This chapter contains a couple of cases of mild-ish swearing. Although if you almost got run over by a ship you'd probably swear too.

Eight

When the coast disappeared, Tintin found himself with nothing to do. Everyone was busy or elsewhere, leaving him with the run of the deck. He wandered about, snapping photos of the crew at work and the yellow seaplane resting on its struts on the foredeck. Eventually, he found himself on the prow, leaning on the rail and watching the ocean ahead.

It was a beautiful day: the sky was a clear blue with no cloud in sight, unusual for the time of the year, and the sea was a rich green-blue topped with foaming white waves that crashed against the hull of the Aurora. "Well, Snowy," he said to the dog that sat at his feet, "we're on our way." There was something invigorating about it: the fresh, chill air blowing away the cobwebs and waking him up. His mind felt better simply by travelling. It was a state of mind for him: to travel was to live, and living was all part of life. Why would he waste his life on the off-chance of a better afterlife? This one was pretty damn good in his view.

Leaning forward against the rail, his mind struck on a particular image: Jack and Rose on the prow of the Titanic. He looked about, making sure nobody was around, and raised his arms as though he was flying while taking deep breaths of the cool, bracing sea air. It felt great: he felt great.

Until the wave hit.

He was in the middle of taking a huge, deep breath, really waking his lungs up with fresh air, and ended up almost choking on a fishy deluge of salty water. The wave disappeared as quickly as it had come and he staggered away, soaking wet. Overhead, the PA system pinged into life, and the Captain's voice filled his ears.

"Smooth move," the Captain said.

Tintin looked around and finally spotted the Captain up in the bridge, shaking his head while behind him his first mate and navigator pointed and laughed. Tintin didn't care: he still felt great, even if he was soaking wet. He waved and shrugged before heading up to the bridge to join the Captain. He knocked politely before the door opened and the Captain showed him in.

"Take the wheel," the Captain said to his First Mate as he ushered Tintin into the room. "I'm having a smoke." He stretched and yawned and sat on the desk. "I'm fit for the knackers'," he said.

"Beg pardon?" Tintin asked as he sat beside the man.

"I'm tired," the Captain translated. "Don't mind me. Where's that dog of yours?"

Tintin looked around, but Snowy was nowhere to be seen. "Probably out on deck." He made to get up and find him, but the Captain waved him back.

"He'll be fine: there's not much trouble he can do on this ship, believe me. Everything's nailed down. Most he can do is piss on it, and the crew'll be doing that before this trip is over." He carefully tamped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and lit up, taking a long drag. "I'm starving," he added as an afterthought. "You hungry?"

Tintin shrugged. "A little."

"I'm always hungrier when I'm up early. There's probably a scientific reason for that, but I'm buggered if I know it."

"Did you have breakfast?"

"I did. I had a dirty big fry-up. It was tasty. I could still eat a horse though. What time is it?"

Tintin checked his watch. "Just coming up to 1pm."

"Good. Go and get changed: it's almost time for lunch, and I'm not eating with them scientists on my own," the Captain warned.

x

By the time Tintin had showered and changed and made his way to the mess, everyone for the first service was already seated. The only chair left was one to the right of the Captain, who was at the head of the table and back to being impeccably dressed. As soon as Tintin was seated the stewards began to serve the meal.

The Captain stared at his plate for a few moments, his mind wondering. Eventually, he called the head steward over and held out the menu, which was printed on card and laminated, and left in a holder on the table. "Bangers and mash," he said.

The steward blinked. "I beg your pardon, Captain?"

"See? Menu: bangers and mash. Yes? Yes. I don't know about where you're from, but where I'm from, bangers and mash usually involves sausages. Look at what you've served: see the mountain of potato? Don't get me wrong, lad, the mash looks good. Very creamy. But d'you mind if I ask where the flaming sausages are?"

Tintin felt a familiar, guilty prickle on the back of his neck. It was a sensation he associated with a state of being called; 'Oh God, What Has My Dog Done Now?'

"Er," said the steward.

The Captain caught sight of Tintin's face. "Will I go and find Snowy?" Tintin asked guiltily. The Captain rolled his eyes.

"Leave him: he stole those sausages fair and square. Little git. Never mind: bring on the ketchup and let's have us a party."

The wine was served, and they fell to eating their mashed potatoes. True to his word, the Captain smothered his in ketchup and kept up a running commentary to Tintin, cracking silly jokes and making outlandish claims. One by one, a definite change came over the rest of the party as the Aurora rolled and tossed on the waves. "The weather's picking up," Tintin said as the ship hit a particularly strong wave and the bottle of wine fell off the table.

"Is it?" the Captain asked, genuinely surprised.

"Isn't it?" Tintin asked.

"I don't think so. I haven't noticed anything, anyway."

Dr Schulze cracked first. He stood up and hurried away, his napkin pressed to his mouth and his eyes watering. The Captain half-heartedly stood up politely as the doctor left, and shrugged at Tintin. "What's up with him?" he whispered.

Phostle was next to go. He murmured something and almost ran to the door. As it slammed closed behind him, they heard the distinctive sound of someone throwing up.

"Aaaah!" the Captain said knowingly. "Well, hopefully he made it to the rail. It's no fun, slipping in sick. Oh, you too, Professor Cantonneau? Ah, and Dr Santos. Fair enough."

They watched as, one by one, the scientists fled the mess, each of them looking green about the gills. "Never mind," the Captain said to Tintin as they tucked into their dessert. "They'll soon find their sea legs."

x

As the day wore on and the ship got further from land, the water became wilder and the waves higher. Tintin lay on his bed, his hands clasped behind his head. Snowy was curled up beside him. Every so often a huge wave would hit the ship and it would toss, and Tintin would have to reach out and put a steadying hand on the dog: he'd already fallen out of the bunk once. While Tintin had found it funny, Snowy had been less impressed.

Tintin's mind was working furiously. For one, with the storm picking up outside he didn't know if he'd even survive the night. That was preferable, considering the alternative.

The Thompsons were great. Well, not great, per say, but tolerable. At first they'd been heavy handed, but as soon as he'd figured out how to deal with them they'd been useful. They had helped him; they'd been good friends. Their police style wasn't so much interstellar as plodding. They were slow and steady and always won the race with their dogged determination to get to the finish line first. He enjoyed working with them, but once they got a hint of a crime they would needle and pick at it until the whole thing unravelled (or someone admitted something in frustration: their questioning technique was very simple. It started with a repetitive "Did you do it?" that continued for several hours, and every so often they would be clever and slip in a different question, like; "You did it, didn't you?", hoping to catch the suspect out).

On their own, he could deal with them. It was simply a case of distracting them with another crime, and the Lord knew he had leads he could throw their way, just to give them something to do. It was the people who had been at the docks with them that were giving Tintin pause. He hadn't recognised the young woman who was with them – she was an unknown quantity – but the sombrely dressed man with the long face had once been Tintin's case worker, and it was he who had placed Tintin in the group home run by the priest in the cassock, Father Piatus.

Now, given time to think about it, it had been a bad idea to get on the Aurora. He should have slipped away and gone somewhere else for a while. He'd found that people weren't that willing to follow him in to war-torn countries or dangerous places. And while everyone was focused on the Aurora, he could have slipped off to somewhere like Borduria, where it was still very unstable. By the time they'd realised he wasn't on the Aurora, he would be somewhere else, doing something else.

Well, he decided, he was here now. It wasn't as though he could just… get off and go home. He was in it for the long haul – although the ship sinking seemed like a nicer alternative to going back to the group home – and he would just have to think of a way to deal with it when the time came.

He stared at the ceiling, still no closer to getting to sleep than he was an hour ago. The ship tumbled as a wave hit her and his stomach churned slightly. Snowy put his head up and whimpered.

"I can't sleep," Tintin said aloud.

Snowy stood up, tail wagging, and climbed onto the boy's chest. Tintin groaned and tried to push him off, which Snowy took as an invitation to play. There was nothing else for it: he might as well go and join the Captain on the bridge.

He got up and dressed again, pulling on his rain slicker and a waterproof hat. He staggered up the corridor to the deck, losing his footing a few times as the ship rocked and rolled in the wind, slamming into a wall at one point, and then again a few minutes later. As he passed another cabin, he heard the noise of someone throwing up: the scientists still hadn't found their sea legs. He went up the stairs to the deck, and once there he found the wood underneath his feet slick with water and slippery. He skidded along, holding tight to anything he could find to stop himself from falling. He turned the corner and the wind hit him, driving rain into his face so hard he thought it was hailstones for a second. He gritted his teeth and bent forward against the wind, forcing himself on.

He was unprepared when the wave hit. It was the biggest so far, he thought as it drove him from his feet. He went down under its strength, dragged along the deck until his back hit something hard. Instinctively, and ignoring the pain in his back, he reached out and grabbed a hold of the metal piping he had just struck and struggled back to his feet. Where he was walking, which had the main buildings of the ship on his right and the open water of the ocean on left, was under almost three feet of water. It came up to his waist and was slow to drain through the drain holes in the rail.

Dazed, he looked around. For a moment, he had thought he would be swept overboard, never to be seen again – wouldn't that be the answer to my problems? he thought wryly – and he didn't think that it was idle panic: the weather was rough. This was a full-on gale. He just hoped that the ship would be able to withstand the battering it was getting.

Where the hell was Snowy?

Frantic, Tintin turned around and around again, searching for any sign of the dog. The only thing he could see, however; the main thing jumping out at him beside the water and the rain and the dark and the huge expanse of open sea, were the holes in the guard rails.

Holes perfectly suited to a dog Snowy's size.

The water continued to drain, and there, breaching the white-tipped run off, was a white-tipped tail. With a shout of alarm, Tintin lunged and grabbed a hold of Snowy's tail just as the dog disappeared through the drains. As soon as he had the dog in his arms again, he clung to the piping and waited until his legs had finished shaking. He felt sick: not because of the listing of the ship, but because of how close he had come to losing his dog. Snowy wasn't just a dog though – no 'pet' was just a dog. Snowy was his baby; his Big Man; his shnukkums; his Snowballs; his foil and his partner in crime.

It was safer to carry him to the bridge. There wasn't going to be any more near misses. Not if Tintin had his way.

x

He had made it. He could see the lights of the bridge at the top of the metal stairs. He struggled up and hung gratefully to the top rail, Snowy still balanced in his arms. The Captain, still at the wheel, looked over his shoulder and grinned.

"Oh, it's you. Nice little breeze, isn't it?"

"Breeze?" Tintin asked weakly.

"Yeah. Grand night. Very bracing." The Captain turned back and studied the horizon ahead of the ship.

"This isn't a gale?" Tintin asked.

"Hah! Not a chance! It's a bit draughty, I'll give you that, but that's all it is."

"So we're not in danger? The ship isn't going to sink?"

"If you start in about them icebergs again, I'll pitch you overboard myself!"

"No, I mean, this isn't a gale?"

The Captain stared at him. "No," he said slowly, as though addressing a mildly-retarded child. "This is perfectly normal."

"Oh." Tintin felt foolish. He thought it was the End of Days. Mind you, it almost had been for Snowy. He put the dog down, now that they were too high for the waves to wash them away.

"We just have to be a bit careful, that's all," the Captain continued in his normal, coarser tone of voice. "That's why I'm here."

"I thought you were always supposed to be here."

"Naaaah! Not a chance! We're captains, but we ain't that diligent. No." He shook his head and gestured to the water ahead of them. "I'll take us through the channel and the ice fields, and my First Mate and navigator will mainly do the nights."

"What channel are we in?" Tintin asked, interested. He lunged forward and grabbed the rail beside the wheel, leaving the relative calm of the covered, back part of the wheel-house to go back into the rain on the bridge.

"The North Channel," the Captain answered. "It's not a bad one, but it's the main shipping lane and it gets a bit busy, and visibility is almost down to zero."

"What are our chances of hitting another ship."

"Bugger all chance: our navy lights are on – that's navigation lights, landlubber – just like every other ship in the North Channel. Them's the rules, and we stick to it."

"There's no icebergs here, are there?"

"Will you stop about them flaming icebergs! If you mention them one more time, I'll" –

"Captain, watch out!"

"Thundering, shitting, typhoons!"

To their horror, the sharp, black prow of another ship cut through the waves to their left, heading straight for their port side. It loomed, growing dangerously closer with each second Tintin stood frozen. Beside him, after the initial shock, Captain Haddock swung into action, twisting the wheel hard to starboard and forcing the order through to engineering to speed up. The Aurora put on a sudden burst and listed heavily to the right as she turned away from the wind and cut to the starboard tack. The huge, black prow slunk past so close that Tintin felt that he could reach out and touch it. He closed his eyes and felt his breath catch as he waited to hear the horrible, metallic grinding of the Aurora crumpling under the rogue vessel, but all he could hear was the Captain swearing.

"You bunch of bastards! Sea-lice! Ship wreakers! Pirates! Filibusters! Road hog! Hoodlums! Freshwater swabs!"

Tintin opened his eyes and breathed again. The Captain was over at the rail, leaning over regardless of the wind, and shouting at the ship as it disappeared back into the night. "If I find out who you are, I'll hunt you down and get you! I'll get you for this! Keep your bloody eyes open! Blistering barnacles!" He shook his head as the ship was swallowed up by the darkness and took his place at the wheel again. "What a stupid thing to do," he said, still fuming. "Flaming lunatic! A little bit closer and he'd have cut us in two. He must be crazy, sailing like that. No lights or anything. Madness! He couldn't have judged it better if he'd been trying to sink us."

"What's to say he wasn't?" Tintin asked.

The Captain eyed him cynically. "What are you talking about?"

"Think about it. Someone's already tried to sabotage the Aurora," Tintin continued.

"The dynamite."

"Exactly. That 'accident' we avoided looks remarkably like another attempt. Like you just said: he couldn't have judged that better."

"Thundering typhoons, you're right," the Captain said. He looked shocked. "Who on earth would do that?"

Tintin shrugged. "Who else but the Peary? The other expedition? Or rather, the people financing it."

x

In Sao Rico, Marcus Hearst-Faber sat very still behind his desk. His hand hovered over the ashtray, the long columns of ash on his cigar falling with a soft poof! every so often. Johnston sat in front of him, and together they waited in silence. After another half an hour a white machine in the corner whirred loudly, breaking the silence, and spat out a piece of paper. As soon as the machine had started to make noise Johnston had got up, and he handed the paper to Hearst-Faber straight away.

Hearst-Faber read the paper, screwed it up and threw it on the ground. Johnston stayed quiet, rightly judging his boss to be furious. Hearst-Faber stood up, his office chair thrust back with enough force to make the castors hit the skirting on the wall behind him, gouging a small groove out of the wood. "I'll be at the Chez Amis," he growled. "Nobody disturb me." He strode from the room and slammed the door angrily behind him.

Johnston stood for a few minutes, waiting until he was sure Hearst-Faber was gone. Then he sighed softly and picked the wad of paper up and un-crumpled it. It was, he saw, a missive from another of the Hearst-Faber ships – the S.S. Kentucky Star.

"Obeyed orders received," he read. "Attempted to sink Aurora. Operation miscarried. Aurora well and continues on her way. Awaiting further instructions."

He sighed again and shook his head. Some men just wanted to watch the world burn, and would do anything to see it happen. It was time, he thought, to set his retirement plans in motion.