The Adventures of Tintin Read Free Book Online Page B

is, what has he done with it?”
    “We searched him all over, boss,” Tom said.
    “I want you to go back down there and make him talk,” Sakharine said, emphasizing the last three words by poking his cane into Tom’s chest. “Do what it takes. Break every bone in his body if you have to.”
    Tom looked upset. “That’s nasty,” he said.
    Sakharine rolled his eyes. It was hard to find good goons these days. “You know the stakes,” he said. “You know what we’re playing for. Just do it!”
    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