Aboard a Doomed Slave Ship
A journey into peril
The Red Sea Sharks by Hergé
Tintin and Captain Haddock, his friend, are not doing much. They’re hanging around Marlinspike Hall, the captain’s country pad, and going into town on occasion. In town, they’ve just seen a film and the captain is not a fan. He thinks it’s contrived, foolish — all of that just happening out of nowhere. Real life is not like that. It’s not like that at all.
Meanwhile, Tintin is thinking about General Alcazar, an old acquaintance of theirs. Once, Alvazar was a South American potentate, alternately in charge and deposed in the constant musical chairs of coups and military dictators over there. And then, having been replaced by General Tapioca, Alcazar had left his homeland and made a go of it on the stage — in the music halls and the variety shows, performing as a knife-thrower. That’s where Tintin and Haddock had seen him last.
And then, quite by accident, they bump into him — literally bump into Alcazar — in the street. He’s shifty and evasive. Tintin wants to see his old friend but he’s brushed off.
Yes, Alcazar almost says. Don’t call me: I’ll call you.
When Tintin asks the general where he is staying, he’s given an incorrect hotel. But Alcazar seems to have dropped his wallet, so Tintin and the captain are on his trail regardless.
At about the same time, the two identical detectives, the Thompsons, try to find Tintin. They, quite by coincidence of course, want to ask him about Alcazar. They’re adamant. Alcazar may well be trying to buy or sell some old aeroplanes, but they’ll never give that away to Tintin.
You’ll never here it from us! one of them says, to Tintin.
To by precise, we’re dumb on the subject, the other adds.
Indeed.
And Tintin calls the number on a letter in the general’s wallet. The voice at the end of the phone blanks him, acts as though this has been a wrong number and quite the opposite of what it seems.
It’s all very suspicious.
So Tintin has a mission: something to investigate. He spies out the weapons trafficking operation and discovers a man called Dawson. But does Tintin have a motive to go further? The captain says that all of this is very well and good. But there’s no reason to leave the comfort and certainty of the country house. Not going adventuring for any reason.
And then, reader, we are re-introduced to little Abdullah. This boy is the son, the apple of the eye, the little lambkin, of the emir of a country to which Tintin and Haddock have paid visits.
He’s a rotter, Abdullah, a bad egg. What his father thinks are harmless stunts are in fact some of the most destructive pranks possible. Putting bombs inside furniture and tobacco pipes, for instance. Spraying people with water. Getting innocent parties out of the bath to answer the door or the phone on false pretences. Really evil stuff.
Abdullah has been sent to Marlinspike, a servant of Abdullah’s tells the captain, because his father the emir has a desperate struggle to wage at home. A civil war’s brewing, and Abdullah’s been sent away for his own good and own protection. And for Abdullah’s comfort and his safety, a big group of the emir’s men have, quite naturally, been assembled and sent off with him. An entourage. Don’t mind them. They’ll just be camping in their tent in your living room.
How soon can we leave? the captain asks Tintin, and they are off to the emirate immediately, on the hunt of goodness knows what except danger.
Tintin and the captain (and Snowy, Tintin’s dog) are soon embroiled in the civil war. They’re detained and forcibly deported, despite their documents being in order. Someone tries to bomb their plane as they’re sent back by air to Beirut. Out of options, they trek across the desert, strafed from the sky like Cary Grant in North by Northwest. When eventually, the two of them (and Snowy) find the emir in his desert camp (it resembles parts of Petra), he’s been deposed and is in distant hiding.
The emir tells them that there is something worse even than losing a civil war: a slave trade, organised by a man Tintin already knows, who has adopted the persona of an Italian aristocrat. Pilgrims from Africa travel, they think, to Mecca, but are intercepted and sold into bondage. Tintin and the captain — although the latter does not believe there is a modern slave trade in this day and age — set out to Mecca to stop it — going via dhow or some other local Red Sea craft.
But while travelling, they’re set upon by fighter aircraft. Mosquitoes. All very soon seems lost. But Tintin, acting with decisiveness, shoots down one of the aeroplanes and together, Tintin and the captain fish a mercenary airman out of the sea. A humanitarian gesture, perhaps a futile one. But now they’re alone, in the middle of nowhere, waiting to drown or to die of thirst or to be eaten by sharks.
Only for a ship to happen upon them: a luxury yacht — a ship owned, as it happens, by the alleged Italian aristo. He has them hauled aboard, as his guests have spotted the men in the water and won’t take no for an answer when the question is rescuing castaways, yea or nay.
But when the villain hears that Tintin has realised who he is, he orders that they be transferred to another ship.
A ship with a dreadful human cargo.
And then, when Tintin and the captain and the downed airman (and Snowy) are all in this terrible situation — prisoners of a floating jail heading off to the slave-markets — things really start to get interesting.