a beard?”

“Captain, the
Unicorn
! Something happened on the
Unicorn
? It’s the key to everything!” Tintin grabbed Captain Haddock and shook him a little. “You must try to remember!”

Haddock began to sway on his feet even after Tintin stopped shaking him. “The
Unicorn
?” he repeated. “What? I’m so terribly thirsty.”

“Captain!” Tintin repeated in frustration. What could he do to get Haddock to remember?

“Tintin, what’s happening to me?” Captain Haddock said fearfully. He sank to the ground, with Snowy pacing anxiously around him and Tintin supporting him.

Tintin knew exactly what was happening to Captain Haddock. Maybe none of them would ever get out of the desert, but at least one good thing came out of the experience. “And to think all it took was a day in the Sahara,” he said when Captain Haddock was resting comfortably on the ground. “Congratulations, Captain. You’re sober.”

“Sober,” Captain Haddock said as if he couldn’t quite believe it. He mouthed the word several more times with a surprised smile on his cracked lips. Then he passed out, and Tintin was left to watch over him as the sun touched the horizon and the sand stretched endlessly in every direction. Bagghar was far away. Sakharine was ahead of them in the race to capture the third model
Unicorn
. . .

One of these days
, Tintin thought,
I’m going to tell this story to someone, and we will all laugh about it
.

But right then, things seemed pretty desperate.