Hidden Treasure

And Tintin (and Snowy)

The Secret of the Unicorn by Hergé

As usual, of course, Tintin was minding his business. Wandering around the Old Street market, thinking about what gifts he might want to buy his friends. It was just an ordinary day.

Though Tintin is, as we know, a fearless reporter, often at the scene of action, more often than not, the story finds him. Follows him home — sometimes, as in this book, literally.

But for the moment, Tintin is just shopping, browsing idly through the matter for sale. He sees a full-rigged miniature ship for purchase. It’s detailed and pretty, and so he considers buying it for his maritime friend, Captain Haddock. In fact, Tintin does buy it, but the mere moment he does, he is accosted by first one man and then another.

We are eccentric collectors, they more or less tell him. A collector buys but never sells. We have other ships of this kind but what we most want is yours. The one in your hands. Name your price; we’ll gladly each pay whatever sum you name. But Tintin, being high-minded and certain that this gift would be just the ticket, tells them no. I don’t want your money. I want this ship to give to my friend. And he wanders off, his metaphorical nose metaphorically in the air. His dog Snowy wanders off with him. Snowy’s nose is not, in this book, drawn as being pointed in the air. (Although, not much later, he gets the opportunity to be extraordinarily brave.)

Tintin and Snowy walk on. They bump then into the Thompsons, two inept, bowler-wearing detectives who say they are pursuing a new and persistent threat. There has been a spate of thefts from the person — there’s a pick-pocket about. Bad omens. And the two of them have been tasked with doing something to halt it. The two detectives are just about to pay for a great job-lot of canes (they each affect to carry a cane) when they realise it: first one and then the other. They’ve had their pockets picked and their wallets lifted. They’re sheepish.

I suppose, they imply, Tintin will have to pay for their purchases. Which of course, he happily does, before setting off to his own home with his prized ship under his arm.

Tintin gets home himself.

The doorbell rings. Door opens. Tintin is accosted yet again by one of the collectors.

I know you will sell to me, he says and, as Tintin slams the metaphorical door in his face, he hands over his card. Call this number when you change your mind.

As you surely will.

Now Tintin arranges a meeting with his friend the captain. But before he can do so, Snowy clumsily upsets the apple-cart. He knocks the model ship off the table where it was happily and contentedly resting, and when it falls it snaps a mast. The whole thing’s a disaster. Tintin has to rush to fix it as best he can before he’s summoned to the door.

As he soon is. The captain arrives and Tintin shows him the model ship. But the captain has some news of his own upon seeing it. They race to the captain’s own home. There, he shows Tintin a gigantic portrait of a Restoration-era sailor.

He was my ancestor, the captain says — and indeed, they do appear to look remarkably alike.

And behind him in the picture is a ship very like the one Tintin bought in the marketplace. Is it not similar? The two of them puzzle it out. On the picture in the captain’s home, they spot the minute lettering on the ship’s back: the vessel is called the Unicorn. It’s possible, just possible, that the model ship will have the same name on it. Tintin rushes home to examine his prize, only to find that it’s not there. It’s been stolen. He knows, or thinks he knows, who could have done it.

But when Tintin arrives to see the collector who gave him his card, he finds that though the man does have a ship very like the one Tintin bought, it does not have the telltale break in the mast that Snowy caused. Tintin leaves more irresolute, more confused, than ever.

And he is yet more troubled when he arrives to find his flat burgled, his possessions thrown and strewn widely and wildly. Clearly he is in the middle of something, something terrible and important. And he does not yet know what it is.

This Tintin adventure is not like the others. It has a passage at its core that breaks the format a little. When Tintin finally, after some more adventures, returns to see the captain, he has to force entry into the captain’s flat.

But the captain’s not been kidnapped.

Instead Haddock has, he says, been up all night reading a memoir of his sailor ancestor’s life. A tale of swashbuckling, of pirates, of fighting, of plunder and walking the plank and of Davy Jones’s locker. A story of needing constantly to be refreshed by that harsh but warm restorative, rum. A story so exciting, so infectuous, that Haddock himself — by now wearing his esteemed ancestor’s hat and holding his sword — runs about the place, slashing at phantom enemies, imaginary pirates and foes of all kinds.

A story of hidden treasure, of murder, of woe.