The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure (1945)

A man named Bill walks into a bar, The Anchor, and tells a friend named George that he's sailing aboard the SIRIUS in a few days with Tintin and Captain Haddock. George is familiar with them because they cracked the Bird brothers case, and Bill tells him he's going treasure-hunting with them. They are overheard by a Daily Reporter, who publishes the story in the news the next day (Haddock bumps into a pole while reading the paper, alarmed that an ad on the pole descripes the Daily Reporter as "news which hits you").

A man claiming to go by the name "Red Rackham" drops by Tintin's place and claims he's entitled to half a share; others claiming to go by that name drop by as well (one carrying a "family tree" with him). Haddock scares them off when he reveals himself as Sir Francis' descendant. By the time Thomson and Thompson have dropped by, another man -- Cuthbert Calculus -- has dropped by. He is hard of hearing, and when Haddock demands that he give "YOUR NAME!", Calculus replies, "Gone away?... What a pity! Never mind. I'll come again. I particularly wanted to speak to Mr. Tintin himself..."

Calculus tells Tintin (with some difficulty) that he's invented an underwater sub that could help Tintin avoid sharks during his journey. Much to his annoyance, he practically invites himself along for the ride (assuming Tintin has invited him, even though Tintin has tried to yell to him that he doesn't need him).  After a bit of slapstick at Calculus' place, and accidentally breaking his own sub machine in half, Tintin and Haddock leave, with Calculus assuming (wrongly) that they want him to build a two-seater sub for them.

Some days later, Tintin and Haddock buy a diving suit from a merchant who warns them, "Beware, young fellow, beware! Money is the root of all evil!" and "I see that you intend to go treasure hunting... I read it in your face." Haddock accidentally breaks a mirror in the shop, which makes him paranoid the next day about the voyage. Thomson & Thompson come to inform them that Max Bird has escaped. Haddock receives a latter from his doctor stating that he has a bad liver condition and should avoid alcohol. Just then, Calculus appears and says his ship is ready, but Haddock draws a message on a wall for him: WE ARE NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR MACHINE! Haddock is still resistant about going on the voyage before the Thomsons suggest he is afraid, and he explodes, declaring they'll lay anchors tomorrow.

When they set out the next day, the Thomsons catch up with Tintin/Haddock on motorboat insisting they come with them to make sure Max Bird isn't stalking them during the voyage. "Now that we are aboard you will be able to feel that you are perfectly safe," says Thomson. "To be precise," adds Thompson, "perfectly safe."

There is trouble onboard when Bill accuses Snowy of stealing biscuits and chicken. Meanwhile, Haddock thinks there's a bomb onboard in some crates, when actually it's just steel plates. Haddock also suspects Snowy of stealing whiskey, and although they find Snowy clearly drunk, it's only because Snowy has been licking smashed whiskey from the deck. Up top, they find Calculus sleeping in a lifeboat with a box of biscuits. It turns out Calculus removed the bottles of whiskey from the crates and replaced it with the parts of his sub machine. 

No islands are sighted. The Thomsons insist the Captain may have made a mistake on his calculations, and point to where they think he is on the map. Haddock takes off his hat and "prays", then explains, "I mean, gentlemen, that according to your calculations we are now standing inside Westminster Abbey!" Tintin and Haddock privately try to figure out what they're doing wrong with the calculations, and Tintin realizes that Sir Francis probably used a French chart -- which may mean that they're too far west. 

They finally find an island, but they wait until morning to explore. In the morning, they find the remains of Sir Franc's old jollyboat, which may mean that they're near their goal. In the jungle, Snowy finds a bone and leads them to the remains of jungle natives beside an "idol" of Sir Francis. When Tintin impersonates how Sir Francis might have talked to the natives long ago ("Ration my rum!"), he is replied to by some parrots saying the same thing on the trees above. They also have trouble with some monkeys that temporarily steal Haddock's gun. They decide to take the Francis idol back to the ship.

On the way back, a shark attacks their boat, and others follow suit. Haddock shoots at them, but Calculus appears in his shark-proof sub and scares the sharks off. This persuades Tintin to try operating the sub himself; Calculus tells him a red button can be used to release smoke in the water when he's found the treasure. Tintin descends the sub with Snowy, only for the sub's propeller to get caught in some seaweed. Believing he's found treasure, Haddock and Calculus now out, but are bemused when Tintin fails to rise to the surface. Haddock decides to use the anchor to hook onto the sub and, after some struggling, frees the sub to the surface. Snowy thinks to himself, "Weeds or not, I don't set foot in that thing again!", to which Tintin replies, "Snowy and I are setting out again immediately!"

With his pendulum, Calculus tries to tell Haddock that the Unicorn wreck is not in the area they're searching. However, Tintin does manage to find the wreck, and dives down to it in his diving suit. The air temporarily stops working when the Thomsons stop pumping, which incites Haddock's wrath. When Calculus asks what's going on, Haddock snarks Tintin is "picking daisies down below", which Calculus reads as "having a row." So when Tintin emerges to the surface with a gold cross, encrusted with precious stones and a cutlass, Calculus is rather angry, believing Haddock lied to him.

When Haddock himself dives, he comes up with a bottle of rum, gets drunk, dives back down without his helmet and is prepared to rage at the Thomsons because they "forgot to pump again!" But of course, his suit is now full of water, which Tintin and the Thomsons demonstrate by tipping him over. Having a drink of rum that evening, Tintin expresses disappointment over having not found the treasure, but Haddock says, "Oh, we'll find that tomorrow, won't we Professor Calculus?" To which Calculus, still hard-of-hearing, replies, "Perhaps, but I'm inclined to think it is rum." They then realize the Thomsons are still pumping air outside, and order them off to bed.

The next morning, Tintin finds a casket and wonders if it's treasure when, suddenly, he is attacked by a shark that swallows it. Using a rum bottle as a weapon somehow makes the shark drunk, and Tintin uses the opportunity to tie the ship's rope to the shark and have it dragged up to the deck. When the shark is cut open,  they find the casket in its stomach, and Haddock tries to use a case opener to open it. Inside, all they find are old documents "half eaten away by damp!" More treasure-hunting down below proves useless.

Calculus spots a cross on the island, and they row back to dig under it, which confuses Calculus: what on Earth are they digging for? They find no treasure. Calculus says the pendulum points westwards, but Haddock, in a fury, grabs it and stomps on it (Snowy then treats the pendulum like a fetch ball and brings it back to Calculus). The Thomsons, curiously, stay behind to fill in the hole ("people never look where they're going..."). By the 15th, they are at least able to raise the Unicorn figurehead, which surprises Calculus -- whose pendulum, apparently, was wrong all along. By the time they return on the 22nd, a reporter, Ken Rogers of the Daily Reporter, is desperate for an interview, and Haddock turns his "secretary" Calculus over to him for any questions. The Thomsons, meanwhile, confident that Max Bird never appeared because they were onboard during the voyage, decide to "spend a few days in the country with a farmer friend of ours."

Some days later, Calculus pays a visit to Tintin with the documents from the casket, believing he's been able to figure them out. Indeed, the documents reveal that King Charles II bestowed Marlinspike Hall to Sir Francis. This delights Calculus, who says he has enough government money (for the patent on his sub) to buy the estate back. They buy it, and in the storeroom they find a statue of St. John the Evangelist ("the Eagle of Patmos"), which is equipped with a stone globe that -- when Tintin points to the island they journeyed to - pops out a lid to reveal Red Rackham's treasure. Hearing footsteps, they run and hide, only to realize it's just Caulcus following his pendulum. This allows Haddock to set up a Maritime Gallery, where relics of the Unicorn ship will be on display in Marlinspike Hall.

HADDOCK: Well, what do you say now, my friends? All's well that ends well, eh?

CALCULUS: Just as I always said: more to the west!

HADDOCK: Yes, yes. But I said: all's well that ends well. Don't you agree?

CALCULUS: Your maritime gallery? ... I think it is very successful!

HADDOCK: Thanks. But I was just saying that our adventures had a happy ending. They've ended, and happily!...

CALCULUS: No thank you. Never between meals.

HADDOCK: No, no! Blistering barnacles! All's well that ends well! ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL!

CALCULUS: Without any doubt!

CALCULUS: ...and this is just the moment to quote that old saying: All's well that ends well!

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (1946)

Pickpockets are about! Thomson and Thompson are keeping their eyes peeled for the "well-organized gang" believed to be stealing wallets in Old Street Market. There, they run into Tintin, and are about to buy some walking sticks before they realized both their wallets have been stolen. Tintin pays for the sticks himself. When Thomson and Thompson start harassing others in the crowd to see if they are thieves, they are arrested.

Tintin and Snowy come across a ship being sold. "I say, Snowy, isn't that a fine ship!" Tintin remarks. He wants to buy it for Captain Haddock (price is a quid), and is told "it's a very old... er... very old type of galliard." Tintin bids seventeen and six for it and it is sold to him, but then a bearded man comes on the scene and asks to buy it from Tintin, who refuses to sell it. Then a chubby mustached man tries to buy it from Tintin, and he, too, is rejected. Tintin leaves.

A few minutes later, the bearded man appears at Tintin's place again, still asking to buy the ship, claiming to be a collector of models. The man gives Tintin his card and leaves. Snowy accidentally knocks the ship over, and Tintin fixes it just in time for Haddock's arrival. Haddock is alarmed, asks where Tintin bought the ship, and rushes with Tintin back to his own flat, showing him a portrait of his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock... with a similar-looking ship in the background. In tiny letters it reads: UNICORN. This prompts Tintin to rush back to his place to take another look at the model... only to find it gone.

Looking at the card the bearded man gave him (IVAN IVANOVITCH SAKHARINE; Collector; 21, Eucalyptus Avenue), Tintin visits Sakharine's place, where the man claims he's been "expecting" Tintin. Tintin spots a similkar model on the man's table, but Sakharine claims this is a different model that he's had for 10 years. Tintin checks to see if it has a broken mast like his own model, and, lo and behold, it doesn't.

Leaving Sakharine's place, Tintin tries to phone Haddock (annoyed that a fat lady is in the booth already, but only so she and her dog "Fifi" can stay out of the rain for a quarter of an hour), but Haddock doesn't answer. Tintin returns to find his flat ransacked; did the other man from the market do this? "Burgled twice in one day... Not bad at all!" Tintin complains. Nothing, however, was actually stolen.

The next morning, Thomson and Thompson visit Tintin to pay him back for the sticks, only to realized they've been mugged again. Tintin knows it couldn't have been the burly man from the market because he couldn't have stolen their *new* wallets (which they only bought that morning). Meanwhile, Snowy finds a scroll of parchment under the drawers. It reads:

Three brothers joynes. Three Unicorns in company sailing in the noonday Sunne will speak.


For 'tis from the Light that Light will dawn. And then shines forth.
42                                                     A             o                  1   ?


                                        the Eagle's t


"But it's all gibberish!" complains Tintin. "And where on earth did this parchment come from, anyway?" Then he realizes it must have fallen under the ship and rolled underneath the drawers when Snowy knocked it over. Tintin deduces that whoever stole the ship must have been after the parchment. Snowy thinks, "Tintin, you're a real Sherlock Holmes!"

Tintin and his landlady are unable to get into Haddock's room, but after some struggle, Haddock comes bursting out dressed like a ship captain, complete with a hat and sword. He seems to be, in Tintin's words, "play-acting", when in fact he's enacting the journeys of his ancestor, Francis Haddock. It seems Haddock has found his ancestor's old manuscripts from the year 1676 (the Unicorn was a vessel of King Charles II's fleet). He goes on to tell a story of Francis' ship being attacked by the pirate ship of Red Rackham. The ship was hijacked, and Francis was tied to the mast while Rackham and his pirates transfer their cargo to the Unicorn (their own ship is sinking). "Regard me well, dog: I am Red Rackham!"

Haddock continues to tell the story to Tintin while Snowy gets drunk on rum ("That's funny! Now there are two glasses!"). In the story, Francis breaks free, fights Rackham down below (while Haddock tells of Francis extinguishing the fuse on some powder kegs, he steps on Snowy's tail, causing Snowy to yelp, "WOOOAH!"). And then Francis kills Rackham -- "That's that! May heaven forgive your wicked soul!" -- before lighting the power kegs again, fleeing to an island and watching the ship blow up.

According to Haddock, Francis lived w/the island natives for the next 2 years and then was carried home by a ship, but left a Will on the last page of his manuscript bequeathing a model to each of his three sons. His manuscript instructs the sons to move the mainmasts on each model: "'Thus,' he concludes, 'the truth will come out.'" To which Tintin exclaims, "That's it, Captain! ...Red Rackham's Treasure will be ours!"

Unfortunately, Tintin's wallet has been stolen, so he has lost his parchment, but he does remember the message. He knows they will need to acquire all three scrolls. They find Sakharine "murdered" at his place, according to a hysterical old lady, when in fact he's only been chloroformed. But his parchment has been stolen, too. Thomson and Thompson arrive and anger Haddock by accusing him of commiting the crime (they claim it's an "experiment" of theirs). While Sakharine wakes up, Thompson is burned by his own magnifying glass, much to Thomson's amusement. Thomson reveals he's developed a system of keeping an "elastic" wallet in his pocket from now on.

Sakharine claims the burly man from the market came to visit him. Tintin and Haddock go back to Tintin's place, where the burly man is awaiting them and tries to go inside w/them before he is shot in a drive-by, croaking to Tintin, "Take care! ...They... they will kill you... too..." Befofre passing out, he points to some sparrows eating crumbs on the sidewalk. It is made to look like murder in the papers, when in fact he is still alive in the hospital and the press has been lied to in order to fool the crooks. That night in the market, the Thomsons are nearly mugged again, but the elastic trap works. However, the thief escapes when Thomson crashes into a street pole. But they do manage to retrieve his coat as well as Tintin's wallet from him. Tintin reminds them they can identify the thief by which cleaners the coat has been to.

At Tintin's place, Tintin encounters some "dinner service" men who chloroform him and stuff him in their crate. Snowy barks at them from the window, falls and lands in Haddock's arms (he just arrived onto the scene), then chases the thieves' van. The landlady is confused, since Snowy is known never to leave his master.

Held prisoner in their hideout and tormented by an unseen voice claiming to be "the ghost of the captain of the Unicorn," Tintin is confused when the voice accuses him of stealing the other two parchments. Tintin never did have more than one. Wanting to get out, Tintin uses a long beam as a battering ram tied to a ceiling ring with blanket sheets (his handkerchief is stuffed in the voicebox to prevent the thieves from hearing), while Snowy meanwhile treks across the road in the rain and mud, bathing in a creek but still getting splashed by more mud along the way.

The battering ram successfully punctures a hole through the brick wall (this is weirdly similar to that Well of Souls scene in Raiders, isn't it? No wonder critics thought Spielberg was a Herge fan at the time -- even though he wasn't!), and hears music on the other side, coming from a music box. On the other side is a bunch of memorabilia. The thieves play cat and mouse with him, but he staves them off by breaking an abacus that spills some balls which they trip over. Locking them in, Tintin finds out from an envelope in the house parlor that it's the estate of one "G. Bird", explaining the meaning of the burly man pointing to the sparrows earlier. It was his way of identifying his attackers, the Bird brothers, a pair of antique dealers.

From the voice box, the thieves alert their butler Nestor to what Tintin is doing, claiming he's "a young ruffian" trespassing. Nestor wrestles with Tintin while he's on the phone w/Haddock informing him he's atMarlinspike Hall. Tintin escapes to the woods, where the thieves release a dog after Tintin that is caught by the leash in some branches. Tripping the thieves, Tintin takes their gun and makes them go back to the house, but Nestor knocks Tintin out from the window with a bat, and the thieves take him hostage. But Snowy appears, bites one of them, and Tintin punches them out. Haddock and the Thomsons arrive, and Tintin tells them to let Nestor go because he is innocent and was lied to by his bosses.

The more dangerous of the two Bird brothers, however, gets away. But they learn from the one they have captive (who decides to talk when they reveal that the burly man, Barnaby, is still alive) that they had found the Unicorn model in the attic of their house 2 years ago. Barnaby was one of their spies, and was the one who ransacked Tintin's place and chloroformed Sakharine, but broke from the Bird brothers after he demanded more money, which provoked the more dangerous brother, Max, to decide to try to have him whacked. Tintin is then told that Max still has Tintin's scroll.

The next morning, Tintin and the Thomsons visit the home of Aristides Silk, the suspected pickpocket, who claims to be a "kleptomaniac" who takes wallets in order to sort them out in alphabetical order. One of them is  Max Bird's wallet, which already has two scrolls in it. When the Thomsons finally find Max Bird and arrest him (he had been caught trying to leave the country), it is discovered he has the last scroll in his possession.

When Tintin puts the three parchments together, he discovers that they form a latitude and longitude:

20  37  42  N.  70  52  15  W.


With that, they realize that Rackham's treasure is within their grasp. Haddock says they can charter the SIRIUS, which belongs to his friend Captain Chester.

"But of course it won't be easy," Tintin reminds his readers, "and we shall certainly have plenty of adventures on our treasure-hunt... you can read about them in RED RACKHAM'S TREASURE!"

The Adventures of Tintin: The Crab With The Golden Claws (1953)

Tintin and Snowy are walking around one day when Snowy starts digging in a garbage can, finds a can with a crab painted on it inside and digs it out. Tintin scolds Snowy for this, since the can could have cut him, and throws it away. They meet up at a cafe with Thomson and Thompson, who are investigating a case of counterfeit coins. When Tintin follows them back to their office, he notices that they have half a picture of a crab on their table. According to Thomson and Thompson, it came from police headquarters--from a man who drowned at sea and had five counterfeit coins in his pocket.

Tintin rushes out to find the picture, and Thomson & Thompson follow him. They rummage through some garbage cans but are unsuccessful; the garbage man tells a random Asian man notices they are searching for a crab tin and the Asian remarks to himself, "A crab tin! Are they indeed!"

Tintin takes the crab picture back to his house. He tries to examine it with a magnifying glass but initially confuses the glass with Snowy's bone. When he does manage to examine, the picture, it reads: Karaboudjan. Tintin thinks it's an Armenian name. Later, Tintin's landlady is attacked, and she says an Asian man tried to reach Tintin earlier and give him a letter before being kidnapped by some gangsters.

Thomson & Thompson call, saying that the drowned body has been identified as Herbert Dawes; he was a sailor on the merchant-ship Karaboudjan. Tintin and Snowy rush to the docks to find the ship and are nearly killed by a falling crate (which Tintin manages to avoid after being distratced by seagulls). Thomson & Thompson follow Tintin up to the ship to investigate, and while they are busy Tintin is knocked out and imprisoned; Thomson & Thompson leave the ship.

The ship sails, and the gangsters receive a telegram asking to "send T to the bottom". A gangster, "Pedro", has already gone down to Tintin with food, and when Tintin asks to be untied to eat with his hands, he uses the opportunity to tie Pedro up and escape. Tintin and Snowy break into a room filled w/crates of crab tins filled w/opium and bottles of champagne. When night falls, Tintin and Snowy rope they way up to the window on the floor above them, where they run into a drunken Captain Haddock -- who professes innocence to the opium charges. Haddock suspects his first-mate, Allan, is guilty.

The gangsters come upstairs, but Tintin is hiding under the bed, while the gangsters are "shot at" by the champagne bottles downstairs. Meanwhile, Tintin, Snowy and Haddock have escaped via rowboat. While Tintin sleeps, Haddock, drunk, builds a fire in the middle of the boat to keep warm, causing a struggle between him and Tintin that sends the boat toppling over. A seaplane then appears and shoots at them. With Pedro's gun, Tintin shoots the plane down, dives under the water, appears from the surface to take the pilots by surprise and takes control of the plane.

Up in the air, the gangsters refuse to talk, and Tintin tries to steer towards Spain. Haddock, who gets drunk on another bottle of whiskey, throws a fit to seize the controls from Tintin, smashing the bottle against his head. The plane crashes into some sand dunes, but Tintin rescues the pilots from the burning wreck. The pilots  then disappear, Tintin and Haddock suffer hallucinations and fall out cold before being rescued by Muslim riders in the serve of Lieutenant Delcourt, who is in command of the outpost at Afghar. He offers them some spirits, but Tintin says, "No thank you. I never drink spirits." To which Haddock adds, "Er...er..no thank you, Lieutenant, I... I don't either. I... I never touch spirits." On the radio, they hear a report that the Karaboudjan is lost at sea and may have sunken, but they are skeptical. 

They leave that day with two guides, but are shot at by 20 Arab riders. Haddock rushes at them and apparently scares them away, when in fact the Lieutenant's army is the one repelling them. Several days later, they reach Bagghar, a large Moroccan port, hoping to hear news of the Karaboudjan from the harbor master. Tintin thinks he sees one of the gangsters and runs after him, accidentally losing Haddock but also losing the person he's chasing after. Haddock apparently spots the Karaboudjan disguised as the "Djebel Amilah", but gets in trouble with the police during a drunken disturbance at a cafe and is arrested. Then he's released -- only to be captured by the kidnappers, which Tintin witnesses. Tintin's attempt to chase at their car in a cab (while he scares a passenger out of the cab with the "rabid" Snowy) proves unsuccessful.

In the marketplace, Tintin runs into Thomson and Thompson, and together they spot a shop selling crab tins. These tins do, in fact, contain crab, and the merchant says he got them fro Mohammed Ben Ali, who in turn says he got them from Omar Ben Salaad, "the biggest trader in Bagghar." Tintin, dressed as a beggar, manages to locate Salaad's headquarters (Snowy sneaks in through the ventilator shaft), and they find a secret entrance in a barrel that takes them down to where Haddock is being held.

A struggle ensues, and Tintin and Haddock and Snowy barricade themselves in a wine room, where the fumes of spilled wine intoxicate them (and puts Haddock in a drunken rage that sends the gangsters running out screaming). Thomson and Thompson, meanwhile, interrogate Salaad, who is outraged when they accuse him, but the Captain appears from behind a bookcase and Salaad's secret entrance his leg and he accidentally shoots a chandelier that lands on his head, knocking him out. The police take Salaad into custody while Tintin goes on a boat chase after the escaped mate, "the most dangerous of the lot", finally managing to capture him in a fishing net. 

Afterwards, Tintin is approached by Bunji Kuraki of the Yokohama police force, aka the Asian man. He apparently was imprisoned in the hold of the Karaboudjan the whole time. He tells Tintin that the dead man Herbert Dawes had alerted him to the drugs in the Karaboudjan and that Dawes, before getting whacked, had had the label with "Karaboudjan" written on it in his pocket in order to tell Kuraki the name of the ship (but he had never actually given Kuraki the paper itself). 

Some days later, on the Home Service radio show, Captain Haddock is supposed to read a broadcast about "drink, the sailor's worst enemy." At the same time, Snowy receives a package containing an oversized bone ("from an admirer"). On the show, however, Haddock is "taken ill", and when Tintin calls to inquire, he is told that the Captain "was taken ill after drinking a glass of water."