Balthazar Moderator
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#10 · Posted: 19 Dec 2007 19:28
But Allan tells Tintin and Haddock earlier (on page 42) that the plan to get rid of them is to put them ashore at Wadesdah, where there's a price on their heads. Then he goes on to imply that if they refuse to go ashore there, they'll be dumped overboard to be eaten by sharks.
Derfallbienlein is right to point out that there are witnesses to Tintin and Haddock boarding the Ramona, which is presumeably why putting them ashore at Wadesdah to be killed by others is the preferred option. When Rastapopoulos is looking out of his cabin window, laughing as they board the Ramona, he clearly thinks that the plan Alan is about to reveal to Tintin and Haddock will do the job. There's no sense that he thinks it's necessary to blow up his own freighter and get rid of all evidence at this stage. (You're right, mct, that this does become his stated plan once Tintin and Haddock have taken control of the Ramona - he spells it out in the last panel of page 51 - but that's much later, when things are more desperate for him.)
For Allan to suddenly abandon the dumping-them-to-be-killed-at-Wadesdah plan and instead sacrifice the entire ship and deliberately put to sea in a small lifeboat where he's clearly worried about being caught in the explosion and killed himself doesn't seem likely. I think his remark about the forthcoming explosion making a "pretty fireworks display" is grim irony. His body language and beads of sweat don't suggest gleeful anticipation of a preplanned act. I think his impatience for the explosion is because he's braced for it and is now confused that it hasn't happened. And I think the reason he's cross that the fire's gone out (he doesn't realise it's been put out) is because he realises that they've abandoned his ship and his prisoners in a mad panic for no good reason, not because some plan to blow the ship up has failed.
Of course it's possible that Rastapolpulous changes his mind in the middle of the night and radios Allan to abandon the Wadesdah plan and set fire to the shp instead, but why wouldn't Hergé have shown us a panel of him doing this? (Hergé was generally a stickler for absolute clarity.)
And why wouldn't Allan kill Tintin and Haddock in their bunks before starting the fire, to make sure they couldn't wake up and escape? The explosion would leave no recoverable bodies to be forensically examined, so he'd lose nothing by doing this. The fact that he takes no such precautions strongly suggests that he was genuinely surprised by the fire and abandoned ship in a genuine panic.
Also, if Rastapopoulos has decided to cut his losses, curtail his operations, and blow up all the evidence on the night of the Ramona fire (p.43), how come the Arab slaver still comes out to them to inspect the "coke" two days later (on page 48)? Clearly Rastapopoulos hasn't put the word out to his contacts that slaving operations from the Ramona are over, which suggests that he a) didn't decide to blow up the Ramona himself and b) hasn't heard what's happened from Allan yet. If having Allan abandon the Ramona in order to blow it up was all a deliberate plan, Rastapopoulos would surely have arranged for the lifeboat to be quickly picked up, and when he did so, he'd have found out that the explosion plan had failed. Even if he didn't know this, and thought the explosion had succeeded, he'd have told his slaver contacts not to expect the Ramona any more.
As it is, it takes Rastapopoulos another day still for his plane to track down the Ramona, suggesting that he only hears the news that Allan is no longer captaining the Ramona from the Arab slaver, two days after the fire took place.
So, personally, I still think it's clear that the fire is an accident!
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