Tintin shook him off and started pushing toward the aisle. “No, wait!” he cried.
In the back of the hall, Captain Haddock saw Ben Salaad pointing. The captain pointed at himself and asked, “Me?”
“Yes!” Ben Salaad raged. “Thief! Arrest him!”
Soldiers rushed toward the puzzled Captain Haddock. On the stage, the Milanese Nightingale looked confused by the chaos. She was not accustomed to people paying attention to other things during her standing ovations. But out in the great hall of Ben Salaad’s palace there was a falcon swooping, a little white dog swerving through the legs of startled patrons, Ben Salaad himself shouting and waving his arms, and a group of soldiers converging on an unkempt man in the back of the hall.
“C’est un voleur!” the sheik shouted as his soldiers tackled Captain Haddock en masse. Captain Haddock roared and fought back, fists flying. Soldiers went down in every direction. Through it all, the Milanese Nightingale continued to take her bows.
Tintin had reached the aisle and was elbowing his way through the crowd in the direction of Captain Haddock, but he was also trying to keep an eye on Sakharine and the falcon, which even then was diving down toward the shattered case. “Snowy!” Tintin called, and Snowy burst out of the crowd in a white blur.
The falcon picked up the Unicorn model and quickly dropped it. With a crash it hit the floor and the tiny mast broke. The falcon swooped back around, with Snowy bearing down on the model. A tiny metal cylinder fell out of the broken mast and rolled across the floor.
The falcon reached down with its talons.
Snowy reached up with his jaws.
The falcon snatched up the cylinder and beat its wings, rising back into the air just ahead of Snowy’s leap. Snowy snapped at its tail feathers before falling back to the floor and barking furiously. All Tintin could do was watch as the falcon soared back up to Sakharine, who reached out to take the cylinder. He caught Tintin’s eye and shot him a mocking wink. Then he disappeared into the back of the balcony. Over the whole scene, Ben Salaad shouted orders in French.
Tintin got to Captain Haddock, and together the two of them cleared a path through Ben Salaad’s guards to the door. They escaped into the halls of the palace. “Sakharine’s got the scroll!” Tintin said breathlessly.
“It’s worse than that!” Haddock said. “They took your scroll, too, Tintin! It’s gone!”
Tintin came to a skidding halt. Back down the corridor, he could hear the shouts of pursuit, but they were not yet too close. He got his bearings and realized that he was close to the garage. From there he could get a car or something. He would catch Sakharine yet!
And now that Captain Haddock had lost the scroll, catching Sakharine was more urgent than ever. “How?” he asked. “What happened?”
“It was Allan,” Captain Haddock said. “He—he knobbled me in the—in the . . . garden?”
Tintin ran down the corridor toward the outside door, disappointed in the captain. Luckily, he had a chance to take out his disappointment on one of Ben Salaad’s guards, who stood between him and one of the palace’s many courtyards. He knocked out the guard and then looked around to see if he could get a sense of which way Sakharine might have gone.
Then he saw a motorcycle. Aha! Tintin thought. At the same time he remembered that from the palace, only one road led back down to Bagghar, past the spillway gate at the base of the dam. So there was only one way Sakharine could have gone.
“Tintin!” Captain Haddock burst out of the palace and ran across the courtyard toward him. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going after Sakharine,” Tintin said.
Haddock frowned in confusion. “By yourself?”
“Yes,” Tintin said. “Come on, Snowy.” Tintin hopped onto the motorcycle and fired it up. He glanced over to see if Snowy was in the sidecar, and to his surprise he saw Captain Haddock knocking out the guard (who was just getting up again) with the guard’s own weapon (a bazooka!).
The motorcycle rocked as Captain Haddock leaped into the sidecar with the rocket launcher. “What are you bringing that thing for?” Tintin asked.
“You never know!” cried Captain Haddock as they roared out of the courtyard toward the main driveway that Sakharine must have taken on his way through town to the Karaboudjan. Snowy ran after them, barking, and made the jump into Captain Haddock’s lap as Tintin slowed to take the first sharp curve in the driveway.
They caught Sakharine much sooner than Tintin would have expected, barely halfway down the winding road from the palace to Bagghar proper. He couldn’t believe his good luck. Tom was driving a jeep with Sakharine in the passenger seat and Allan in the back. Allan, unfortunately, had a machine gun. As soon as he saw Tintin, Allan started filling the air around the motorcycle with bullets.
Snowy huddled in the bottom of the sidecar, and Tintin ducked lower behind the handlebars of the motorcycle, making himself a smaller target. He gunned the motorcycle and started to close the distance between them and the jeep. When someone was shooting at you and escape was impossible, the only thing to do was turn the tables and go after them!
Captain Haddock had a similar idea. He braced himself in the sidecar and swung the rocket launcher up onto his shoulder. He was hollering something, but Tintin couldn’t hear over the racket of the engines and the gunfire and the wind. He thought he heard the name Red Rackham. He looked over at Captain Haddock, hoping the captain hadn’t gotten lost in one of his hallucinations again.
With a loud whoosh, the rocket launcher fired. Tintin was looking forward again, keeping them on the road. He didn’t see the rocket, or a trail of smoke . . . or an impact . . .
“Did you hit anything?” he yelled.
He glanced over again to see Captain Haddock and Snowy both looking backward. “Oh,” Captain Haddock said. “Yes.”
Captain Haddock threw away the rocket launcher. Tintin looked over his shoulder and put two and two together as he saw a tiny plume of smoke at the edge of the spillway gate.
“Uh-oh,” he said. Captain Haddock had shot the rocket backward, launching it toward the dam!
The dam burst with a sound like rolling thunder. A tower of water churned past the palace wall and roared into the riverbed and the head of the empty canal. Tintin gunned the motorcycle again, closing in on Sakharine’s jeep and also staying just ahead of the flood.
They were in Bagghar now, zigzagging through its streets. Tintin could hear Sakharine up ahead screaming at Tom to go faster. At the side of the road, the canal was filling—too high! In places the surge of water had overspilled the banks. Water swirled in the streets around them. The jeep had to slow down to take a corner, and Tintin shot up next to it.
Snowy jumped over to the other vehicle, snapping his teeth at the scrolls, which Sakharine clutched in one bony hand. Sakharine lifted them away from Snowy—practically handing them to Tintin, who sang out, “Thank you!” and grabbed them. Tintin tried to steer with one hand, keeping pace with the water that was surging into Bagghar’s canals. Snowy used the jeep’s rear seat as a springboard and leaped back into the sidecar.
They reached the main square just as the fountain gushed back to life, water shooting thirty feet and higher into the air. The people of Bagghar cheered and danced in the water as Tintin shot past them, Sakharine’s jeep in hot pursuit. Other villagers carrying jugs and bottles ran from every direction into the square. Ha! Tintin thought. We didn’t mean to, but we managed to get the people of Bagghar their water. Ben Salaad will control them no longer!
Sakharine’s falcon flew out of the jeep and swooped down toward Tintin as he veered the motorcycle away. Tom was saying all kinds of impolite things as he fought to control the jeep in the crowd and the water that was starting to pour into the street. Tintin thought they were going to get away free and clear, but at that moment a wall next to the road collapsed and a tank slid through, its treads grinding the wall to dust and pebbles, which were then swept away in the flood.
A tank?! Ben Salaad
means business, Tintin thought.
The tank’s long gun barrel clonked Captain Haddock on the head. Tintin swerved to avoid hitting the tank, but he was shocked when Captain Haddock was jerked up and out of the sidecar! The sea captain’s wool coat had been snagged by the tank’s gun barrel. The sudden motion also made the three scrolls slip from Tintin’s hand!
Captain Haddock grabbed two of them as they fluttered past him. “Tintin, I’ve lost one!” he cried out.
Snowy came to the rescue, twisting in the air to snap up the third scroll before it could be lost to the wind and chaos. “Nice work, Snowy,” Tintin said.
The tank careened down the narrow streets with Captain Haddock still dangling from its turret gun. Incredibly, that tank also seemed to be dragging an entire building behind it. It was a hotel! People trapped inside leaned out their windows and screamed at the tank.
Captain Haddock was yelling, too. “Where’d you get your driver’s license?” he raged as he banged into walls and doorways on either side of the street. Tintin tried to stay close so Captain Haddock would have a place to fall when he got himself loose, but the road narrowed and he had to gun the motorcycle ahead again.
The tank’s gun suddenly fired with an ear-splitting boom. The shell blasted through the link between the motorcycle and sidecar, sending the sidecar—with Snowy still in it!—rolling off down a side street while Tintin stayed perilously close to the tank. The firing of the shot knocked Captain Haddock loose. He swung like a monkey along clotheslines strung between buildings before thumping down to the street in a storm of falling laundry.
Somehow, he came up from the pile of clothes wearing a pink dress, but this didn’t stop Captain Haddock. His skirt rippling, he ran off after one of the scrolls that had gotten loose in the fall. It was fluttering and twisting through the air toward the canal!
“Tintin, there goes number two!” he cried out.
He ran along the canal wall as Tintin and the jeep played cat-and-mouse through the streets nearby. Almost there! The scroll dipped close and Captain Haddock lunged after it, but the falcon swooped in and snatched it from his fingertips. “Come back, you pilfering parakeet!” Captain Haddock yelled. He chased the bird along the wall and suddenly noticed Snowy, still in the sidecar, riding the surge of water in the canal itself. “Snowy!” Captain Haddock called out. “Get the scroll!”
At that moment, Tintin got close enough to swerve right next to the wall. “Captain!” he shouted. Captain Haddock, still at a dead run, jumped from the wall onto the motorcycle’s handlebars.
“The bird, Captain!” he yelled in Haddock’s ear. They were closing in, with water rushing all around them. The falcon was struggling against crazy winds whipped up by the flood, and Tintin thought they just might be able to catch it before it got too much altitude. He looked around. Where was Sakharine?
Just ahead of them, Snowy surfed the rushing water right to the falcon. It was starting to gain altitude, but Snowy pounced before it could get away! He pinned the falcon between his paws on the edge of the sidecar and seized the scroll in his teeth without dropping the one he already had in his mouth. The dog and bird began to fight a violent tug-of-war. “Nice work, Snowy!” Tintin said. “Don’t let him go!”
Captain Haddock leaned out from the motorcycle, reaching for the falcon. It was too far. He got his balance and jumped, aiming to land in the sidecar, but he missed ever so slightly. All his weight came down on the edge of the sidecar, catapulting Snowy and the falcon straight up in the air! The falcon flapped with all its might to get away as Snowy still held the other end of the scroll in his teeth.
“You burglarizing, budgering, jackal-eyed jackdaw!” Captain Haddock roared. “Hang on, Snowy, I’m—”
Captain Haddock’s voice trailed off as the flood carried him through the open window of another building. Snowy and the falcon crashed into the wall. The water rose and the falcon kept flapping, but Snowy held on. Captain Haddock caught another dangling clothesline and swung up into a high window of a nearby tower. He caught Snowy’s leg, but it startled the terrier so much that his jaws slipped and he let go of both scrolls! Now the bird had two scrolls, one in its beak and one in its talons. Captain Haddock and Snowy sprinted through the tower to the other side, just missing the bird as it swooped out another window.
Tintin on his motorcycle and Sakharine in the jeep jockeyed through the streets below. Bagghar was coming to life. Everywhere, people were running around and celebrating the return of water to the town. It was a fine sight to see, but it made for tricky driving.
Looking up, Tintin saw Captain Haddock dive partway out of one of the tower’s upper windows after the falcon. Reaching, he lost the third scroll! “Noo!” Haddock shouted as the falcon banked around and calmly snatched the precious parchment out of the air.
Sakharine called to the falcon, which wheeled in his direction. He was at the edge of the bazaar near the main square. The tank rumbled somewhere nearby, still dragging the hotel through the streets and knocking pieces off other buildings.
Just as the falcon reached Sakharine, Tintin gunned the motorcycle’s engine and crashed right through a spice seller’s stall nearby. A cloud of spices covered them, and everyone sneezed explosively—except Tintin, who had covered his nose! Even the bird was sneezing. Tintin took advantage of the chaos to grab two of the scrolls, but as he reached for the third, the falcon got away from him and flew in the direction of the harbor. He went after it.
At that moment, Captain Haddock, who had been leaping across rooftops with Snowy right behind him, plunged down from a nearby building into the enemy’s jeep. “Bashi-bazouks!” he roared. “Mutineers!” He laid into the sneezing Tom and Allan with his fists, pummeling them. “Ah, Mr. Allan!” he said. “You ship-stealing parasite. Allow me to return the favor!”
The vehicle jerked forward and roared off despite Captain Haddock’s best efforts. He grappled with Allan as Tom tried to keep the jeep under control while dodging stray punches from both of them. Sakharine swiveled around, looking for his falcon.
Tintin was hot on the bird’s trail. The chase carried him into a house built on stilts near the harbor, and he rode the motorcycle up the front steps and through the front door. He crashed into a living room and saw the falcon get tangled up in threads trailing out from a loom in one corner. The falcon flapped and struggled free, but with stray threads clinging to its feathers, it bobbled in the air. “Excuse me! Pardon me!” Tintin called out to the surprised occupants of the apartment. He accelerated out the window on the other side of the building, hitting the back wall hard enough that the entire house fell over and split open like an egg.
The motorcycle zoomed up a flight of stairs, smashing into a stone wall. Rebounding from the impact, Tintin caught one of its handlebars as it flew off the crashed bike. He strung it on telephone wires and rode them like a zip line, following the falcon, which trailed wisps of spun cotton.
As he ran out of phone line, Tintin jumped off into the nearest window, and found himself in an apartment. He dashed through the apartment, keeping pace with the thread-tangled falcon as he passed each window. He burst out onto a balcony and saw the falcon dropping one wing, just beginning to bank away from the building. Tintin knew he would lose the bird if he didn’t act fast.
There was only one thing to do.
He leaped onto the balcony railing, sprang out into the air—and caught the falcon in the midst of its turn!
He landed with a grunt on a wooden platform. Somehow, the chase had led them to the harbor. Seawater lapped at the pilings that supported the platform. The bird fought, but Tintin held on. There wasn’t a moment to waste. He had all three scrolls now, even though the falcon wouldn’t let the third go. That was all right. He held the bird in one spot and put the other two scrolls next to the one it held. “Hidden numbers,” he said to himself as he got the three scrolls aligned and saw . . .
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” called Sakharine’s voice.
T
intin looked up and saw that Tom and Allan had captured Captain Haddock. They held him out over a long drop from a nearby building. They had Snowy, too. He dangled from a rope tied to Captain Haddock’s waist. Below them, the harbor churned at the mouth of the canal, clogged with wreckage and mud.
“Let the bird go,” Sakharine demanded. “What do you value more, those scrolls or Haddock’s life?”
“Don’t listen to him!” Haddock shouted. “You’ll never get away with this, you sour-faced sassinack!”
“I will kill him!” Sakharine threatened.
Tintin held on to the falcon. He had a plan, but he wasn’t sure it would work. One thing he did know was that Sakharine’s goons were going to drop Captain Haddock no matter what Tintin did. That was the problem with being a villain, he thought. Nobody believed you when you said you would make a fair trade.
“Let the bird go now or this man dies!” Sakharine threatened.
“No, wait!” Tintin said. He was so close. So close . . . the crucial clue was literally in his hands!
Dangling from the balcony, Captain Haddock raged on. “You two-timing troglodyte! You simpering son of a profiteer!”
I just need one more moment, Tintin thought . . . but he wasn’t going to get it. “Here’s mud in your eye!” Sakharine gloated. Tom and Allan let go of Captain Haddock, who plunged downward toward the muddy water.
“Fathead!” Captain Haddock roared, and disappeared into the harbor. Snowy splashed in a split second later.
With a cry of frustration, Tintin let the falcon go and dove in after them.
When the flood had calmed, the entire town of Bagghar was celebrating. Its canals were full of sparkling fresh water. The river flowed down its natural course, winding its way from the blown spillway to the sea. Sheik Ben Salaad’s palace was partially in ruins, some of its walls undercut by the initial flood. The people of Bagghar were jubilant. They had water! They had fresh water for the first time since . . . how long had it been?
The Adventures of Tintin Page 12