Five

Whistling softly to himself, Tom trotted down the stairs to the belly of the Karaboudjan. In one hand he held a length of coiled rope. In the other he held a large piece of heavy lead, already tied to the end of the rope. He'd seen people drown before and knew it wasn't a pleasant death. The poor sod: Tintin would have no chance with his hands tied behind his back. What he would have, though, was time. Time to reflect, as his body started to trash in desperate need of air, on his busy-body ways and the value of keeping one's nose out of other people's business.

He reached the room where Tintin was being held captive. He dropped the rope and weight heavily, so that it clanged loudly as it landed. He opened the door and invited himself in cheerfully. It took a few extra seconds for his brain to catch up with his eyes, and to figure out what he was seeing. His voice trailed away.

Pedro was tied up in place of Tintin, a gag tied over his mouth. Confused, Tom looked around the small room. He even checked behind the door before he checked behind the few small crates that were stored here. At last he went to Pedro and yanked the gag from his mouth. "What the hell!" he cried.

"It wasn't my fault!" Pedro exclaimed. "That little bastard! He said he couldn't eat with his hands tied behind his back, and when I went to untie them he bloody hit me! I think the little runt bit me on the ankle too! It's friggin' killing me!"

"Jesus, Pedro, that's nothing compared to what the Mate'll do to you!"

x

At first, Tom had been surprised. Allan had listened to Pedro patiently, nodding along thoughtfully and even asking a few questions as Pedro explained what had happened. "Well," the First Mate said at last, "it's clear what happened here."

"What's that, Mate?" Tom asked cautiously.

Allan punched Pedro square on the nose. "This man's a God-damned half wit! Probably a wimp too. How hard can a kid hit? Goddamn it, Pedro" – he kicked Pedro's leg viciously as the other man lay on the ground, whimpering – "you freaking wussy!" He turned to Tom. "We have to find him. Now."

"Hey Pedro, where's your gun?" Tom asked suddenly. "You had one, didn't you?"

Pedro looked even more shame-faced.

"Un-frickin'-believable!" Allan snapped.

x

With a groan, Tintin heaved the last crate on to the top of the pile. He was now, hopefully, barricaded in. He hadn't even bothered trying to get to the deck: the ship was teaming with crewmen now and there was no telling how far away from the shore they were. He was a strong swimmer but Snowy was so small he couldn't really risk it. Instead, he'd checked out a few of the cargo rooms. There'd been no way to tell what was being shipped, but when he'd found a room where most of the boxes were marked 'perishable' and 'fragile', he figured there was a good chance that the perishables might be food.

He'd decided to stay put, barricading the door to keep them out. There were no locks on the inside, so he'd used some of the crates instead, stacking them across the doorway so that the door would be too heavy to push open. He still had no idea what was inside the crates, but he'd heard the unmistakable sound of glass clashing together when he was moving some of the crates. He hoped they contained bottles of water.

He stood back and looked proudly at the barricade. "That's a good pile!" he said happily. "Now, let's see what's on the menu. I'm starving."

There was an old, rusted crowbar propped up against the corner. He grabbed it and started levering the lid off one of the crates, picked at random from those that remained.

Please be water, please be water, please be water, he thought to himself.

Chicken chicken chicken chicken walk play chicken play chicken walk, Snowy thought as he watched Tintin. He wasn't particularly curious about the contents of the crate, but chicken, walking, and playing were never far from his thoughts anyway.

The top of the crate popped off and Tintin peered in curiously. More tins of crab, each baring the same red and yellow label as the one he had found discarded on the street in Nieuwpoort. "Well, that's our food sorted," Tintin murmured. He set to work on a second crate, one of the ones that had sounded like it contained glass, and soon had that lid off too. "Champagne!" he cried. "Snowy, m'boy, we dine in style!"

Chicken? Snowy thought to himself when he saw how pleased Tintin looked. He boosted himself up and looked in to the crate. No chicken. Boo! Bubbly-fizzy-thing? Yay!

"I think I deserve a drink." Tintin sat on top of another crate and busied himself with opening a bottle of champagne. He paused, cocking his head, at a noise on the other side of the door. He shushed Snowy and waited, listening as the remote noise turned into the sound of footsteps.

He knew that they would have noticed his disappearance by now. They were probably searching for him, but with luck they would simply think that had headed for the deck, little suspecting that he'd simply moved a few rooms down…

The footsteps were right outside his door. He held his breath… And the cork exploded from the champagne bottle.

He jumped at the sudden Bang!, holding the bottle away as the contents fizzed up and over. The cork flew out and hit Snowy on the head, eliciting a frightened yelp.

Swearing silently to himself, Tintin quickly rushed to his pile of crates, ready to back them up if the men tried force their way in, but it was unnecessary: the First Mate called them off.

"Ass!" Allan snapped loudly and angrily as Pedro struggled with the door in an attempt to make up for his previous incompetence. "It's obvious: he's barricaded himself in. Screw it: we'll starve him out. He's got nothing to eat in there."

"Pfft, that's where you're wrong, pal!" Tintin muttered. He backed away and, using his Swiss Army knife, he managed to lever the lid off one of the crabs of tin. "Oh," he said flatly as he looked inside. "Well, that's heroin. Damn. So they're drug smugglers. And he's right: I have no food."

He gazed around as his brain went to work furiously. Snowy, on the other hand, had drunk all of the spilt champagne and was attempting to walk in a straight line.

I have wood. I have Styrofoam chips. I have a bit of rope, Tintin thought. Now, how the heck can I MacGyver my way out of this one?

x

Allan left Pedro and Tom down bellow, keeping an eye on Tintin's hiding place. Allan himself, on the other hand, still had a ship to run and it wasn't likely that the reporter could manage to slip passed two grown men. At least, he hoped so, but he just had too much to do than to baby-sit a locked room.

He was at the wheel, checking over the day's shipping routes, when Jumbo interrupted him.

"Captain wants to see you, Mate," Jumbo said.

"That old soak?" Allan rolled his eyes, frustrated at being interrupted. "What the hell does he want?"

"No idea, but he's making a bit of a row. You know what he's like."

"Of course I do," Allan muttered as he pushed by the other man. I did my damnedest to make him this way!

x

Captain Archibald Haddock was floating on a sea of despair. Sailing in a ship of sorrows. Blown forth by the winds of cruelty. Tethered to the shores of regret… Sailing on waves of corruption! Fed on by the fish of –

"Captain!" Allan tried again, snapping his fingers in front of the man's bulbous, red nose. "Captain? You wanted to see me?"

Haddock looked up, disturbed from his poetic reverie, and saw two Allans standing before him. He closed one eye and looked at the Allan that remained. "You! You're… Ah! You're here!" he said. His head swayed from side to side slightly. "I… It… It's intolerable, Mate!"

"Is it?" Allan sat down and waited for Haddock to continue. It was actually quite comical, watching this wreck of a man attempt to communicate.

"I… Yes! Yes, e-e-exactly right! It… It's wicked, Mate! I'm… It's wicked!"

"Really?"

"Yes! I'm… I'm left to… to die here! Of thirst!" He upturned the whisky bottle and almost dropped it. "It's dislipi…. Desplici…. Delici… It's wicked!"

"Well, that's not on, is it?" Allan said kindly. "I'll have a new bottle sent up at once, Captain."

"Ooh! My friend! My only friend! You're my besht mate, Mate."

Oh Christ, he's getting sentimental again… "Of course," Allan said soothingly. "You know I wouldn't keep you from your whisky." He got out of there quickly: the Captain was a maudlin drunk.

Outside, he called Jumbo back. "What have I told you?" he hissed. "Keep him drunk!"

"But he'll kill himself, Mate!" Jumbo protested. "Have you seen the amount of whisky that man goes through?"

"So? Do you want him to sober up and figure out what's going on? As long as he's drunk, I'm boss and we get to keep doing what we're doing."

"But what if he does die?" Jumbo pointed out, not unreasonably.

"So we dump his ass overboard and pretend he's still alive! He has no family – his brother hasn't spoken to him since they were kids, for Christ's sake! Who the hell will come looking for him?" Allan closed his coat over his throat and scowled at the smaller Asian man. "Bring him some whisky right now. And keep it flowing: as long as he's like that, we run the ship and the money keeps rolling in. Got it? Good." He turned on his heel and stalked away, back to the bridge of the Karaboudjan.

In the belly of the ship, Tintin went to work.

Author's note: The word the Captain is reaching for is 'despicable'.