1872 2026
This is an AI modernization of Around the World in Eighty Days into contemporary English. The original is available from Project Gutenberg. Also available as an epub.
Jules Verne published Around the World in Eighty Days in 1872, and set it in that same year. Phileas Fogg, an English gentleman who has apparently never done anything, plays whist at the Reform Club every afternoon, dines there to the second, and walks home at midnight. An argument about a newspaper article ends with him betting four of his fellow members twenty thousand pounds — half of everything he has — that he can go round the world and be back in the same room eighty days later. He leaves that night with a valet he hired at half past eleven that morning.
The wager was topical arithmetic, not fantasy, and that is most of what made the book exciting in 1872. Three things had just been finished: the Suez Canal in 1869, the American transcontinental railroad in the same year, and the rail link across India. Between them they had cut the world down to a size where the trip could be planned on published timetables. Verne worked it out that way, and the plot is a clockwork of departures, connections and delays. Every figure in it is meant to be checked, and the figures are kept exactly here. So is the clock: what actually threatens Fogg is never distance but a connection missed by a few minutes.
It is a comedy, which its reputation as a boys' adventure story tends to hide. Fogg's servant Passepartout — the name means a key that opens everything — is a former circus gymnast and fireman who took the job because he wanted a quiet life, and he is the feeling in the book. Fix, the Scotland Yard detective who follows them from Suez onward, has decided that Fogg is the man who robbed the Bank of England of fifty-five thousand pounds, and every reasonable step he takes to stop him makes matters worse. Verne's chapter titles are jokes in their own right, and they are translated here rather than replaced.
The Victorian English translations of Verne were abridged and clumsy, and lost most of the wit along with a good deal of the geography. This one is made from Verne's French and is complete, as are the two other Verne novels in this collection. A warning about the ending: the last chapters turn on a point of fact about travel that Fogg has overlooked, and nothing here will say what it is. The book also contains a rescue from a forced funeral pyre in India, an attack on a train crossing the American plains, and a crossing of the Atlantic conducted in a way no shipowner would forgive. All of it is as Verne wrote it.
In Which Phileas Fogg and Passepartout Accept Each Other, the One as Master, the Other as Servant
In Which Passepartout Is Convinced He Has Found His Ideal at Last
In Which a Conversation Takes Place That May Cost Phileas Fogg Dearly
In Which Phileas Fogg Astounds His Servant Passepartout
In Which a New Security Appears on the London Exchange
In Which Detective Fix Shows a Very Understandable Impatience
Which Once More Proves the Uselessness of Passports in Police Matters
In Which Passepartout Perhaps Talks a Little More Than He Should
In Which the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean Prove Favorable to Phileas Fogg's Designs
In Which Passepartout Is Only Too Glad to Get Off with the Loss of His Shoes
In Which Phileas Fogg Buys a Mount at a Fabulous Price
In Which Phileas Fogg and His Companions Venture into the Forests of India, and What Comes of It
In Which Passepartout Proves Once More That Fortune Favors the Bold
In Which Phileas Fogg Travels the Whole Splendid Valley of the Ganges Without a Thought of Seeing It
In Which the Bag of Banknotes Grows Lighter by a Few Thousand Pounds More
In Which Fix Appears to Know Nothing at All of the Matters Put to Him
In Which This and That Is Discussed on the Passage from Singapore to Hong Kong
In Which Phileas Fogg, Passepartout, and Fix Each Go About Their Own Business
In Which Passepartout Takes Too Keen an Interest in His Master, and What Comes of It
In Which Fix Comes Face to Face with Phileas Fogg
In Which the Skipper of the Tankadère Risks Losing a Two-Hundred-Pound Reward
In Which Passepartout's Nose Grows Enormously Long
During Which the Crossing of the Pacific Ocean Is Accomplished
In Which a Brief Glimpse Is Given of San Francisco on the Day of a Political Rally
In Which the Party Boards the Pacific Railroad Express
In Which Passepartout Takes a Course in Mormon History at Twenty Miles an Hour
In Which Passepartout Cannot Manage to Make Anyone Listen to Reason
In Which Are Told Various Incidents Found Only on the Railroads of the Union
In Which Phileas Fogg Simply Does His Duty
In Which Inspector Fix Takes Phileas Fogg's Interests Very Seriously
In Which Phileas Fogg Joins Direct Battle with Bad Luck
In Which Phileas Fogg Proves Equal to the Occasion
Which Affords Passepartout the Chance to Make an Atrocious, but Perhaps Original, Pun
In Which Passepartout Does Not Need to Be Told Twice the Order His Master Gives Him
In Which Phileas Fogg Is Once Again at a Premium on the Market
In the year 1872, the house at No. 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens — the very house in which Sheridan died in 1814 — was occupied by Phileas Fogg, Esq., one of the oddest and most talked-about members of the Reform Club of London, though he seemed to make it his business to do nothing whatever that might attract attention.
So the successor to one of the greatest orators England has ever honored was this Phileas Fogg — an enigma of a man, about whom nothing was known except that he was a thorough gentleman and one of the handsomest figures in English high society.
People said he looked like Byron — the head, at least, for his feet were beyond reproach — but a Byron with a mustache and side-whiskers, an unruffled Byron who might have lived a thousand years without growing old.
English beyond all doubt, Phileas Fogg was perhaps not a Londoner. He had never been seen on the Exchange, at the Bank, or in any of the counting-houses of the City. No dock or basin in London had ever taken in a ship of which Phileas Fogg was the owner. His name appeared on no board of directors. It had never sounded in any inn of court — not at the Temple, not at Lincoln's Inn, not at Gray's Inn. He had never argued a case before the Court of Chancery, the Queen's Bench, the Exchequer, or the Ecclesiastical Court. He was no manufacturer, no trader, no merchant, no farmer. He belonged to none of the learned bodies — not the Royal Institution of Great Britain, nor the London Institution, nor the Artisans' Institution, nor the Russell Institution, nor the Western Literary Institution, nor the Law Institution, nor that combined Institution of Arts and Sciences that enjoys the direct patronage of Her Gracious Majesty. In short, he belonged to none of the countless societies that swarm through the capital of England, from the Harmonica Society all the way down to the Entomological Society, founded chiefly for the extermination of harmful insects.
Phileas Fogg was a member of the Reform Club, and that was all.
To anyone astonished that so mysterious a gentleman should be counted among the members of that honorable association, the answer is that he came in on the recommendation of Baring Brothers, with whom he kept an open line of credit. Hence a certain standing, owing to the fact that his checks were paid regularly on sight, charged to a current account that was invariably in the black.
Was this Phileas Fogg rich? Beyond question. But how he had made his fortune, not even the best-informed could say, and Mr. Fogg was the last man on earth to ask. He was never wasteful, yet never a miser either, for wherever a good, useful, or generous cause fell short of funds, he made up the difference quietly — anonymously, even.
In a word, nothing could be less talkative than this gentleman. He spoke as little as possible, and seemed all the more mysterious for his silence. And yet his life was an open book; it was simply that everything he did was so exactly, mathematically the same, day after day, that the imagination, unsatisfied, went looking for something more.
Had he traveled? Very likely, for no one knew the map of the world better than he did. There was no spot so remote that he did not seem to have some special knowledge of it. Now and then, in a few brief and pointed words, he would set straight the thousand rumors that circulated through the club about lost or missing travelers; he would name the true odds, and his words had often proved so exactly right that it was as if he had second sight — the outcome always ended up bearing him out. Here was a man who must have traveled everywhere — in his mind, at the very least.
What was certain, all the same, was that for years Phileas Fogg had not left London. Those who had the honor of knowing him a shade better than the rest swore that no one could claim to have ever seen him anywhere but on the one straight route he walked each day from his house to the club. His only pastime was reading the newspapers and playing whist. At that silent game — so perfectly suited to his nature — he often won; but his winnings never went into his own pocket. They made up a considerable line in his charity budget. And it should be noted that Mr. Fogg plainly played for the sake of playing, not for the sake of winning. To him the game was a contest, a struggle against a difficulty — but a struggle without motion, without travel, without fatigue, and that suited him perfectly.
Phileas Fogg had, as far as anyone knew, no wife and no children — which can happen to the most honest of men — and no relatives and no friends, which is rarer, in truth. Phileas Fogg lived alone in his house on Savile Row, where no one ever set foot. Of his home life there was never a word. A single servant was enough to wait on him. He breakfasted and dined at the club at hours fixed to the second, in the same room, at the same table, never treating his fellow members, never inviting a guest, and he came home only to sleep — at midnight exactly — never once making use of the comfortable rooms the Reform Club keeps ready for its members. Of every twenty-four hours he spent ten at home, whether sleeping or seeing to his grooming. When he walked, it was always at an even pace, up and down the entrance hall with its inlaid parquet floor, or along the circular gallery beneath the dome of blue stained glass, held up by twenty Ionic columns of red porphyry. When he dined or breakfasted, it was the club's kitchens, its larder, its pantry, its fishmonger and its dairy that stocked his table with their succulent stores; it was the club's servants — grave figures in black coats, shod in soft felt-soled shoes — who waited on him, serving him from a special china on splendid Saxony linen; it was the club's own antique crystal that held his sherry, his port, or his claret laced with cinnamon, maidenhair, and cassia; and it was the club's ice — ice brought at great expense from the lakes of America — that kept his drinks at a satisfying coolness.
If living in such conditions makes a man an eccentric, then it must be admitted that eccentricity has its charms!
The house on Savile Row, without being lavish, was a model of comfort. And given the fixed habits of the tenant, there was little enough for the staff to do. Even so, Phileas Fogg required of his one servant a punctuality, a regularity, that were quite out of the ordinary. That very day — the 2nd of October — Phileas Fogg had dismissed James Forster, the young man having committed the crime of bringing him shaving water at eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit instead of eighty-six; and now he sat waiting for the successor, who was to present himself between eleven and half past.
Phileas Fogg sat squarely in his armchair, his two feet together like a soldier on parade, his hands resting on his knees, his body straight, his head high, watching the hand of the clock move — an elaborate contraption that showed the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the days of the week, the days of the month, and the year. At the stroke of half past eleven Mr. Fogg would, by his daily custom, leave the house and set off for the Reform Club.
At that moment there came a knock at the door of the little parlor where Phileas Fogg was sitting.
James Forster, the dismissed man, appeared.
"The new servant," he announced.
A fellow of about thirty came in and bowed.
"You are French, and your name is John?" Phileas Fogg asked him.
"Jean, if it please you, sir," the newcomer replied. "Jean Passepartout — a nickname that stuck to me, and one my knack for getting out of scrapes has earned. I believe I'm an honest fellow, sir, but to be frank, I've turned my hand to a good many trades. I've been a traveling singer; a bareback rider in a circus, doing trapeze work like Léotard and walking the tightrope like Blondin; then I became a gymnastics instructor, to put my talents to better use, and last of all I was a sergeant in the fire brigade in Paris. I've even got a few notable blazes in my record. But it's now five years since I left France, and, wanting a taste of family life, I've been working as a valet in England. Finding myself out of a place, and having heard that Mr. Phileas Fogg was the most precise and most stay-at-home man in the United Kingdom, I've come to your door, sir, in the hope of a quiet life here — and of forgetting even that name of Passepartout."
"Passepartout suits me," the gentleman replied. "You come recommended. I have good reports of you. You know my terms?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. What time do you have?"
"Twenty-two minutes past eleven," answered Passepartout, hauling an enormous silver watch out of the depths of his waistcoat pocket.
"You are slow," said Mr. Fogg.
"Begging your pardon, sir, but that's impossible."
"You are four minutes slow. No matter. It's enough to note the difference. So then — from this moment, eleven twenty-nine in the morning, this Wednesday the 2nd of October, 1872, you are in my service."
That said, Phileas Fogg rose, took his hat in his left hand, set it on his head with the motion of an automaton, and vanished without another word.
Passepartout heard the street door shut once: that was his new master, going out. Then a second time: that was his predecessor, James Forster, taking his own leave.
Passepartout was left alone in the house on Savile Row.
"Well, upon my word," Passepartout said to himself, a little dazed at first, "I've seen figures over at Madame Tussaud's every bit as lively as my new master!"
It should be explained here that Madame Tussaud's "figures" are those wax models, much visited in London, that truly lack nothing but the power of speech.
During the few moments he had glimpsed Phileas Fogg, Passepartout had made a quick but careful study of his future master. He was a man of perhaps forty, with a noble, handsome face, tall, not the worse for a slight fullness of figure, fair of hair and side-whiskers, his forehead smooth and unlined at the temples, his complexion rather pale than ruddy, his teeth magnificent. He seemed to possess in the highest degree what physiognomists call "repose in action" — that quality common to all who make more work than noise. Calm, phlegmatic, clear-eyed, his eyelids never flickering, he was the finished type of those cold-blooded Englishmen one meets fairly often in the United Kingdom, whose faintly academic bearing Angelica Kauffmann has so wonderfully caught with her brush. Seen in the various acts of his existence, this gentleman gave the impression of a being perfectly balanced in all his parts, exactly weighted, as flawless as a chronometer by Leroy or by Earnshaw. And indeed, Phileas Fogg was precision personified, which showed plainly in "the expression of his feet and hands," for in man, as in animals, the very limbs are organs that express the passions.
Phileas Fogg was one of those mathematically exact men who, never in a hurry and always ready, are sparing of their steps and their movements. He never took one stride too many, always going by the shortest way. He never wasted a glance at the ceiling. He allowed himself not a single unnecessary gesture. No one had ever seen him stirred or troubled. He was the least hurried man in the world, yet he always arrived on time. Still, one can understand that he lived alone and, so to speak, outside all social contact. He knew that in life one must allow for friction, and since friction slows a man down, he rubbed up against no one.
As for Jean, called Passepartout, a true Parisian of Paris, in the five years he had lived in England, working in London as a valet, he had searched in vain for a master he could grow attached to.
Passepartout was none of those Frontins or Mascarilles — shoulders back, nose in the air, cocksure gaze, dry eye — who are nothing but impudent rogues. No. Passepartout was a good fellow, with a pleasant face, lips a little full and always ready to taste something or kiss somebody, a gentle and obliging soul, with one of those fine round heads you like to see on the shoulders of a friend. He had blue eyes, a lively color, a face plump enough that he could see his own cheekbones, a broad chest, a strong build, powerful muscles, and a Herculean strength that the exercises of his youth had developed to admiration. His brown hair was a bit unruly. If the sculptors of antiquity knew eighteen ways to arrange Minerva's hair, Passepartout knew only one for arranging his own: three passes of the comb, and he was done.
Whether this fellow's outgoing temperament would agree with that of Phileas Fogg — the most elementary prudence forbids one to say. Would Passepartout prove the thoroughly punctual servant his master required? Only time and wear would tell. After a fairly footloose youth, as we know, he now longed for peace. Having heard English orderliness praised, and the proverbial coolness of English gentlemen, he had come to seek his fortune in England. But so far fate had served him badly. He had been unable to put down roots anywhere. He had tried ten households. In every one of them the master was whimsical, erratic, a chaser after adventures or after distant countries — which no longer suited Passepartout. His last master, young Lord Longsferry, Member of Parliament, after spending his nights in the oyster-rooms of the Haymarket, was carried home all too often on the shoulders of the police. Passepartout, wanting above all to be able to respect his master, ventured a few respectful remarks that were badly received, and so he quit. In the meantime he learned that Phileas Fogg, Esq., was looking for a servant. He made inquiries about the gentleman. A man whose life was so regular, who never slept away from home, who never traveled, who was never absent, not even for a day, could only suit him. He presented himself, and was taken on under the circumstances already related.
Passepartout — half past eleven having struck — thus found himself alone in the house on Savile Row. He set about inspecting it at once. He went over it from cellar to attic. This clean, orderly, austere, puritanical house, so well arranged for service, pleased him. It struck him as a fine snail's shell — but a shell lit and heated by gas, for carbureted hydrogen supplied all its needs for light and warmth. On the second floor Passepartout had no trouble finding the room meant for him. It suited him. Electric bells and speaking-tubes put it in communication with the rooms on the mezzanine and the first floor. On the mantel an electric clock kept time with the clock in Phileas Fogg's bedroom, and the two struck the same instant, the same second.
"This suits me, this suits me!" said Passepartout to himself.
He noticed, too, in his room, a notice posted above the clock. It was the program of the daily service. It listed — from eight in the morning, the regulation hour at which Phileas Fogg rose, to half past eleven, the hour at which he left the house to go and lunch at the Reform Club — every detail of the service: tea and toast at eight twenty-three, shaving water at nine thirty-seven, hairdressing at twenty to ten, and so on. Then, from half past eleven in the morning to midnight — the hour at which the methodical gentleman went to bed — everything was noted, foreseen, regulated. Passepartout made it his delight to study this program and to fix each of its several articles in his mind.
As for the gentleman's wardrobe, it was very well stocked and admirably thought out. Each pair of trousers, coat, or waistcoat bore a serial number, entered in a register that recorded when it came and went, marking the date on which, according to the season, each garment was to be worn in its turn. The same system governed the footwear.
In short, this house on Savile Row — which in the days of the illustrious but dissipated Sheridan must have been the very temple of disorder — was now comfortably furnished, bespeaking easy means. No library, no books, which would have been of no use to Mr. Fogg, since the Reform Club put two libraries at his disposal, one devoted to literature, the other to law and politics. In the bedroom stood a safe of moderate size, built to defend its contents from fire as well as theft. There was not a weapon in the house, not a single implement of hunting or war. Everything about it pointed to the most peaceable habits.
After examining the place in detail, Passepartout rubbed his hands, his broad face lit up, and he repeated cheerfully:
"This suits me! This is just the thing for me! We'll get along perfectly, Mr. Fogg and I! A stay-at-home, regular sort of man! A real machine! Well, I've no objection to serving a machine!"
Phileas Fogg had left his house on Savile Row at half past eleven, and, after setting his right foot before his left five hundred and seventy-five times and his left foot before his right five hundred and seventy-six times, he arrived at the Reform Club — that vast pile in Pall Mall which cost no less than three million pounds to build.
Phileas Fogg went straight to the dining room, whose nine windows looked out on a handsome garden already touched with the gold of autumn. There he took his usual place at the table where his cover awaited him. His lunch was a hors d'oeuvre, a boiled fish dressed in a first-rate "Reading sauce," a scarlet cut of roast beef seasoned with mushroom relish, a tart stuffed with rhubarb stalks and green gooseberries, and a wedge of Cheshire cheese — all of it washed down with several cups of that excellent tea grown especially for the pantry of the Reform Club.
At forty-seven minutes past noon the gentleman rose and made his way to the great drawing room, a sumptuous chamber hung with richly framed paintings. There a servant handed him an uncut copy of the Times, and Phileas Fogg performed the laborious business of unfolding it with a sureness of hand that betrayed long practice in that difficult operation. Reading the paper occupied him until a quarter to four; the Standard, which followed, saw him through to dinner. That meal ran along the same lines as his lunch, with the addition of a "royal British sauce."
At twenty minutes to six the gentleman reappeared in the great drawing room and buried himself in the Morning Chronicle.
Half an hour later, various members of the Reform Club began arriving and drawing up to the fireplace, where a coal fire burned. These were Mr. Phileas Fogg's regular partners, whist players as rabid as himself: the engineer Andrew Stuart; the bankers John Sullivan and Samuel Fallentin; the brewer Thomas Flanagan; and Gauthier Ralph, one of the directors of the Bank of England — men of wealth and standing, even in a club that counts among its members the leading lights of industry and finance.
"Well, Ralph," asked Thomas Flanagan, "how does this robbery business stand?"
"Well," answered Andrew Stuart, "the Bank can kiss its money goodbye."
"On the contrary, I hope we'll lay our hands on the man," said Gauthier Ralph. "Police inspectors — very shrewd fellows — have been sent to America and Europe, to all the principal ports of embarkation and arrival, and it'll be hard for this gentleman to slip through them."
"So they've got a description of the thief?" asked Andrew Stuart.
"To begin with, he isn't a thief," Gauthier Ralph replied gravely.
"Not a thief — the man who made off with fifty-five thousand pounds in banknotes?"
"No," said Gauthier Ralph.
"A businessman, then?" said John Sullivan.
"The Morning Chronicle assures us he's a gentleman."
The man who offered this last remark was none other than Phileas Fogg, whose head just then emerged from the tide of paper heaped around him. He nodded to his colleagues, who returned his greeting.
The affair under discussion — argued over with great heat by every paper in the Kingdom — had taken place three days earlier, on the 29th of September. A bundle of banknotes, amounting to the enormous sum of fifty-five thousand pounds, had been lifted from the counter of the head cashier at the Bank of England.
To anyone amazed that such a theft could have been pulled off so easily, the deputy governor, Gauthier Ralph, would only reply that at that very moment the cashier had been busy recording a receipt of three shillings and sixpence, and a man can't keep his eye on everything.
But it should be pointed out here — and this makes the thing more understandable — that this admirable establishment, the Bank of England, seems to care enormously about the dignity of the public. No guards, no old pensioners on watch, no iron grilles. Gold, silver, and banknotes lie freely on display, practically at the mercy of the first comer. No one would dream of casting suspicion on the honor of any passerby. One of the shrewdest observers of English manners even tells this story: In one of the Bank's halls one day, curious to get a closer look at a gold ingot weighing seven or eight pounds that lay out on the cashier's counter, he picked the ingot up, examined it, passed it to his neighbor, who passed it to another, and so on, until the ingot traveled from hand to hand all the way down some dim corridor and did not come back to its place until half an hour later — and the cashier never once lifted his head.
But on the 29th of September, things did not go quite so smoothly. The bundle of banknotes did not come back, and when the magnificent clock above the drawing office struck five and closing time, the Bank of England had nothing left to do but charge fifty-five thousand pounds to its profit-and-loss account.
Once the theft was well and duly established, agents — detectives, chosen from among the most able — were dispatched to the principal ports: Liverpool, Glasgow, Le Havre, Suez, Brindisi, New York, and so on, with the promise, should they succeed, of a reward of two thousand pounds plus five percent of the sum recovered. While they waited for the findings of the investigation, just then getting under way, these inspectors were charged with keeping a scrupulous watch on every traveler coming or going.
Now, precisely as the Morning Chronicle claimed, there was reason to suppose that the man behind the theft belonged to none of England's gangs of thieves. During that day of the 29th of September, a well-dressed gentleman of good manners and distinguished bearing had been noticed coming and going about the payments hall, the scene of the crime. The investigation had made it possible to piece together a fairly exact description of this gentleman, a description at once circulated to every detective in the Kingdom and on the Continent. And so certain clever minds — Gauthier Ralph among them — felt justified in hoping the thief would not escape.
As one can imagine, the affair was the talk of London and all of England. People debated it, took sides for and against the odds of the metropolitan police. So it is no surprise to find the members of the Reform Club worrying at the same question — all the more so since one of the deputy governors of the Bank was among them.
The honorable Gauthier Ralph had no wish to doubt the outcome of the search, reckoning that the reward on offer should sharpen the zeal and wits of the agents wonderfully. But his colleague Andrew Stuart was far from sharing that confidence. So the argument went on among the gentlemen as they sat down at a whist table — Stuart facing Flanagan, Fallentin facing Phileas Fogg. During the play the men said nothing, but between rubbers the interrupted conversation started up again livelier than ever.
"I maintain," said Andrew Stuart, "that the odds favor the thief, who's bound to be a clever man."
"Come now," Ralph shot back. "There isn't a single country left where he can take refuge."
"Oh, come!"
"Where do you suppose he'll go?"
"I've no idea," answered Andrew Stuart, "but after all, the world's a big place."
"It used to be," said Phileas Fogg, half under his breath. Then: "Your cut, sir," he added, offering the cards to Thomas Flanagan.
The argument hung fire while the rubber was played. But before long Andrew Stuart took it up again:
"Used to be! Has the world shrunk, by any chance?"
"No doubt of it," answered Gauthier Ralph. "I'm of Mr. Fogg's mind. The world has shrunk, since a man can now cross it ten times faster than a hundred years ago. And that, in the case we're discussing, is exactly what will make the search quicker."
"And make the thief's escape easier too!"
"Your play, Mr. Stuart," said Phileas Fogg.
But the skeptical Stuart was not convinced, and once the hand was finished:
"You must admit, Mr. Ralph," he went on, "that you've found an amusing way of saying the world has shrunk! So because a man can now go around it in three months —"
"In eighty days, only," said Phileas Fogg.
"Quite so, gentlemen," John Sullivan put in. "Eighty days, now that the section between Rothal and Allahabad has opened on the Great Indian Peninsular Railway. Here's the reckoning the Morning Chronicle has drawn up:
From London to Suez, by Mont Cenis and Brindisi, railways and steamers: 7 days. From Suez to Bombay, steamer: 13 days. From Bombay to Calcutta, railway: 3 days. From Calcutta to Hong Kong (China), steamer: 13 days. From Hong Kong to Yokohama (Japan), steamer: 6 days. From Yokohama to San Francisco, steamer: 22 days. From San Francisco to New York, railroad: 7 days. From New York to London, steamer and railway: 9 days. Total: 80 days."
"Yes, eighty days!" cried Andrew Stuart, who in his distraction trumped a winning card. "But that leaves out bad weather, headwinds, shipwrecks, derailments, and the rest of it."
"All included," answered Phileas Fogg, playing on — for by now the argument had stopped respecting the whist.
"Even if the Hindus or the Indians tear up the rails?" cried Andrew Stuart. "Even if they stop the trains, loot the baggage cars, scalp the passengers?"
"All included," answered Phileas Fogg, who laid down his cards and added, "Two winning trumps."
Andrew Stuart, whose turn it was to deal, gathered up the cards, saying:
"In theory you're right, Mr. Fogg, but in practice —"
"In practice too, Mr. Stuart."
"I'd like to see you try it."
"Nothing is stopping you. Let's go together."
"Heaven forbid!" cried Stuart. "But I'd gladly bet four thousand pounds that such a journey, made under those conditions, is impossible."
"Perfectly possible, on the contrary," replied Mr. Fogg.
"Well then, do it!"
"Go around the world in eighty days?"
"Yes."
"Gladly."
"When?"
"At once."
"This is madness!" cried Andrew Stuart, who was beginning to be nettled by his partner's insistence. "Look here — let's just play instead."
"Deal again, then," answered Phileas Fogg, "for there's a misdeal."
Andrew Stuart took up the cards with a feverish hand; then, all at once, throwing them down on the table:
"Very well, yes, Mr. Fogg — yes, I bet four thousand pounds!"
"My dear Stuart," said Fallentin, "calm yourself. This isn't serious."
"When I say I bet," answered Andrew Stuart, "I always mean it."
"So be it," said Mr. Fogg. Then, turning to his colleagues:
"I have twenty thousand pounds on deposit with Baring Brothers. I'll gladly stake it —"
"Twenty thousand pounds!" cried John Sullivan. "Twenty thousand pounds that a single unforeseen delay could cost you!"
"There is no such thing as the unforeseen," Phileas Fogg replied simply.
"But Mr. Fogg, this span of eighty days is figured only as a minimum!"
"A minimum well used is enough for anything."
"But to keep from overshooting it, you'd have to leap mathematically out of railways into steamers, and out of steamers into railways!"
"I will leap mathematically."
"You're joking!"
"A good Englishman never jokes about anything so serious as a wager," answered Phileas Fogg. "I bet twenty thousand pounds against anyone who likes that I will go around the world in eighty days or less — that is, in nineteen hundred and twenty hours, or one hundred and fifteen thousand two hundred minutes. Do you accept?"
"We accept," answered Messrs. Stuart, Fallentin, Sullivan, Flanagan, and Ralph, once they had conferred.
"Good," said Mr. Fogg. "The Dover train leaves at eight forty-five. I shall take it."
"This very evening?" asked Stuart.
"This very evening," answered Phileas Fogg. "So then," he added, consulting a pocket calendar, "since today is Wednesday, the 2nd of October, I must be back in London, in this very drawing room of the Reform Club, on Saturday, the 21st of December, at eight forty-five in the evening — failing which the twenty thousand pounds now standing to my credit with Baring Brothers will belong to you, gentlemen, in fact and in law. Here is a check for the amount."
A record of the wager was drawn up and signed on the spot by the six parties. Phileas Fogg had remained perfectly cool. He certainly had not bet in order to win, and had risked these twenty thousand pounds — half his fortune — only because he foresaw that he might have to spend the other half to carry through this difficult, not to say unworkable, undertaking. As for his opponents, they seemed rattled — not by the size of the stake, but by a kind of scruple at contending on such terms.
Seven o'clock was striking. The others offered to break off the whist so that Mr. Fogg could see to his preparations for departure.
"I am always ready," answered this imperturbable gentleman, and dealing the cards:
"I turn up diamonds," he said. "Your play, Mr. Stuart."
At twenty-five minutes past seven, Phileas Fogg — having won a score of guineas at whist — took his leave of his honorable colleagues and left the Reform Club. At ten minutes to eight he opened the door of his house and let himself in.
Passepartout, who had conscientiously studied his schedule, was more than a little surprised to see Mr. Fogg guilty of a lapse in punctuality, turning up at so unusual an hour. According to the notice, the tenant of Savile Row was not to be home until midnight precisely.
Phileas Fogg had first gone up to his room, then he called out:
"Passepartout."
Passepartout did not answer. The call could not be meant for him. It was not the hour.
"Passepartout," Mr. Fogg repeated, without raising his voice any further.
Passepartout appeared.
"That's the second time I've called you," said Mr. Fogg.
"But it isn't midnight," answered Passepartout, his watch in his hand.
"I know that," said Phileas Fogg, "and I'm not reproaching you. We leave in ten minutes for Dover and Calais."
A sort of grimace flickered across the round face of the Frenchman. Clearly he had misheard.
"Sir is going away?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Phileas Fogg. "We are going around the world."
Passepartout — eyes stretched impossibly wide, eyebrows and lids hoisted up, arms hanging slack, body sagging — displayed at that moment every symptom of astonishment pushed all the way to stupefaction.
"Around the world!" he murmured.
"In eighty days," answered Mr. Fogg. "So we haven't a moment to lose."
"But the trunks?..." said Passepartout, unconsciously wagging his head from side to side.
"No trunks. Just an overnight bag. Inside it, two wool shirts, three pairs of socks. The same for you. We'll buy along the way. Bring down my mackintosh and my traveling blanket. Have a good pair of shoes. Though we'll be doing little or no walking. Off you go."
Passepartout would have liked to answer. He couldn't. He left Mr. Fogg's room, went up to his own, dropped into a chair, and — falling back on a rather coarse phrase of his native country — said to himself:
"Well, now! That's a good one, that is! And me, who wanted a quiet life!..."
And, mechanically, he began his preparations for departure. Around the world in eighty days! Was he dealing with a madman? No... Was it a joke? They were off to Dover, fine. To Calais, all right. After all, that could hardly upset the good fellow much, seeing as he hadn't set foot on his native soil in five years. Perhaps they might even go as far as Paris, and — my word — he'd be glad to see the great capital again. But surely a gentleman so sparing of his steps would stop there... Yes, no doubt, but the fact remained that he was leaving, that he was going traveling — this gentleman who until now had been such a homebody!
By eight o'clock, Passepartout had packed the modest bag that held his own wardrobe and his master's; then, his mind still in a whirl, he left his room, carefully locked the door behind him, and rejoined Mr. Fogg.
Mr. Fogg was ready. He carried under his arm Bradshaw's Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide, which was to furnish him with every detail he needed for his journey. He took the bag from Passepartout's hands, opened it, and slipped inside a thick wad of those handsome banknotes that are good tender in every country.
"You've forgotten nothing?" he asked.
"Nothing, sir."
"My mackintosh and my blanket?"
"Here they are."
"Good. Take this bag."
Mr. Fogg handed the bag back to Passepartout.
"And take good care of it," he added. "There are twenty thousand pounds inside."
The bag nearly slipped from Passepartout's hands, as though the twenty thousand pounds had been in gold and weighed a considerable amount.
Master and servant then went downstairs, and the street door was double-locked behind them.
There was a cab stand at the end of Savile Row. Phileas Fogg and his servant climbed into a cab, which drove briskly toward Charing Cross station, the terminus of one of the branches of the South Eastern Railway.
At twenty minutes past eight the cab stopped in front of the station gate. Passepartout jumped down. His master followed and paid the driver.
At that moment a poor beggar woman, a child by the hand, barefoot in the mud, a battered hat on her head with a sorry feather dangling from it, a tattered shawl over her rags, came up to Mr. Fogg and begged him for alms.
Mr. Fogg drew from his pocket the twenty guineas he had just won at whist, and, holding them out to the beggar woman, said:
"Here you are, my good woman. I'm glad to have met you!"
Then he passed on.
Passepartout felt something like a dampness about his eyes. His master had taken a step into his heart.
He and Mr. Fogg went straight into the great hall of the station. There Phileas Fogg gave Passepartout the order to buy two first-class tickets to Paris. Then, turning around, he caught sight of his five colleagues from the Reform Club.
"Gentlemen, I'm off," he said, "and the various visas stamped on a passport I'm carrying for the purpose will allow you, on my return, to verify my itinerary."
"Oh, Mr. Fogg," Gauthier Ralph replied politely, "that's unnecessary. We'll rely on your honor as a gentleman!"
"Better this way," said Mr. Fogg.
"You won't forget that you're to be back?..." Andrew Stuart pointed out.
"In eighty days," answered Mr. Fogg. "On Saturday, the 21st of December, 1872, at a quarter to nine in the evening. Good-bye, gentlemen."
At twenty minutes to nine, Phileas Fogg and his servant took their seats in the same compartment. At a quarter to nine a whistle sounded, and the train began to move.
The night was pitch black. A fine rain was falling. Phileas Fogg, settled back in his corner, said nothing. Passepartout, still stunned, mechanically hugged the bag of banknotes against himself.
But the train had barely passed Sydenham when Passepartout let out a genuine cry of despair!
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"It's... that... in my rush... my confusion... I forgot..."
"Forgot what?"
"To turn off the gas jet in my room!"
"Well, my boy," Mr. Fogg answered coldly, "it's burning on your account!"
When he left London, Phileas Fogg surely had no idea of the enormous stir his departure was about to create. The news of the wager spread first through the Reform Club, where it produced a genuine sensation among the members of that honorable circle. From the club the excitement passed, by way of the reporters, into the newspapers, and from the newspapers to the public of London and the whole of the United Kingdom.
This "question of the tour of the world" was commented on, debated, and dissected with as much passion and heat as if it had been some new Alabama affair. Some took Phileas Fogg's side; others — and they soon formed a considerable majority — came out against him. To make this trip around the world, other than in theory and on paper, in that minimum of time, with the means of communication currently in use — it was not merely impossible, it was insane!
The Times, the Standard, the Evening Star, the Morning Chronicle, and twenty other papers of wide circulation declared against Mr. Fogg. Only the Daily Telegraph stood by him, and only up to a point. Phileas Fogg was generally written off as a maniac and a madman, and his fellow members at the Reform Club were blamed for having taken on a bet that pointed to a softening of the wits in the man who had proposed it.
Articles appeared on the question — extremely heated, yet perfectly logical. Everyone knows the interest England takes in anything touching on geography. And so there was not a reader, of whatever class, who did not devour the columns devoted to the case of Phileas Fogg.
During the first few days, a few bold spirits — the women chiefly — were for him, especially after the Illustrated London News ran his portrait, copied from the photograph on file in the archives of the Reform Club. Certain gentlemen went so far as to say, "Well, well — why not, after all? Stranger things have happened!" These were mostly readers of the Daily Telegraph. But it soon became clear that even that paper was beginning to waver.
For a long article appeared on October 7 in the Bulletin of the Royal Geographical Society. It treated the question from every possible angle and demonstrated, clearly, the sheer folly of the enterprise. According to the article, everything was against the traveler — the obstacles of man and the obstacles of nature alike. To succeed in this scheme, one would have to assume a miraculous alignment of departure and arrival times, an alignment that did not exist and could not exist. In Europe, at a pinch — where the runs are of relatively modest length — one may count on the trains arriving on schedule; but when they take three days to cross India and seven to cross the United States, could anyone build the terms of such a problem on their punctuality? And the engine breakdowns, the derailments, the collisions, the bad season, the piling up of snow — was not all of it against Phileas Fogg? On the steamers, would he not find himself, in winter, at the mercy of gales and fogs? Is it really so rare for the best runners on the transoceanic lines to lose two or three days? And a single delay, just one, was all it would take to snap the chain of connections beyond repair. If Phileas Fogg missed a steamer's departure by so much as a few hours, he would be forced to wait for the next one, and by that alone his whole journey would be wrecked, irrevocably.
The article made a great noise. Nearly every paper reprinted it, and shares in Phileas Fogg fell sharply.
In the first days after the gentleman's departure, considerable business had been done on the "odds" of his venture. Everyone knows what the betting world in England is — a world more intelligent, more elevated than the world of common gamblers. Betting is in the English temperament. And so not only did the various members of the Reform Club lay heavy wagers for and against Phileas Fogg, but the mass of the public joined the movement. Phileas Fogg was entered, like a racehorse, in a kind of studbook. He was also turned into a security, quoted at once on the London Exchange. People bid for "Phileas Fogg" and offered him, firm or at a premium, and enormous business was done in him. But five days after his departure, following the article in the Bulletin of the Geographical Society, the offers began to pour in. Phileas Fogg fell. He was offered in bundles. Taken first at five, then at ten, he was soon taken only at twenty, at fifty, at a hundred!
He kept one lone supporter. This was the old paralytic, Lord Albermale. The honorable gentleman, nailed to his armchair, would have given his whole fortune to be able to make the tour of the world, even in ten years! — and he bet five thousand pounds in favor of Phileas Fogg. And whenever someone pointed out to him not only the stupidity of the scheme but its uselessness, he simply answered, "If the thing can be done, it's a good deal better that an Englishman should be the first to do it!"
Now matters stood there — Phileas Fogg's backers growing scarcer and scarcer, everyone, and not without reason, turning against him, so that he was taken only at a hundred and fifty, at two hundred to one — when, seven days after his departure, a completely unexpected incident meant that he was no longer taken at all.
For that day, at nine o'clock in the evening, the director of the metropolitan police received a telegram worded as follows:
"Suez to London.
"Rowan, Director of Police, Central Administration, Scotland Place.
"I am on the trail of the bank robber, Phileas Fogg. Send warrant of arrest without delay to Bombay (British India).
"Fix, Detective."
The effect of this telegram was immediate. The honorable gentleman vanished, and in his place stood the thief of banknotes. His photograph, kept at the Reform Club with those of all his colleagues, was studied. It reproduced, feature for feature, the man whose description the inquiry had supplied. People recalled how mysterious Phileas Fogg's whole existence had been — his solitude, his sudden departure — and it seemed obvious that this character, using a trip around the world as his pretext and propping it up on an insane wager, had had no other aim than to throw the agents of the English police off his scent.
Here are the circumstances under which that telegram concerning Mr. Phileas Fogg had been sent.
On Wednesday, the 9th of October, the steamer Mongolia — of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, an iron screw-driven vessel with a spar deck, of two thousand eight hundred tons and a nominal five hundred horsepower — was expected at Suez at eleven o'clock in the morning. The Mongolia ran regularly between Brindisi and Bombay by way of the Suez Canal. She was one of the fastest ships in the company's fleet, and she had always beaten her regulation speeds — ten miles an hour between Brindisi and Suez, and nine and fifty-three hundredths between Suez and Bombay.
While the Mongolia was awaited, two men paced the quay amid the crowd of locals and foreigners who flock to this town — a mere village not long ago, but one to which M. de Lesseps's great work now promises a considerable future.
One of the two men was the consular agent of the United Kingdom, posted at Suez, who — despite the gloomy forecasts of the British government and the dire predictions of the engineer Stephenson — watched English ships cross the canal every day, cutting in half the old route from England to India by the Cape of Good Hope.
The other was a small, thin man with a fairly shrewd face, high-strung, who kept knitting his brows with remarkable persistence. Behind his long lashes shone a very bright eye — but one whose fire he could dim at will. Just now he was showing certain signs of impatience, pacing back and forth, unable to keep still.
This man's name was Fix, and he was one of those English "detectives," or police agents, who had been dispatched to the various ports after the robbery at the Bank of England. Fix's job was to keep the closest possible watch on every traveler taking the Suez route, and if any one of them struck him as suspicious, to "shadow" him while awaiting a warrant for his arrest.
As it happened, two days earlier Fix had received from the head of the metropolitan police a description of the man presumed to be the thief. It was the description of that distinguished, well-dressed figure who had been noticed in the paying room of the Bank.
The detective — plainly tempted by the handsome reward promised for success — was therefore waiting for the Mongolia with an impatience that was easy to understand.
"And you say, Mr. Consul," he asked for the tenth time, "that this ship can't be far off?"
"No, Mr. Fix," the consul answered. "She was sighted yesterday off Port Said, and the hundred and sixty kilometers of canal are nothing for a runner like her. I tell you again, the Mongolia has always earned the twenty-five-pound bonus the government pays for every twenty-four hours she comes in ahead of schedule."
"This steamer comes straight from Brindisi?" Fix asked.
"From Brindisi itself, where she took on the India mail — Brindisi, which she left Saturday at five in the evening. So be patient; she can't be long now. But I really don't see how, with the description you've received, you'll manage to recognize your man, if he's aboard the Mongolia."
"Mr. Consul," Fix replied, "men like that you sense rather than recognize. You need a nose for it, and the nose is a special sense, one that draws on hearing, sight, and smell all at once. I've arrested more than one of these gentlemen in my time, and provided my thief is aboard, I'll answer for it that he won't slip through my fingers."
"I hope so, Mr. Fix, for it's a serious robbery."
"A magnificent robbery," the agent said, warming to it. "Fifty-five thousand pounds! We don't often come by such windfalls! Thieves are turning small-time! The breed of Sheppard is dying out! Nowadays a man gets himself hanged for a few shillings!"
"Mr. Fix," said the consul, "you talk in such a way that I heartily wish you success; but I say again, in the circumstances you're in, I'm afraid it will be difficult. Do you realize that, by the description you've received, this thief looks exactly like an honest man?"
"Mr. Consul," the inspector answered sententiously, "the great thieves always look like honest folk. You'll appreciate that a man with the face of a scoundrel has only one course open to him, which is to stay upright — otherwise he'd get himself arrested. It's the honest faces you have to size up above all. Difficult work, I grant you, and no longer a trade but an art."
Clearly this Fix was not lacking in a certain measure of self-regard.
Meanwhile the quay was slowly coming to life. Sailors of every nationality, merchants, brokers, porters, fellahs, all thronging in. The steamer's arrival was plainly near.
The weather was fairly fine, but the air was cold, with this east wind. A few minarets stood out above the town under the pale rays of the sun. To the south, a jetty two thousand meters long stretched like an arm across the roadstead of Suez. On the surface of the Red Sea rolled several fishing and coasting boats, some of which still keep in their lines the elegant model of the ancient galley.
Moving through the crowd, Fix — out of professional habit — sized up the passers-by with a quick glance.
It was then half past ten.
"But this steamer's never coming!" he cried, hearing the harbor clock strike.
"She can't be far off," the consul replied.
"How long will she lie at Suez?" Fix asked.
"Four hours. Time enough to take on her coal. From Suez to Aden, at the far end of the Red Sea, is reckoned at thirteen hundred and ten miles, and she has to lay in fuel."
"And from Suez this ship goes straight to Bombay?" Fix asked.
"Straight there, without breaking cargo."
"Well, then," said Fix, "if the thief has taken this route and this ship, it must be part of his plan to land at Suez, so as to reach the Dutch or French possessions of Asia by some other way. He must know very well that he wouldn't be safe in India, which is English soil."
"Unless he's a very clever man," the consul replied. "As you know, an English criminal is always better hidden in London than he would be abroad."
On this remark, which gave the agent a good deal to think about, the consul went back to his offices, a short distance off. The inspector was left alone, gripped by a nervous impatience, and by the rather odd presentiment that his thief was bound to be aboard the Mongolia — and in truth, if the scoundrel had left England meaning to reach the New World, the route by India, less closely watched, or harder to watch, than the Atlantic route, would surely have been his choice.
Fix was not left to his reflections for long. Sharp whistle blasts announced the steamer's arrival. The whole horde of porters and fellahs rushed toward the quay in a tumult somewhat alarming for the limbs and clothes of the passengers. A dozen small boats put out from the shore and went to meet the Mongolia.
Soon the huge hull of the Mongolia was seen passing between the banks of the canal, and eleven o'clock was striking when the steamer came to anchor in the roadstead, her steam roaring loudly through the escape pipes.
There were a good many passengers aboard. Some stayed on the spar deck to take in the picturesque panorama of the town; but most went ashore in the boats that had come alongside the Mongolia.
Fix scrupulously examined everyone who set foot on land.
Just then one of them came up to him, after vigorously fending off the fellahs who were mobbing him with offers of service, and asked him very politely if he could point out the offices of the English consular agent. At the same time the passenger held out a passport on which he no doubt wished to have the British visa stamped.
Fix instinctively took the passport and, at a quick glance, read the description on it.
An involuntary start nearly escaped him. The sheet trembled in his hand. The description entered on the passport was identical to the one he had received from the head of the metropolitan police.
"This passport isn't yours?" he said to the passenger.
"No," the man answered, "it's my master's passport."
"And your master?"
"He's stayed aboard."
"But," the agent went on, "he'll have to present himself in person at the consulate to establish his identity."
"What! Is that necessary?"
"Indispensable."
"And where are these offices?"
"There, at the corner of the square," the inspector replied, pointing to a house some two hundred paces off.
"Then I'll go and fetch my master — though it won't much please him to be put out!"
With that, the passenger bowed to Fix and went back aboard the steamer.
The inspector went back down onto the quay and made straight for the consul's offices. At his urgent request, he was shown in to that official at once.
"Sir," he said without any preamble, "I have strong reason to believe that our man has taken passage aboard the Mongolia."
And Fix recounted what had passed between himself and that servant on the subject of the passport.
"Well, Mr. Fix," the consul replied, "I wouldn't mind getting a look at this rascal's face. But if he's what you suppose, he may not present himself at my office at all. A thief doesn't like to leave a trail behind him, and besides, the passport formality is no longer required."
"Sir," the agent answered, "if he's a shrewd man, as we have every reason to think, he'll come!"
"To have his passport stamped?"
"Yes. Passports never do anything but inconvenience honest people and help scoundrels slip away. I promise you this one's papers will be in perfect order, but I do hope you won't stamp them."
"And why not? If the passport is in order," the consul replied, "I've no right to refuse my visa."
"All the same, sir, I have to hold this man here until I've received a warrant for his arrest from London."
"Ah, that, Mr. Fix, is your affair," the consul answered, "but I, for my part, cannot—"
The consul never finished his sentence. At that moment there came a knock at the door of his office, and the clerk showed in two strangers, one of whom was precisely that servant who had been chatting with the detective.
It was indeed the master and the man. The master presented his passport, laconically requesting that the consul be so good as to affix his visa.
The consul took the passport and read it attentively, while Fix, in a corner of the office, watched the stranger — or rather, devoured him with his eyes.
When the consul had finished reading:
"You are Phileas Fogg, Esquire?" he asked.
"I am, sir," the gentleman replied.
"And this man is your servant?"
"Yes. A Frenchman named Passepartout."
"You come from London?"
"I do."
"And you are bound for—?"
"Bombay."
"Very good, sir. You're aware that this visa formality is unnecessary, and that we no longer require the presentation of a passport?"
"I'm aware of it, sir," Phileas Fogg replied, "but I wish your visa to record my passage through Suez."
"As you please, sir."
And the consul, having signed and dated the passport, affixed his stamp to it. Mr. Fogg paid the visa fee and, after a cold nod, went out, followed by his servant.
"Well?" asked the inspector.
"Well," the consul replied, "he has the look of a perfectly honest man!"
"That may be," said Fix, "but that's not the question. Do you find, sir, that this cool-blooded gentleman is the exact likeness, feature for feature, of the thief whose description I've received?"
"I grant you he is, but you know how it is with descriptions—"
"I'll get to the bottom of it," Fix replied. "The servant strikes me as less impossible to read than the master. What's more, he's a Frenchman — he won't be able to keep from talking. Until soon, sir."
That said, the agent went out and set off in search of Passepartout.
Meanwhile Mr. Fogg, on leaving the consulate, had made his way toward the quay. There he gave a few orders to his servant; then he stepped into a boat, returned aboard the Mongolia, and went back to his cabin. He took out his notebook, which held the following entries:
"Left London, Wednesday, October 2, 8:45 p.m.
"Reached Paris, Thursday, October 3, 7:20 a.m.
"Left Paris, Thursday, 8:40 a.m.
"Reached Turin by way of Mont Cenis, Friday, October 4, 6:35 a.m.
"Left Turin, Friday, 7:20 a.m.
"Reached Brindisi, Saturday, October 5, 4:00 p.m.
"Boarded the Mongolia, Saturday, 5:00 p.m.
"Reached Suez, Wednesday, October 9, 11:00 a.m.
"Total hours spent: 158½ — that is, in days: 6½ days."
Mr. Fogg noted these dates on an itinerary laid out in columns, which listed — from October 2 to December 21 — the month, the date, the day of the week, the scheduled arrivals and the actual arrivals at each principal point: Paris, Brindisi, Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York, Liverpool, London — and which let him calculate the time gained or lost at each stage of the journey.
This methodical schedule thus accounted for everything, and Mr. Fogg always knew whether he was ahead or behind.
So on this day, Wednesday, October 9, he entered his arrival at Suez, which, matching the scheduled arrival, put him neither ahead nor behind.
Then he had lunch served to him in his cabin. As for seeing the town, the thought never so much as crossed his mind — for he was of that breed of Englishman who have their servant do the sightseeing in the countries they pass through.
In a few minutes Fix had caught up with Passepartout on the quay, where the Frenchman was strolling and taking in the sights — feeling no obligation, himself, not to look.
"Well, my friend," Fix said, coming up to him, "is your passport stamped?"
"Ah! It's you, sir," the Frenchman answered. "Much obliged. Yes, we're perfectly in order."
"And you're seeing the country?"
"Yes, but we're going so fast it feels like I'm traveling in a dream. So this is Suez, is it?"
"Suez."
"In Egypt?"
"In Egypt, exactly."
"In Africa?"
"In Africa."
"In Africa!" Passepartout repeated. "I can't believe it. Imagine, sir — I never dreamed I'd get farther than Paris, and that famous capital I saw for all of one hour and twenty minutes, from twenty past seven to twenty to nine in the morning, between the Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon, through the windows of a cab and in a driving rain! What a shame. I'd have loved to see Père-Lachaise and the circus on the Champs-Élysées again!"
"So you're in a great hurry?" the police inspector asked.
"Me? No, but my master is. That reminds me — I need to buy some socks and shirts! We left without any luggage, just an overnight bag."
"I'll take you to a bazaar where you'll find everything you need."
"Sir," Passepartout replied, "you really are too kind!"
And the two of them set off together. Passepartout kept right on talking.
"Above all," he said, "I must be careful not to miss the boat!"
"You've got time," Fix answered. "It's only noon!"
Passepartout pulled out his big watch.
"Noon," he said. "Come now! It's nine fifty-two!"
"Your watch is slow," Fix said.
"My watch! A family watch, handed down from my great-grandfather! It doesn't gain or lose five minutes in a year. A genuine chronometer!"
"I see what's happened," Fix said. "You're still keeping London time, which runs about two hours behind Suez. You want to reset your watch to local noon in each country."
"Me! Touch my watch!" cried Passepartout. "Never!"
"Well then, it won't agree with the sun."
"So much the worse for the sun, sir! The sun will be the one in the wrong!"
And the good fellow slipped his watch back into his pocket with a magnificent flourish.
A few moments later, Fix said to him:
"So you left London in a great rush?"
"I should say so! Last Wednesday, at eight in the evening — against all his habits — Mr. Fogg came home from his club, and three-quarters of an hour later we were on our way."
"But where's he going, this master of yours?"
"Straight ahead! He's going around the world!"
"Around the world?" Fix exclaimed.
"Yes, in eighty days! A wager, he says — but between you and me, I don't believe a word of it. It makes no sense. There's something else behind it."
"Ah! So he's a character, this Mr. Fogg?"
"I'd say so."
"And he's rich?"
"Obviously — and he's carrying a tidy sum with him, in brand-new banknotes! And he doesn't spare the money on the road, either! Why, he's promised the engineer of the Mongolia a splendid bonus if we reach Bombay well ahead of time!"
"And you've known him a long time, this master of yours?"
"Me?" said Passepartout. "I entered his service the very day we left."
One can easily imagine the effect these answers must have had on the already overheated mind of the police inspector.
This hurried departure from London, so soon after the robbery; the large sum being carried off; the rush to reach distant countries; the pretext of an eccentric wager — it all confirmed Fix in his ideas, as it was bound to. He kept the Frenchman talking and became certain that the fellow knew nothing whatever about his master; that this Fogg lived a solitary life in London, was said to be rich without anyone knowing the source of his fortune, and was a thoroughly impenetrable man — and so on. But at the same time, Fix could now hold it for certain that Phileas Fogg was not landing at Suez, and that he really was bound for Bombay.
"Is it far, Bombay?" Passepartout asked.
"Fairly far," the agent replied. "You've still got a good ten days at sea."
"And where do you place Bombay, exactly?"
"In India."
"In Asia?"
"Naturally."
"The devil! Here's the thing I'll tell you... there's one thing that's been nagging at me... it's my burner!"
"What burner?"
"My gas burner, that I forgot to turn off and that's burning away on my account. Now, I've worked it out that it comes to two shillings every twenty-four hours — exactly sixpence more than I earn — and you can see that if the trip drags on at all..."
Did Fix follow the business about the gas? Not likely. He was no longer listening; he had made up his mind. He and the Frenchman had reached the bazaar. Fix left his companion to do his shopping there, warned him not to miss the departure of the Mongolia, and hurried back to the offices of the consular agent.
Now that his conviction was settled, Fix had fully recovered his composure.
"Sir," he said to the consul, "I no longer have any doubt. I've got my man. He's passing himself off as an eccentric who wants to go around the world in eighty days."
"Then he's a clever one," the consul replied, "and he means to come back to London after throwing the police of two continents off his trail!"
"We'll see about that," Fix answered.
"But aren't you mistaken?" the consul asked once more.
"I'm not mistaken."
"Then why did this thief insist on having his passage through Suez confirmed with a stamp?"
"Why?... I've no idea, Mr. Consul," the detective replied, "but hear me out."
And in a few words he laid out the salient points of his conversation with the servant of the said Fogg.
"Indeed," said the consul, "every presumption is against this man. And what do you mean to do?"
"Fire off a telegram to London with an urgent request to send me a warrant of arrest at Bombay, board the Mongolia, shadow my thief as far as India, and there, on that English soil, walk up to him politely, my warrant in one hand and the other hand on his shoulder."
Having spoken these words coldly, the agent took his leave of the consul and made his way to the telegraph office. From there he fired off to the director of the metropolitan police that dispatch we already know about.
A quarter of an hour later, Fix — his light luggage in hand, and well supplied with money besides — was going aboard the Mongolia, and soon the swift steamer was racing at full steam over the waters of the Red Sea.
The distance from Suez to Aden is exactly one thousand three hundred and ten miles, and the Company's contract allows its steamers a span of a hundred and thirty-eight hours to cover it. The Mongolia, her fires stoked hard, was making enough speed to beat the scheduled time.
Most of the passengers who had come aboard at Brindisi were bound for India. Some were going to Bombay, others to Calcutta — but by way of Bombay, for ever since a railway had been driven straight across the width of the Indian peninsula, there was no longer any need to round the point of Ceylon.
Among these passengers of the Mongolia were civil servants of various sorts and officers of every rank. Some belonged to the British army proper, others commanded the native regiments of sepoys, and all were handsomely paid, even now that the government had taken over the rights and the burdens of the old East India Company: second lieutenants at 7,000 francs, brigadiers at 60,000, generals at 100,000.
Life aboard the Mongolia, then, was a good one, in this company of officials, into which were mixed a few young Englishmen who, with a million in their pockets, were off to found trading houses in far-flung ports. The purser — the Company's trusted man, the equal of the captain aboard — did things in style. At the morning breakfast, at the two o'clock lunch, at the half-past five dinner, at the eight o'clock supper, the tables groaned under platters of fresh meat and side dishes turned out by the steamer's butchery and pantries. The lady passengers — there were a few — changed their dress twice a day. There was music, there was even dancing, whenever the sea allowed.
But the Red Sea is a moody thing, and too often a foul one, like all these long, narrow gulfs. When the wind blew off either the Asian or the African coast, the Mongolia — a long spindle of a screw steamer — was caught broadside and rolled fearfully. The ladies then vanished; the pianos fell silent; songs and dances stopped together. And yet, gale or no gale, swell or no swell, the steamer, driven by her powerful engine, ran on without delay toward the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb.
And what was Phileas Fogg doing all this while? One might imagine that, forever fretful and anxious, he worried over the shifting winds that threatened the ship's pace, over the wild heave of the swell that might damage the engine, over every possible breakdown that could force the Mongolia into some port and so wreck his whole journey.
Not in the least — or if the gentleman did entertain such possibilities, he let nothing of it show. He was still the impassive man, the imperturbable member of the Reform Club, whom no incident or accident could surprise. He seemed no more moved than the ship's chronometers. He was seldom seen on deck. He gave little thought to this Red Sea, so rich in memory, this stage of the first historic scenes of humankind. He did not come up to make out the curious towns strewn along its shores, whose picturesque outlines sometimes stood against the horizon. He did not so much as dream of the dangers of this Arabian gulf, of which the ancient historians — Strabo, Arrian, Artemidorus, Edrisi — always spoke with dread, and onto which sailors of old never ventured without first consecrating their voyage with offerings to appease the gods.
So what did this odd fellow do, cooped up aboard the Mongolia? First, he took his four meals a day, without ever a roll or a pitch throwing a machine so wonderfully well ordered off its rhythm. Then he played whist.
Yes! He had found partners as rabid for the game as himself: a tax collector on his way to his post at Goa, a clergyman, the Reverend Decimus Smith, returning to Bombay, and a brigadier general of the English army rejoining his corps at Benares. These three passengers had the same passion for whist as Mr. Fogg, and they played for hours on end, no less silently than he.
As for Passepartout, seasickness had no hold on him whatsoever. He had a cabin forward and ate, for his part, conscientiously. And it must be said that this voyage, made on these terms, no longer displeased him in the slightest. He had made his peace with it. Well fed, well lodged, seeing the world — and besides, he kept assuring himself that this whole fancy would end at Bombay.
The day after leaving Suez, the 10th of October, it was with a certain pleasure that he ran into, up on deck, the obliging fellow he had turned to on landing in Egypt.
"I'm not mistaken," he said, coming up to him with his most amiable smile. "You're the very man, sir, who so kindly played guide for me at Suez?"
"Indeed I am," answered the detective. "I recognize you! You're the servant of that odd Englishman —"
"Precisely, Mr. —?"
"Fix."
"Mr. Fix," said Passepartout. "Delighted to find you aboard. And where are you headed?"
"Same as you — Bombay."
"Couldn't be better! Have you made this trip before?"
"Several times," answered Fix. "I'm an agent of the Peninsular Company."
"Then you know India?"
"Well... yes...," answered Fix, not wanting to commit himself too far.
"And is it a curious place, this India?"
"Very curious! Mosques, minarets, temples, fakirs, pagodas, tigers, snakes, dancing girls! But let's hope you'll have the time to see the country?"
"I hope so, Mr. Fix. You do understand that no man in his right mind can spend his life leaping from a steamer onto a railway and from a railway onto a steamer, all on the pretext of going around the world in eighty days! No. All this acrobatics will stop at Bombay, never you doubt it."
"And is he keeping well, Mr. Fogg?" asked Fix in the most natural tone.
"Very well, Mr. Fix. And so am I, for that matter. I'm eating like an ogre who's been fasting. It's the sea air."
"And your master — I never see him on deck."
"Never. He isn't curious."
"You know, Mr. Passepartout, that this so-called trip in eighty days might well be a cover for some secret mission — a diplomatic mission, say!"
"My word, Mr. Fix, I've no idea, I'll admit it, and frankly I wouldn't give half a crown to find out."
After that meeting, Passepartout and Fix chatted together often. The police inspector was keen to strike up a friendship with Mr. Fogg's servant. It might serve him when the moment came. So he would often stand him, in the bar-room of the Mongolia, a few glasses of whisky or pale ale, which the good fellow accepted without ceremony and even returned in kind, so as not to be in his debt — finding this Fix, moreover, a thoroughly decent gentleman.
Meanwhile the steamer pressed rapidly on. On the 13th, they sighted Mocha, appearing within its belt of ruined walls, above which a few green date palms stood out. Far off in the mountains spread vast fields of coffee trees. Passepartout was thrilled to gaze on this famous town, and he even decided that, with its circular walls and a dismantled fort curving like a handle, it looked like an enormous demitasse.
During the following night the Mongolia cleared the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, whose Arabic name means the Gate of Tears, and the next day, the 14th, she put in at Steamer Point, to the northwest of the roadstead of Aden. There she was to take on fuel again.
Feeding the furnaces of steamers at such distances from the centers of production is a grave and weighty business. For the Peninsular Company alone, it comes to an annual expense of eight hundred thousand pounds. Depots have had to be set up in several ports, and in these far-off seas coal runs to eighty francs a ton.
The Mongolia still had sixteen hundred and fifty miles to make before reaching Bombay, and she was to stay four hours at Steamer Point to fill her bunkers.
But this delay could do no harm whatever to Phileas Fogg's program. It had been allowed for. Besides, instead of reaching Aden only on the morning of the 15th of October, the Mongolia came in on the evening of the 14th. That was a gain of fifteen hours.
Mr. Fogg and his servant went ashore. The gentleman wished to have his passport stamped. Fix followed without being noticed. The formality of the visa done, Phileas Fogg returned aboard to take up his interrupted game.
Passepartout, for his part, strolled about as was his habit, among that population of Somalis, Banians, Parsees, Jews, Arabs, and Europeans who make up the twenty-five thousand inhabitants of Aden. He admired the fortifications that make this town the Gibraltar of the Indian Ocean, and the magnificent cisterns still being worked on by English engineers two thousand years after the engineers of King Solomon.
"Very curious, very curious!" Passepartout said to himself on his way back aboard. "I can see it's no bad thing to travel, if a man wants to see something new."
At six in the evening the Mongolia beat the waters of the Aden roadstead with the blades of her screw and was soon running out over the Indian Ocean. She was allowed a hundred and sixty-eight hours to make the crossing from Aden to Bombay. And this Indian sea proved kind to her. The wind held in the northwest. The sails came to the aid of the steam.
Better steadied, the ship rolled less. The lady passengers, in fresh gowns, reappeared on deck. The songs and the dances began again.
So the voyage went off in the best of conditions. Passepartout was delighted with the agreeable companion chance had thrown his way in the person of Fix.
On Sunday the 20th of October, toward noon, they raised the Indian coast. Two hours later the pilot came aboard the Mongolia. On the horizon a backdrop of hills traced itself harmoniously against the sky. Soon the ranks of palms that cover the town stood out sharply. The steamer entered the roadstead formed by the islands of Salsette, Colaba, Elephanta, and Butcher, and at half-past four she was drawing alongside the quays of Bombay.
Phileas Fogg was just then finishing the thirty-third rubber of the day, and he and his partner, thanks to one bold maneuver, had taken all thirteen tricks and closed this fine crossing with a splendid grand slam.
The Mongolia was not due at Bombay until the 22nd of October. But here she was arriving on the 20th. That made, since her departure from London, a gain of two days, which Phileas Fogg methodically entered on his itinerary, in the column of credits.
Everyone knows that India — that great inverted triangle, its base to the north and its point to the south — covers an area of some fourteen hundred thousand square miles, across which a population of a hundred and eighty million is spread unevenly. Over a certain part of this immense country the British government holds real dominion. It keeps a governor-general at Calcutta, governors at Madras, at Bombay, in Bengal, and a lieutenant-governor at Agra.
But British India proper covers only seven hundred thousand square miles and a population of a hundred to a hundred and ten million. Which is another way of saying that a good deal of the territory still lies outside the queen's authority; and indeed, among certain rajahs of the interior — fierce and formidable men — Hindu independence is still absolute.
From 1756 — the year the first English settlement was founded on the site the city of Madras now occupies — down to the year in which the great Sepoy uprising broke out, the famous East India Company was all-powerful. Little by little it annexed the various provinces, buying them from the rajahs in exchange for pensions it paid barely or not at all; it appointed its own governor-general and every one of its officials, civil and military. But now the Company is gone, and the English possessions in India answer directly to the Crown.
And so the look of the peninsula, its customs, its ethnographic divisions, are changing by the day. In the old times you traveled there by every ancient means of transport — on foot, on horseback, by cart, by wheelbarrow, by palanquin, on a man's back, by coach, and the rest. Now steamboats race up the Indus and the Ganges at high speed, and a railway that crosses India along its full width, branching as it goes, has brought Bombay within a mere three days of Calcutta.
The line of this railway does not run dead straight across India. As the crow flies the distance is only a thousand to eleven hundred miles, and trains at no more than a moderate speed would take less than three days to cover it; but that distance is increased by at least a third by the arc the railway describes as it climbs up to Allahabad in the north of the peninsula.
Here, in broad strokes, is the route of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway. Leaving the island of Bombay, it crosses Salsette, jumps to the mainland opposite Tannah, scales the range of the Western Ghauts, runs northeast to Burhampoor, cuts across the more or less independent territory of Bundelkund, climbs to Allahabad, bends eastward, meets the Ganges at Benares, veers slightly away from it, and, dropping back to the southeast by way of Burdwan and the French town of Chandernagore, comes to the head of the line at Calcutta.
It was half past four in the afternoon when the passengers of the Mongolia landed at Bombay, and the Calcutta train left at eight o'clock precisely.
So Mr. Fogg took leave of his card partners, went ashore, gave his servant a list of a few purchases to make, warned him expressly to be at the station before eight, and, with that steady step of his that beat off the seconds like the pendulum of an astronomical clock, he set off for the passport office.
Of all the wonders of Bombay, then, he had no thought of seeing a single one — not the town hall, nor the magnificent library, nor the forts, nor the docks, nor the cotton market, nor the bazaars, nor the mosques, nor the synagogues, nor the Armenian churches, nor the splendid pagoda on Malabar Hill with its two polygonal towers. He would not gaze on the masterworks of Elephanta, nor on its mysterious underground chambers hidden away to the southeast of the harbor, nor on the Kanheri caves of Salsette Island, those admirable relics of Buddhist architecture.
No — nothing. Coming out of the passport office, Phileas Fogg made calmly for the station, and there he ordered dinner. Among the other dishes, the headwaiter felt bound to recommend a certain fricassee of "native rabbit," which he praised to the skies.
Phileas Fogg accepted the fricassee and tasted it conscientiously; but in spite of its spiced sauce, he found it revolting.
He rang for the headwaiter.
"My good man," he said, fixing him with a level stare, "this is rabbit?"
"Yes, my lord," the rascal answered brazenly, "jungle rabbit."
"And this rabbit didn't happen to meow when it was killed?"
"Meow! Oh, my lord — a rabbit! I swear to you—"
"Don't swear, my good man," Mr. Fogg went on coldly. "Just remember this: in the old days, in India, cats were held to be sacred animals. Those were the good times."
"For the cats, my lord?"
"And perhaps for travelers too."
That observation made, Mr. Fogg went quietly on with his dinner.
A few moments after Mr. Fogg, Detective Fix had likewise come ashore from the Mongolia and hurried off to the head of the Bombay police. He made his standing as a detective known, along with the mission he'd been charged with and his position regarding the presumed author of the theft. Had a warrant of arrest been received from London? Nothing had come. And in fact the warrant, dispatched after Fogg, could not possibly have arrived yet.
Fix was thoroughly put out. He tried to get an order of arrest against this Mr. Fogg out of the director. The director refused. The matter concerned the metropolitan authorities, and they alone could lawfully issue a warrant. This strictness of principle, this rigorous observance of the letter of the law, is perfectly in keeping with English habits, which in the matter of individual liberty allow no high-handedness whatever.
Fix did not press it, and understood he would have to resign himself to waiting for his warrant. But he resolved not to let his inscrutable scoundrel out of his sight the whole time the man remained in Bombay. He had no doubt Phileas Fogg would linger there — and, as we know, that was Passepartout's conviction too — which would give the warrant time to arrive.
But after the last orders his master had given him on leaving the Mongolia, Passepartout had understood perfectly well that Bombay would go the way of Suez and Paris, that the journey would not end here, that it would carry on at least as far as Calcutta, and perhaps beyond. And he began to wonder whether this wager of Mr. Fogg's might not be entirely serious after all — whether fate was not dragging him, a man who had only wanted a quiet life, right around the world in eighty days.
In the meantime, having laid in a few shirts and pairs of socks, he strolled through the streets of Bombay. There was a great crowd, and in among Europeans of every nationality moved Persians in pointed caps, Bunhyas in round turbans, Sindees in square bonnets, Armenians in long robes, Parsees in black miters. It happened to be a festival kept by these Parsees, or Guebres — direct descendants of the followers of Zoroaster, who are the most industrious, most civilized, most intelligent, and most austere of the Hindus, and the race to which the wealthy native merchants of Bombay now belong. That day they were celebrating a sort of religious carnival, with processions and entertainments, in which appeared dancing girls dressed in rose-colored gauze shot with gold and silver, who, to the sound of viols and the beat of tom-toms, danced marvelously — and, for that matter, with perfect decorum.
That Passepartout watched these curious ceremonies, that his eyes and ears opened as wide as they would go to take it all in, that his look and his whole bearing were those of the greenest greenhorn imaginable — none of that need be dwelt on here.
Unhappily for him and for his master, whose journey he came close to wrecking, his curiosity carried him further than it should have.
For, having glimpsed this Parsee carnival, Passepartout was heading toward the station when, passing before the admirable pagoda on Malabar Hill, he got the unfortunate notion of visiting the inside.
He was ignorant of two things: first, that entry to certain Hindu pagodas is strictly forbidden to Christians, and second, that even the faithful may not go in without leaving their shoes at the door. It should be noted here that, as a matter of sound policy, the English government respects the country's religion down to its smallest details — and requires that it be respected — punishing severely anyone who violates its practices.
Passepartout, having gone in meaning no harm, like an ordinary tourist, was admiring the dazzling glitter of the Brahmin ornamentation inside Malabar Hill when he was suddenly thrown down on the sacred flagstones. Three priests, their eyes blazing with fury, rushed at him, tore off his shoes and socks, and set about raining blows on him, howling savagely.
The Frenchman, strong and quick, was on his feet in an instant. With a punch and a kick he knocked down two of his assailants, badly tangled in their long robes, and, bolting out of the pagoda as fast as his legs would carry him, he soon left the third Hindu far behind — the man had thrown himself after him, whipping up the crowd as he went.
At five minutes to eight, only a few minutes before the train pulled out, hatless, barefoot, having lost in the scuffle the bundle that held his purchases, Passepartout reached the railway station.
Fix was there, on the boarding platform. Having followed Mr. Fogg to the station, he had understood that the scoundrel was about to leave Bombay. His mind was made up at once: he would go with him as far as Calcutta, and further if he had to. Passepartout did not see Fix, who kept to the shadows, but Fix overheard the tale of his adventures, which Passepartout related to his master in a few words.
"I trust this won't happen again," was all Phileas Fogg said, as he took his seat in one of the train's carriages.
The poor fellow, barefoot and thoroughly crestfallen, followed his master without a word.
Fix was about to climb into a separate carriage when a thought stopped him and abruptly changed his plans to leave.
"No — I'll stay," he said to himself. "An offense committed on Indian soil... I've got my man."
At that moment the locomotive gave a hearty whistle, and the train vanished into the night.
The train had pulled out exactly on schedule. It carried the usual assortment of passengers — a few officers, some civil servants, and a handful of dealers in opium and indigo whose business called them to the eastern part of the peninsula.
Passepartout shared a compartment with his master. A third traveler occupied the far corner.
This was Brigadier General Sir Francis Cromarty, one of Mr. Fogg's whist partners on the crossing from Suez to Bombay, now on his way to rejoin his troops garrisoned near Benares.
Sir Francis Cromarty was a tall, fair man of about fifty who had distinguished himself in the recent Sepoy Rebellion, and he could very nearly have passed for a native. He had lived in India since he was young, making only rare appearances in the country of his birth. He was a well-read man, and would gladly have shared everything he knew about the customs, the history, and the workings of the country — had Phileas Fogg been the sort of man to ask. But this particular gentleman asked nothing. He was not traveling; he was tracing a circumference. He was a solid body describing an orbit around the globe, in accordance with the laws of rational mechanics. At this very moment he was running back over the hours spent since leaving London, and he would have rubbed his hands together in satisfaction, had it been in his nature to make a useless gesture.
Sir Francis Cromarty had not failed to notice the originality of his fellow traveler, though he had studied him only across a hand of cards, between two rubbers of whist. He had good reason to wonder whether a human heart beat beneath that cold exterior — whether Phileas Fogg had a soul alive to the beauties of nature or to any higher aspiration. It was an open question, as far as he was concerned. Of all the eccentrics the brigadier general had met in his life, not one compared to this product of the exact sciences.
Phileas Fogg had made no secret to Sir Francis Cromarty of his plan to travel around the world, nor of the terms under which he was doing it. The brigadier general saw in the wager nothing but a pointless eccentricity, one that necessarily lacked the transire benefaciendo — the doing of good in passing — that ought to guide any reasonable man. At the rate this odd gentleman was going, he would clearly pass through the world without "doing anything," either for himself or for anyone else.
An hour out of Bombay the train crossed the viaducts, ran over the island of Salsette, and struck out onto the mainland. At Callyan station it left on the right the branch line that runs down through Khandala and Poona toward southeastern India, and reached the station of Pauwell. From there it entered the deeply folded ranges of the Western Ghats, chains of trap rock and basalt whose highest peaks are cloaked in thick forest.
From time to time Sir Francis Cromarty and Phileas Fogg exchanged a few words, and just now the brigadier general, picking up a conversation that kept lapsing, said:
"A few years ago, Mr. Fogg, you'd have run into a delay right about here that would very likely have wrecked your schedule."
"How so, Sir Francis?"
"Because the railway stopped at the foot of these mountains, and you had to cross them by palanquin or on pony-back to reach the station at Khandala, on the far side."
"That delay wouldn't have disturbed my program in the least," replied Mr. Fogg. "I've allowed for the possibility of certain obstacles."
"All the same, Mr. Fogg," the brigadier general went on, "you came very near having a nasty piece of business on your hands, thanks to that young fellow's adventure."
Passepartout, his feet wrapped up in his traveling blanket, was fast asleep, and had no idea he was the subject of conversation.
"The English government is extremely severe, and rightly so, about that sort of offense," Sir Francis Cromarty continued. "Above all it insists that the religious customs of the Hindus be respected, and if your servant had been caught—"
"Well, if he had been caught, Sir Francis," replied Mr. Fogg, "he'd have been sentenced, he'd have served his time, and then he'd have come quietly home to Europe. I don't see how that business could possibly have delayed his master."
And on that note the conversation lapsed again. During the night the train crossed the Ghats, passed through Nassik, and the next day, October 21, it shot out across relatively flat country — the territory of Khandeish. The well-tilled fields were dotted with villages, and above each rose the minaret of a pagoda where a European village would have had a church steeple. Countless small streams, most of them tributaries or sub-tributaries of the Godavery, watered this fertile stretch of land.
Passepartout, awake now, watched it all and could scarcely believe he was crossing Hindu country in a train of the "Great Peninsular Railway." It struck him as wildly improbable. And yet nothing could be more real. The locomotive, guided by the arm of an English engineer and fed on English coal, threw its smoke over plantations of coffee, nutmeg, clove, and red pepper. The steam curled in spirals around clumps of palm trees, among which appeared picturesque bungalows, a few viharas — a kind of abandoned monastery — and marvelous temples lavished with the inexhaustible ornament of Indian architecture. Then vast tracts of land stretched away as far as the eye could see, jungles well stocked with snakes and tigers that the train's whistling sent bolting, and at last forests split by the line of the track, still haunted by elephants that watched the disheveled convoy rush past with a thoughtful eye.
That morning, beyond the station of Malligaum, the travelers crossed a grim stretch of country that had so often been drenched in blood by the worshippers of the goddess Kali. Not far off rose Ellora with its admirable pagodas; not far off, the famous Aurungabad, capital of the fierce Aureng-Zeb, now no more than the chief town of one of the provinces broken off from the kingdom of the Nizam. This was the region where Feringhea, chief of the Thugs, king of the Stranglers, had once held sway. These murderers, bound together in an association impossible to root out, strangled victims of every age in honor of the goddess of Death, never spilling a drop of blood — and there was a time when you could not dig anywhere in this soil without turning up a corpse. The English government has managed to check these killings to a considerable degree, but the dreadful society still exists and is still at work.
At half past twelve the train stopped at the station of Burhampour, where Passepartout managed to buy, at a price fit for gold, a pair of slippers trimmed with imitation pearls, which he put on with an air of unmistakable vanity.
The travelers lunched in a hurry and set off again for the station of Assurghur, after skirting for a moment the bank of the Tapty, a small river that empties into the Gulf of Cambay near Surat.
This is a good moment to describe what was going through Passepartout's mind just then. Right up until his arrival in Bombay, he had believed — and been able to believe — that the whole affair would go no further than that. But now, since he had been racing across India at full steam, a change had come over him. His true nature came galloping back. He recovered all the wild fancies of his youth; he began to take his master's plans seriously; he came to believe in the reality of the wager, and therefore in this trip around the world and this maximum stretch of time that mustn't be exceeded. He had even begun to fret over the delays that might crop up, the accidents that might happen on the road. He felt as if he had a personal stake in the bet, and trembled to think that the day before he had nearly wrecked it with his own unforgivable gawking. And so, far less phlegmatic than Mr. Fogg, he was far more anxious. He counted and recounted the days gone by, cursed every stop the train made, accused it of crawling, and privately blamed Mr. Fogg for not having promised the engineer a bonus. The good fellow had no idea that what was possible aboard a steamer was out of the question on a railway, whose speed is fixed by regulation.
Toward evening they entered the passes of the Sutpour mountains, which separate the territory of Khandeish from that of Bundelkund.
The next day, October 22, when Sir Francis Cromarty asked him the time, Passepartout consulted his watch and answered that it was three in the morning. And in fact this famous watch, still set to the meridian of Greenwich — now nearly seventy-seven degrees to the west — was bound to be running slow, and was indeed four hours behind.
So Sir Francis corrected the time Passepartout had given him, and made the same point that Fix had already made once before. He tried to get across to him that he ought to reset his watch at each new meridian, and that, since he was traveling steadily eastward — that is, toward the sun — the days grew shorter by four minutes for every degree covered. It was no use. Whether the stubborn fellow had understood the brigadier general's point or not, he obstinately refused to move his watch ahead, and kept it fixed forever on London time. A harmless little quirk, in any case, and one that could hurt nobody.
At eight in the morning, fifteen miles short of the station of Rothal, the train stopped in the middle of a wide clearing bordered by a few bungalows and workmen's huts. The conductor walked down the line of cars, calling out:
"Passengers get off here."
Phileas Fogg looked at Sir Francis Cromarty, who seemed to make nothing of this halt in the middle of a forest of tamarinds and date palms.
Passepartout, no less surprised, sprang out onto the track and came back almost at once, crying:
"Sir, the railway's finished!"
"What do you mean?" asked Sir Francis Cromarty.
"I mean the train doesn't go any further!"
The brigadier general climbed down from the car at once. Phileas Fogg followed, in no hurry. The two of them turned to the conductor:
"Where are we?" asked Sir Francis Cromarty.
"At the hamlet of Kholby," the conductor answered.
"And we stop here?"
"We must. The railway isn't finished—"
"What! It isn't finished?"
"No! There's still a stretch of about fifty miles to lay between this point and Allahabad, where the line picks up again."
"But the papers announced the line was open all the way through!"
"What can I tell you, officer — the papers got it wrong."
"And yet you sell tickets from Bombay to Calcutta!" said Sir Francis Cromarty, who was starting to heat up.
"No doubt," the conductor replied, "but the passengers know perfectly well that they have to arrange their own transport from Kholby to Allahabad."
Sir Francis Cromarty was furious. Passepartout would gladly have knocked the conductor flat, though the man was hardly to blame. He didn't dare look at his master.
"Sir Francis," said Mr. Fogg simply, "we'll see about finding some way to reach Allahabad, if you're willing."
"Mr. Fogg, this is exactly the kind of delay that damages your interests."
"No, Sir Francis, it was foreseen."
"What! You knew the line—"
"Not at all, but I knew that some obstacle or other would turn up on my route sooner or later. And nothing is lost. I have two days in hand to spare. There's a steamer leaving Calcutta for Hong Kong on the 25th at noon. This is only the 22nd, and we'll reach Calcutta in time."
There was nothing to say to an answer delivered with such complete assurance.
It was all too true that the railway works stopped at this point. Newspapers are like certain watches that have a mania for running fast, and they had announced the completion of the line prematurely. Most of the passengers knew about this break in the track, and as they got off the train they had grabbed up every kind of vehicle the little town possessed: four-wheeled palkigharis, carts drawn by zebus — a sort of humped ox — traveling wagons that looked like rolling pagodas, palanquins, ponies, and the rest. So Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty, after searching the whole town, came back having found nothing.
"I'll go on foot," said Phileas Fogg.
Passepartout, rejoining his master just then, made a meaningful grimace as he considered his splendid but wholly inadequate slippers. Luckily he too had been off scouting, and after a bit of hesitation he said:
"Sir, I believe I've found us a means of transport."
"What is it?"
"An elephant! An elephant that belongs to an Indian living a hundred paces from here."
"Let's go and see the elephant," replied Mr. Fogg.
Five minutes later, Phileas Fogg, Sir Francis Cromarty, and Passepartout arrived at a hut adjoining a paddock fenced with tall palisades. In the hut was an Indian, and in the paddock, an elephant. At their request, the Indian led Mr. Fogg and his two companions into the enclosure.
There they found themselves face to face with a half-tamed animal that its owner was raising not as a beast of burden but as a beast of war. To that end he had begun to alter the animal's naturally gentle temperament, working it up by degrees to that frenzy of rage the Hindus call "mutsh," and doing it by feeding the creature sugar and butter for three months. This treatment may seem an unlikely way to get such a result, but breeders use it successfully all the same. Very fortunately for Mr. Fogg, the elephant in question had only just been put on the diet, and the "mutsh" had not yet come on.
Kiouni — that was the beast's name — could, like all his kind, keep up a brisk pace for a long stretch, and, for want of any other mount, Phileas Fogg resolved to use him.
But elephants are expensive in India, where they are beginning to grow scarce. The males, the only ones fit for the fights of the arena, are in great demand. These animals seldom breed once they've been reduced to captivity, so that the only way to get one is by hunting it down. That is why they are the object of such extreme care, and when Mr. Fogg asked the Indian whether he would rent him his elephant, the Indian flatly refused.
Fogg persisted, and offered an outrageous price for the beast — ten pounds an hour. Refused. Twenty pounds? Refused again. Forty pounds? Refused still. Passepartout jumped at every raise in the bid. But the Indian would not be tempted.
And yet it was a handsome sum. Reckoning that the elephant might take fifteen hours to reach Allahabad, that came to six hundred pounds it would earn its owner.
Phileas Fogg, without warming up in the slightest, then offered to buy the beast outright, and started off at a thousand pounds.
The Indian would not sell! Perhaps the rascal scented a magnificent piece of business.
Sir Francis Cromarty took Mr. Fogg aside and urged him to think it over before going any further. Phileas Fogg replied that he was not in the habit of acting without thought, that it came down in the end to a wager of twenty thousand pounds, that this elephant was necessary to him, and that even if he had to pay twenty times its worth, he would have this elephant.
Mr. Fogg went back to the Indian, whose small eyes, lit up with greed, made it plain enough that for him it was only a question of price. Phileas Fogg offered, one after another, twelve hundred pounds, then fifteen hundred, then eighteen hundred, and finally two thousand. Passepartout, usually so red in the face, had gone pale with emotion.
At two thousand pounds, the Indian gave in.
"By my slippers," cried Passepartout, "that puts a fine price on elephant meat!"
The deal done, all that remained was to find a guide. That proved easier. A young Parsee with an intelligent face offered his services. Mr. Fogg accepted, and promised him a handsome fee — one that could only sharpen his wits.
The elephant was brought out and fitted up without delay. The Parsee knew the trade of "mahout," or elephant driver, perfectly. He threw a kind of housing over the elephant's back and rigged up, one on each of its flanks, a pair of rather uncomfortable seats.
Phileas Fogg paid the Indian in banknotes drawn from the famous bag. It really looked as though they were being torn out of Passepartout's own insides. Then Mr. Fogg offered to carry Sir Francis Cromarty as far as the station at Allahabad. The brigadier general accepted. One more traveler was hardly going to tire the gigantic animal.
Provisions were bought at Kholby. Sir Francis Cromarty took his place in one of the seats, Phileas Fogg in the other. Passepartout settled astride the housing between his master and the brigadier general. The Parsee perched himself on the elephant's neck, and at nine o'clock the animal left the little town and plunged by the shortest route into the thick forest of fan palms.
To shorten the distance, the guide kept to the right of the railway line still under construction. That line, thrown badly off course by the whimsical spurs of the Vindhia Mountains, did not follow the shortest road — the one Phileas Fogg had every reason to take. The Parsee, thoroughly at home on the country's roads and footpaths, claimed he could save a good twenty miles by cutting straight through the forest, and they took his word for it.
Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty, buried up to the neck in their howdahs, were shaken half to pieces by the elephant's stiff trot, which the mahout kept at a brisk pace. But they endured it with the most perfectly British calm, saying little, and scarcely able to see each other besides.
As for Passepartout, perched on the animal's back and taking every jolt and counter-jolt full force, he was careful — on his master's advice — not to let his tongue get between his teeth, or it would have been bitten clean through. The good fellow, flung now onto the elephant's neck, now back onto its rump, was doing gymnastics like a clown on a springboard. But he joked and laughed through his tumbling, and every so often he dug a lump of sugar out of his bag, which the clever Kiouni took with the tip of his trunk without once breaking his steady trot.
After two hours of this, the guide halted the elephant and gave him an hour's rest. The animal first slaked his thirst at a nearby pool, then set to devouring branches and shrubs. Sir Francis Cromarty made no complaint about the stop. He was worn out. Mr. Fogg looked as fresh as if he had just risen from his bed.
"The man is made of iron!" said the brigadier general, gazing at him in admiration.
"Wrought iron," said Passepartout, who was busy putting together a quick breakfast.
At noon the guide gave the signal to move on. The country soon took on a wild look. The great forests gave way to thickets of tamarind and dwarf palm, then to vast barren plains bristling with scrubby brush and strewn with great blocks of syenite. This whole stretch of upper Bundelkund, little traveled, is home to a fanatical population hardened in the most terrible practices of the Hindu religion. The English had never been able to establish any real authority over a territory still ruled by the sway of the rajahs, whom it would have been hard to reach in their unassailable retreats among the Vindhias.
Several times they caught sight of bands of fierce Indians, who made an angry gesture at the sight of the swift beast passing by. The Parsee steered clear of them whenever he could, judging them poor company to meet. Few animals showed themselves that day — barely a handful of monkeys, which fled with a thousand contortions and grimaces that Passepartout found highly entertaining.
One thought, among many others, kept nagging at him. What would Mr. Fogg do with the elephant once they reached the Allahabad station? Take him along? Impossible! The cost of transport added to the purchase price would make him a ruinously expensive animal. Sell him, then, or turn him loose? This admirable beast surely deserved some consideration. And if by chance Mr. Fogg were to make a present of him — to Passepartout, that is — the valet would be very much at a loss. The question would not stop turning over in his mind.
By eight in the evening the main ridge of the Vindhias had been crossed, and the travelers halted at the foot of the northern slope, in a ruined bungalow.
The distance covered that day was about twenty-five miles, and as many still remained before they would reach the Allahabad station.
The night was cold. Inside the bungalow the Parsee lit a fire of dry branches, whose warmth was much appreciated. Supper was made up of the provisions bought at Kholby. The travelers ate like men worn out and aching. The conversation, which began with a few broken phrases, soon ended in loud snoring. The guide kept watch beside Kiouni, who slept standing up, propped against the trunk of a great tree.
Nothing marked that night. A few roars from cheetahs and panthers now and then broke the silence, mixed with the shrill chattering of monkeys. But the big cats confined themselves to noise and made no hostile move against the guests of the bungalow. Sir Francis Cromarty slept heavily, like a good soldier worn out by his labors. Passepartout, in a restless sleep, relived in his dreams the tumbling of the day before. As for Mr. Fogg, he rested as peacefully as if he had been in his quiet house on Savile Row.
At six in the morning they set out again. The guide hoped to reach the Allahabad station that very evening. In that case Mr. Fogg would lose only a part of the forty-eight hours he had banked since the start of the journey.
They came down the last slopes of the Vindhias. Kiouni had picked up his brisk pace again. Toward noon the guide skirted the little town of Kallenger, on the Cani, one of the lesser tributaries of the Ganges. He kept clear of inhabited places, feeling safer in these deserted stretches of country that mark the first dips of the great river's basin. The Allahabad station now lay less than twelve miles to the northeast. They halted under a clump of banana trees, whose fruit — as wholesome as bread and, in travelers' words, "as luscious as cream" — was very much appreciated.
At two o'clock the guide passed under the cover of a thick forest, which he had to cross for several miles. He preferred to travel this way, sheltered by the woods. In any case he had met with no unpleasant encounter so far, and the journey seemed likely to pass off without mishap — when the elephant, showing some signs of unease, suddenly stopped.
It was four o'clock by then.
"What is it?" asked Sir Francis Cromarty, lifting his head above his howdah.
"I don't know, officer," answered the Parsee, straining to catch a confused murmur that came drifting under the thick canopy.
A few moments later the murmur grew more distinct. It sounded like a chorus of human voices and brass instruments, still a good way off.
Passepartout was all eyes and ears. Mr. Fogg waited patiently, without a word.
The Parsee dropped to the ground, tied the elephant to a tree, and slipped into the thickest of the underbrush. A few minutes later he came back and said:
"A procession of Brahmins, heading this way. If we can, let's not be seen."
The guide untied the elephant and led him into a thicket, warning the travelers not to set foot on the ground. He himself stood ready to spring onto his mount if flight became necessary. But he judged that the band of the faithful would pass without noticing them, for the dense foliage hid him completely.
The jarring din of voices and instruments came nearer. Monotonous chants mingled with the beat of drums and cymbals. Soon the head of the procession appeared beneath the trees, some fifty paces from the post held by Mr. Fogg and his companions. Through the branches they could easily make out the strange cast of this religious ceremony.
In the front rank came priests, crowned with miters and wrapped in long, gaudy robes. Around them pressed men, women, and children, raising a sort of funeral chant, broken at even intervals by the blows of tom-toms and cymbals. Behind them, on a car with broad wheels whose spokes and rim formed a tangle of serpents, rose a hideous statue, drawn by two yoke of zebus richly draped. The statue had four arms; its body was dyed a dark red, its eyes wild, its hair matted, its tongue lolling, its lips stained with henna and betel. Around its neck coiled a necklace of skulls; at its flanks, a belt of severed hands. It stood upright on a fallen giant whose head was missing.
Sir Francis Cromarty knew that statue.
"The goddess Kali," he murmured, "the goddess of love and death."
"Of death, I'll grant you, but of love — never!" said Passepartout. "The ugly old harridan!"
The Parsee signed to him to be quiet.
Around the statue writhed and struggled and convulsed a knot of old fakirs, striped with ochre and covered in cross-shaped gashes that let their blood escape drop by drop — dull-witted zealots who, in the great Hindu ceremonies, still fling themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut's car.
Behind them, a few Brahmins, in all the splendor of their Oriental dress, were dragging along a woman who could barely hold herself upright.
This woman was young, and white as a European. Her head, her neck, her shoulders, her ears, her arms, her hands, her toes were loaded down with jewels — necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings. A tunic threaded with gold, veiled under a light muslin, traced the lines of her figure.
Behind this young woman — a violent contrast to the eye — guards armed with naked sabers thrust through their belts and long inlaid pistols carried a corpse on a palanquin.
It was the body of an old man, dressed in the rich robes of a rajah, wearing, as in life, the turban embroidered with pearls, the robe woven of silk and gold, the cashmere sash set with diamonds, and the magnificent weapons of an Indian prince.
Then came musicians and a rear guard of fanatics, whose cries at times drowned out the deafening crash of the instruments, closing the cortege.
Sir Francis Cromarty watched all this pomp with a strangely saddened air, and turning to the guide:
"A suttee!" he said.
The Parsee nodded and put a finger to his lips. The long procession wound slowly on beneath the trees, and soon its last ranks vanished into the depths of the forest.
Little by little the chants died away. There were still a few bursts of distant shouting, and at last a deep silence settled over all the uproar.
Phileas Fogg had heard the word spoken by Sir Francis Cromarty, and the moment the procession had gone:
"What is a suttee?" he asked.
"A suttee, Mr. Fogg," answered the brigadier general, "is a human sacrifice — but a voluntary one. That woman you have just seen will be burned tomorrow at the first hours of daylight."
"The scoundrels!" cried Passepartout, unable to hold back the shout of outrage.
"And the corpse?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"That is the body of the prince, her husband," said the guide, "an independent rajah of Bundelkund."
"You mean to say," Phileas Fogg went on, without the least tremor in his voice, "that these barbarous customs still survive in India, and the English have not been able to stamp them out?"
"In most of India," answered Sir Francis Cromarty, "such sacrifices no longer take place. But we have no hold over these wild regions, and least of all over this Bundelkund territory. The whole northern face of the Vindhias is the scene of endless murder and pillage."
"The poor woman!" murmured Passepartout. "Burned alive!"
"Yes," the brigadier general went on, "burned — and if she were not, you could scarcely believe the wretched state her own people would reduce her to. They would shave off her hair; they would feed her barely a few handfuls of rice; they would cast her out. She would be treated as an unclean thing and would die in some corner like a mangy dog. It is often the prospect of that dreadful existence, far more than love or religious zeal, that drives these unhappy women to the pyre. Sometimes, though, the sacrifice is genuinely willing, and it takes the government's firm hand to prevent it. A few years ago, when I was living in Bombay, a young widow came to ask the governor's leave to burn herself with her husband's body. As you may imagine, the governor refused. So the widow left the city, took refuge with an independent rajah, and there carried out her sacrifice."
Throughout the brigadier general's account, the guide had been shaking his head, and when it was done:
"The sacrifice that will take place tomorrow at daybreak is not voluntary," he said.
"How do you know that?"
"It is a story everyone in Bundelkund knows," answered the guide.
"And yet the poor creature seemed to put up no resistance," Sir Francis Cromarty observed.
"That is because they have drugged her senseless with the smoke of hemp and opium."
"But where are they taking her?"
"To the pagoda of Pillaji, two miles from here. There she will spend the night, waiting for the hour of the sacrifice."
"And that sacrifice will take place —?"
"Tomorrow, at the first light of day."
After this answer, the guide brought the elephant out of the dense thicket and hoisted himself onto the animal's neck. But just as he was about to urge him on with a particular whistle, Mr. Fogg stopped him, and turning to Sir Francis Cromarty:
"What if we saved this woman?" he said.
"Save this woman, Mr. Fogg!" cried the brigadier general.
"I still have twelve hours in hand. I can spend them on that."
"Well! So you have a heart after all!" said Sir Francis Cromarty.
"Sometimes," Phileas Fogg answered simply. "When I have the time."
The plan was daring, bristling with difficulties, and possibly impossible. Mr. Fogg was about to gamble his life — or at the very least his liberty, and with it the success of the whole enterprise — but he did not hesitate. And in Sir Francis Cromarty he found a partner just as resolved.
As for Passepartout, he was ready; they could do with him as they pleased. His master's scheme thrilled him. He could feel a heart, a soul, beating beneath all that ice. He was beginning to love Phileas Fogg.
That left the guide. Whose side would he take in the affair? Mightn't he lean toward the Hindus? If they couldn't count on his help, they would at least have to be sure of his neutrality.
Sir Francis Cromarty put the question to him plainly.
"Sir," the guide answered, "I am a Parsee, and this woman is a Parsee. Do with me as you will."
"Good, guide," said Mr. Fogg.
"But understand this," the Parsee went on. "We risk not only our lives, but horrible tortures if we are caught. So be warned."
"Understood," said Mr. Fogg. "I take it we'll have to wait for nightfall to act?"
"I think so too," the guide replied.
Then the good fellow gave them a few particulars about the victim. She was an Indian woman of famous beauty, Parsee by race, the daughter of wealthy merchants of Bombay. In that city she had received a thoroughly English education, and from her manners and learning you would have taken her for a European. Her name was Aouda.
Left an orphan, she had been married against her will to this old rajah of Bundelkund. Three months later she was a widow. Knowing the fate that awaited her, she fled, was recaptured at once, and the rajah's relatives — who had an interest in her death — condemned her to this ordeal, from which there seemed no chance she could escape.
The story only rooted Mr. Fogg and his companions more firmly in their generous resolve. It was decided that the guide would steer the elephant toward the pagoda of Pillaji, drawing as near to it as he could.
Half an hour later they halted in a thicket, five hundred paces from the pagoda, which they could not see; but the howling of the fanatics came through clear and distinct.
They then talked over how to reach the victim. The guide knew this pagoda of Pillaji, and he was certain the young woman was imprisoned inside it. Could they slip in through one of the doors once the whole band had sunk into a drunken sleep, or would they have to cut a hole through a wall? That could only be decided on the spot, in the moment itself. But one thing was beyond doubt: the rescue had to be carried out that very night, and not once day came and the victim was led to her death. At that point no human power on earth could have saved her.
Mr. Fogg and his companions waited for night. As soon as the shadows fell, around six in the evening, they resolved to scout around the pagoda. The last cries of the fakirs were dying away. As was their habit, these men would be sunk in the heavy stupor of "hang" — liquid opium laced with an infusion of hemp — and it might just be possible to steal between them to the temple.
The Parsee, leading Mr. Fogg, Sir Francis Cromarty, and Passepartout, moved off soundlessly through the forest. After ten minutes of crawling under the branches, they reached the bank of a small river, and there, by the light of iron torches tipped with burning resin, they saw a heap of piled wood. It was the pyre, built of costly sandalwood and already soaked in perfumed oil. On top of it lay the embalmed body of the rajah, to be burned together with his widow. A hundred paces from the pyre rose the pagoda, its minarets piercing the dark above the tops of the trees.
"Come!" whispered the guide.
And, redoubling his caution, followed by his companions, he glided silently through the tall grass.
Now the only sound was the murmur of wind in the branches.
Soon the guide stopped at the edge of a clearing. A few resin torches lit the place. The ground was strewn with clusters of sleepers, heavy with drink. It looked like a battlefield covered with the dead. Men, women, children — all lay tangled together. Here and there a few drunkards still groaned.
In the background, among the mass of trees, the temple of Pillaji loomed dimly. But to the guide's great dismay, the rajah's guards, lit by smoking torches, were keeping watch at the doors, pacing back and forth with drawn swords. It was safe to assume that the priests inside were keeping watch as well.
The Parsee went no farther. He had seen that forcing the temple door was impossible, and he led his companions back.
Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty had understood, as he had, that nothing could be attempted on that side.
They stopped and talked in low voices.
"Let's wait," said the brigadier general. "It's only eight o'clock yet, and it's possible these guards will give in to sleep too."
"That is possible, yes," the Parsee replied.
So Phileas Fogg and his companions stretched out at the foot of a tree and waited.
The time dragged! Now and then the guide left them to go watch the edge of the wood. The rajah's guards were still on watch by their torches, and a faint light filtered through the windows of the pagoda.
They waited that way until midnight. Nothing changed. The same vigilance outside. Plainly there was no counting on the guards dozing off; the stupor of the "hang" had probably been spared them. They would have to try another way — break in through an opening cut in the pagoda's walls. That left the question of whether the priests were watching over their victim as closely as the soldiers watched the temple door.
After a last conference, the guide declared himself ready to go. Mr. Fogg, Sir Francis, and Passepartout followed. They made a fairly long detour to come at the pagoda from the rear.
Around half past midnight they reached the foot of the walls without meeting a soul. No watch had been posted on this side — though it must be said there were no windows or doors here at all.
The night was dark. The moon, then in its last quarter, was barely clearing a horizon crowded with heavy clouds. The height of the trees deepened the gloom further.
But reaching the foot of the walls was not enough; they still had to make an opening in them. For this the only tools Phileas Fogg and his companions had were their pocketknives. Very luckily, the temple walls were made of a mixture of brick and wood that could not be hard to breach. Once the first brick was out, the rest would come away easily.
They set to work, making as little noise as they could. The Parsee on one side, Passepartout on the other, worked at prying loose the bricks, trying to open a gap two feet wide.
The work was coming along when a cry rang out inside the temple, and almost at once other cries answered it from without.
Passepartout and the guide broke off. Had they been spotted? Was the alarm being raised? The plainest prudence told them to slip away — which they did, along with Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty. They crouched once more under cover of the wood, waiting for the alarm, if that was what it was, to die down, and ready in that case to take up their work again.
But — a disastrous stroke of luck — guards now appeared at the rear of the pagoda and posted themselves there so as to block any approach.
It would be hard to describe the dismay of these four men, stopped in their work. Now that they could no longer reach the victim, how were they to save her? Sir Francis Cromarty gnawed his fists. Passepartout was beside himself, and the guide had some trouble holding him back. The impassive Fogg waited, betraying nothing.
"Is there nothing left but to go?" the brigadier general asked under his breath.
"There is nothing left but to go," the guide answered.
"Wait," said Fogg. "I only need to be at Allahabad before noon tomorrow."
"But what do you hope for?" Sir Francis Cromarty replied. "In a few hours it will be light, and —"
"The chance that's slipping away may come back at the final moment."
The brigadier general would have given a great deal to read what was in Phileas Fogg's eyes.
What was this cold Englishman counting on? Did he mean, at the moment of execution, to rush at the young woman and tear her openly from her killers?
That would have been madness, and how could anyone believe the man was mad to that degree? Still, Sir Francis Cromarty agreed to wait for the outcome of this terrible scene. The guide, however, did not leave his companions where they had taken shelter; he led them back to the forward part of the clearing. There, screened by a clump of trees, they could watch the sleeping groups.
Meanwhile Passepartout, perched on the lower branches of a tree, was turning over an idea that had first flashed through his mind like lightning and had ended by lodging itself firmly in his brain.
He had begun by telling himself, "What madness!" — and now he kept repeating, "Why not, after all? It's a chance, maybe the only one, and with such brutes as these!"
At any rate Passepartout put his thought no more clearly than that, but he soon slid with the suppleness of a snake along the low branches of the tree, whose ends curved down toward the ground.
The hours slipped by, and before long a few paler streaks announced the coming of day. Yet the darkness was still deep.
This was the moment. A kind of resurrection ran through the drowsing crowd. The groups came to life. Tom-toms began to beat. Songs and shouts broke out anew. The hour had come when the poor woman was to die.
And indeed, the doors of the pagoda swung open. A brighter light spilled out from within. Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty could make out the victim, sharply lit, dragged out by two priests. It even seemed to them that, shaking off the numbness of the drug by a final instinct of self-preservation, the wretched woman was trying to escape her captors. Sir Francis Cromarty's heart leaped, and with a convulsive movement he seized Phileas Fogg's hand — and felt that the hand was holding an open knife.
At that moment the crowd surged forward. The young woman had sunk back into the torpor brought on by the fumes of the hemp. She passed among the fakirs, who escorted her with their religious howling.
Phileas Fogg and his companions, blending into the last ranks of the crowd, followed.
Two minutes later they reached the riverbank and stopped less than fifty paces from the pyre, on which lay the rajah's body. In the half-dark they saw the victim utterly still, stretched out beside her husband's corpse.
Then a torch was brought near, and the oil-soaked wood caught fire at once.
At that instant Sir Francis Cromarty and the guide held back Phileas Fogg, who in a burst of generous madness was flinging himself toward the pyre —
But Phileas Fogg had already thrown them off, when the whole scene changed in a heartbeat. A cry of terror went up. The entire crowd threw itself to the ground, appalled.
So the old rajah was not dead after all — for there he was, rising up all at once like a phantom, lifting the young woman in his arms, coming down from the pyre through swirling clouds of vapor that gave him the look of a specter.
Fakirs, guards, priests, seized with a sudden terror, lay face down, not daring to lift their eyes and look upon such a marvel.
The lifeless victim passed along in the strong arms that carried her, and seemed to weigh nothing at all. Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty had stayed on their feet. The Parsee had bowed his head, and Passepartout, no doubt, was no less astonished than the rest!
The resurrected man came up in this way to the spot where Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty stood, and there, in a curt voice, he said:
"Let's clear out!"
It was Passepartout himself who had slipped up to the pyre through the thick smoke! It was Passepartout who, taking advantage of the still-deep darkness, had snatched the young woman from death! It was Passepartout who, playing his part with an audacity blessed by luck, was walking straight through the general panic!
A moment later all four vanished into the wood, and the elephant bore them off at a swift trot. But shouts, an uproar, and even a bullet through the crown of Phileas Fogg's hat told them that the trick had been discovered.
For there on the blazing pyre now stood out the body of the old rajah. The priests, recovered from their fright, had understood that an abduction had just taken place.
At once they rushed into the forest. The guards ran after them. A volley was fired, but the rescuers were fleeing fast, and in a few moments they were beyond the reach of bullets and arrows.
The daring rescue had come off. An hour later, Passepartout was still laughing over his success. Sir Francis Cromarty had shaken the fearless fellow's hand. His master had said, "Well done" — which, from that gentleman, amounted to the highest praise. To which Passepartout replied that all the honor of the affair belonged to his master. As for himself, he had merely had a "funny" idea, and he laughed to think that for a few moments he, Passepartout, former gymnast and ex-sergeant of firemen, had been the widower of a lovely woman, an old embalmed rajah!
As for the young Indian woman, she had known nothing of what had happened. Wrapped in the travel blankets, she lay resting in one of the panniers.
Meanwhile the elephant, guided with perfect sureness by the Parsee, ran swiftly through the forest, still dark. An hour after leaving the pagoda of Pillaji, he was tearing across an immense plain. At seven o'clock they halted. The young woman was still completely prostrate. The guide got her to drink a few swallows of water and brandy, but the stupefying influence that weighed on her had a while yet to run.
Sir Francis Cromarty, who knew the effects of the intoxication produced by inhaling hemp vapors, felt no anxiety on her account.
But if the recovery of the young Indian woman raised no doubt in the brigadier general's mind, he was less reassured about her future. He did not hesitate to tell Phileas Fogg that if Aouda stayed in India she would inevitably fall back into the hands of her tormentors. These fanatics were scattered all through the peninsula, and certainly, in spite of the English police, they would find a way to seize their victim again, whether at Madras, Bombay, or Calcutta. To back up what he said, Sir Francis Cromarty cited a recent case of the same kind. In his view, the young woman would not truly be safe until she had left India.
Phileas Fogg answered that he would keep these observations in mind, and would see what could be done.
Toward ten o'clock the guide announced the station of Allahabad. There the interrupted line of railway picked up again, and its trains cross the distance between Allahabad and Calcutta in less than a day and a night.
Phileas Fogg would therefore arrive in time to catch a steamer that did not sail until the next day, the 25th of October, at noon, for Hong Kong.
The young woman was laid down in a room at the station. Passepartout was charged with going out to buy her various articles of dress — a gown, a shawl, furs, whatever he could find. His master gave him unlimited credit.
Passepartout set off at once and hurried through the streets of the town. Allahabad is the City of God, one of the most venerated in India, on account of its being built at the meeting of two sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna, whose waters draw pilgrims from all over the peninsula. As everyone knows, moreover, according to the legends of the Ramayana, the Ganges has its source in the sky, from which, thanks to Brahma, it descends to the earth.
While doing his shopping, Passepartout soon took in the whole town, once defended by a magnificent fort that has since become a state prison. No more trade, no more industry in this city, once a place of manufacture and commerce. Passepartout, hunting in vain for a draper's the way he might have on Regent Street a few steps from Farmer and Co., found what he needed only at a secondhand dealer's — a difficult old Jewish trader — namely a gown of Scotch cloth, a roomy cloak, and a splendid otter-skin pelisse, for which he did not hesitate to pay seventy-five pounds. Then, in high triumph, he went back to the station.
Aouda was beginning to come round. The influence to which the priests of Pillaji had subjected her was wearing off little by little, and her beautiful eyes were recovering all their Indian softness.
When the poet-king Uçaf Uddaul sings the charms of the queen of Ahmehnagara, he puts it this way:
"Her shining hair, parted evenly in two, frames the harmonious contours of her delicate white cheeks, bright with smoothness and freshness. Her ebony brows have the shape and the power of the bow of Kama, god of love, and beneath her long silken lashes, in the black pupils of her great limpid eyes, there swim — as in the sacred lakes of the Himalaya — the purest reflections of heavenly light. Fine, even, and white, her teeth gleam between her smiling lips like drops of dew in the half-closed bosom of a pomegranate flower. Her dainty ears with their matching curves, her rosy hands, her little feet, arched and tender as the buds of the lotus, shine with the luster of the loveliest pearls of Ceylon, the finest diamonds of Golconda. Her slim, supple waist, which a single hand could encircle, sets off the elegant arch of her rounded hips and the richness of her bust, where youth in flower displays its most perfect treasures; and beneath the silken folds of her tunic she seems to have been modeled in pure silver by the divine hand of Vicvacarma, the eternal sculptor."
But, leaving all that flourish aside, it is enough to say that Aouda, the widow of the rajah of Bundelkund, was a charming woman in every European sense of the word. She spoke English with great purity, and the guide had not exaggerated in saying that this young Parsee had been transformed by education.
Meanwhile the train was about to leave the Allahabad station. The Parsee was waiting. Mr. Fogg settled his wages at the agreed price, without going a farthing beyond it. This rather astonished Passepartout, who knew all that his master owed to the guide's devotion. The Parsee had, in fact, willingly risked his life in the Pillaji business, and if the Hindus ever learned of it later, he would have a hard time escaping their vengeance.
There remained, too, the question of Kiouni. What was to be done with an elephant bought at such a price?
But Phileas Fogg had already made up his mind on that score.
"Parsee," he said to the guide, "you have been helpful and devoted. I have paid for your service, but not for your devotion. Will you have this elephant? He is yours."
The guide's eyes shone.
"It is a fortune Your Honor is giving me!" he cried.
"Take him, guide," Mr. Fogg replied, "and even so I shall still be in your debt."
"Now there's the thing!" cried Passepartout. "Take him, friend! Kiouni is a brave and courageous animal!"
And going up to the beast, he held out a few lumps of sugar, saying:
"Here, Kiouni, here, here!"
The elephant let out a few grunts of satisfaction. Then, taking Passepartout by the waist and wrapping him in his trunk, he lifted him up to the height of his head. Passepartout, not the least bit frightened, gave the animal a good caress, and Kiouni gently set him back on the ground — and to the honest elephant's handshake of the trunk, the honest fellow answered with a hearty handshake of his own.
A few moments later, Phileas Fogg, Sir Francis Cromarty, and Passepartout, settled in a comfortable carriage where Aouda had the best seat, were speeding at full steam toward Benares.
No more than eighty miles separate that city from Allahabad, and they were covered in two hours.
During the run the young woman came fully to herself; the drowsy vapors of the hang faded away.
What was her astonishment to find herself on the railway, in this compartment, dressed in European clothes, among travelers who were complete strangers to her!
First of all, her companions lavished attention on her and revived her with a few drops of cordial; then the brigadier general told her her own story. He dwelt on the devotion of Phileas Fogg, who had not hesitated to stake his life to save her, and on the outcome of the adventure, owed to the daring imagination of Passepartout.
Mr. Fogg let all this be said without uttering a word. Passepartout, thoroughly abashed, kept repeating that it "wasn't worth the trouble"!
Aouda thanked her rescuers with deep feeling — by her tears more than by her words. Her beautiful eyes, better than her lips, were the interpreters of her gratitude. Then, her thoughts carrying her back to the scenes of the suttee, her eyes seeing again that Indian land where so many dangers still awaited her, she was seized with a shudder of terror.
Phileas Fogg understood what was passing in Aouda's mind, and to reassure her he offered — very coolly, it must be said — to take her on to Hong Kong, where she could stay until the affair had blown over.
Aouda accepted the offer gratefully. As it happened, one of her relations lived at Hong Kong, a Parsee like herself, and one of the leading merchants of that city, which is thoroughly English while occupying a point on the Chinese coast.
At half past twelve the train stopped at the station of Benares. The Brahman legends hold that this city stands on the site of the ancient Casi, which once hung suspended in space, between zenith and nadir, like the tomb of Mahomet. But in this more realistic age, Benares — the Athens of India, as the orientalists call it — rested quite prosaically on solid ground, and Passepartout was able to catch a glimpse of its brick houses and wattle huts, which gave it an utterly desolate look, without a trace of local color.
It was here that Sir Francis Cromarty was to stop. The troops he was rejoining were encamped a few miles north of the city. So the brigadier general said his goodbyes to Phileas Fogg, wishing him every possible success and voicing the hope that he might one day do the trip over again in a less original but more profitable fashion. Mr. Fogg pressed his companion's fingers lightly. Aouda's farewells were warmer. Never would she forget what she owed to Sir Francis Cromarty. As for Passepartout, he was honored with a genuine handshake from the brigadier general. Quite moved, he wondered where and when he might ever find a chance to devote himself for the man. Then they parted.
From Benares on, the railway followed in part the valley of the Ganges. Through the carriage windows, in fairly clear weather, appeared the varied landscape of Behar — then mountains green with vegetation, fields of barley, maize, and wheat, streams and ponds swarming with greenish alligators, well-kept villages, forests still in leaf. A few elephants and big-humped zebus came to bathe in the waters of the sacred river, and so too — despite the late season and the already cold air — did bands of Hindus of both sexes, piously performing their holy ablutions. These faithful, bitter enemies of Buddhism, are fervent followers of the Brahman religion, which takes flesh in three persons: Vishnu, the solar divinity; Shiva, the divine embodiment of the forces of nature; and Brahma, the supreme lord of priests and lawgivers. But with what eye must Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu regard this now "Britannicized" India, whenever some steamboat went whistling past and troubled the consecrated waters of the Ganges, scaring off the gulls that skimmed its surface, the turtles that teemed along its banks, and the devout stretched out at the water's edge!
The whole panorama flashed by like lightning, and often a cloud of white steam hid the details of it. The travelers were barely able to make out the fort of Chunar, twenty miles southeast of Benares, the old stronghold of the rajahs of Behar; Ghazepour and its great rosewater works; the tomb of Lord Cornwallis rising on the left bank of the Ganges; the fortified town of Buxar; Patna, a great industrial and trading city, home to India's chief opium market; Monghir, a town more than European — as English as Manchester or Birmingham — famous for its ironworks, its factories of edge-tools and cold steel, and whose tall chimneys fouled the sky of Brahma with black smoke: a real punch in the face for the land of dreams!
Then night came, and amid the howling of the tigers, bears, and wolves that fled before the locomotive, the train swept past at full speed, and nothing more was seen of the wonders of Bengal — not Golconda, not Gour in ruins, not Murshidabad, once a capital, not Burdwan, not Hooghly, not Chandernagore, that French foothold on Indian soil, on which Passepartout would have been proud to see his country's flag flying!
At last, at seven in the morning, Calcutta was reached. The steamer bound for Hong Kong did not weigh anchor until noon. Phileas Fogg thus had five hours before him.
By his itinerary, this gentleman was to arrive in the capital of India on the 25th of October, twenty-three days after leaving London, and he arrived on the day fixed. So he was neither behind nor ahead. Unfortunately, the two days he had gained between London and Bombay had been lost — we know how — in this crossing of the Indian peninsula. But it is safe to assume that Phileas Fogg did not regret them.
The train pulled into the station. Passepartout stepped down from the car first, followed by Mr. Fogg, who handed his young companion onto the platform. Phileas Fogg meant to go straight to the Hong Kong steamer and settle Aouda comfortably aboard, for he did not intend to leave her side so long as she was in a country so dangerous for her.
Just as Mr. Fogg was about to leave the station, a policeman came up to him and said:
"Mr. Phileas Fogg?"
"That is my name."
"And this man is your servant?" the policeman added, pointing at Passepartout.
"He is."
"Then be so good as to come with me, both of you."
Mr. Fogg made not the slightest movement that might have betrayed any surprise. This officer was an agent of the law, and to any Englishman the law is sacred. Passepartout, with his French habits, was inclined to argue the point, but the policeman touched him with his little rod, and Phileas Fogg signaled him to obey.
"May this young lady come with us?" Mr. Fogg asked.
"She may," the policeman answered.
He led Mr. Fogg, Aouda, and Passepartout to a palki-ghari — a sort of four-wheeled, four-seated carriage drawn by two horses — and off they went. No one spoke during the drive, which lasted about twenty minutes.
The carriage passed first through the "black town," with its narrow streets lined with hovels where a cosmopolitan population, filthy and in rags, swarmed and jostled; then it crossed the European quarter, bright with brick houses, shaded by coconut palms, bristling with ships' masts, and already — despite the early hour — crossed by elegant riders and magnificent teams of horses.
The palki-ghari stopped before a plain-looking building that plainly was not meant for domestic use. The policeman handed his prisoners down — for that was truly the word for them now — and led them into a room with barred windows, telling them:
"At half past eight you will appear before Judge Obadiah."
Then he withdrew and shut the door.
"Well! We're caught!" cried Passepartout, dropping into a chair.
Aouda turned at once to Mr. Fogg and said, in a voice she tried and failed to steady:
"Sir, you must leave me! It is on my account that you are being pursued! It is for having saved me!"
Phileas Fogg replied simply that this was not possible. Prosecuted over that business of the suttee! Out of the question! How would the plaintiffs dare show their faces? There was some mistake. In any case, Mr. Fogg added, he would not abandon the young woman, and he would see her to Hong Kong.
"But the boat leaves at noon!" Passepartout pointed out.
"Before noon we shall be aboard," the imperturbable gentleman answered simply.
He said it so flatly that Passepartout could not help telling himself:
"By heaven! It's certain! Before noon we'll be aboard!" But he was not reassured in the least.
At half past eight the door of the room opened. The policeman reappeared and showed the prisoners into the next room. It was a courtroom, and a fair-sized public of Europeans and natives already filled the gallery.
Mr. Fogg, Aouda, and Passepartout took their seats on a bench facing the places reserved for the magistrate and the clerk.
This magistrate, Judge Obadiah, entered almost at once, followed by the clerk. He was a big, perfectly round man. He lifted a wig off a nail and clapped it briskly onto his head.
"The first case," he said.
Then, putting a hand to his head:
"Hey! This isn't my wig!"
"Quite right, Mr. Obadiah — it's mine," answered the clerk.
"My dear Mr. Oysterpuff, how do you expect a judge to hand down a sound sentence in a clerk's wig?"
The wigs were duly exchanged. Through all these preliminaries Passepartout was seething with impatience, for the hand of the big courtroom clock seemed to him to be racing around the dial at a terrifying rate.
"The first case," Judge Obadiah began again.
"Phileas Fogg?" said Oysterpuff the clerk.
"Here," answered Mr. Fogg.
"Passepartout?"
"Present!" answered Passepartout.
"Good!" said Judge Obadiah. "For two days now, prisoners, we have been watching for you on every train from Bombay."
"But what are we charged with?" cried Passepartout, out of patience.
"You are about to find out," said the judge.
"Sir," Mr. Fogg then said, "I am an English citizen, and I have the right —"
"Have you been treated with any disrespect?" asked Mr. Obadiah.
"None at all."
"Good. Bring in the plaintiffs."
At the judge's order a door opened, and an usher led in three Hindu priests.
"That's it exactly!" muttered Passepartout. "These are the rascals who wanted to burn our young lady!"
The priests stood before the judge, and the clerk read aloud a complaint of sacrilege lodged against one Phileas Fogg and his servant, accused of profaning a place consecrated by the Brahmin religion.
"You have heard the charge?" the judge asked Phileas Fogg.
"Yes, sir," answered Mr. Fogg, consulting his watch, "and I confess it."
"Ah! You confess?"
"I confess, and I wait for these three priests to confess in their turn what they meant to do at the pagoda of Pillaji."
The priests looked at one another. They seemed to understand nothing of the accused man's words.
"Of course!" cried Passepartout hotly. "At that pagoda of Pillaji, in front of which they were about to burn their victim!"
Fresh astonishment from the priests, and deep bewilderment from Judge Obadiah.
"What victim?" he asked. "Burn whom? In the middle of the city of Bombay?"
"Bombay?" cried Passepartout.
"Certainly. This has nothing to do with the pagoda of Pillaji, but with the pagoda of Malabar Hill, in Bombay."
"And here, as evidence, are the desecrator's shoes," the clerk added, setting a pair of shoes on his desk.
"My shoes!" cried Passepartout, who, caught utterly off guard, could not hold back the involuntary exclamation.
One can imagine the confusion that had taken hold of master and servant alike. That incident at the Bombay pagoda they had forgotten entirely — and it was that very thing that had now hauled them before the magistrate of Calcutta.
For the truth was that Detective Fix had grasped exactly how much use he could make of this unfortunate affair. Delaying his departure by twelve hours, he had made himself counsel to the priests of Malabar Hill; he had promised them substantial damages, knowing perfectly well that the English government came down hard on offenses of this kind; and then, by the next train, he had launched them on the trail of the sacrilege. But because so much time had been spent rescuing the young widow, Fix and the Hindus reached Calcutta ahead of Phileas Fogg and his servant, whom the magistrates, tipped off by telegram, were to arrest as they stepped off the train. Imagine Fix's dismay when he learned that Phileas Fogg had not yet arrived in the capital of India. He must have supposed that his thief, stopping at one of the stations along the Peninsular Railway, had gone to ground in the northern provinces. For twenty-four hours, in a fever of anxiety, Fix kept watch at the station. Imagine his joy, then, when that very morning he saw the man step down from the car — in the company, it is true, of a young woman whose presence he could not account for. He set a policeman on him at once, and that is how Mr. Fogg, Passepartout, and the widow of the rajah of Bundelkund came to be led before Judge Obadiah.
And had Passepartout been less absorbed in his own troubles, he would have spotted, in a corner of the courtroom, the detective following the proceedings with an interest easy enough to understand — for at Calcutta, as at Bombay, as at Suez, the warrant of arrest still had not reached him.
Meanwhile Judge Obadiah had taken formal note of the admission that had slipped out of Passepartout, who would have given all he owned to take back his rash words.
"The facts are admitted?" said the judge.
"Admitted," answered Mr. Fogg coldly.
"Whereas," the judge went on, "whereas English law means to protect equally and rigorously all the religions of the peoples of India; and the offense being admitted by the said Passepartout, convicted of having profaned with a sacrilegious foot the pavement of the pagoda of Malabar Hill, in Bombay, on the 20th of October — the court sentences the said Passepartout to fifteen days' imprisonment and a fine of three hundred pounds."
"Three hundred pounds?" cried Passepartout, who was genuinely stung by nothing but the fine.
"Silence!" the usher shrieked.
"And," Judge Obadiah added, "whereas it is not materially proven that there was no collusion between the servant and the master, and whereas the latter must in any case be held responsible for the acts of a servant in his pay, the court holds the said Phileas Fogg and sentences him to eight days' imprisonment and a fine of one hundred and fifty pounds. Clerk, call the next case!"
In his corner, Fix felt an unspeakable satisfaction. Phileas Fogg held eight days at Calcutta — that was more than enough time for the warrant to reach him.
Passepartout was thunderstruck. This sentence ruined his master. A wager of twenty thousand pounds lost, and all because he, like a gaping fool, had walked into that cursed pagoda!
Phileas Fogg, as much master of himself as if the sentence had nothing to do with him, had not so much as knit his brow. But at the very moment the clerk was calling the next case, he rose and said:
"I offer bail."
"That is your right," the judge answered.
Fix felt a chill go down his spine, but he recovered his confidence when he heard the judge — "in view of the foreign status of Phileas Fogg and his servant" — set bail for each of them at the enormous sum of one thousand pounds.
That would cost Mr. Fogg two thousand pounds if he did not serve out his sentence.
"I'll pay," said the gentleman.
And from the bag Passepartout carried, he drew a packet of banknotes and laid it on the clerk's desk.
"This sum will be returned to you on your release from prison," said the judge. "In the meantime, you are free on bail."
"Come," said Phileas Fogg to his servant.
"But at least make them give back the shoes!" cried Passepartout with a burst of rage.
They gave him back his shoes.
"An expensive pair, these!" he muttered. "More than a thousand pounds apiece! And they pinch, into the bargain!"
Passepartout, utterly crestfallen, followed Mr. Fogg, who had offered his arm to the young woman. Fix still hoped that his thief would never bring himself to give up that sum of two thousand pounds and would serve out his eight days in prison. So he set off once more on Fogg's trail.
Mr. Fogg took a carriage, into which Aouda, Passepartout, and he climbed at once. Fix ran along behind the carriage, which soon halted at one of the city's quays.
Half a mile out in the roadstead lay the Rangoon at anchor, its departure flag run up to the masthead. Eleven o'clock struck. Mr. Fogg was an hour ahead of schedule. Fix saw him step down from the carriage and get into a boat with Aouda and his servant. The detective stamped his foot on the ground.
"The scoundrel!" he cried. "He's leaving! Two thousand pounds thrown away! Spendthrift as any thief! Ah, I'll tail him to the ends of the earth if I have to; but at the rate he's going, every pound of the stolen money will be gone!"
The police inspector had good grounds for the thought. In fact, since leaving London — what with travel costs and tips, the elephant, the bail money and the fines — Phileas Fogg had already scattered more than five thousand pounds along his route, and the detective's percentage of the recovered sum was shrinking all the time.
The Rangoon, one of the steamers the Peninsular and Oriental Company runs on its China and Japan routes, was an iron ship, screw-driven, of seventeen hundred and seventy tons gross and four hundred nominal horsepower. She matched the Mongolia for speed but not for comfort, and so Aouda was not lodged as well as Phileas Fogg would have liked. Still, it was only a crossing of three thousand five hundred miles — eleven or twelve days — and the young woman proved no difficult passenger.
During the first days of the crossing, Aouda came to know Phileas Fogg better. At every turn she showed him her deepest gratitude. The phlegmatic gentleman heard her out — in appearance, at least — with the utmost coolness, without a single note or gesture betraying the slightest emotion in him. He saw to it that she wanted for nothing. At certain hours he came to her regularly, if not to talk, then at least to listen. He performed the duties of the strictest courtesy toward her, but with the grace and spontaneity of an automaton whose movements had been calibrated for the purpose. Aouda hardly knew what to make of him, but Passepartout had explained his master's eccentric character to her a little. He had told her what a wager was carrying this gentleman around the world. Aouda had smiled; but after all, she owed him her life, and her rescuer could only gain by her seeing him through the lens of her gratitude.
Aouda confirmed the touching story the Hindu guide had told of her. She belonged, in fact, to that race which holds first rank among the native peoples of India. Several Parsee merchants have made great fortunes in India in the cotton trade. One of them, Sir James Jejeebhoy, had been raised to the nobility by the English government, and Aouda was related to this wealthy man, who lived in Bombay. It was in fact a cousin of Sir Jejeebhoy, the honorable Jejeeh, that she meant to join in Hong Kong. Would she find refuge and help with him? She could not say for certain. To which Mr. Fogg would reply that she needn't worry — that it would all work out mathematically. That was his word for it.
Did the young woman understand that dreadful adverb? No one knows. All the same, her great eyes fixed on Mr. Fogg's — those great eyes "limpid as the sacred lakes of the Himalaya." But the unyielding Fogg, as buttoned-up as ever, seemed hardly the man to go plunging into such a lake.
This first stretch of the Rangoon's crossing went off in excellent conditions. The weather was manageable. That whole portion of the vast bay the sailors call "the fathoms of Bengal" favored the steamer's progress. The Rangoon soon raised the Great Andaman, the chief island of the group, which its picturesque Saddle Peak — two thousand four hundred feet high — signals to navigators from far off.
The coast was skirted fairly close. The wild Papuans of the island did not show themselves. They are creatures placed on the lowest rung of the human ladder, but they are wrongly made out to be cannibals.
The panorama unrolling before them was superb. Immense forests of fan palms, areca, bamboo, nutmeg, and teak, of giant mimosas and tree ferns, covered the country in the foreground, and behind them stood the elegant outline of the mountains. Along the coast swarmed, by the thousand, those prized swiftlets whose edible nests make a sought-after delicacy in the Celestial Empire. But all this varied spectacle offered by the Andaman group passed quickly, and the Rangoon steamed swiftly on toward the Strait of Malacca, which would give her access to the seas of China.
And what was Inspector Fix doing during this crossing, so awkwardly dragged into a voyage around the world? On leaving Calcutta, having left instructions that the warrant, if it ever did arrive, be forwarded to him at Hong Kong, he had managed to get aboard the Rangoon without being spotted by Passepartout, and he fully hoped to keep his presence hidden until the steamer arrived. It would, in fact, have been hard to explain why he was aboard without rousing the suspicions of Passepartout, who must believe him still in Bombay. But he was brought to renew his acquaintance with the honest fellow by the very logic of circumstances. How? You shall see.
All the inspector's hopes and desires were now fixed on a single spot on the globe — Hong Kong — for the steamer stopped too briefly at Singapore for him to act there. It was at Hong Kong, then, that the arrest of the thief must be made, or the thief slipped through his fingers, so to speak, for good.
For Hong Kong was still English soil — but the last that lay along the route. Beyond it, China, Japan, and America offered the man Fogg a refuge all but assured. At Hong Kong, if Fix found at last the arrest warrant that was plainly running after him, he would collar Fogg and hand him over to the local police. No trouble at all. But after Hong Kong, a simple warrant would no longer do. It would take an extradition order. Hence delays, hold-ups, obstacles of every kind, which the scoundrel would exploit to escape once and for all. If the operation failed at Hong Kong, it would be, if not impossible, at least very hard to take up again with any chance of success.
"So," Fix kept telling himself through the long hours he spent in his cabin, "either the warrant is at Hong Kong, and I arrest my man, or it isn't there, and this time I've got to delay his departure at any cost! I failed at Bombay, I failed at Calcutta! If I miss my shot at Hong Kong, my reputation is finished! Whatever it takes, I've got to pull it off. But what means can I use to hold up the departure of that cursed Fogg, if it comes to that?"
As a last resort, Fix was quite prepared to confess everything to Passepartout — to reveal to him just what sort of master he served, and whose accomplice he certainly was not. Passepartout, enlightened by the disclosure and fearing to be implicated himself, would surely come over to his side. But it was a risky expedient all the same, to be used only for want of any other. A single word from Passepartout to his master would be enough to wreck the whole affair beyond repair.
The police inspector was thus in a real quandary when the presence of Aouda aboard the Rangoon, in the company of Phileas Fogg, opened new possibilities to him.
Who was this woman? What combination of circumstances had made her Fogg's companion? The meeting had plainly taken place between Bombay and Calcutta. But at what point in the peninsula? Was it chance that had thrown Phileas Fogg and the young traveler together? Or had this journey across India, on the contrary, been undertaken by the gentleman for the very purpose of joining this charming person? For charming she was — Fix had seen that plainly in the courtroom at Calcutta.
One can understand how intrigued the agent was. He asked himself whether there might not be some criminal abduction in the business. Yes! That had to be it! The idea lodged itself in Fix's brain, and he saw all the use he could make of the circumstance. Whether this young woman was married or not, there had been an abduction, and it might be possible, at Hong Kong, to stir up such trouble for the abductor that he couldn't buy his way clear of it.
But he mustn't wait for the Rangoon to reach Hong Kong. This Fogg had the detestable habit of hopping from one boat to another, and before the affair could even be opened, he might already be far away.
The important thing, then, was to alert the English authorities and flag the Rangoon's passage before her passengers disembarked. Nothing could be easier, since the steamer put in at Singapore, and Singapore was linked to the Chinese coast by a telegraph line.
Still, before acting — and to work more surely — Fix resolved to question Passepartout. He knew it wasn't very hard to get the fellow talking, and he made up his mind to break the incognito he had kept until then. There was no time to lose. It was the 30th of October, and the very next day the Rangoon was due to put in at Singapore.
So that day, Fix left his cabin and came up on deck, meaning to accost Passepartout "first," with every mark of the most extreme surprise. Passepartout was strolling forward when the inspector rushed toward him, exclaiming:
"You, aboard the Rangoon!"
"Mr. Fix, on this ship!" replied Passepartout, utterly astonished, recognizing his fellow passenger from the Mongolia. "What! I leave you at Bombay, and I find you again on the road to Hong Kong! So you're going around the world too?"
"No, no," Fix replied. "I mean to stop at Hong Kong — for a few days, at least."
"Ah!" said Passepartout, who seemed puzzled for a moment. "But how is it I haven't caught sight of you aboard since we left Calcutta?"
"Well — a touch of illness... a bit of seasickness... I kept to my cabin, lying down. The Gulf of Bengal doesn't agree with me the way the Indian Ocean does. And your master, Mr. Phileas Fogg?"
"In perfect health, and as punctual as his timetable! Not a single day behind! Ah, Mr. Fix, you don't know this, but we've got a young lady with us now."
"A young lady?" replied the agent, looking for all the world as if he had no idea what his companion meant.
But Passepartout soon brought him up to speed. He recounted the incident at the pagoda in Bombay, the purchase of the elephant for two thousand pounds, the whole business of the suttee, the abduction of Aouda, the sentence handed down by the Calcutta court, and their release on bail. Fix, who knew the last part of these events, seemed ignorant of all of them, and Passepartout gave himself up to the pleasure of telling his adventures before a listener who showed him such keen interest.
"But in the end," Fix asked, "does your master mean to take this young woman to Europe?"
"Not at all, Mr. Fix, not at all! We're simply going to place her in the care of one of her relatives, a rich merchant in Hong Kong."
"Nothing doing," the detective said to himself, hiding his disappointment. "A glass of gin, Mr. Passepartout?"
"With pleasure, Mr. Fix. It's the least we can do — drink to our meeting aboard the Rangoon!"
From that day on, Passepartout and the detective ran into each other often, but the agent kept himself in the strictest reserve toward his companion and made no attempt to draw him out. Once or twice only did Fix catch a glimpse of Mr. Fogg, who was content to stay in the great saloon of the Rangoon, either keeping Aouda company or playing whist, according to his unvarying habit.
As for Passepartout, he had taken very seriously to puzzling over the strange chance that had once again set Fix on his master's road. And really, it would take less than that to astonish a man. This gentleman — thoroughly agreeable, thoroughly obliging, no doubt about it — whom you first meet at Suez, who boards the Mongolia, who lands at Bombay, where he says he has business to keep him, whom you find again on the Rangoon bound for Hong Kong; in a word, dogging Mr. Fogg's itinerary step for step — that was worth a moment's thought. There was a coincidence here that was odd, to say the least. What was this Fix after? Passepartout was ready to bet his slippers — he had kept them, carefully — that Fix would leave Hong Kong exactly when they did, and most likely on the very same steamer.
Passepartout might have racked his brains for a hundred years and never once guessed what mission the agent had been charged with. Never would he have imagined that Phileas Fogg was being "shadowed," like a thief, clear around the globe. But since it is human nature to find an explanation for everything, here is how Passepartout, struck suddenly by a flash of insight, interpreted Fix's constant presence — and, truth be told, his interpretation was quite plausible. According to him, Fix was and could only be an agent set on Mr. Fogg's trail by his fellow members of the Reform Club, to confirm that the journey was being carried out properly, all the way around the world, along the agreed itinerary.
"It's obvious! It's obvious!" the honest fellow kept telling himself, mightily proud of his own shrewdness. "He's a spy those gentlemen have put at our heels! Now that's not worthy of them! Mr. Fogg, so upright, so honorable! To have him watched by a hired agent! Ah, gentlemen of the Reform Club, this is going to cost you dear!"
Delighted with his discovery, Passepartout resolved all the same to say nothing about it to his master, for fear Mr. Fogg would be justly wounded by this distrust his opponents were showing him. But he promised himself he would needle Fix when the chance came — in veiled hints, and without giving himself away.
On Wednesday, October 30, in the afternoon, the Rangoon entered the Strait of Malacca, which separates the peninsula of that name from the shores of Sumatra. Steep, jagged little islands, very picturesque, hid the great island itself from the passengers' view.
At four the next morning the Rangoon, having gained half a day on her scheduled crossing, put in at Singapore to renew her supply of coal.
Phileas Fogg entered this gain in the column of things won, and this time he went ashore, accompanying Aouda, who had expressed a wish to walk about for a few hours.
Fix, to whom every move Fogg made looked suspicious, followed him without letting himself be seen. As for Passepartout, who laughed up his sleeve to watch Fix's maneuvering, he went off to do his usual shopping.
The island of Singapore is neither large nor imposing to look at. It has no mountains — no bold outlines, that is. Even so, it is charming in its slenderness. It is a park cut through with fine roads. A trim carriage, drawn by the elegant horses that have been imported from New Holland, carried Aouda and Phileas Fogg through the clumps of palms with their dazzling foliage and the clove trees whose cloves are formed from the very bud of the half-opened flower. Here thickets of pepper plants took the place of the thorny hedgerows of the European countryside; sago palms and great ferns with their superb branches broke up the look of this tropical country; nutmeg trees with their varnished leaves saturated the air with a piercing perfume. Monkeys, in brisk and grimacing bands, were not lacking in the woods, nor perhaps tigers in the jungles. And to anyone surprised to learn that on so relatively small an island these fearsome predators had not been wiped out to the last one, the answer is that they come over from Malacca, swimming across the strait.
After roaming the countryside for two hours, Aouda and her companion — who looked without quite seeing — returned to the town, a vast huddle of heavy, low-crushed houses ringed with charming gardens where mangosteens, pineapples, and all the finest fruits in the world grow.
At ten o'clock they came back to the steamer, having been followed, never suspecting it, by the inspector, who had likewise been obliged to go to the expense of a carriage.
Passepartout was waiting for them on the deck of the Rangoon. The good fellow had bought a few dozen mangosteens, big as medium apples, dark brown on the outside, brilliant red within, whose white flesh, melting between the lips, gives true epicures a pleasure beyond compare. Passepartout was only too happy to offer them to Aouda, who thanked him with great grace.
At eleven o'clock the Rangoon, her bunkers full of coal, cast off her lines, and a few hours later the passengers lost sight of those high mountains of Malacca, whose forests shelter the most beautiful tigers on earth.
Some thirteen hundred miles separate Singapore from the island of Hong Kong, a small English territory carved off from the coast of China. Phileas Fogg had an interest in covering them in six days at most, so as to catch at Hong Kong the boat due to leave on November 6 for Yokohama, one of the chief ports of Japan.
The Rangoon was heavily loaded. Many passengers had boarded at Singapore — Hindus, Ceylonese, Chinese, Malays, Portuguese — most of them traveling second class.
The weather, fair enough until then, changed with the moon's last quarter. The sea ran high. The wind blew sometimes in a stiff gale, but very fortunately out of the southeast, which helped the steamer along. When it was manageable, the captain had the sails set. Rigged as a brig, the Rangoon often ran under her two topsails and foresail, and her speed rose under the double drive of steam and wind. So they worked their way along the coasts of Annam and Cochin China over a short, choppy, and at times very punishing sea.
But the fault lay more with the Rangoon than with the sea, and it was to this steamer that the passengers — most of whom were ill — had to lay the blame for their misery.
The truth is, the ships of the Peninsular Company that work the China seas have a serious defect of construction. The ratio of their loaded draft to their depth of hold was badly calculated, and as a result they offer poor resistance to the sea. Their enclosed, watertight volume is insufficient. They are "swamped," to use the seafaring word, and because of this a few seas thrown aboard are enough to alter their behavior. These vessels are therefore much inferior — if not in engine and boiler, at least in build — to the types of the French Messageries line, such as the Impératrice and the Cambodge. Whereas, by the engineers' calculations, those ships can take on a weight of water equal to their own before going under, the Peninsular Company's boats — the Golgonda, the Corea, and lastly the Rangoon — could not ship a sixth of their weight without foundering.
So in bad weather it was wise to take great precautions. Sometimes they had to heave to under low steam. It was a loss of time that seemed to trouble Phileas Fogg not in the least, but at which Passepartout showed himself extremely put out. He would then blame the captain, the engineer, the Company, and consign to the devil every soul who has anything to do with carrying passengers. Perhaps, too, the thought of that gas burner still blazing away on his account back at the house on Savile Row had a good deal to do with his impatience.
"You're in a great hurry to reach Hong Kong, then?" the detective asked him one day.
"A very great hurry!" answered Passepartout.
"You think Mr. Fogg is eager to catch the Yokohama steamer?"
"Frightfully eager."
"So you believe now in this odd trip around the world?"
"Absolutely. And you, Mr. Fix?"
"Me? I don't believe in it!"
"You joker!" replied Passepartout, with a wink.
The word left the agent brooding. That label unsettled him, though he could not quite say why. Had the Frenchman seen through him? He hardly knew what to think. But how could Passepartout have made out that he was a detective, a secret he alone was in on? And yet, in speaking to him like that, Passepartout had surely meant something by it.
It even happened that the good fellow went further, another day — but he couldn't help himself. He simply could not hold his tongue.
"Come now, Mr. Fix," he asked his companion in a sly tone, "once we get to Hong Kong, are we going to have the misfortune of leaving you behind?"
"Well," answered Fix, rather awkwardly, "I don't know! Perhaps —"
"Ah," said Passepartout, "if you were to come along with us, it would be a joy for me! Come, an agent of the Peninsular Company can't very well stop halfway! You were only going as far as Bombay, and here you are nearly in China! America isn't far, and from America to Europe it's only a step!"
Fix studied his companion closely — Passepartout showing him the friendliest face in the world — and decided to laugh along with him. But Passepartout, who was on a roll, went on to ask whether "it paid pretty well, that line of work."
"Yes and no," answered Fix without batting an eye. "There's good business and bad. But you understand I don't travel at my own expense!"
"Oh, of that I'm quite sure!" cried Passepartout, laughing harder than ever.
The conversation over, Fix went back to his cabin and fell to thinking. He had plainly been found out. One way or another, the Frenchman had recognized him for a detective. But had he warned his master? What part was he playing in all this? Was he an accomplice or not? Was the game blown, and the whole affair ruined with it? The agent spent some hard hours there, now believing all was lost, now hoping Fogg knew nothing of the situation, and in the end unable to decide what to do.
Presently, though, the calm came back to his mind, and he resolved to deal openly with Passepartout. If he found himself unable to arrest Fogg at Hong Kong, and if Fogg was preparing to leave English soil this time for good, then he, Fix, would tell Passepartout everything. Either the servant was his master's accomplice — and Fogg knew all, in which case the affair was definitively compromised — or the servant had no hand in the theft, and then his interest would be to give up the thief.
Such, then, was the standing of these two men, one against the other, while high above them Phileas Fogg soared in his majestic indifference. He was rationally completing his orbit around the world, untroubled by the asteroids gravitating about him.
And yet, close at hand, there was — as the astronomers would put it — a disturbing body that ought to have set up certain perturbations in this gentleman's heart. But no! The charm of Aouda had no effect at all, to Passepartout's great surprise, and the perturbations, if they existed, would have been harder to calculate than those of Uranus that led to the discovery of Neptune.
Yes! it was a daily astonishment to Passepartout, who read so much gratitude toward his master in the young woman's eyes! Decidedly, Phileas Fogg had just enough heart to behave heroically, but as for loving — no! As for any anxiety the chances of this journey might stir in him, there was not a trace of it. But Passepartout lived in a state of continual dread. One day, leaning on the rail of the engine-room, he was watching the powerful machine, which now and then ran wild when, in a violent pitch of the ship, the propeller raced clear of the water. The steam would spurt from the valves, and this set the worthy fellow fuming.
"Those valves aren't loaded down enough!" he cried. "We're not moving! That's the English for you! Ah, if this were an American ship, we might blow up, but at least we'd go faster!"
Through the last days of the crossing the weather turned foul. The wind rose hard, and, settling into the northwest, worked dead against the steamer's course. The Rangoon, too unsteady, rolled heavily, and the passengers had every right to bear a grudge against those long, sickening swells the wind heaved up from the open sea.
Through the 3rd and 4th of November it was something close to a full gale. The squall lashed the sea with real violence. The Rangoon had to lie to for half a day, holding herself steady on just ten turns of the screw so as to take the waves at a slant. Every sail had been furled, and even so there was too much rigging left to shriek in the gusts.
The steamer's speed, as one can imagine, dropped sharply, and it was reckoned she would reach Hong Kong twenty hours behind schedule — more than that, if the storm didn't let up.
Phileas Fogg watched this spectacle of a raging sea, which seemed to be fighting him personally, with his usual composure. His brow never darkened for an instant — and yet a delay of twenty hours might wreck his whole journey by making him miss the Yokohama steamer. But this man without nerves felt neither impatience nor annoyance. It really seemed as though the storm were part of his program, something he had foreseen. Aouda, who spoke with her companion about the setback, found him as calm as ever.
Fix, now, did not see things with the same eye. Quite the contrary. This storm delighted him. His satisfaction would have known no bounds if the Rangoon had been forced to run before the gale. Every delay suited him, for each one would oblige Mr. Fogg to stay a few days at Hong Kong. At last the sky, with its squalls and its gusts, was playing his game. True, he was a bit seasick — but what of it! He didn't bother to count his bouts of nausea, and while his body writhed under the seasickness, his spirit crowed with immense satisfaction.
As for Passepartout, one can guess the barely hidden fury with which he lived through this ordeal. Until now everything had gone so well! Land and water alike had seemed devoted to his master. Steamers and railways obeyed him. Wind and steam had joined forces to speed his journey along. Had the hour of reckoning finally struck? Passepartout, as though the twenty thousand pounds of the wager were to come out of his own purse, could hardly bear to live. This storm exasperated him, this gale threw him into a rage, and he would gladly have taken a whip to that disobedient sea! Poor fellow! Fix carefully hid his own private satisfaction — and did well to, for if Passepartout had ever guessed at Fix's secret contentment, Fix would have spent a very bad quarter of an hour.
All through the squall Passepartout stayed on the deck of the Rangoon. He couldn't have borne to keep below; he scrambled up into the rigging; he astonished the crew and lent a hand at everything with the agility of a monkey. A hundred times he badgered the captain, the officers, the sailors, who couldn't help laughing at the sight of a fellow so thoroughly thrown off his stride. Passepartout absolutely had to know how long the storm would last. They would send him off to the barometer, which showed no intention of rising. Passepartout shook the barometer, but nothing came of it — neither the shaking nor the insults he heaped on the blameless instrument.
At last the tempest died down. The state of the sea changed during the day of November 4. The wind veered two points to the south and turned favorable once more.
Passepartout brightened along with the weather. The topsails and lower sails could be set again, and the Rangoon took up her course at a marvelous speed.
But there was no making up all the lost time. There was nothing for it but to accept the loss, and land was not sighted until the 6th, at five in the morning. Phileas Fogg's itinerary had the steamer arriving on the 5th. And here she was arriving only on the 6th. That meant twenty-four hours' delay, and the departure for Yokohama would necessarily be missed.
At six o'clock the pilot came aboard the Rangoon and took his place on the bridge to steer the ship through the channels into the port of Hong Kong.
Passepartout was dying to question the man, to ask whether the Yokohama steamer had already left Hong Kong. But he didn't dare, preferring to hold on to a scrap of hope until the last possible moment. He had confided his worries to Fix, who — the sly fox — tried to console him by saying that Mr. Fogg would simply have to take the next steamer. Which put Passepartout into a black rage.
But if Passepartout didn't venture to question the pilot, Mr. Fogg, after consulting his Bradshaw, asked the pilot in his tranquil way whether he knew when a boat would leave Hong Kong for Yokohama.
"Tomorrow, on the morning tide," the pilot answered.
"Ah!" said Mr. Fogg, betraying not the slightest surprise.
Passepartout, who was present, could have kissed the pilot — the very man Fix would gladly have throttled.
"What is the name of this steamer?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"The Carnatic," the pilot answered.
"Wasn't she due to leave yesterday?"
"Yes, sir, but one of her boilers had to be repaired, and her departure was put off to tomorrow."
"Thank you," replied Mr. Fogg, who with his automatic step went back down into the saloon of the Rangoon.
As for Passepartout, he seized the pilot's hand and wrung it vigorously, saying:
"Pilot, you're a fine man!"
The pilot surely never knew why his answers earned him this burst of affection. At a blast of the whistle he climbed back onto the bridge and steered the steamer through that flotilla of junks, tankas, fishing boats, and craft of every sort that clogged the narrows of Hong Kong.
At one o'clock the Rangoon was alongside the quay, and the passengers were going ashore.
In this instance, it must be admitted, chance had served Phileas Fogg remarkably well. Without that need to repair her boilers, the Carnatic would have left on November 5, and the travelers bound for Japan would have had to wait a full week for the next steamer. Mr. Fogg, true, was twenty-four hours behind — but this delay could have no unfortunate consequences for the rest of the journey.
For the steamer that makes the Pacific crossing from Yokohama to San Francisco was in direct connection with the Hong Kong steamer, and it could not leave before the latter had arrived. There would obviously be twenty-four hours' delay at Yokohama, but during the twenty-two days the Pacific crossing takes, they would be easy enough to make up. And so Phileas Fogg found himself, to within twenty-four hours, right on the terms of his program, thirty-five days after leaving London.
With the Carnatic not due to leave until five the next morning, Mr. Fogg had sixteen hours ahead of him to see to his business — that is to say, to the business concerning Aouda. As they came off the boat, he offered the young woman his arm and led her toward a palanquin. He asked the bearers to point him to a hotel, and they named the Hôtel du Club. The palanquin set off, with Passepartout following, and twenty minutes later it arrived at its destination.
A suite was engaged for the young woman, and Phileas Fogg saw to it that she wanted for nothing. Then he told Aouda that he would set out at once in search of the relative into whose care he was to leave her at Hong Kong. At the same time he gave Passepartout orders to remain at the hotel until his return, so that the young woman would not be left there alone.
The gentleman had himself driven to the Exchange. There, someone would be sure to know a figure such as the honorable Jejeeh, who ranked among the richest merchants in the city.
The broker Mr. Fogg approached did indeed know the Parsee trader. But for two years now the man had no longer lived in China. Having made his fortune, he had settled in Europe — in Holland, it was believed — which was explained by the many dealings he had had with that country over his years in business.
Phileas Fogg returned to the Hôtel du Club. He at once sent to ask Aouda's leave to present himself before her, and, without further preamble, told her that the honorable Jejeeh no longer resided at Hong Kong, and in all likelihood now lived in Holland.
To this Aouda at first said nothing. She passed a hand across her brow, and sat a few moments in thought. Then, in her gentle voice:
"What am I to do, Mr. Fogg?" she said.
"It's very simple," the gentleman answered. "Go back to Europe."
"But I can't impose—"
"You're not imposing, and your presence hinders my program in no way whatever... Passepartout?"
"Sir?" answered Passepartout.
"Go to the Carnatic and book three cabins."
Passepartout, delighted to go on with the journey in the company of the young woman, who was so gracious to him, left the Hôtel du Club at once.
Hong Kong is only a little island, handed over to England by the Treaty of Nanking after the war of 1842. In a few short years, Britain's colonizing genius had raised an important city there and built a harbor, Victoria Harbour. The island sits at the mouth of the Canton River, and a mere sixty miles separate it from the Portuguese city of Macao, built on the opposite bank. Hong Kong was bound to beat Macao in the commercial contest, and by now most of the Chinese transit trade passed through the English town. Docks, hospitals, wharves, warehouses, a Gothic cathedral, a government house, macadamized streets — everything about it made you think that some trading town out of Kent or Surrey had bored clean through the terrestrial sphere and come out again at this spot in China, very nearly at its antipodes.
Passepartout, hands in his pockets, made his way down toward Victoria Harbour, taking in the sedan chairs, the sail-rigged wheelbarrows still in favor in the Celestial Empire, and the whole crowd of Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans jostling through the streets. Give or take a detail here and there, it was Bombay, Calcutta, or Singapore all over again that the good fellow kept finding along his route. There is, it seems, a sort of trail of English towns laid clear around the world.
Passepartout reached Victoria Harbour. There, at the mouth of the Canton River, was a swarming mass of ships of every nation — English, French, American, Dutch, warships and merchantmen, Japanese and Chinese craft, junks, sampans, tankas, and even flower-boats that made so many floating gardens on the water. Strolling along, Passepartout noticed a number of locals dressed in yellow, all of them well on in years. Stepping into a Chinese barber's to get a shave "in the Chinese style," he learned from the local Figaro, who spoke tolerably good English, that these old men were all at least eighty, and that at that age they had the privilege of wearing yellow, the imperial color. Passepartout found this very funny, without quite knowing why.
His beard trimmed, he went down to the Carnatic's boarding quay, and there he spotted Fix pacing back and forth — which did not surprise him in the least. But the police inspector's face wore the plain marks of a bitter disappointment.
"Good!" Passepartout said to himself. "This looks bad for the gentlemen of the Reform Club!"
And he greeted Fix with his cheerful smile, choosing not to notice his companion's sour expression.
Now, the detective had good reason to curse the infernal luck that dogged him. No warrant! It was clear the warrant was running along somewhere behind him and could only catch up if he stayed a few days in this city. And Hong Kong being the last stretch of English soil on the route, Fogg was going to slip away from him for good unless he could find some way to hold him there.
"Well, Mr. Fix, have you made up your mind to come along with us as far as America?" asked Passepartout.
"Yes," Fix answered through his teeth.
"There, you see!" cried Passepartout, letting out a ringing peal of laughter. "I knew you couldn't bear to part from us. Come sign up for your berth, come along!"
And the two of them stepped into the shipping office and booked cabins for four. But the clerk pointed out that, the repairs to the Carnatic being finished, the steamer would sail that very evening at eight o'clock, and not the next morning as had first been announced.
"Excellent!" said Passepartout. "That will suit my master perfectly. I'll go and let him know."
At that moment Fix made a desperate decision. He resolved to tell Passepartout everything. It was perhaps the only way left to him of keeping Phileas Fogg a few days in Hong Kong.
As they left the office, Fix offered to stand his companion a drink at a tavern. Passepartout had the time. He accepted.
A tavern opened onto the quay. It had an inviting look. The two of them went in. It was a large, well-appointed room, with a camp bed laid out at the far end, heaped with cushions. On this bed lay a number of sleepers.
Some thirty or so customers occupied little tables of woven cane in the main room. A few were draining pints of English beer, ale or porter; others jugs of gin or brandy. And most of them, besides, were smoking long pipes of red clay, packed with little pellets of opium blended with essence of rose. Now and then some smoker, his nerves gone, would slide under the table, and the waiters of the house would take him by the head and heels and carry him over to the camp bed to lie beside a fellow. A score of these drunkards were laid out that way, side by side, sunk to the last degree of stupor.
Fix and Passepartout understood that they had walked into one of those smoking dens haunted by the wretched, dull-eyed, wasted, witless men to whom mercantile England sells, every year, two hundred and sixty million francs' worth of that deadly drug called opium — a sad harvest of millions, drawn from one of the most ruinous of all human vices.
The Chinese government had certainly tried to check the abuse with strict laws, but in vain. From the wealthy class, to whom the use of opium had at first been strictly confined, the habit had worked its way down to the lower classes, and the ruin it caused could no longer be stopped. Opium is smoked everywhere, all the time, in the Middle Kingdom. Men and women alike give themselves over to the wretched craving, and once they are used to breathing it in, they cannot do without it, or else suffer horrible cramps of the stomach. A heavy smoker can get through as many as eight pipes a day — but he is dead within five years.
Well, it was into one of the many dens of this sort, which swarm even in Hong Kong, that Fix and Passepartout had walked with the idea of getting a drink. Passepartout had no money, but he gladly accepted his companion's "courtesy," meaning to return it in his own time and place.
They ordered two bottles of port, which the Frenchman did full justice to, while Fix, more sparing, watched him with the closest attention. They talked of this and that, and above all of the excellent notion Fix had had of booking passage on the Carnatic. And on the subject of that steamer, whose departure had been moved up a few hours, Passepartout — the bottles now empty — got to his feet to go and warn his master.
Fix held him back.
"One moment," he said.
"What is it, Mr. Fix?"
"I have something serious to talk to you about."
"Something serious!" cried Passepartout, tipping back the last few drops of wine in his glass. "Well, we'll talk about it tomorrow. I haven't the time today."
"Stay," Fix answered. "It concerns your master!"
At that word, Passepartout looked hard at the man across from him. There was something odd in Fix's expression. He sat back down.
"What is it you have to tell me?" he asked.
Fix laid a hand on his companion's arm and, dropping his voice, said:
"You've guessed who I am?"
"Of course I have!" said Passepartout, smiling.
"Then I'm going to confess everything to you—"
"Now that I already know the whole of it, my friend! Ah, that's not much of a secret! Still, go on. But first let me tell you those gentlemen have put themselves to a great deal of trouble for nothing!"
"For nothing!" said Fix. "You talk very easily! It's plain you don't know the size of the sum!"
"Of course I know it," Passepartout answered. "Twenty thousand pounds!"
"Fifty-five thousand!" Fix shot back, gripping the Frenchman's hand.
"What!" cried Passepartout. "Mr. Fogg would have dared!... Fifty-five thousand pounds!... Well then! All the more reason not to lose a single moment," he added, getting to his feet again.
"Fifty-five thousand pounds!" Fix repeated, forcing Passepartout back into his seat and calling for a flask of brandy to be brought. "And if I pull it off, I earn a bonus of two thousand pounds. Will you take five hundred of it — on condition you help me?"
"Help you?" cried Passepartout, his eyes stretched enormously wide.
"Yes — help me keep Fogg a few days in Hong Kong!"
"Eh!" said Passepartout. "What are you saying? What! Not content with having my master followed, with doubting his honesty, these gentlemen actually want to throw obstacles in his path! I'm ashamed of them!"
"Now then — what do you mean by that?" asked Fix.
"I mean it's downright shabby. You might as well strip Mr. Fogg bare and lift the money straight out of his pocket!"
"Ah — but that's exactly what we're counting on doing!"
"But this is an ambush!" cried Passepartout — who was warming up now under the brandy Fix kept pouring, and which he drank without noticing. "A regular ambush! And from gentlemen! From colleagues!"
Fix was beginning to lose the thread.
"Colleagues!" cried Passepartout. "Members of the Reform Club! I'll have you know, Mr. Fix, that my master is an honest man, and that when he has made a bet, he means to win it fair and square."
"But who do you think I am?" asked Fix, fixing his gaze on Passepartout.
"Why — an agent of the members of the Reform Club, sent to check up on my master's route, which is singularly humiliating! And that's why, though I guessed what you were some time ago now, I've taken good care not to breathe a word of it to Mr. Fogg!"
"He knows nothing?" Fix asked quickly.
"Nothing," Passepartout answered, draining his glass once more.
The police inspector passed a hand across his forehead. He hesitated before speaking again. What was he to do? Passepartout's mistake seemed genuine, but it made his scheme all the harder. It was plain the fellow was speaking in absolute good faith, and that he was no accomplice of his master's — which was what Fix might have feared.
"Well," he said to himself, "since he's not the accomplice, he'll help me."
For the second time, the detective made up his mind. Besides, he had no more time to wait. At any cost, Fogg had to be stopped in Hong Kong.
"Listen," said Fix in a clipped voice. "Listen to me carefully. I am not what you think — that is, an agent of the members of the Reform Club—"
"Bah!" said Passepartout, eyeing him mockingly.
"I am a police inspector, charged with a mission by the Metropolitan authorities—"
"You... a police inspector!"
"Yes, and I can prove it," Fix went on. "Here is my commission."
And the detective, drawing a paper from his wallet, showed his companion a commission signed by the director of the central police. Passepartout, dumbfounded, stared at Fix, unable to get out a single word.
"Fogg's bet," Fix continued, "is nothing but a pretext, and you and his fellow members of the Reform Club are the dupes of it, because he had an interest in securing your unwitting help."
"But why?" cried Passepartout.
"Listen. On the 29th of September last, a theft of fifty-five thousand pounds was committed at the Bank of England, by a man whose description was taken down. Well, here is that description, and it matches Fogg feature for feature."
"Nonsense!" cried Passepartout, bringing his sturdy fist down on the table. "My master is the most honest man in the world!"
"How would you know?" Fix returned. "You don't even know him! You entered his service the very day he left, and he set off in a mad rush on some senseless pretext, without so much as a trunk, carrying off a large sum in banknotes! And you still dare to maintain he's an honest man!"
"Yes! Yes!" the poor fellow kept repeating, mechanically.
"So you'd like to be arrested as his accomplice?"
Passepartout had taken his head in both hands. He was no longer himself. He did not dare look at the police inspector. Phileas Fogg a thief — he, the rescuer of Aouda, that generous and fearless man! And yet what a weight of presumptions stood against him! Passepartout tried to push away the suspicions creeping into his mind. He would not believe his master guilty.
"Well, what is it you want from me?" he said to the detective, holding himself in by one supreme effort.
"Here it is," Fix answered. "I've trailed Fogg this far, but I still haven't received the arrest warrant I asked London for. So you must help me hold him in Hong Kong—"
"Me! That I should—"
"And I'll split with you the two-thousand-pound bonus promised by the Bank of England!"
"Never!" answered Passepartout, who tried to rise and fell back again, feeling both his wits and his strength deserting him at once.
"Mr. Fix," he said, stammering, "even supposing everything you've told me were true... even if my master were the thief you're after... which I deny... I have been — I am — in his service... I have seen him good and generous... betray him... never... no, not for all the gold in the world... I come from a village where we don't eat that kind of bread!"
"You refuse?"
"I refuse."
"Then let's say I've said nothing," Fix answered, "and let's drink."
"Yes — let's drink!"
Passepartout felt the drunkenness taking hold of him more and more. Fix, seeing that he had to separate the man from his master at any cost, resolved to finish him off. On the table lay a few pipes charged with opium. Fix slipped one into Passepartout's hand. He took it, raised it to his lips, lit it, drew in a few puffs, and sank back, his head heavy under the drug's grip.
"Well," said Fix, watching Passepartout go under, "Fogg won't be warned in time about the Carnatic's departure, and if he does sail, at least he'll sail without this cursed Frenchman!"
Then he went out, after settling the bill.
While this scene — which might yet do such grave damage to his future — was playing out, Mr. Fogg was strolling with Aouda through the streets of the English town. Ever since she had accepted his offer to see her safely to Europe, he had had to think through all the details that a journey of such length involves. That an Englishman like himself should circle the globe with a single bag in hand — well and good; but a woman could hardly undertake such a crossing on those terms. Hence the necessity of buying the clothing and other necessities for the trip. Mr. Fogg saw to the task with his usual calm, and to every apology or objection from the young widow, embarrassed by so much kindness, he replied without fail:
"It's in the interest of my journey. It's in my program."
The purchases made, Mr. Fogg and the young woman returned to the hotel and dined at the table d'hôte, which was laid out on a lavish scale. Then Aouda, a little tired, went back up to her room, but not before shaking hands "in the English fashion" with her imperturbable rescuer.
As for the honorable gentleman, he spent the whole evening buried in the Times and the Illustrated London News.
Had he been a man capable of being surprised by anything, it would have been by the failure of his servant to appear at bedtime. But knowing that the Yokohama steamer would not leave Hong Kong before the next morning, he thought no more of it. The following day, Passepartout did not answer Mr. Fogg's ring.
What the honorable gentleman thought on learning that his servant had not come back to the hotel, no one could have said. Mr. Fogg simply picked up his bag, sent word to Aouda, and called for a palanquin.
It was then eight o'clock, and high tide — which the Carnatic needed in order to clear the channel — was set for half past nine.
When the palanquin arrived at the hotel door, Mr. Fogg and Aouda climbed into the comfortable conveyance, and the luggage followed behind on a barrow.
Half an hour later, the travelers stepped down onto the embarkation quay, and there Mr. Fogg learned that the Carnatic had sailed the day before.
Mr. Fogg, who had counted on finding both the steamer and his servant, was now reduced to doing without either. But not a flicker of disappointment crossed his face, and when Aouda looked at him anxiously, he only replied:
"It's a small setback, madam, nothing more."
At that moment a man who had been watching him closely stepped up. It was Inspector Fix, who greeted him and said:
"Aren't you, like me, sir, one of the passengers off the Rangoon that came in yesterday?"
"Yes, sir," Mr. Fogg answered coldly, "but I haven't the honor of —"
"Forgive me. I thought I'd find your servant here."
"Do you know where he is, sir?" the young woman asked quickly.
"What!" said Fix, feigning surprise. "Isn't he with you?"
"No," said Aouda. "He hasn't reappeared since yesterday. Could he have gone aboard the Carnatic without us?"
"Without you, madam?" said the detective. "But — excuse the question — you were meaning to take that steamer yourselves?"
"Yes, sir."
"So was I, madam, and you see me thoroughly put out. The Carnatic finished her repairs and left Hong Kong twelve hours early without warning a soul, and now we'll have to wait eight days for the next departure!"
As he pronounced the words "eight days," Fix felt his heart leap for joy. Eight days! Fogg held at Hong Kong for eight days! That would be time enough for the warrant to arrive. At last luck was breaking the way of the law's representative.
Judge, then, of the blow that landed on him when he heard Phileas Fogg say, in that calm voice of his:
"But there are other ships besides the Carnatic in the port of Hong Kong, I imagine."
And Mr. Fogg, offering his arm to Aouda, headed off toward the docks in search of a ship about to sail.
Fix, thunderstruck, followed. You would have thought a thread tied him to the man.
Yet luck did seem, this time, to abandon the one it had served so well until now. For three hours Phileas Fogg tramped the harbor in every direction, resolved, if it came to that, to charter a vessel to carry him to Yokohama; but he saw only ships loading or unloading, and therefore unable to weigh anchor. Fix began to hope again.
Still, Mr. Fogg was not put off, and he was about to go on searching, even if it meant pushing on as far as Macao, when a sailor hailed him on the outer harbor.
"Is Your Honor looking for a boat?" said the sailor, taking off his cap.
"Have you a boat ready to sail?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"Yes, Your Honor, pilot-boat number 43, the best of the fleet."
"Is she fast?"
"Eight to nine miles, close-hauled. Would you care to see her?"
"Yes."
"Your Honor will be satisfied. Is it a pleasure trip at sea?"
"No. A voyage."
"A voyage?"
"Will you take it on to carry me to Yokohama?"
At these words the sailor's arms fell slack and his eyes went wide.
"Your Honor is joking?" he said.
"No! I've missed the Carnatic, and I have to be at Yokohama by the 14th at the latest to catch the San Francisco steamer."
"I'm sorry," the pilot answered, "but it's impossible."
"I'll offer you a hundred pounds a day, and a bonus of two hundred pounds if I arrive in time."
"You're serious?" asked the pilot.
"Perfectly serious," Mr. Fogg replied.
The pilot had drawn off to one side. He was studying the sea, plainly torn between the itch to earn an enormous sum and the fear of venturing so far. Fix was in mortal agonies.
Meanwhile Mr. Fogg had turned back to Aouda.
"You won't be afraid, madam?" he asked.
"Not with you, Mr. Fogg," the young woman answered.
The pilot had come forward again toward the gentleman, twisting his hat in his hands.
"Well, pilot?" said Mr. Fogg.
"Well, Your Honor," the pilot replied, "I can't risk my men, or myself, or you either, on so long a crossing in a boat of barely twenty tons, and at this time of year. Besides, we wouldn't get there in time, for it's sixteen hundred and fifty miles from Hong Kong to Yokohama."
"Sixteen hundred only," said Mr. Fogg.
"It's the same thing."
Fix breathed a good lungful of air.
"But," the pilot added, "there might be a way to manage it differently."
Fix stopped breathing.
"How?" asked Phileas Fogg.
"By going to Nagasaki, at the southern tip of Japan — eleven hundred miles — or only as far as Shanghai, eight hundred miles from Hong Kong. On that last run we'd keep close to the Chinese coast, which would be a great advantage, all the more since the currents there set to the north."
"Pilot," Phileas Fogg replied, "it's at Yokohama that I have to catch the American mail steamer, not at Shanghai or Nagasaki."
"Why not?" the pilot answered. "The San Francisco steamer doesn't start from Yokohama. She puts in at Yokohama and Nagasaki, but her port of departure is Shanghai."
"You're certain of what you say?"
"Certain."
"And when does the steamer leave Shanghai?"
"On the 11th, at seven in the evening. So we've got four days ahead of us. Four days makes ninety-six hours, and at an average of eight miles an hour, if we're well served, if the wind holds to the southeast, if the sea stays calm, we can knock off the eight hundred miles that lie between us and Shanghai."
"And you could leave —?"
"Within the hour. Just time enough to buy provisions and get under way."
"It's settled... You're the master of the boat?"
"Yes, John Bunsby, master of the Tankadère."
"Would you like something on account?"
"If it's no trouble to Your Honor."
"Here's two hundred pounds on account... Sir," Phileas Fogg added, turning to Fix, "if you'd care to take advantage —"
"Sir," Fix answered firmly, "I was about to ask you that very favor."
"Good. In half an hour we'll be aboard."
"But that poor fellow —" said Aouda, deeply troubled by Passepartout's disappearance.
"I'll do for him everything that can be done," Phileas Fogg replied.
And while Fix — nervous, feverish, seething — made his way to the pilot-boat, the two of them went off to the Hong Kong police offices. There Phileas Fogg gave a description of Passepartout and left a sum sufficient to send him home. The same formality was carried out at the office of the French consular agent, and the palanquin, after a stop at the hotel to collect the luggage, brought the travelers back to the outer harbor.
Three o'clock was striking. Pilot-boat number 43, her crew aboard and her provisions loaded, was ready to weigh anchor.
The Tankadère was a lovely little schooner of twenty tons, sharp in the bow, easy in her handling, long in her waterlines. She looked like a racing yacht. Her gleaming brasswork, her galvanized iron fittings, her deck white as ivory, all showed that her master, John Bunsby, knew how to keep her in trim. Her two masts raked a little aft. She carried a spanker, foresail, staysail, jibs, and topsails, and could rig out a squaresail for running before the wind. She was bound to sail beautifully, and in fact she had already won several prizes in the pilot-boat "matches."
The crew of the Tankadère was made up of master John Bunsby and four men. These were bold seamen of the kind who put out in all weathers in search of ships and know these waters wonderfully well. John Bunsby, a man of about forty-five, sturdy, tanned dark, quick-eyed, with a strong face, steady on his feet and thoroughly on top of his business, would have inspired confidence in the most fearful soul.
Phileas Fogg and Aouda came aboard. Fix was there already. Through the after hatch of the schooner one went down into a square cabin, its walls hollowed into frames above a circular divan. In the middle stood a table lit by a gimbal lamp. It was small, but clean.
"I'm sorry to have nothing better to offer you," said Mr. Fogg to Fix, who bowed without a word.
The police inspector felt something like humiliation at profiting this way from Mr. Fogg's courtesy.
"A polite rogue, to be sure," he thought, "but a rogue all the same!"
At ten minutes past three the sails were hoisted. The flag of England flew at the schooner's gaff. The passengers were seated on deck. Mr. Fogg and Aouda cast one last look at the quay, to see whether Passepartout might not appear.
Fix was not without his own misgivings, for chance might well have led to that very spot the wretched fellow he had treated so shamefully, and then there would have been an explosion of explanations from which the detective would not have come off well. But the Frenchman did not show himself; no doubt the stupefying narcotic still held him in its grip.
At last master John Bunsby stood out to sea, and the Tankadère, taking the wind under her spanker, foresail, and jibs, went bounding off across the waves.
It was a bold undertaking, this eight-hundred-mile voyage, on a boat of twenty tons, and above all at that time of year. The seas off China are generally foul, exposed to terrible gales, especially around the equinoxes — and they were still in the first days of November.
Plainly it would have been to the skipper's advantage to carry his passengers all the way to Yokohama, since he was paid by the day. But it would have been reckless in the extreme to attempt such a crossing in these conditions, and it was already a piece of daring — of near foolhardiness — merely to push on as far as Shanghai. Still, John Bunsby had faith in his Tankadère, which rode the swell like a gull, and perhaps he was not wrong.
Through the last hours of that day the Tankadère worked her way out through the fickle channels of Hong Kong, and on every point of sailing — close-hauled or running before the wind — she behaved admirably.
"I don't need to tell you, skipper," said Phileas Fogg as the sloop stood out into open water, "to crowd on all the speed you can."
"Your Honor may leave it to me," answered John Bunsby. "As for sail, we're carrying everything the wind will let us carry. Our topsails would add nothing — they'd only bury her nose and spoil her way."
"That's your trade, skipper, not mine, and I trust you to it."
Phileas Fogg, body erect, legs braced, steady as a sailor, watched the heaving sea without flinching. The young woman, seated aft, felt a stir of emotion as she gazed at that ocean, already darkening in the dusk, which she was daring in so frail a craft. Overhead the white sails spread, bearing her through space like great wings. Lifted by the wind, the sloop seemed to fly through the air.
Night came on. The moon was entering its first quarter, and its feeble light would soon be snuffed out in the mists on the horizon. Clouds were driving up from the east and already overrunning part of the sky.
The skipper had set out his running lights — an indispensable precaution in those crowded waters near the coast. Ships were not seldom met with, and at the speed she was making, the sloop would have shattered at the slightest collision.
Fix brooded up forward. He kept apart, knowing Fogg to be a man of few words. Besides, it went against the grain to talk to this man whose hospitality he was accepting. He was thinking, too, about what came next. It seemed certain to him that Fogg would not stop at Yokohama, that he would take the San Francisco steamer at once in order to reach America, whose vast expanse would guarantee him both impunity and safety. Phileas Fogg's plan struck him as simplicity itself.
Instead of sailing straight from England to the United States like a common crook, this Fogg had gone the long way round and crossed three-quarters of the globe, the better to make sure of the American continent, where he could quietly spend the Bank's stolen fortune once he had thrown the police off the scent. But once on Union soil, what would Fix do? Give the man up? No, a hundred times no! And until he had secured a warrant of extradition, he would not budge an inch from his side. It was his duty, and he would carry it through to the end. In any case, one lucky thing had happened: Passepartout was no longer with his master — and above all, after Fix's confidences, it was vital that master and servant should never meet again.
Phileas Fogg, for his part, was not without a thought for his own servant, so strangely vanished. All things considered, it did not seem impossible to him that, through some misunderstanding, the poor fellow had gone aboard the Carnatic at the last moment. That was Aouda's opinion as well; she deeply missed that honest servant, to whom she owed so much. It might be, then, that they would find him again at Yokohama, and if the Carnatic had carried him there, it would be easy enough to learn.
Toward ten the breeze freshened. It might have been prudent to take in a reef, but the skipper, after carefully studying the state of the sky, left the sail as it stood. Besides, the Tankadère carried canvas beautifully, drawing a deep draught, and everything was ready to bring the sails down fast in case of a squall.
At midnight Phileas Fogg and Aouda went below to the cabin. Fix had gone down before them and stretched himself out on one of the bunks. As for the skipper and his men, they stayed on deck all night.
By the next morning, the 8th of November, at sunrise, the sloop had run more than a hundred miles. The log, cast again and again, showed her average speed to be between eight and nine miles an hour. The Tankadère had the wind on her quarter, all her canvas drawing, and under this point of sailing she was making her best speed. If the wind held on these terms, the odds were with her.
All that day the Tankadère kept close to the coast, where the currents ran in her favor. She held it at five miles off at most on her port quarter, and that coast, its outline ragged, showed itself now and then through the breaks in the weather. With the wind coming off the land, the sea was the less heavy for it — a lucky thing for the sloop, since small craft suffer above all from the swell, which breaks their way and, in the sailors' phrase, "kills them."
Toward noon the breeze slackened a little and hauled to the southeast. The skipper had the topsails set; but two hours later they had to be brought down again, for the wind was freshening once more.
Mr. Fogg and the young woman, luckily immune to seasickness, ate the tinned food and ship's biscuit with a hearty appetite. Fix was invited to share their meal and had to accept, knowing well that a stomach, like a boat, must be ballasted — but it galled him! To travel at this man's expense, to eat this man's own provisions, struck him as something less than honorable. He ate all the same — on the wing, it's true — but eat he did.
When the meal was over, however, he felt he ought to take Fogg aside, and he said to him:
"Sir…"
That word "sir" scraped his lips, and he had to hold himself back from taking this "sir" by the collar!
"Sir, you were very obliging to offer me passage aboard your boat. But though my means don't allow me to do things as handsomely as you, I mean to pay my share—"
"Let's not speak of it, sir," answered Mr. Fogg.
"But I insist—"
"No, sir," Fogg repeated, in a tone that brooked no reply. "It comes under general expenses!"
Fix bowed; he was choking; and going to stretch himself out in the bow of the sloop, he did not say another word the whole day.
Meanwhile they were making fast time. John Bunsby had good hopes. Several times he told Mr. Fogg that they would reach Shanghai in good time. Mr. Fogg answered simply that he counted on it. And the whole crew of the little sloop threw themselves into the work with a will. The reward tempted these good fellows. So not a sheet that was not conscientiously hauled taut! Not a sail that was not vigorously set up! Not a yaw the helmsman could be blamed for! They could not have been worked harder in a regatta of the Royal Yacht Club.
By evening the skipper's log gave a run of two hundred and twenty miles since Hong Kong, and Phileas Fogg could hope that on reaching Yokohama he would have no delay to enter against his schedule. So the first serious setback he had met since leaving London would, in all likelihood, do him no harm at all.
During the night, toward the small hours of the morning, the Tankadère stood boldly into the Strait of Fo-Kien, which divides the great island of Formosa from the Chinese coast, and cut across the Tropic of Cancer. The sea ran very hard in that strait, full of eddies stirred up by the cross-currents. The sloop labored heavily. The short seas broke her way. It grew very hard to keep one's feet on deck.
With the coming of day the wind freshened still more. There was the look of a gale in the sky. The barometer, moreover, foretold a coming change in the weather; its daily march was erratic, and the mercury swung about capriciously. The sea, too, could be seen heaving up toward the southeast in long swells "that smelled of the storm." The evening before, the sun had set in a red haze, amid the phosphorescent glittering of the ocean.
The skipper studied that ugly aspect of the sky for a long while and muttered something unintelligible between his teeth. At one point, finding himself near his passenger, he said in a low voice:
"May I tell Your Honor everything?"
"Everything," answered Phileas Fogg.
"Well then — we're going to get a gale."
"From the north or the south?" Mr. Fogg asked simply.
"From the south. Look. It's a typhoon brewing!"
"Then let it be the typhoon from the south, since it will push us the right way," answered Mr. Fogg.
"If you take it like that," the skipper replied, "I've nothing more to say!"
John Bunsby's forebodings did not deceive him. At a less advanced season of the year the typhoon, in the words of a famous meteorologist, would have spent itself like a luminous cascade of electric flame; but at the winter equinox there was reason to fear it would break loose with fury.
The skipper took his precautions in advance. He had all the sloop's sails furled and the yards brought down on deck. The topmasts were struck. The jib-boom was run in. The hatches were carefully battened down. Not a drop of water could get into the boat's hull now. A single triangular sail, a storm-jib of heavy canvas, was hoisted forward to keep the sloop running before the wind. And they waited.
John Bunsby had urged his passengers to go below into the cabin; but in a cramped space, nearly airless, and with the jolting of the swell, that confinement held no charm. Neither Mr. Fogg, nor Aouda, nor even Fix would agree to leave the deck.
Toward eight the squall of rain and blast came down on them. With no more than her scrap of canvas, the Tankadère was snatched up like a feather by a wind of which no exact idea can be given when it blows a full storm. To compare her speed to four times that of a locomotive going flat out would still be to fall short of the truth.
All day long the boat ran on this way toward the north, borne up by the monstrous seas, keeping, mercifully, a pace as swift as their own. Twenty times she was on the point of being pooped by one of those mountains of water that reared up astern; but a deft turn of the helm from the skipper warded off the disaster. The passengers were sometimes drenched from head to foot by the spray, which they took philosophically. Fix grumbled, no doubt, but the intrepid Aouda, her eyes fixed on her companion, whose coolness she could only admire, showed herself worthy of him and braved the tempest at his side. As for Phileas Fogg, it seemed as though this typhoon were part of his schedule.
Until now the Tankadère had always held her course to the north; but toward evening, as might have been feared, the wind veered three-quarters and hauled to the northwest. The sloop, now offering her flank to the seas, was shaken frightfully. The sea struck her with a violence well fitted to terrify anyone who does not know how solidly every part of a vessel is bound to the rest.
With the night the storm rose still higher. Seeing the darkness come on, and with the darkness the tempest grow, John Bunsby felt keen misgivings. He wondered whether it might not be time to put in somewhere, and he consulted his crew.
His men consulted, John Bunsby stepped up to Mr. Fogg and said:
"I think, Your Honor, that we'd do well to make one of the ports along the coast."
"I think so too," answered Phileas Fogg.
"Ah!" said the skipper. "But which one?"
"I know only one," Mr. Fogg answered calmly.
"And that is—?"
"Shanghai."
For a few moments the skipper could not grasp what this answer meant, all the stubbornness and tenacity it held. Then he cried out:
"Well — yes! Your Honor is right. To Shanghai!"
And the Tankadère's course was held imperturbably to the north.
A truly terrible night! It was a miracle the little sloop did not capsize. Twice she was swamped, and everything on board would have been swept away had the lashings given. Aouda was battered and spent, but she did not let a single complaint be heard. More than once Mr. Fogg had to rush to her side to shield her from the fury of the seas.
Day came again. The storm was still raging with the utmost violence. The wind, however, fell back into the southeast. This was a favorable shift, and the Tankadère once more made her way over that heaving sea, whose waves now clashed with the ones raised by the wind's new quarter. From this came a battering of cross-seas that would have crushed a less solidly built craft.
Now and again the coast could be glimpsed through the torn mists, but not a ship in sight. The Tankadère alone was keeping the sea.
At noon there were some signs of a lull, which grew more marked as the sun sank toward the horizon.
The storm's short life was owing to its very violence. The passengers, utterly worn out, were able to eat a little and get some rest.
The night was relatively quiet. The skipper had his sails set again, close-reefed. The boat's speed was considerable. The next day, the 11th, at daybreak, having taken his bearings from the coast, John Bunsby could declare that they were not a hundred miles from Shanghai.
A hundred miles, and only this one day left to make them! It was that very evening that Mr. Fogg must reach Shanghai, if he did not want to miss the departure of the Yokohama steamer. But for this storm, in which he had lost several hours, he would at this moment have been within thirty miles of the port.
The breeze slackened noticeably, but happily the sea fell with it. The sloop covered herself with canvas. Topsails, staysails, outer jib — everything drew, and the sea foamed under her stem.
At noon the Tankadère was no more than forty-five miles from Shanghai. She had six hours left to gain the port before the Yokohama steamer sailed.
Fears ran high on board. They meant to arrive at any cost. Every heart — save Phileas Fogg's, no doubt — was beating with impatience. The little sloop had to hold an average of nine miles an hour, and the wind was slackening still! It was a fitful breeze, capricious gusts coming off the coast. They would pass, and the sea smoothed over the moment they were gone.
Yet the boat was so light, her sails so high and of such fine cloth, that they gathered the wild little gusts so well that, with the current helping, by six o'clock John Bunsby reckoned no more than ten miles to the Shanghai river — for the city itself lies at least twelve miles above the river's mouth.
At seven they were still three miles from Shanghai. A tremendous oath burst from the skipper's lips… The two-hundred-pound reward was clearly about to slip through his fingers. He looked at Mr. Fogg. Mr. Fogg was impassive — and yet his whole fortune was riding on that moment…
At that moment, too, a long black spindle, crowned with a plume of smoke, appeared just above the water. It was the American steamer, standing out at her scheduled hour.
"Damnation!" cried John Bunsby, thrusting away the helm with a desperate arm.
"Signals!" said Phileas Fogg simply. A little bronze cannon lay along the bow of the Tankadère. It was used to make signals in foggy weather.
The cannon was loaded to the muzzle, but just as the skipper was about to touch a live coal to the priming:
"Colors at half-mast," said Mr. Fogg.
The flag was run down to half-mast. It was a signal of distress, and there was hope that the American steamer, on seeing it, would alter her course for a moment to close with the boat.
"Fire!" said Mr. Fogg.
And the report of the little bronze cannon burst upon the air.
The Carnatic had left Hong Kong on the 7th of November at half past six in the evening, and was steaming at full pressure toward the shores of Japan. She carried a full load of cargo and passengers. Two cabins at the stern stood empty — the two that had been booked in the name of Mr. Phileas Fogg.
The next morning, the men forward could see, not without some surprise, a passenger with a half-dazed eye, an unsteady step, and a wild head of hair, who came up through the second-class hatch and staggered over to sit down on a spare spar.
That passenger was Passepartout in person. Here is what had happened.
A few moments after Fix had left the smoking den, two attendants had lifted the deeply sleeping Passepartout and laid him on the bed kept for the smokers. But three hours later, hounded even into his nightmares by one fixed idea, Passepartout woke and fought against the stupefying grip of the drug. The thought of a duty left undone shook him out of his torpor. He left that bed of drunkards, and stumbling, catching at the walls, falling and picking himself up, but always and irresistibly driven by a kind of instinct, he lurched out of the den crying as though in a dream: "The Carnatic! The Carnatic!"
The steamer was right there, smoking, ready to cast off. Passepartout had only a few steps to go. He threw himself onto the gangway, cleared the ship's ladder, and dropped senseless at the bow just as the Carnatic let go her moorings.
A few sailors, men used to scenes of the kind, carried the poor fellow down to a second-class cabin, and Passepartout did not wake until the next morning, a hundred and fifty miles from the shores of China.
And that was how, on that particular morning, Passepartout came to be on the deck of the Carnatic, gulping down great lungfuls of the fresh sea breeze. The pure air sobered him. He began to gather his thoughts, and did not manage it without some difficulty. But at last he remembered the scenes of the night before — Fix's confidences, the smoking den, and the rest.
"It's plain enough," he said to himself, "that I got abominably drunk! What is Mr. Fogg going to say? Well, at any rate I haven't missed the boat, and that's the main thing."
Then, thinking of Fix:
"As for that one," he said to himself, "I certainly hope we've seen the last of him, and that after what he proposed to me, he hasn't dared follow us aboard the Carnatic. A police inspector, a detective on my master's heels, accused of that theft at the Bank of England! Come off it! Mr. Fogg is about as much a thief as I am a murderer!"
Should Passepartout tell his master all this? Would it be right to let him know the part Fix had played in the business? Wouldn't he do better to wait until they reached London, and then tell him that an agent of the metropolitan police had shadowed him around the world — and have a good laugh about it together? Yes, no doubt. In any case, a question to be examined later. The pressing thing was to rejoin Mr. Fogg and beg his pardon for his unspeakable behavior.
So Passepartout got up. The sea was heavy, and the steamer rolled hard. The worthy fellow, none too steady on his legs yet, worked his way aft as best he could.
On deck he saw no one who looked like either his master or Aouda.
"Right," he said, "Aouda is still in bed at this hour. As for Mr. Fogg, he'll have found himself some whist player, and, as is his habit —"
So saying, Passepartout went down to the saloon. Mr. Fogg was not there. There was only one thing left to do: ask the purser which cabin Mr. Fogg occupied. The purser answered that he knew no passenger of that name.
"Excuse me," said Passepartout, pressing him. "I mean a gentleman, tall, cold, not much of a talker, traveling with a young lady —"
"We have no young lady aboard," the purser replied. "But here — here is the passenger list. You can look for yourself."
Passepartout ran through the list. His master's name was nowhere on it.
Everything went dark before his eyes for a moment. Then an idea flashed through his brain.
"Wait — I am on the Carnatic, aren't I?" he cried.
"Yes," answered the purser.
"Bound for Yokohama?"
"Exactly."
For one instant Passepartout had been seized with the fear that he had boarded the wrong ship! But if he was on the Carnatic, then it was certain his master was not.
Passepartout dropped into an armchair. It was a thunderbolt. And all at once the light broke in on him. He remembered that the Carnatic's departure had been moved up, that he was supposed to have warned his master — and that he had not done it! So it was his fault, his own, that Mr. Fogg and Aouda had missed the sailing!
His fault, yes — but even more the fault of the traitor who, to separate him from his master, to keep Mr. Fogg pinned in Hong Kong, had gotten him drunk! For at last he understood the police inspector's maneuver. And now Mr. Fogg was surely ruined, his wager lost, arrested, imprisoned perhaps! At the thought, Passepartout tore at his hair. Ah, if ever Fix fell into his hands, what a settling of accounts there would be!
At last, after the first shock of dismay, Passepartout recovered his composure and studied the situation. It was not an enviable one. The Frenchman was on his way to Japan. Certain of getting there, how was he to get back? His pockets were empty. Not a shilling, not a penny! Still, his passage and his meals aboard were paid in advance. So he had five or six days ahead of him to decide on a course. As for how he ate and drank during that crossing — it defies description. He ate for his master, for Aouda, and for himself. He ate as though Japan, where he was about to land, were a desert country stripped of every edible substance.
On the 13th, on the morning tide, the Carnatic entered the port of Yokohama.
This is an important port of call in the Pacific, where all the steamers on the mail and passenger service between North America, China, Japan, and the Malay islands put in. Yokohama sits in the very bay of Yeddo, a short distance from that enormous city, the second capital of the Japanese empire — once the residence of the taikun, back when that civil emperor still existed, and the rival of Meako, the great city inhabited by the mikado, the ecclesiastical emperor, descended from the gods.
The Carnatic came alongside the quay at Yokohama, near the jetties of the port and the customs warehouses, in the midst of a crowd of ships belonging to every nation.
Passepartout set foot, without the slightest enthusiasm, on this most curious land of the Sons of the Sun. With nothing better to do, he took chance for a guide and set off at random through the streets of the city.
Passepartout found himself first in a wholly European quarter, with low-fronted houses trimmed with verandas beneath which ran elegant colonnades — a district whose streets, squares, docks, and warehouses covered every foot of ground from the promontory of the Treaty down to the river. There, as in Hong Kong, as in Calcutta, swarmed a jumble of people of every race — Americans, English, Chinese, Dutch — merchants ready to sell anything and buy anything, and among them the Frenchman felt as much a stranger as if he had been dropped into the land of the Hottentots.
Passepartout did have one resource left: he could go and present himself to the French or English consular agents stationed at Yokohama. But it went against the grain to tell his story, so closely bound up with his master's, and before he came to that he wanted to have exhausted every other chance.
So, having crossed the European part of the town without chance doing anything to help him, he entered the Japanese part, resolved, if he had to, to push on all the way to Yeddo.
This native portion of Yokohama is called Benten, after a goddess of the sea worshipped on the neighboring islands. There one saw splendid avenues of firs and cedars, sacred gates of strange architecture, bridges half buried among bamboo and reeds, temples sheltered under the vast, melancholy cover of ancient cedars, monasteries in whose depths the priests of Buddhism and the followers of the religion of Confucius quietly lived out their days, and endless streets where one might have gathered a whole harvest of rosy-skinned, red-cheeked children — little fellows who might have been cut out of some native folding screen — playing among short-legged spaniels and yellowish cats, tailless, very lazy, and very affectionate.
In the streets it was nothing but swarming, an endless coming and going: bonzes filing past in procession beating their monotonous tambourines; yakunins — customs or police officers — in pointed hats inlaid with lacquer, two sabers at the belt; soldiers in blue cotton with white stripes, armed with percussion muskets; the mikado's men-at-arms sheathed in their silk doublets, with hauberk and coat of mail, and any number of other soldiers of every rank — for in Japan the soldier's profession is held in as much esteem as it is despised in China. Then came begging friars, pilgrims in long robes, plain civilians with sleek hair black as ebony, big heads, long torsos, spindly legs, and short stature, their complexions ranging from the dark shades of copper to a dull white — but never the yellow of the Chinese, from whom the Japanese differ essentially. And finally, among the carriages, the palanquins, the horses, the porters, the sail-driven wheelbarrows, the lacquer-paneled "norimons," and the cushioned "cangos" — real bamboo litters — one saw circulating, at the little steps of their little feet, shod in cloth shoes, straw sandals, or carved wooden clogs, a few women, not very pretty, with slanted eyes, flat chests, and teeth blackened in the fashion of the day, but wearing with elegance the national dress, the "kirimon" — a sort of dressing gown crossed by a silk scarf whose broad sash blossomed behind into an extravagant knot, which the Parisiennes of today seem to have borrowed from the Japanese.
Passepartout strolled for several hours through this motley crowd, gazing at the curious, opulent shops, the bazaars heaped with all the glitter of Japanese goldsmithery, the "restaurations" hung with streamers and banners that he was forbidden to enter, and those teahouses where they drink cupfuls of hot fragrant water together with "saki," a liquor drawn from fermenting rice, and those comfortable smoking dens where they smoke a very fine tobacco — not opium, the use of which is nearly unknown in Japan.
Then Passepartout found himself out in the fields, among the vast rice paddies. There, along with flowers casting off their last colors and last scents, bloomed brilliant camellias — carried no longer on shrubs but on trees — and, inside bamboo enclosures, cherry, plum, and apple trees that the natives cultivate for their blossoms rather than their fruit, and that grinning scarecrows and screeching whirligigs guard against the beaks of sparrows, pigeons, crows, and other greedy birds. There was no majestic cedar that did not shelter some great eagle, no weeping willow that did not cover with its foliage some heron perched, melancholy, on one leg — and everywhere, rooks, ducks, hawks, wild geese, and great numbers of those cranes that the Japanese address as "Your Lordships," and that stand to them as symbols of long life and good fortune.
Wandering along this way, Passepartout spotted a few violets among the grasses.
"Good!" he said. "There's my supper."
But when he had smelled them, he found they had no scent at all.
"No such luck!" he thought.
To be sure, the honest fellow had — with an eye to the future — breakfasted as heartily as he possibly could before leaving the Carnatic; but after a day of walking, his stomach felt very hollow indeed. He had certainly noticed that mutton, goats, and pigs were entirely absent from the stalls of the native butchers, and since he knew it was a sacrilege to kill oxen — reserved solely for the needs of agriculture — he had concluded that meat was scarce in Japan. He was not mistaken; but failing butcher's meat, his stomach would have made itself very much at home with a haunch of wild boar or venison, with partridge or quail, with fowl or fish, on which the Japanese feed almost exclusively together with the produce of their rice fields. But he had to put a brave face on it, and left until tomorrow the business of seeing to his food.
Night came. Passepartout went back into the native town, and wandered the streets amid the many-colored lanterns, watching the troupes of tumblers perform their marvelous feats and the open-air astrologers who gathered a crowd around their telescopes. Then he saw the harbor again, spangled with the fires of fishermen luring the fish by the glow of burning resin.
At last the streets emptied. The crowd gave way to the rounds of the yakunins. These officers, in their magnificent costumes and surrounded by their retinues, looked like ambassadors, and Passepartout kept saying to himself in good humor, each time he met one of their dazzling patrols:
"There now! Another Japanese embassy setting off for Europe!"
The next morning Passepartout — worn out, starving — told himself that he had to eat, no matter what, and the sooner the better. He did have the option of selling his watch, but he would sooner have died of hunger. Now, if ever, was the moment for this good fellow to make use of the strong, if not exactly melodious, voice that nature had granted him.
He knew a few tunes from France and England, and he resolved to try them out. The Japanese, surely, must be lovers of music, since everything they did was done to the sound of cymbals, gongs, and drums; they could hardly fail to appreciate the gifts of a European virtuoso.
But perhaps it was a little early in the day to be putting on a concert, and the music lovers, roused out of bed without warning, might not pay their singer in coin stamped with the Mikado's likeness.
So Passepartout decided to wait a few hours. As he wandered along, though, it struck him that he was rather too well dressed for a strolling street performer, and the idea came to him of trading his clothes for some cast-off outfit better suited to his situation. The swap ought to leave a little cash in the bargain besides — cash he could put straight toward quieting his appetite.
Decision made, all that remained was to carry it out. It was only after a long search that Passepartout turned up a local secondhand dealer, to whom he explained what he wanted. The European suit took the dealer's fancy, and soon enough Passepartout came out got up in an old Japanese robe, a sort of ribbed turban faded with age perched on his head — but, in exchange, a few small silver coins jingled in his pocket.
"Good," he thought. "I'll just imagine it's carnival time!"
The first thing Passepartout did, now that he was thoroughly "Japan-ized," was to step into a modest-looking teahouse, where, on the remains of a fowl and a few handfuls of rice, he breakfasted like a man for whom dinner was still a problem waiting to be solved.
"Now," he said to himself, once he had eaten his fill, "the thing is to keep a level head. I can't very well sell this getup for one that's still more Japanese. So I'd better figure out how to get out of this Land of the Rising Sun as quickly as I can — I'll carry nothing away from it but a miserable memory!"
Passepartout then thought of visiting the steamers bound for America. He meant to offer himself as a cook or a servant, asking nothing in return but passage and food. Once at San Francisco, he'd find some way out of his troubles. The important thing was to cross those four thousand seven hundred miles of Pacific that stretch between Japan and the New World.
Passepartout, never a man to let an idea languish, headed for the port of Yokohama. But the nearer he drew to the docks, the more his plan — which had seemed so simple the moment he thought of it — struck him as impossible to pull off. Why would anyone need a cook or a servant aboard an American steamer, and what confidence would he inspire, rigged out the way he was? What recommendations could he offer? What references could he give?
As he was turning this over, his eye fell on an enormous poster that a kind of clown was carrying through the streets of Yokohama. The poster read, in English:
JAPANESE ACROBATIC TROUPE OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM BATULCAR — FINAL PERFORMANCES — Before Their Departure for the United States of America OF THE LONG NOSES — LONG NOSES UNDER THE DIRECT PATRONAGE OF THE GOD TINGOU Great Attraction!
"The United States of America!" cried Passepartout. "That's just the thing for me!"
He followed the walking billboard, and behind the man was soon back in the Japanese quarter of town. A quarter of an hour later he came to a halt before a large hall crowned with several clusters of streamers, its outer walls painted — with no attempt at perspective, but in violent colors — with a whole band of jugglers.
This was the establishment of the honorable Batulcar, a sort of American Barnum, manager of a troupe of tumblers, jugglers, clowns, acrobats, tightrope-walkers, and gymnasts who, according to the poster, were giving their final performances before leaving the Empire of the Sun for the United States.
Passepartout went in under a portico that fronted the hall and asked for Mr. Batulcar. Mr. Batulcar appeared in person.
"What do you want?" he said to Passepartout, taking him at first for a local.
"Do you need a servant?" Passepartout asked.
"A servant!" cried the Barnum, stroking the thick gray tuft that sprouted beneath his chin. "I've got two — obedient, faithful, never left my side, and they work for nothing, so long as I feed them. Here they are," he added, holding up two brawny arms laced with veins as thick as the strings of a double bass.
"So there's nothing I can do for you?"
"Nothing."
"The devil! And it would have suited me so well to travel with you."
"Ah, now," said the honorable Batulcar. "You're about as Japanese as I'm a monkey! Why are you dressed like that, then?"
"A man dresses as best he can!"
"True enough. You're a Frenchman, are you?"
"Yes, a Parisian of Paris."
"In that case, you must know how to pull faces?"
"Well now," Passepartout answered, nettled to see his nationality prompt such a question, "we French do know how to pull faces, it's true — but no better than the Americans!"
"Fair. Well then, if I can't take you on as a servant, I can take you on as a clown. You see, my good man, in France they show off foreign clowns, and abroad they show off French ones!"
"Ah!"
"You're strong, besides?"
"Especially when I've just got up from the table."
"And you can sing?"
"Yes," answered Passepartout, who in his day had done his part in a few street concerts.
"But can you sing standing on your head, with a top spinning on the sole of your left foot and a saber balanced on the sole of your right?"
"By Jove!" answered Passepartout, remembering the exercises of his early youth.
"You see, that's the whole of it!" replied the honorable Batulcar.
The bargain was struck then and there.
At last, Passepartout had found a position. He was hired to do anything and everything in the famous Japanese troupe. It was hardly flattering, but within a week he'd be on the road to San Francisco.
The performance, trumpeted with a great flourish by the honorable Batulcar, was to begin at three o'clock, and soon the fearsome instruments of a Japanese orchestra — drums and gongs — were thundering at the door. Passepartout, of course, had had no chance to study a part, but he was to lend the support of his sturdy shoulders to the great feat of the "human cluster," performed by the Long Noses of the god Tingou. This "great attraction" was to close the program.
Before three o'clock, the spectators had filled the vast hall. Europeans and locals, Chinese and Japanese, men, women, and children crowded onto the narrow benches and into the boxes facing the stage. The musicians had come back inside, and the full orchestra — gongs, drums, clackers, flutes, tambourines, and bass drums — was going at it with a fury.
The performance was what all such acrobatic exhibitions are. But it must be admitted that the Japanese are the finest balancers in the world. One, armed with his fan and little scraps of paper, gave the graceful "butterflies and flowers" routine. Another, with the fragrant smoke of his pipe, quickly traced in the air a string of bluish words that spelled out a compliment to the audience. A third juggled with lit candles, snuffing them one after another as they passed his lips and relighting each from the last, never once breaking off his dazzling display. Yet another reproduced, with spinning tops, the most improbable combinations; under his hand those whirring machines seemed to take on a life of their own in their endless spinning — they ran along pipe stems, along the edges of saber blades, along wires stretched thin as hairs from one side of the stage to the other; they circled great crystal vases, climbed bamboo ladders, scattered into every corner, producing strange harmonic effects as their various tones blended together. The jugglers juggled with them, and still they spun in the air; they flung them like shuttlecocks with wooden rackets, and still they spun; they stuffed them into their pockets, and when they drew them out, still they spun — until a released spring sent them bursting open in a spray of fireworks!
There's no need to describe here the prodigious feats of the troupe's acrobats and gymnasts. The tricks with the ladder, the pole, the ball, the barrels, and the rest were carried off with remarkable precision. But the main draw of the show was the exhibition of those "Long Noses," astonishing balancers still unknown in Europe.
These Long Noses form a special guild placed under the direct patronage of the god Tingou. Dressed like medieval heralds, they wore a splendid pair of wings at their shoulders. But what set them apart most of all was that long nose adorning each face — and above all the use they made of it. These noses were nothing less than bamboo poles, five, six, ten feet long, some straight, some curved, some smooth, some knobbed. And it was on these firmly fixed appendages that all their balancing feats were performed. A dozen of these devotees of the god Tingou lay down on their backs, and their comrades came to frolic on their noses — raised like lightning rods — leaping and vaulting from one to the next, and pulling off the most improbable stunts.
To finish, the public had been specially promised the human pyramid, in which some fifty Long Noses were to form the "Car of Juggernaut." But instead of building the pyramid by using their shoulders as the point of support, the honorable Batulcar's performers were to link together by their noses alone. Now, one of the men who formed the base of the car had left the troupe, and since all that was needed was strength and agility, Passepartout had been chosen to take his place.
To be sure, the worthy fellow felt thoroughly wretched when — a sad reminder of his youth — he had donned his medieval costume, trimmed with its many-colored wings, and a six-foot nose had been fitted to his face! But in the end, that nose was his bread and butter, and he made the best of it.
Passepartout went on stage and took his place among the colleagues who were to form the base of the Car of Juggernaut. They all stretched out on the ground, noses pointed at the sky. A second section of balancers came to settle on those long appendages, a third tier mounted above them, then a fourth, and on these noses that touched only at their tips a human monument soon rose to the very rafters of the theater.
Now, the applause was swelling and the instruments of the orchestra were bursting like so many thunderclaps, when the pyramid swayed, the balance broke, one of the noses at the base gave way, and the whole monument tumbled down like a house of cards —
The fault lay with Passepartout, who — abandoning his post, clearing the footlights without the help of his wings, and clambering up to the right-hand gallery — dropped at the feet of a spectator, crying out:
"Ah! My master! My master!"
"You?"
"Me!"
"Well, in that case — to the steamer, my boy!"
Mr. Fogg, Aouda, who was with him, and Passepartout rushed out through the corridors of the hall. But there they came upon the honorable Batulcar, furious, demanding damages for "the breakage." Phileas Fogg soothed his rage by tossing him a handful of banknotes. And at half past six, just as the steamer was about to leave, Mr. Fogg and Aouda set foot on the American vessel, followed by Passepartout — wings on his back, and on his face that six-foot nose he had not yet managed to tear loose!
What had happened off Shanghai is easy enough to understand. The signals flown by the Tankadère had been spotted from the Yokohama steamer. Seeing a flag at half-mast, the captain had borne down on the little schooner. A few minutes later Phileas Fogg, settling his passage at the price agreed upon, was tucking five hundred and fifty pounds into the pocket of the skipper, John Bunsby. Then the honorable gentleman, Aouda, and Fix had climbed aboard the steamer, which set course at once for Nagasaki and Yokohama.
Arriving that very morning, the 14th of November, right on schedule, Phileas Fogg had left Fix to his own business and gone straight aboard the Carnatic, where he learned — to Aouda's great joy, and perhaps to his own, though he let nothing of it show — that the Frenchman Passepartout had in fact reached Yokohama the day before.
Phileas Fogg, who was to leave again that same evening for San Francisco, set out immediately in search of his servant. He applied, but in vain, to the French and English consular agents, and after combing the streets of Yokohama to no purpose, he had given up hope of finding Passepartout when chance — or perhaps some kind of presentiment — led him into the booth of the honorable Batulcar. He would certainly never have recognized his servant under that outlandish herald's costume; but Passepartout, upside down as he was, caught sight of his master up in the gallery. He couldn't stop his nose from twitching. And there went the balance of the pyramid, and everything that followed.
All this Passepartout learned from Aouda's own lips, and she told him too how the crossing from Hong Kong to Yokohama had been made, in the company of one Mr. Fix, aboard the schooner Tankadère.
At the name of Fix, Passepartout didn't so much as blink. He judged the moment had not yet come to tell his master what had passed between the police inspector and himself. And so, in the account he gave of his own adventures, he blamed and excused himself only for having been caught out by an opium binge in a Yokohama smoking den.
Mr. Fogg listened coldly to this tale, without a word; then he opened his servant a line of credit large enough to fit him out in more suitable clothes aboard ship. And sure enough, before an hour had gone by, the honest fellow had cut off his nose and clipped his wings, and there was nothing left about him to recall the disciple of the god Tingou.
The steamer that ran between Yokohama and San Francisco belonged to the Pacific Mail Steam Company and was named the General Grant. She was a great paddle-wheel steamer of twenty-five hundred tons, well fitted out and very fast. An enormous walking-beam rose and fell above the deck; at one end it took the rod of a piston, and at the other that of a connecting-rod, which turned the straight-line motion into a circular one and applied it directly to the shaft of the wheels. The General Grant was rigged as a three-masted schooner and carried a broad spread of canvas that lent the steam a powerful hand. Making her twelve miles an hour, the steamer should take no more than twenty-one days to cross the Pacific. Phileas Fogg was therefore entitled to believe that, reaching San Francisco on the 2nd of December, he would be in New York on the 11th and in London on the 20th — beating that fatal date of December 21st by a few hours.
There were a good many passengers aboard the steamer: English, plenty of Americans, a whole tide of coolies emigrating to America, and a number of Indian Army officers spending their leave making the tour of the world.
Nothing happened at sea during the crossing. Held up on her broad wheels and steadied by her heavy canvas, the steamer rolled very little. The Pacific Ocean lived up to its name. Mr. Fogg was as calm and as sparing of words as ever. His young companion felt herself drawn to this man by bonds other than gratitude. That silent nature, so generous in the end, made a deeper impression on her than she knew, and it was almost without meaning to that she gave way to feelings the enigmatic Fogg seemed not to feel in the least.
What was more, Aouda took a prodigious interest in the gentleman's plans. She worried over the setbacks that might yet wreck the success of the journey. Often she talked with Passepartout, who was not incapable of reading between the lines of Aouda's heart. By now the good fellow had, where his master was concerned, the simple faith of a charcoal-burner; he never ran dry of praise for Phileas Fogg's honesty, his generosity, his devotion; then he set Aouda's mind at ease about the outcome of the trip, repeating that the hardest part was done, that they were out of those fantastical countries of China and Japan and heading back toward civilized lands, and that a train from San Francisco to New York and a steamer from New York to London would surely be enough to finish this impossible tour of the world within the appointed time.
Nine days after leaving Yokohama, Phileas Fogg had traveled exactly halfway round the globe.
For on the 23rd of November the General Grant crossed the one hundred and eightieth meridian — the one on which, in the southern hemisphere, the antipodes of London lie. Of the eighty days he had been allotted, Mr. Fogg had, it is true, used up fifty-two, leaving him only twenty-eight to spend. But it should be noted that if the gentleman was only halfway there "by the difference of the meridians," he had in reality covered more than two-thirds of the whole route. What forced detours, after all, from London to Aden, from Aden to Bombay, from Calcutta to Singapore, from Singapore to Yokohama! Following the fiftieth parallel — London's own — in a straight circle, the distance would have been only about twelve thousand miles, whereas Phileas Fogg, at the whim of his means of transport, was obliged to cover twenty-six thousand, of which he had done some seventeen thousand five hundred by this 23rd of November. But now the way was straight, and Fix was no longer there to pile up obstacles along it!
It happened, too, that on this 23rd of November Passepartout knew a great joy. It will be remembered that the stubborn fellow had insisted on keeping London time on his famous family watch, holding every other country's hours to be wrong. Well, that day, though he had never once put it forward or back, his watch agreed with the ship's chronometers.
That Passepartout crowed over it, one can well imagine. He'd have dearly liked to know what Fix might have said, had he been there.
"That scoundrel who fed me a heap of nonsense about meridians, about the sun, about the moon!" Passepartout kept saying. "Ha! Those people! If you listened to them, you'd keep fine time indeed! I was always sure that one day or another the sun would make up its mind to set itself by my watch!"
What Passepartout didn't know was this: if the face of his watch had been divided into twenty-four hours, like the Italian clocks, he'd have had no cause to crow at all, for the hands of his instrument, when it was nine in the morning aboard ship, would have pointed to nine in the evening — that is, the twenty-first hour past midnight — a difference exactly equal to the one between London and the one hundred and eightieth meridian.
But even if Fix had been able to explain this purely physical effect, Passepartout would no doubt have been incapable, if not of understanding it, at least of admitting it. And in any case, if by some impossibility the police inspector had shown up aboard just then, it's likely that Passepartout — quite rightly holding a grudge — would have taken up an altogether different subject with him, and in an altogether different manner.
Now, where was Fix at that moment?
Fix was, as it happened, aboard the General Grant.
For on reaching Yokohama, the agent had left Mr. Fogg, whom he counted on catching up with later in the day, and gone straight to the English consul. There he had at last found the warrant, which, chasing after him ever since Bombay, was already forty days old — the warrant that had been sent on to him from Hong Kong aboard the very Carnatic on which he'd been believed to be traveling. Imagine the detective's disappointment! The warrant was now useless! Mr. Fogg had left the English possessions! An extradition order would now be needed to arrest him!
"So be it!" Fix said to himself, once the first flush of anger had passed. "My warrant's no good here, but it will be in England. This scoundrel has every look of a man heading home, thinking he's shaken off the police. Good. I'll follow him all the way there. As for the money, God grant there's some left! But on travel, on rewards, on lawsuits, on fines, on an elephant, on expenses of every kind, my man has already dropped more than five thousand pounds along his road. After all, the Bank is rich!"
His mind made up, he had gone aboard the General Grant at once. He was on board when Mr. Fogg and Aouda arrived. To his extreme surprise, he recognized Passepartout in his herald's costume. He hid himself in his cabin without delay, to avoid an explanation that might spoil everything — and, thanks to the crowd of passengers, he fully expected to escape his enemy's notice, when that very day he found himself face to face with him on the forward deck.
Passepartout sprang at Fix's throat without another word, and, to the great delight of certain Americans who bet on him at once, he treated the wretched inspector to a magnificent thrashing that proved beyond doubt the high superiority of French boxing over English.
When Passepartout had finished, he felt calm, as though a weight had lifted. Fix picked himself up in fairly bad shape and, looking his opponent over, said coldly:
"Are you done?"
"Yes, for now."
"Then come and have a word with me."
"That I—"
"In your master's interest."
Passepartout, as though mastered by this coolness, followed the police inspector, and the two of them sat down at the front of the steamer.
"You've given me a hiding," said Fix. "Good. Now listen to me. Up to now I've been Mr. Fogg's adversary, but from here on I'm playing his hand."
"At last!" cried Passepartout. "You believe he's an honest man?"
"No," Fix answered coldly. "I believe he's a scoundrel. Quiet! Don't move, and let me speak. As long as Mr. Fogg was on English soil, it was in my interest to hold him there until a warrant came. I did everything toward it. I set the priests of Bombay on him, I got you drunk at Hong Kong, I split you off from your master, I made him miss the Yokohama steamer—"
Passepartout listened, fists clenched.
"Now," Fix went on, "Mr. Fogg seems to be heading back to England? So be it, I'll follow him. But from here out I'll put as much care and zeal into clearing the obstacles from his road as I've put until now into piling them up. You see, my game has changed, and it's changed because my interest demands it. I'll add that your interest runs the same as mine, for it's only in England that you'll learn whether you're in the service of a criminal or an honest man!"
Passepartout had listened to Fix very closely, and he was convinced that Fix spoke in complete good faith.
"Are we friends?" asked Fix.
"Friends, no," answered Passepartout. "Allies, yes, and on approval only, for at the first sign of treachery I'll wring your neck."
"Agreed," said the police inspector calmly.
Eleven days later, on the 3rd of December, the General Grant steamed into the bay of the Golden Gate and reached San Francisco.
Mr. Fogg had as yet neither gained nor lost a single day.
It was seven o'clock in the morning when Phileas Fogg, Aouda, and Passepartout set foot on the American continent — if you can give that grand name to the floating wharf they landed on. These wharves rise and fall with the tide, which makes loading and unloading the ships easier. Clippers of every size berth there, steamers of every flag, and those many-decked steamboats that run the Sacramento River and its tributaries. There too are piled the goods of a trade that reaches to Mexico, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Europe, Asia, and every island of the Pacific Ocean.
In his joy at finally touching American soil, Passepartout had felt it only right to disembark by turning a somersault of the very finest style. But when he came down on the wharf, whose planking was worm-eaten, he nearly went straight through it. Utterly thrown off by the manner in which he had "set foot" on the new continent, the honest fellow let out a tremendous yell that sent an enormous flock of cormorants and pelicans — the usual tenants of these floating wharves — flapping into the air.
The moment he landed, Mr. Fogg asked when the first train left for New York. Six o'clock that evening. So Mr. Fogg had a whole day to spend in the capital of California. He called a carriage for Aouda and himself. Passepartout climbed up onto the box, and the vehicle — three dollars the ride — set off for the International Hotel.
From his high perch, Passepartout studied the great American city with curiosity: broad streets, low houses in neat rows, churches and chapels of an Anglo-Saxon Gothic, immense docks, warehouses like palaces, some of wood, some of brick; in the streets, no end of carriages, omnibuses, tramway "cars"; and on the crowded sidewalks, not only Americans and Europeans, but Chinese and Indians too — in short, everything needed to make up a population of more than two hundred thousand souls.
Passepartout was rather surprised by what he saw. In his mind he was still back in the legendary city of 1849 — the city of bandits, arsonists, and murderers who had come racing after the gold nuggets, one vast bedlam of every outcast on earth, where men gambled with gold dust, a revolver in one hand and a knife in the other. But "the good old days" were gone. San Francisco had the look of a great trading city now. The tall tower of the city hall, where the watchmen kept their lookout, loomed over the whole grid of streets and avenues, all crossing at right angles, with green squares blooming between them, and then a Chinese quarter that seemed to have been shipped over from the Celestial Empire in a toy box. No more sombreros, no more red shirts in the fashion of the gold-diggers, no more feathered Indians — only silk hats and black coats, worn by any number of gentlemen driven by a devouring energy. Some streets — Montgomery Street among them, the Regent Street of London, the Boulevard des Italiens of Paris, the Broadway of New York — were lined with splendid shops that displayed the goods of the entire world.
By the time Passepartout reached the International Hotel, it hardly seemed to him that he had ever left England.
The ground floor of the hotel was taken up by an enormous "bar," a kind of buffet open free of charge to every passerby. Dried meat, oyster soup, biscuit, and Cheshire cheese were served out without the customer's ever having to loosen his purse strings. He paid only for his drink — ale, port, or sherry — should the fancy take him to refresh himself. All this struck Passepartout as "very American."
The hotel restaurant was comfortable. Mr. Fogg and Aouda settled at a table and were lavishly served, in Lilliputian dishes, by waiters of the deepest black.
After breakfast, Phileas Fogg, with Aouda on his arm, left the hotel for the offices of the English consul, to have his passport stamped. On the sidewalk he found his servant, who asked whether, before taking the Pacific Railroad, it might not be wise to buy a few dozen Enfield rifles or Colt revolvers. Passepartout had heard tell of Sioux and Pawnees who stop trains the way ordinary Spanish bandits do. Mr. Fogg replied that this was a needless precaution, but he left him free to do as he saw fit. Then he headed for the offices of the consular agent.
Phileas Fogg had not gone two hundred paces when, "by the greatest of chances," he ran into Fix. The inspector looked extremely surprised. What! He and Mr. Fogg had crossed the Pacific together and never once met aboard! In any case, Fix could only be honored to see again the gentleman to whom he owed so much, and, as his business was calling him back to Europe, he would be delighted to continue his journey in such agreeable company.
Mr. Fogg replied that the honor would be his, and Fix — who was anxious not to lose sight of him — asked leave to explore this curious city of San Francisco in his company. This was granted.
And so here were Aouda, Phileas Fogg, and Fix strolling through the streets. They soon found themselves on Montgomery Street, where the crowd was enormous. On the sidewalks, in the middle of the roadway, on the tramway rails, despite the ceaseless passing of coaches and omnibuses, in the doorways of the shops, at the windows of every house, and even up on the rooftops — a countless multitude. Men wearing sandwich boards moved among the knots of people. Banners and streamers flapped in the wind. Shouts burst out on every side.
"Hurrah for Kamerfield!"
"Hurrah for Mandiboy!"
It was a rally. That, at least, was Fix's guess, and he shared the thought with Mr. Fogg, adding:
"We would do well, sir, not to mix ourselves up in this mob. There's nothing to come of it but a beating."
"Quite so," answered Phileas Fogg. "And a fist, for being political, is no less a fist."
Fix thought it right to smile at this remark, and, so as to watch without getting caught in the scuffle, he and Aouda and Phileas Fogg took up a position on the top landing of a staircase that led to a terrace, set above Montgomery Street. Before them, across the street, between a coal merchant's wharf and an oil dealer's warehouse, stood a large open-air office toward which the various currents of the crowd seemed to be converging.
And now, what was this rally about? What was the occasion for it? Phileas Fogg had absolutely no idea. Was it the appointment of some high military or civil official, a state governor, a member of Congress? It was fair to guess as much, judging by the extraordinary excitement that had the whole city in a fever.
At that moment a great heave ran through the crowd. Every hand was in the air. Some of them, tightly clenched, seemed to rise and fall quickly amid the shouting — a vigorous way, no doubt, of casting a vote. Eddies stirred the mass as it surged back. The banners swayed, vanished for an instant, and reappeared in tatters. The rolling of the swell spread all the way to the staircase, while every head bobbed on the surface like a sea suddenly whipped up by a squall. The number of black hats dropped before your eyes, and most of them seemed to have lost their usual height.
"It's plainly a rally," said Fix, "and the question behind it must be a burning one. I shouldn't be surprised if it were still that Alabama business, even though it's been settled."
"Perhaps," Mr. Fogg answered simply.
"In any case," Fix went on, "two champions are squaring off against each other — the honorable Kamerfield and the honorable Mandiboy."
Aouda, on Phileas Fogg's arm, watched this tumultuous scene in amazement, and Fix was just about to ask one of the bystanders the reason for all this popular ferment when a sharper surge broke out. The hurrahs, now spiced with insults, redoubled. Banner poles turned into weapons. No more open hands — fists everywhere. From the tops of the halted carriages and the stalled omnibuses, blows were traded thick and fast. Anything served as a missile. Boots and shoes went whistling through the air on long flat trajectories, and it even seemed that a few revolvers were adding their patriotic reports to the roar of the crowd.
The throng closed in on the staircase and spilled back onto the first steps. One of the parties had clearly been driven back, though the mere onlookers couldn't tell whether the advantage lay with Mandiboy or with Kamerfield.
"I think it would be wise to withdraw," said Fix, who had no wish to see "his man" take a nasty blow or land himself in a nasty fix. "If England comes into any of this and we're recognized, we'll be badly compromised in the brawl."
"An English citizen —" Phileas Fogg began.
But the gentleman never finished his sentence. Behind him, from the terrace above the staircase, came a burst of appalling howls. They were shouting: "Hurrah! Hip! Hip! for Mandiboy!" It was a band of voters arriving to the rescue, taking Kamerfield's supporters in the flank.
Mr. Fogg, Aouda, and Fix found themselves caught between two fires. It was too late to escape. This torrent of men, armed with loaded canes and blackjacks, was irresistible. Phileas Fogg and Fix, shielding the young woman, were horribly jostled. Mr. Fogg, no less unflappable than usual, tried to defend himself with those natural weapons that nature has fitted to the end of every Englishman's arms — but in vain. An enormous fellow with a red goatee, a florid complexion, and broad shoulders, who seemed to be the leader of the gang, raised his formidable fist at Mr. Fogg, and he would have done the gentleman serious damage had not Fix, out of devotion, taken the blow in his place. An enormous lump instantly rose under the detective's silk hat, which was flattened into a mere cap.
"Yankee!" said Mr. Fogg, flinging his adversary a look of deep contempt.
"Englishman!" the other retorted.
"We shall meet again!"
"Whenever you please. Your name?"
"Phileas Fogg. Yours?"
"Colonel Stamp W. Proctor."
That said, the tide swept on past. Fix was knocked down and got back up, his clothes torn but with no serious bruises. His traveling coat had come apart into two unequal halves, and his trousers looked like the sort of breeches certain Indians — a matter of fashion — put on only after first cutting the seat out of them. But on the whole Aouda had been spared, and Fix alone was the worse for it, with his one punch to show.
"Thank you," said Mr. Fogg to the inspector, as soon as they were clear of the crowd.
"Don't mention it," answered Fix, "but come along."
"Where?"
"To a clothier's."
The visit was indeed timely. The clothes of Phileas Fogg and Fix hung in shreds, as if the two gentlemen had been fighting on behalf of the honorable Kamerfield and the honorable Mandiboy.
An hour later, they were properly dressed and hatted again. Then they returned to the International Hotel.
There Passepartout was waiting for his master, armed with half a dozen six-shot dagger-revolvers with center-fire priming. When he caught sight of Fix in Mr. Fogg's company, his brow darkened. But once Aouda had told, in a few words, what had happened, Passepartout brightened up. Fix was plainly no longer an enemy — he was an ally. He was keeping his word.
Dinner over, a coach was brought around to carry the travelers and their luggage to the station. As they were about to step into it, Mr. Fogg said to Fix:
"You haven't seen that Colonel Proctor again?"
"No," Fix replied.
"I shall come back to America to find him," said Phileas Fogg coldly. "It would not be fitting for an English citizen to let himself be treated in such a way."
The inspector smiled and said nothing. But, as you can see, Mr. Fogg was of that breed of Englishman who, while they will not tolerate dueling at home, will fight abroad when it is a matter of defending their honor.
At a quarter to six, the travelers reached the station and found the train ready to leave. Just as Mr. Fogg was about to board, he spotted a railway employee and, catching up with him:
"My friend," he said, "wasn't there some trouble in San Francisco today?"
"It was a rally, sir," the man answered.
"Still, I thought I noticed a certain excitement in the streets."
"It was simply a rally organized for an election."
"The election of a commander in chief, no doubt?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"No, sir. Of a justice of the peace."
At this answer, Phileas Fogg climbed into the car, and the train pulled out at full steam.
"Ocean to Ocean" — so the Americans put it — and those three words really ought to be the general name for the great trunk line that crosses the United States at their widest point. But in fact the Pacific Railroad divides into two distinct parts: the Central Pacific, between San Francisco and Ogden, and the Union Pacific, between Ogden and Omaha. There five separate lines meet, putting Omaha in frequent communication with New York.
New York and San Francisco are therefore now joined by an unbroken ribbon of metal measuring no less than three thousand seven hundred and eighty-six miles. Between Omaha and the Pacific, the railroad crosses country still frequented by Indians and wild beasts — a vast stretch of territory the Mormons began to settle around 1845, after they had been driven out of Illinois.
In earlier days, under the most favorable conditions, it took six months to travel from New York to San Francisco. Now it takes seven days.
It was in 1862 that, over the objections of the Southern representatives — who wanted a line farther south — the route of the railroad was fixed between the forty-first and forty-second parallels. President Lincoln, of such sadly missed memory, himself set the head of the new line in the State of Nebraska, at the city of Omaha. Work began at once and was pushed forward with that American energy that is neither red tape nor bureaucracy. Speed of labor was in no way allowed to harm the soundness of the work. Out on the prairie they advanced at the rate of a mile and a half a day. A locomotive, running on the rails laid the day before, would bring up the rails for the next day and roll along their surface as fast as they were set down.
The Pacific Railroad throws off several branches along its course, in the States of Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, and Oregon. Leaving Omaha, it follows the left bank of the Platte River as far as the mouth of the north fork, takes up the south fork, crosses the Laramie country and the Wahsatch Mountains, skirts the Salt Lake, reaches Salt Lake City, the Mormon capital, plunges into the Tuilla Valley, runs along the American desert, the Cedar and Humboldt mountains, the Humboldt River, and the Sierra Nevada, and comes down again by Sacramento to the Pacific — all without the grade of this route ever exceeding one hundred and twelve feet to the mile, even in crossing the Rocky Mountains.
Such was the long artery that the trains ran in seven days, and that was going to let the honorable Phileas Fogg — so he hoped, at least — catch the Liverpool steamer at New York on the 11th.
The car Phileas Fogg occupied was a kind of long omnibus resting on two four-wheeled trucks, whose play allowed it to take curves of small radius. Inside there were no compartments: just two rows of seats down each side, set crosswise to the axis, with an aisle between them leading to the washrooms and other conveniences each car is fitted with. All along the train, the cars connected to one another by gangways, and passengers could walk from one end of the train to the other, which put at their disposal parlor cars, observation cars, dining cars, and coffee cars. The only thing missing was a theater car. But that will come one day.
Along the gangways there passed a ceaseless traffic of booksellers and newsmen crying their wares, and hawkers of drink, food, and cigars, who never lacked for customers.
The travelers had left the Oakland station at six in the evening. Night had already fallen — a cold, dark night, the sky overcast with clouds that threatened to turn to snow. The train did not go very fast. Counting the stops, it made no more than twenty miles an hour, a pace that should nonetheless get it across the United States within the scheduled time.
There was little talk in the car. Besides, sleep would soon be creeping over the travelers. Passepartout found himself seated next to the police inspector, but he did not speak to him. Since the recent events, their relations had cooled noticeably. No more warmth, no more familiarity. Fix had changed nothing in his manner; Passepartout, on the contrary, kept himself severely on guard, ready at the least suspicion to throttle his old friend.
An hour after the train pulled out, snow began to fall — a fine snow that luckily could do nothing to slow the train down. Through the windows one could now see only a vast white sheet, against which the locomotive's steam, uncoiling its scrolls, looked grayish.
At eight o'clock a steward came into the car and announced to the travelers that the hour for bed had come. This was a sleeping car, and in a few minutes it was turned into a dormitory. The seat backs folded down, carefully bundled berths unrolled by some ingenious mechanism, cabins were improvised in an instant, and each traveler soon had a comfortable bed at his disposal, screened by thick curtains from any prying eye. The sheets were white, the pillows soft. There was nothing left to do but lie down and sleep — which everyone did, as though tucked into the snug cabin of a steamer — while the train raced along at full steam across the State of California.
In the stretch of country between San Francisco and Sacramento, the ground is not much broken up. This part of the line, under the name of the Central Pacific road, first took Sacramento as its starting point and pushed eastward to meet the one setting out from Omaha. From San Francisco to the Californian capital, the line ran straight to the northeast, following the American River, which empties into San Pablo Bay. The hundred and twenty miles between these two important cities were covered in six hours, and toward midnight, while they slept their first sleep, the travelers passed through Sacramento. So they saw nothing of that sizable city, seat of the California legislature — neither its fine quays, nor its wide streets, nor its splendid hotels, nor its squares, nor its temples.
Out of Sacramento, the train passed the stations of Junction, Roclin, Auburn, and Colfax, and struck into the mass of the Sierra Nevada. It was seven in the morning when it ran through Cisco. An hour later the dormitory had become an ordinary car again, and through the windows the travelers could catch the picturesque views of this mountain country. The line bent to every whim of the Sierra — here clinging to the mountainside, there hung over sheer drops, dodging sharp angles by bold curves, diving into narrow gorges that looked as though they had no way out. The locomotive, glittering like a reliquary, with its great headlamp throwing off tawny gleams, its silvery bell, and its cowcatcher jutting out like a spur, mixed its whistles and bellows with those of the torrents and waterfalls, and twined its smoke through the black branches of the firs.
Few tunnels or none, and no bridges along the way. The railroad rounded the flanks of the mountains, not looking to the straight line for the shortest way from one point to another, and doing no violence to nature.
Toward nine o'clock, by way of the Carson valley, the train crossed into the State of Nevada, still holding to the northeast. At noon it left Reno, where the travelers had twenty minutes for lunch.
From this point the railway, skirting the Humboldt River, climbed for some miles to the north, following the stream. Then it bent to the east, not to leave the watercourse again until it had reached the Humboldt Ranges, which give the river its source, almost at the eastern edge of the State of Nevada.
After lunch, Mr. Fogg, Aouda, and their companions took their seats again in the car. Phileas Fogg, the young woman, Fix, and Passepartout, comfortably settled, watched the changing landscape slide past their eyes — broad prairies, mountains ranged along the horizon, creeks rolling their foaming waters. Now and then a great herd of bison, massed in the distance, would appear like a moving dam. These endless armies of ruminants often throw up an insurmountable barrier to the passage of trains. Thousands of the animals have been known to file past for hours on end, in dense ranks, across the track. The locomotive is then forced to halt and wait until the way is clear again.
That was exactly what happened now. Toward three in the afternoon, a herd of ten to twelve thousand head blocked the line. The engine slowed and tried to work its spur into the side of the immense column, but had to stop before the impenetrable mass.
There they were — these "buffalo," as the Americans wrongly call them — plodding along at their leisurely pace, now and then letting out formidable bellows. They stood taller than the bulls of Europe, with short legs and tails, a jutting withers that formed a muscular hump, horns splayed wide at the base, and head, neck, and shoulders shrouded in a mane of long hair. There was no question of stopping this migration. Once the bison have settled on a direction, nothing can check or turn their march. It is a torrent of living flesh that no dam could hold.
The travelers, scattered along the gangways, watched the curious spectacle. But the one who had most reason to be in a hurry, Phileas Fogg, kept his seat and waited philosophically for the buffalo to see fit to let him pass. Passepartout was livid at the delay this mob of animals was causing. He would gladly have emptied his whole arsenal of revolvers into them.
"What a country!" he cried. "A pack of ordinary cattle that hold up trains, and go filing off in a procession, in no more of a hurry than if they weren't blocking the road at all! Good Lord — I'd dearly love to know whether Mr. Fogg had allowed for this little snag in his program! And that engineer who doesn't dare drive his machine straight through this pesky livestock!"
The engineer had not tried to bowl the obstacle over, and he had acted wisely. No doubt he would have crushed the first buffalo the locomotive's spur struck; but, powerful as the engine was, it would soon have been brought up short, a derailment would inevitably have followed, and the train would have been left stranded.
The best thing, then, was to wait patiently, and make up the lost time later by putting on speed. The parade of bison lasted three long hours, and the track did not clear until nightfall. By then the last ranks of the herd were crossing the rails while the first were vanishing below the southern horizon.
So it was eight o'clock when the train threaded the passes of the Humboldt Ranges, and half past nine when it entered the territory of Utah — the region of the Great Salt Lake, the curious country of the Mormons.
During the night of December 5th to 6th, the train ran southeast for about fifty miles; then it climbed back the same distance to the northeast, drawing near the Great Salt Lake.
Around nine in the morning Passepartout came out onto the platforms for a breath of air. The weather was cold, the sky gray, but it had stopped snowing. The disk of the sun, swollen by the mist, hung there like an enormous gold coin, and Passepartout was busy working out its value in pounds sterling when he was drawn away from this useful labor by the appearance of a rather strange figure.
This figure, who had boarded at Elko station, was a tall man, very dark, with black mustaches, black stockings, a black silk hat, a black waistcoat, black trousers, a white cravat, and dogskin gloves. You would have taken him for a clergyman. He went from one end of the train to the other, and on the door of each car he pasted up, with sealing wafers, a handwritten notice.
Passepartout came closer and read on one of these notices that the honorable Elder William Hitch, Mormon missionary, taking advantage of his presence on train No. 48, would deliver, from eleven o'clock to noon, in car No. 117, a lecture on Mormonism — inviting all gentlemen anxious to inform themselves about the mysteries of the religion of the "Latter-day Saints" to come and hear him.
"I'll certainly go," Passepartout said to himself, who knew little of Mormonism beyond its practice of taking several wives, the cornerstone of Mormon society.
The news spread quickly through the train, which was carrying a hundred or so passengers. Of that number, thirty at most, tempted by the bait of the lecture, were occupying the benches of car No. 117 by eleven o'clock. Passepartout was in the front row of the faithful. Neither his master nor Fix had thought it worth the trouble to stir.
At the appointed hour, Elder William Hitch rose, and in a rather irritated voice, as though he had already been contradicted, he cried out:
"I tell you — I — that Joe Smyth is a martyr, that his brother Hyram is a martyr, and that the persecutions of the Union government against the prophets are going to make a martyr of Brigham Young as well! Who would dare maintain the contrary?"
No one ventured to contradict the missionary, whose fervor stood in odd contrast to his naturally calm face. But his anger was no doubt explained by the fact that Mormonism was, at that very moment, undergoing hard trials. Indeed, the government of the United States had just, and not without difficulty, brought these independent fanatics to heel. It had made itself master of Utah and subjected it to the laws of the Union, after imprisoning Brigham Young on charges of rebellion and polygamy. Since then the prophet's disciples had redoubled their efforts, and, while holding off from open acts, they resisted the claims of Congress with words.
As you can see, Elder William Hitch carried his proselytizing all the way onto the railway.
And then, firing up his account with bursts of his voice and violent gestures, he told the history of Mormonism from biblical times: how, in Israel, a Mormon prophet of the tribe of Joseph published the annals of the new religion and handed them down to his son Morom; how, many centuries later, a translation of this precious book, written in Egyptian characters, was made by Joseph Smyth junior, a Vermont farmer, who revealed himself as a mystic prophet in 1825; and how, at last, a heavenly messenger appeared to him in a shining forest and delivered to him the annals of the Lord.
At this point a few listeners, none too interested in the missionary's backward-reaching tale, left the car; but William Hitch, going on, recounted how young Smyth, gathering his father, his two brothers, and a handful of disciples, founded the religion of the Latter-day Saints — a religion adopted not only in America but in England, in Scandinavia, in Germany, counting among its faithful artisans and no small number of people in the professions; how a colony was founded in Ohio; how a temple was raised at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars and a city built at Kirkland; how Smyth became a bold banker and received, from a mere showman of mummies, a papyrus containing an account written in the hand of Abraham and other famous Egyptians.
As this narrative was growing a little long, the ranks of the audience thinned still further, and the public now numbered no more than twenty.
But the Elder, untroubled by these desertions, told in detail how Joe Smyth went bankrupt in 1837; how his ruined shareholders coated him with tar and rolled him in feathers; and how, a few years later, he turned up again, more honorable and more honored than ever, at Independence, Missouri, at the head of a flourishing community that numbered no fewer than three thousand disciples — and how then, hounded by the hatred of the Gentiles, he was forced to flee into the American Far West.
Ten listeners were still there, among them the honest Passepartout, who was listening with all his ears. That was how he learned how, after long persecutions, Smyth reappeared in Illinois and founded in 1839, on the banks of the Mississippi, Nauvoo the Beautiful, whose population rose as high as twenty-five thousand souls; how Smyth became its mayor, its supreme judge, and its commander in chief; how, in 1843, he put himself forward as a candidate for the presidency of the United States; and how, finally, lured into an ambush at Carthage, he was thrown into prison and murdered by a band of masked men.
By this moment Passepartout was absolutely alone in the car, and the Elder, looking him in the face, holding him spellbound with his words, reminded him that, two years after the murder of Smyth, his successor — the inspired prophet Brigham Young — abandoned Nauvoo and came to settle on the shores of the Salt Lake, and that there, on that splendid territory, in the midst of that fertile country, on the road of the emigrants who crossed Utah on their way to California, the new colony, thanks to the polygamous principles of Mormonism, grew to an enormous size.
"And that," added William Hitch, "that is why the jealousy of Congress has been turned against us! why the soldiers of the Union have trodden the soil of Utah! why our leader, the prophet Brigham Young, has been imprisoned in defiance of all justice! Shall we yield to force? Never! Driven out of Vermont, driven out of Illinois, driven out of Ohio, driven out of Missouri, driven out of Utah, we will yet find some independent territory where we may plant our tent... And you, my faithful friend," the Elder went on, fixing wrathful looks on his one remaining listener, "will you plant yours in the shade of our flag?"
"No," Passepartout answered stoutly, and he too took to his heels, leaving the fanatic to preach in the wilderness.
But during this lecture the train had been rolling briskly along, and toward half past twelve it reached the northwestern tip of the Great Salt Lake. From there one could take in, over a vast sweep, the whole face of that inland sea, which also bears the name of the Dead Sea and into which an American Jordan empties. A splendid lake, framed by beautiful wild rocks in broad terraces crusted over with white salt — a superb sheet of water that once covered a far greater expanse; but with time its shores, rising little by little, have shrunk its surface while deepening it.
The Salt Lake, about seventy miles long and thirty-five wide, lies three thousand eight hundred feet above sea level. Very different from the Asphaltite Lake, whose bed sinks to twelve hundred feet below, its saltiness is considerable, and its waters hold in solution a quarter of their weight in solid matter. Their specific gravity is 1,170, that of distilled water being 1,000. And so fish cannot live in it. Those thrown in by the Jordan, the Weber, and other creeks soon perish there; but it is not true that the density of its waters is such that a man cannot dive into them.
Around the lake the countryside was admirably cultivated, for the Mormons have a real gift for working the land: ranches and corrals for the livestock, fields of wheat, corn, and sorghum, luxuriant meadows, hedges of wild roses everywhere, clumps of acacia and spurge — such would have been the look of the country six months later; but at this moment the ground had vanished under a thin layer of snow that dusted it lightly.
At two o'clock the passengers got down at Ogden station. Since the train was not to leave again until six, Mr. Fogg, Aouda, and their two companions had time enough to make their way to the City of the Saints by the little branch line that runs off from Ogden station. Two hours were enough to see this thoroughly American town, built — like every town of the Union — on a single pattern: vast checkerboards of long, cold lines, with, in Victor Hugo's phrase, "the dismal gloom of right angles." The founder of the City of the Saints could not escape that craving for symmetry which marks the Anglo-Saxons. In this singular country, where the men are certainly not up to the level of the institutions, everything is done "squarely" — the towns, the houses, and the follies.
At three o'clock, then, the travelers were strolling through the streets of the city, built between the bank of the Jordan and the first swells of the Wahsatch mountains. They noticed few churches, if any, but among the public buildings the prophet's house, the courthouse, and the arsenal; then houses of bluish brick with verandas and galleries, ringed by gardens and bordered with acacias, palms, and carob trees. A wall of clay and pebbles, built in 1853, girded the city. In the main street, where the market is held, stood a few hotels decked with flags, among them the Salt Lake House.
Mr. Fogg and his companions did not find the city very populous. The streets were nearly deserted — except, that is, for the quarter of the Temple, which they reached only after crossing several districts fenced with palings. The women were fairly numerous, which is explained by the peculiar makeup of Mormon households. It should not be supposed, however, that all Mormons are polygamists. A man is free; but it is worth noting that it is the women of Utah who are especially anxious to be married, for, by the religion of the country, the Mormon heaven does not admit unmarried women to the enjoyment of its blessings. These poor creatures looked neither well-off nor happy. A few — the richest, no doubt — wore a black silk jacket, open at the waist, under a hood or a very plain shawl. The rest were dressed only in calico.
Passepartout, for his part, being a confirmed bachelor, could not look without a certain dread on these Mormon women charged with jointly making the happiness of a single Mormon. In his good sense, it was the husband above all whom he pitied. It seemed a terrible thing to have to guide so many ladies at once through the ups and downs of life, to lead them along in a flock all the way to the Mormon paradise, with the prospect of finding them there again for all eternity in the company of the glorious Smyth, who was to be the chief ornament of that place of delights. Decidedly, he felt no calling for it; and he found — perhaps he deceived himself in this — that the women of Great Salt Lake City were casting rather unsettling looks upon his person.
Very happily, his stay in the City of the Saints was not to be prolonged. At a few minutes before four the travelers were back at the station and taking their places again in their cars.
The whistle sounded; but just as the locomotive's driving wheels, skidding on the rails, were beginning to work the train up to some speed, these shouts rang out: "Stop! Stop!"
You do not stop a moving train. The gentleman uttering these cries was plainly a Mormon running late. He was racing along fit to burst his lungs. Luckily for him, the station had neither doors nor barriers. So he dashed onto the track, sprang up onto the step of the last car, and dropped, out of breath, onto one of the benches.
Passepartout, who had followed the incidents of this gymnastic feat with some emotion, came to contemplate the latecomer, in whom he took a lively interest when he learned that this citizen of Utah had bolted like that only in the wake of a domestic quarrel.
Once the Mormon had caught his breath, Passepartout ventured to ask him politely how many wives he had, all to himself — and from the way he had just decamped, he supposed him to have twenty at the very least.
"One, sir!" answered the Mormon, throwing up his arms to heaven. "One, and that was quite enough!"
Leaving Great Salt Lake and the station at Ogden, the train climbed northward for an hour, as far as the Weber River, having covered some nine hundred miles since San Francisco. From that point it swung east again through the rugged bulk of the Wahsatch Mountains. It was in this stretch of country, between these mountains and the Rocky Mountains proper, that American engineers ran up against their most serious difficulties. Here the government subsidy rose to forty-eight thousand dollars a mile, against a mere sixteen thousand out on the plains — but the engineers, as has been said, did not do violence to nature so much as outwit her, going around the obstacles rather than through them. To reach the great basin, a single tunnel, fourteen thousand feet long, was the only one bored along the whole run of the line.
It was at Salt Lake itself that the track had so far reached its highest point. From there its profile traced a long, drawn-out curve, dropping toward the valley of the Bitter Creek before climbing again to the divide between the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific. Rivers were plentiful in this mountainous region. The Muddy, the Green, and others had to be crossed on little trestle bridges. Passepartout had grown more impatient the nearer they came to the goal. But Fix, for his part, would have given anything to be out of this awkward country already. He dreaded delays, he feared accidents, and he was in more of a hurry than Phileas Fogg himself to set foot on English soil.
At ten o'clock that night the train stopped at Fort Bridger station, which it left again almost at once, and twenty miles farther on it entered the state of Wyoming — the old Dakota — following the whole valley of the Bitter Creek, which feeds part of the waters that make up the river system of the Colorado.
The next day, the 7th of December, there was a quarter-hour halt at Green River station. Snow had fallen fairly heavily during the night, but mixed with rain and half melted, it was in no state to slow the train down. Still, the bad weather did nothing to ease Passepartout's mind, for a heavy build-up of snow, miring the wheels of the cars, would certainly have wrecked the journey.
"What an idea," he said to himself, "for my master to go traveling in winter! Couldn't he have waited for the fine weather to better his chances?"
But just now, while the honest fellow was fretting over nothing but the state of the sky and the falling temperature, Aouda was gripped by fears of a far keener kind, springing from an altogether different cause.
For a few of the passengers had stepped down from their car and were strolling along the platform of the Green River station, waiting for the train to leave. And there, through the window, the young woman recognized among them Colonel Stamp W. Proctor — the American who had behaved so grossly toward Phileas Fogg during the meeting at San Francisco. Not wishing to be seen, Aouda drew back from the glass.
The sight left her badly shaken. She had grown attached to this man who, coldly though he did it, gave her every day the marks of the most absolute devotion. She did not yet grasp, no doubt, the full depth of the feeling her rescuer stirred in her, and for the moment she gave that feeling no name but gratitude — though, without her knowing it, there was already more than that in it. And so her heart clenched when she recognized the coarse creature to whom Mr. Fogg meant, sooner or later, to call for an accounting. Plainly it was pure chance that had put Colonel Proctor on this train; but there he was, all the same, and Phileas Fogg had to be kept from catching sight of his adversary at any cost.
Once the train was moving again, Aouda seized on a moment when Mr. Fogg had dozed off to bring Fix and Passepartout up to speed.
"That Proctor is on the train!" cried Fix. "Well, set your mind at rest, madam. Before he has to deal with — with Mr. Fogg, he'll have to deal with me! It seems to me that in all this, I'm still the one who took the worst of the insults!"
"And what's more," Passepartout added, "I'll take him on myself, colonel or no colonel."
"Mr. Fix," Aouda went on, "Mr. Fogg will let no one else take on the job of avenging him. He is quite capable — he said so himself — of coming back to America to hunt down the man who insulted him. So if he catches sight of Colonel Proctor, we won't be able to prevent a confrontation, and it could lead to dreadful results. He simply must not see him."
"You're right, madam," Fix answered. "A run-in could ruin everything. Winner or loser, Mr. Fogg would be delayed, and —"
"And," Passepartout put in, "that would play right into the hands of the gentlemen of the Reform Club. In four days we'll be in New York! Well, if for four days my master doesn't leave his car, we can hope that chance won't bring him face to face with that cursed American — may God confound him! So we'll just have to keep him from —"
The conversation broke off. Mr. Fogg had woken, and was gazing out at the country through the snow-flecked window. But later on, without being overheard by his master or by Aouda, Passepartout said to the police inspector:
"Would you really fight for him?"
"I'll do anything to bring him back to Europe alive!" answered Fix simply, in a tone that spoke of an iron resolve.
Passepartout felt something like a shudder run through his whole body, but his convictions where his master was concerned did not weaken in the least.
And now — was there any way at all of keeping Mr. Fogg in this compartment, to head off any meeting between the colonel and himself? It ought not to be hard, the gentleman being of a naturally unrestless and incurious disposition. In any case, the police inspector believed he had hit on the means, for a few moments later he was saying to Phileas Fogg:
"They're long, slow hours, sir, that one spends this way on a railway."
"They are indeed," replied the gentleman, "but they pass."
"On board the steamers," Fix went on, "you were in the habit of playing your whist?"
"Yes," answered Phileas Fogg, "but here it would be difficult. I have neither cards nor partners."
"Oh, cards — we'll manage to buy some. They sell everything in the American cars. As for partners, if by chance, madam, you —"
"Certainly, sir," the young woman answered readily. "I know whist. It's part of an English education."
"And I," Fix resumed, "have some claim to playing the game well. So, the three of us and a dummy —"
"As you please, sir," said Phileas Fogg, delighted to take up his favorite pastime again — even on a railway.
Passepartout was dispatched to find the steward, and he came back before long with two full packs, counters, chips, and a small baize-covered board. Nothing was missing. The game began. Aouda knew whist quite well enough, and even earned a few compliments from the exacting Phileas Fogg. As for the inspector, he was simply first-rate, worthy of holding his own against the gentleman.
"Now," Passepartout said to himself, "we've got him. He won't budge!"
At eleven in the morning the train had reached the divide between the two oceans. This was at Bridger Pass, seven thousand five hundred and twenty-four English feet above sea level, one of the highest points touched by the line on its passage through the Rockies. Another two hundred miles or so, and the travelers would at last be out on those long plains that stretch all the way to the Atlantic — plains that nature had made so obliging for the laying of a railway.
On the slope of the Atlantic basin the first rivers were already unfolding, tributaries and sub-tributaries of the North Platte. The whole northern and eastern horizon was walled off by that immense semicircular curtain that forms the northern portion of the Rocky Mountains, crowned by Laramie Peak. Between this great curve and the railway line lay vast, well-watered plains. To the right of the track rose the first ramps of the mountain mass that swings around to the south as far as the sources of the Arkansas River, one of the great tributaries of the Missouri.
At half past twelve the travelers caught a glimpse, for a moment, of Fort Halleck, which commands that country. A few more hours, and the crossing of the Rockies would be done. There was reason to hope, then, that no accident would mark the train's passage through this difficult region. The snow had stopped falling. The weather was turning to a dry cold. Great birds, startled by the locomotive, fled off into the distance. No wild beast, bear or wolf, showed itself on the plain. It was the desert in its immense bareness.
After a fairly comfortable lunch, served in the car itself, Mr. Fogg and his partners had just resumed their endless whist when a series of violent whistle-blasts sounded. The train stopped.
Passepartout put his head out the window and saw nothing to explain the halt. No station was in sight.
For a moment Aouda and Fix could fear that Mr. Fogg meant to climb down onto the track. But the gentleman merely said to his servant:
"Go see what it is."
Passepartout bolted out of the car. Some forty passengers had already left their seats, and among them Colonel Stamp W. Proctor.
The train had halted before a signal turned to red, which closed the line. The engineer and the conductor had climbed down and were arguing rather heatedly with a flagman whom the stationmaster of Medicine Bow, the next station along, had sent out to meet the train. Passengers had drawn near and were joining in the discussion — among them the aforesaid Colonel Proctor, loud of voice and imperious of gesture.
Passepartout, having come up to the group, heard the flagman saying:
"No! There's no way through! The Medicine Bow bridge is shaky and wouldn't bear the weight of the train."
The bridge in question was a suspension bridge, thrown across a rapid a mile from the spot where the train had stopped. According to the flagman, it was in danger of collapse, several of the cables were broken, and it was impossible to risk crossing it. The flagman was in no way exaggerating when he insisted there was no getting through. And besides, given the happy-go-lucky habits of Americans, one may say that when they do take it into their heads to be careful, it would be madness not to be.
Passepartout, not daring to go and warn his master, listened with his teeth clenched, still as a statue.
"Well now!" cried Colonel Proctor. "We're not going to sit here, I suppose, taking root in the snow!"
"Colonel," answered the conductor, "we've telegraphed the Omaha station to ask for a train, but it isn't likely to reach Medicine Bow before six hours are out."
"Six hours!" cried Passepartout.
"No doubt," answered the conductor. "Besides, we'll need that long to reach the station on foot."
"On foot!" cried all the passengers.
"But how far off is this station?" one of them asked the conductor.
"Twelve miles, on the far side of the river."
"Twelve miles in the snow!" cried Stamp W. Proctor.
The colonel let fly a broadside of oaths, cursing the company, cursing the conductor, and Passepartout, furious, was not far from joining the chorus. Here was a hard, physical obstacle against which, this time, all his master's banknotes would come to nothing.
What was more, the disappointment was general among the passengers, who, quite apart from the delay, now saw themselves obliged to tramp some fifteen miles across a snow-covered plain. And so there rose a hubbub, a storm of exclamations and shouting, that would certainly have caught the attention of Phileas Fogg, had that gentleman not been absorbed in his game.
Meanwhile Passepartout found himself under the necessity of warning him, and, head down, he was heading toward the car when the train's engineer — a genuine Yankee named Forster — raised his voice and said:
"Gentlemen, there might just be a way through."
"Over the bridge?" asked a passenger.
"Over the bridge."
"With our train?" asked the colonel.
"With our train."
Passepartout had stopped short, drinking in the engineer's words.
"But the bridge is about to give way!" the conductor objected.
"Never mind," answered Forster. "I think that by launching the train at its top speed, we'd have some chance of getting across."
"The devil!" said Passepartout.
But a fair number of the passengers had been won over to the idea at once. It pleased Colonel Proctor in particular. This hothead found the thing entirely doable. He even reminded them that engineers had had the notion of crossing rivers "without a bridge" using rigid trains launched at full speed, and so on. And in the end, everyone with a stake in the question came around to the engineer's view.
"We've got fifty chances of making it," said one.
"Sixty," said another.
"Eighty! — ninety in a hundred!"
Passepartout was dumbfounded, though he was ready to try anything to get across the Medicine Creek — but the attempt struck him as a little too "American."
"Besides," he thought, "there's a much simpler thing to do, and these people don't even think of it!"
"Sir," he said to one of the passengers, "the way the engineer proposes seems to me a bit chancy, but —"
"Eighty chances!" answered the passenger, and turned his back on him.
"I know that," said Passepartout, turning to another gentleman, "but a simple thought —"
"No thinking, it's no use!" answered the American he had addressed, with a shrug, "since the engineer swears we'll get across!"
"No doubt," Passepartout went on, "we'll get across, but it might perhaps be more prudent —"
"What! Prudent!" cried Colonel Proctor, whom the word, caught by chance, made leap into the air. "At full speed, you're told! Do you understand? At full speed!"
"I know — I understand," Passepartout kept repeating, though no one would let him finish his sentence, "but it would be, if not more prudent — since the word offends you — at least more natural —"
"Who? what? which? What's the matter with this fellow and his natural?" came the cry from all sides.
The poor fellow no longer knew whose ear he might catch.
"Are you afraid?" Colonel Proctor demanded of him.
"Me, afraid!" cried Passepartout. "Well, so be it! I'll show these people that a Frenchman can be as American as they are!"
"All aboard! All aboard!" the conductor was shouting.
"Yes! All aboard," Passepartout kept repeating, "all aboard! And right away! But no one will stop me from thinking it would have been more natural to send us passengers across the bridge on foot first, and the train after!"
But no one heard this wise reflection, and no one would have cared to admit that it was right.
The passengers had climbed back into their cars. Passepartout took his seat again, saying nothing of what had passed. The players were wholly given over to their whist.
The locomotive whistled vigorously. The engineer, throwing the engine into reverse, ran the train backward for nearly a mile — drawing back like a jumper about to take his run-up.
Then, at a second whistle-blast, the forward march began again: it gathered pace; soon the speed became frightful; nothing could be heard but a single long whinny pouring out of the locomotive; the pistons beat twenty strokes to the second; the axles smoked in their grease-boxes. One felt, so to speak, that the whole train, traveling at a hundred miles an hour, no longer bore down on the rails. Speed was devouring weight.
And they got across! It was like a flash of lightning. No one saw a thing of the bridge. The train leapt, one might say, from one bank to the other, and the engineer only managed to stop his runaway machine five miles beyond the station.
But no sooner had the train cleared the river than the bridge, wrecked for good, came crashing down into the rapid of Medicine Bow.
That same evening the train rolled on without trouble, passed Fort Sanders, cleared Cheyenne Pass, and reached Evans Pass. Here the line touched the highest point of the whole route — eight thousand and ninety-one feet above the level of the ocean. From there the travelers had nothing to do but run downhill toward the Atlantic, across those boundless plains that nature herself had leveled flat.
Here, off the great trunk line, ran the branch to Denver City, the chief town of Colorado. The territory is rich in gold and silver mines, and already more than fifty thousand people have settled there.
By this point, thirteen hundred and eighty-two miles had been covered from San Francisco, in three days and three nights. Four more days and four more nights, by every reasonable forecast, should be enough to reach New York. Phileas Fogg was still comfortably inside his schedule.
During the night they left Camp Walbach on the left. Lodgepole Creek ran alongside the track, following the ruler-straight border shared by the states of Wyoming and Colorado. At eleven o'clock they entered Nebraska, passed near Sedgwick, and touched Julesburg, on the south branch of the Platte River.
It was here, on the 23rd of October, 1867, that the Union Pacific Road was inaugurated, its chief engineer being General J. M. Dodge. Here the two mighty locomotives had halted, towing the nine cars of invited guests — among them the vice-president, Mr. Thomas C. Durant; here the cheering had gone up; here the Sioux and the Pawnee had put on the show of a little Indian war; here the fireworks had burst; and here, at last, by means of a portable printing press, the first issue of the newspaper Railway Pioneer had come off the type. So was celebrated the opening of this great railroad — an instrument of progress and civilization flung across the desert, meant to link together towns and cities that did not yet exist. The whistle of the locomotive, more powerful than the lyre of Amphion, would soon call them up out of the American soil.
At eight in the morning Fort McPherson was left behind. Three hundred and fifty-seven miles separate that point from Omaha. The line followed, along its left bank, the capricious windings of the south branch of the Platte. At nine o'clock they reached the important town of North Platte, built between the two arms of the great river, which come together around it to form a single channel once more — a considerable stream whose waters merge with those of the Missouri a little above Omaha.
The hundred-and-first meridian was crossed.
Mr. Fogg and his partners had taken up their game again. None of them complained about the length of the road — not even the dummy hand. Fix had begun by winning a few guineas, which he was now busy losing back, but he showed himself no less caught up in it than Mr. Fogg. That morning luck singularly favored the gentleman. Trumps and honors rained into his hands. At one point, having worked out a bold play, he was about to lead a spade when, from behind the seat, a voice made itself heard, saying:
"Now me, I'd play a diamond."
Mr. Fogg, Aouda, and Fix looked up. Colonel Proctor was standing beside them.
Stamp W. Proctor and Phileas Fogg knew each other at once.
"Ah! So it's you, mister Englishman," cried the colonel. "You're the one who wants to play a spade!"
"And who is playing it," Phileas Fogg answered coldly, laying down a ten of that suit.
"Well, it suits me that it should be a diamond," the colonel retorted in an irritated voice.
And he made a move to snatch up the played card, adding:
"You don't understand the first thing about this game."
"Perhaps I'll prove abler at another," said Phileas Fogg, rising to his feet.
"You've only to try, son of John Bull!" the boor shot back.
Aouda had gone pale. The blood drained back to her heart. She had seized Phileas Fogg's arm, and he gently freed himself. Passepartout was ready to throw himself on the American, who was eyeing his adversary with the most insulting air imaginable. But Fix had risen, and, going up to Colonel Proctor, he said:
"You forget that it's me you have to deal with, sir — me, whom you not only insulted, but struck!"
"Mr. Fix," said Mr. Fogg, "I beg your pardon, but this concerns me alone. By claiming I was wrong to play a spade, the colonel has offered me a fresh insult, and he will answer to me for it."
"Whenever you like, wherever you like, and with whatever weapon you like!" answered the American.
Aouda tried in vain to hold Mr. Fogg back. The inspector tried, just as uselessly, to take the quarrel onto himself. Passepartout wanted to pitch the colonel out through the door, but a sign from his master stopped him. Phileas Fogg left the car, and the American followed him out onto the platform between the coaches.
"Sir," said Mr. Fogg to his opponent, "I am in a great hurry to get back to Europe, and any delay whatever would badly damage my interests."
"Well, and what's that to me?" answered Colonel Proctor.
"Sir," Mr. Fogg went on, very politely, "after our meeting in San Francisco, I had formed the plan of coming to find you again here in America, as soon as I had finished the business that calls me to the old continent."
"Had you, now!"
"Will you give me a rendezvous six months from now?"
"Why not six years?"
"I said six months," answered Mr. Fogg, "and I will keep the appointment to the minute."
"Excuses, all of it!" cried Stamp W. Proctor. "Now or never."
"Very well," answered Mr. Fogg. "You're going to New York?"
"No."
"To Chicago?"
"No."
"To Omaha?"
"None of your business! Do you know Plum Creek?"
"No," answered Mr. Fogg.
"It's the next station. The train will be there in an hour. It stops there ten minutes. In ten minutes a man can exchange a few revolver shots."
"Very well," answered Mr. Fogg. "I'll stop at Plum Creek."
"And I rather think you'll stay there!" the American added, with unmatched insolence.
"Who knows, sir?" answered Mr. Fogg, and he went back into his car, as cold as ever.
There the gentleman began by reassuring Aouda, telling her that braggarts were never anything to fear. Then he asked Fix to serve as his second in the encounter that was about to take place. Fix could not refuse, and Phileas Fogg calmly took up his interrupted game, leading a spade with perfect composure.
At eleven o'clock the locomotive's whistle announced that the Plum Creek station was near. Mr. Fogg rose and, followed by Fix, went out onto the platform. Passepartout came with him, carrying a pair of revolvers. Aouda had stayed behind in the car, pale as death.
Just then the door of the other coach opened, and Colonel Proctor appeared on the platform as well, followed by his second, a Yankee cut from the same cloth. But at the very moment when the two adversaries were about to step down onto the track, the conductor ran up and shouted to them:
"No one gets off, gentlemen."
"And why not?" demanded the colonel.
"We're twenty minutes late, and the train isn't stopping."
"But I have to fight this man."
"I'm sorry," answered the railwayman, "but we're leaving again at once. There's the bell now!"
The bell was indeed ringing, and the train pulled out.
"I'm truly sorry, gentlemen," the conductor said then. "In any other circumstance I'd have been glad to oblige you. But after all — since you didn't have time to fight it out here, who's to stop you fighting on the move?"
"That may not suit the gentleman!" said Colonel Proctor, with a mocking air.
"It suits me perfectly," answered Phileas Fogg.
"Well, there's no doubt about it — we really are in America!" thought Passepartout. "And the train conductor is a gentleman of the very finest sort!"
And so thinking, he followed his master.
The two adversaries and their seconds, led by the conductor, made their way from car to car toward the rear of the train. The last car held no more than a dozen passengers. The conductor asked whether they would be so kind as to leave the place free for a few minutes to two gentlemen who had an affair of honor to settle.
Would they! The passengers were only too happy to do the two gentlemen a good turn, and they withdrew onto the platforms.
This car, some fifty feet long, lent itself very nicely to the occasion. The two opponents could march at each other between the seats and blaze away to their hearts' content. Never was a duel easier to arrange. Mr. Fogg and Colonel Proctor, each armed with two six-shooters, stepped into the car. Their seconds, staying outside, shut them in. At the first blast of the locomotive's whistle they were to open fire. Then, after a lapse of two minutes, whatever remained of the two gentlemen would be taken out of the car.
Nothing could be simpler, in truth. It was so simple, in fact, that Fix and Passepartout could feel their hearts pounding fit to burst.
So they were all waiting for the agreed whistle when, suddenly, savage cries rang out. Gunshots came with them — but they did not come from the car set aside for the duelists. On the contrary, these reports carried all the way to the front and along the whole length of the train. Cries of terror could be heard inside the coaches.
Colonel Proctor and Mr. Fogg, revolvers in hand, came out of the car at once and rushed toward the front, where the shots and the shouting rang out loudest.
They had understood that the train was under attack by a band of Sioux.
These daring warriors were not on their first such venture; more than once already they had stopped trains. As was their habit, without waiting for the train to halt, a hundred of them had leaped onto the running boards and swarmed up the sides of the cars the way a circus rider vaults onto a galloping horse.
These Sioux were armed with rifles. Hence the gunfire, which the passengers — nearly all of them armed — answered with revolver shots. From the first, the attackers had rushed the engine. The engineer and the fireman had been half knocked senseless with blows from war clubs. One Sioux chief, meaning to stop the train but not knowing how to work the regulator lever, had thrown the steam wide open instead of shutting it off, and the locomotive, running away, tore along at a terrifying speed.
At the same time the Sioux had overrun the cars. They raced like maddened apes along the roofs, they battered in the doors, and they grappled hand to hand with the passengers. The baggage car was forced and looted, and its parcels were flung out onto the track. The cries and the gunfire never let up.
The passengers, though, defended themselves with courage. Some cars, barricaded, held out under siege like so many rolling forts, carried along at a hundred miles an hour.
From the very start of the attack, Aouda had borne herself bravely. Revolver in hand, she defended herself like a hero, firing through the shattered windows whenever some attacker showed himself at hers. A score of Sioux, hit fatally, had dropped onto the track, and the wheels of the cars crushed like worms those who slid onto the rails from the tops of the platforms.
Several passengers, gravely struck by bullets or war clubs, lay stretched across the seats.
But an end had to be made of it. The fight had already gone on ten minutes, and it could only finish in the Sioux's favor if the train did not stop. In fact, the Fort Kearney station was less than two miles off. There stood an American post; but once that post was passed, between Fort Kearney and the next station the Sioux would be masters of the train.
The conductor was fighting at Mr. Fogg's side when a bullet cut him down. As he fell, the man cried out:
"We're lost, if the train doesn't stop within five minutes!"
"It will stop!" said Phileas Fogg, and he made to spring out of the car.
"Stay, sir," Passepartout shouted at him. "This one's mine!"
Phileas Fogg had no time to stop the brave fellow, who, opening a door without being seen by the Indians, managed to slip beneath the car. And then, while the fight went on above and the bullets crossed over his head, finding again all his old agility, all his old circus suppleness, he wormed his way under the cars, catching hold of the chains, using the brake levers and the frame beams, crawling from one carriage to the next with wonderful skill, and so gained the front of the train. He had not been seen; he could not have been.
There, hanging by one hand between the baggage car and the tender, with the other he unhooked the safety chains; but on account of the pull of the moving train he could never have managed to unscrew the coupling bar, had not a jolt of the engine flung that bar loose of itself — and the train, cut free, gradually dropped back, while the locomotive fled ahead with fresh speed.
Carried by its own momentum, the train rolled on a few minutes more, but the brakes were worked from inside the cars, and the whole convoy at last came to a stop less than a hundred paces from the Kearney station.
There the soldiers of the fort, drawn by the gunfire, came running in haste. But the Sioux had not waited for them; before the train had fully stopped, the whole band had made off.
Yet when the passengers counted themselves on the station platform, they realized that several were missing from the roll — and among them the brave Frenchman whose devotion had just saved them all.
Three passengers, Passepartout among them, had vanished. Had they been killed in the fighting? Were they prisoners of the Sioux? There was no way yet to know.
The wounded were fairly numerous, but it turned out that none had been hit fatally. One of the most seriously injured was Colonel Proctor, who had fought bravely and been dropped by a bullet in the groin. He was carried to the station along with other passengers whose condition demanded immediate care.
Aouda was safe. Phileas Fogg, who had spared himself nothing, hadn't a scratch. Fix had been wounded in the arm — a slight thing, nothing to speak of. But Passepartout was missing, and tears ran from the young woman's eyes.
Meanwhile every passenger had left the train. The wheels of the cars were stained with blood. From the hubs and the spokes hung shapeless scraps of flesh. Across the white plain, as far as the eye could reach, ran long red streaks. The last of the Sioux were disappearing then to the south, off toward the Republican River.
Mr. Fogg stood motionless, his arms folded. He had a grave decision to make. Aouda, beside him, looked at him without a word. He understood that look. If his servant was a prisoner, was he not bound to risk everything to tear him from the hands of the Sioux?
"I will find him, dead or alive," he said simply to Aouda.
"Oh! Mr. Fogg — Mr. Fogg!" cried the young woman, seizing her companion's hands and covering them with tears.
"Alive," added Mr. Fogg, "if we don't lose a minute!"
With that decision Phileas Fogg sacrificed himself utterly. He had just pronounced his own ruin. A single day's delay would make him miss the steamer at New York. His wager was irrevocably lost. But faced with the thought — It is my duty! — he had not hesitated.
The captain commanding Fort Kearney was there. His soldiers — a hundred men or so — had drawn themselves up on the defensive, in case the Sioux should turn and mount a direct attack on the station.
"Sir," said Mr. Fogg to the captain, "three passengers have disappeared."
"Dead?" asked the captain.
"Dead or captured," answered Phileas Fogg. "That is an uncertainty that has to be settled. Do you intend to pursue the Sioux?"
"That's a serious matter, sir," said the captain. "These men could flee clear beyond the Arkansas. I can't abandon the fort placed in my charge."
"Sir," Phileas Fogg went on, "three men's lives are at stake."
"No doubt — but can I risk fifty lives to save three?"
"I don't know whether you can, sir, but you must."
"Sir," replied the captain, "no one here has anything to teach me about my duty."
"Very well," said Phileas Fogg coldly. "I'll go alone."
"You, sir!" cried Fix, who had come up. "Go alone, after those men?"
"Would you have me let this poor fellow die — a man who owes his life to no one, and to whom everyone alive here owes theirs? I'm going."
"No — no, you shall not go alone!" cried the captain, moved in spite of himself. "No! You're a brave heart. Thirty men — volunteers!" he added, turning to his soldiers.
The whole company stepped forward as one. The captain had only to choose among these good men. Thirty soldiers were picked out, and an old sergeant put at their head.
"Thank you, captain," said Mr. Fogg.
"Will you permit me to go with you?" Fix asked the gentleman.
"You will do as you please, sir," Phileas Fogg answered him. "But if you want to do me a service, you'll stay here with Aouda. In case anything should happen to me —"
A sudden pallor spread over the inspector's face. Separate from the man he had followed step by step, and with such persistence? Let him venture off like this into that wilderness? Fix studied the gentleman closely, and — whatever he might think, in spite of his suspicions, and despite the war going on inside him — he lowered his eyes before that calm, frank gaze.
"I'll stay," he said.
A few moments later Mr. Fogg pressed the young woman's hand; then, having handed her his precious traveling bag, he set off with the sergeant and his little troop.
But before he left, he had said to the soldiers:
"There's a thousand pounds for you, my friends, if we save the prisoners!"
It was then a few minutes past noon.
Aouda had withdrawn to a room in the station, and there, alone, she waited, thinking of Phileas Fogg, of that plain and immense generosity, of that quiet courage. Mr. Fogg had sacrificed his fortune, and now he was gambling his life, all of it without hesitation, out of duty, without a fine word about it. Phileas Fogg was a hero in her eyes.
Inspector Fix, for his part, saw it otherwise, and he couldn't master his agitation. He paced the station platform in a fever. For a moment he had been won over; then he became himself again. With Fogg gone, he understood what a fool he'd been to let him go. What! This man he had just followed around the world, and he had agreed to part with him! His nature reasserted itself; he blamed himself, he accused himself, he dressed himself down as if he'd been the head of the Metropolitan Police lecturing an officer caught red-handed in an act of gullibility.
"I've been an idiot!" he thought. "The other one will have told him who I am! He's gone, he won't come back! Where do I lay hold of him now? How could I have let myself be taken in like that — me, Fix, with his arrest warrant right here in my pocket! I'm nothing but a fool!"
So the police inspector reasoned, while the hours dragged by at their own slow pace, to his mind. He didn't know what to do. Now and then he had a mind to tell Aouda everything. But he knew perfectly well how the young woman would take it. What course to steer? He was tempted to strike off across the long white plains himself, in pursuit of this Fogg! It didn't seem impossible to find him again. The detachment's footprints were still printed on the snow — but soon a fresh layer covered them over, and every trace was gone.
Then discouragement took hold of Fix. He felt an overwhelming urge to throw in the game. And just then, precisely, the chance to leave the Kearney station and push on with this journey — so rich in setbacks — was handed to him.
Toward two in the afternoon, in fact, while the snow was falling in thick flakes, long whistles were heard coming from the east. An enormous shadow, led by a tawny glow, was advancing slowly, hugely swollen by the mists, which lent it a fantastic look.
Yet no train from the east was expected. The help called for by telegraph couldn't arrive so soon, and the Omaha-to-San-Francisco train wasn't due until the next day. The mystery was soon solved.
This locomotive coming on at low steam, throwing off great blasts of its whistle, was the very one that — after being cut loose from the train — had run on with such terrifying speed, carrying off the fireman and the engineer, both unconscious. It had raced along the rails for several miles; then the fire had died down for want of fuel; the steam had slackened, and an hour later, gradually slowing, the engine had at last come to a stop twenty miles beyond the Kearney station.
Neither the engineer nor the fireman had died, and, after a fairly long faint, they had come to.
By then the engine had stopped. When he saw himself out in the wilderness, the locomotive alone with no cars behind it, the engineer understood what had happened. How the locomotive had come to be uncoupled from the train, he couldn't guess; but he had no doubt that the train, left behind, was in trouble.
The engineer didn't hesitate over what to do. To keep on toward Omaha was prudent; to go back toward the train, which the Sioux might still be plundering, was dangerous. No matter! Shovelfuls of coal and wood were heaved into the firebox, the fire flared up again, the pressure climbed, and toward two in the afternoon the engine was steaming back toward the Kearney station. It was this that had been whistling in the fog.
It was a great relief to the passengers when they saw the locomotive move up to the head of the train. They would be able to carry on with the journey so unhappily interrupted.
At the engine's arrival, Aouda had left the station, and going up to the conductor, she asked:
"You're leaving?"
"This instant, madam."
"But those prisoners — our poor companions —"
"I can't interrupt the service," the conductor replied. "We're already three hours behind."
"And when will the other train come through, the one from San Francisco?"
"Tomorrow evening, madam."
"Tomorrow evening! But that will be too late. We have to wait —"
"Impossible," answered the conductor. "If you want to leave, get aboard."
"I will not leave," the young woman replied.
Fix had overheard this exchange. A few moments earlier, when he had no means of transport at all, he'd been set on quitting Kearney; and now that the train was here, ready to spring away, with nothing left for him to do but take his seat in the car again, an irresistible force pinned him to the ground. The station platform burned the soles of his feet, and he couldn't tear himself from it. The struggle began again inside him. The rage of failure was choking him. He wanted to fight it out to the end.
Meanwhile the passengers and a few of the wounded — Colonel Proctor among them, whose condition was serious — had taken their places in the cars. You could hear the humming of the overheated boiler, and the steam escaping through the valves. The engineer whistled, the train started, and soon it was gone, mixing its white smoke into the swirl of the snow.
Inspector Fix had stayed behind.
Some hours passed. The weather was very bad, the cold biting. Fix, seated on a bench in the station, sat motionless. You might have thought he was asleep. Aouda, in spite of the gale, kept leaving the room that had been put at her disposal. She would come to the far end of the platform, trying to see through the snowstorm, straining to pierce the mist that closed the horizon in around her, listening for any sound. But nothing. Then she would go back inside, chilled through, only to come out again a few moments later, and always in vain.
Evening came. The little detachment had not returned. Where was it now? Had it managed to catch up with the Sioux? Had there been a fight, or were the soldiers, lost in the fog, wandering at random? The captain of Fort Kearney was very uneasy, though he wanted to let none of his unease show.
Night fell, the snow came down less heavily, but the cold sharpened. The most fearless eye couldn't have looked on that dark immensity without dread. An absolute silence lay over the plain. Not the flight of a bird, not the passing of a wild animal disturbed its endless calm.
All through that night Aouda — her mind full of sinister forebodings, her heart wrung with dread — wandered along the edge of the prairie. Her imagination carried her far off and showed her a thousand dangers. What she suffered through those long hours can't be put into words.
Fix was still fixed in the same place, but he wasn't sleeping either. At one point a man came up and even spoke to him, but the agent sent him off, answering his words with a shake of the head.
So the night wore away. At dawn the sun's half-quenched disc rose over a misty horizon. Still, the eye could now reach a distance of two miles. It was toward the south that Phileas Fogg and the detachment had gone — and the south was utterly deserted. It was then seven in the morning.
The captain, extremely worried, didn't know what to decide. Should he send a second detachment to rescue the first? Should he sacrifice fresh men, with so little chance of saving the ones already sacrificed? But his hesitation didn't last, and with a gesture, calling one of his lieutenants over, he was giving the order to push a reconnaissance to the south — when shots rang out. Was it a signal? The soldiers threw themselves out of the fort, and half a mile off they saw a small troop coming back in good order.
Mr. Fogg marched at their head, and near him Passepartout and the two other passengers, snatched from the hands of the Sioux.
There had been a fight ten miles south of Kearney. A few moments before the detachment arrived, Passepartout and his two companions were already grappling with their captors, and the Frenchman had knocked three of them flat with his fists when his master and the soldiers rushed in to their rescue.
All of them — rescuers and rescued alike — were greeted with shouts of joy, and Phileas Fogg handed out to the soldiers the reward he'd promised them, while Passepartout said to himself, not without some reason:
"There's no denying it — I do cost my master a fortune!"
Fix, without a word, watched Mr. Fogg, and it would have been hard to sort out the impressions warring inside him just then. As for Aouda, she had taken the gentleman's hand and was pressing it in both of hers, unable to say a word.
Passepartout, meanwhile, had gone looking for the train the moment he arrived. He expected to find it there, ready to run for Omaha, and he hoped they might still make up the lost time.
"The train! The train!" he cried.
"Gone," answered Fix.
"And the next train — when does it come through?" asked Phileas Fogg.
"Not till this evening."
"Ah," was all the imperturbable gentleman replied.
Phileas Fogg was twenty hours behind. Passepartout, the unwitting cause of that delay, was in despair. He had ruined his master, no two ways about it!
Just then the inspector came up to Mr. Fogg and looked him squarely in the face.
"In all seriousness, sir," he asked, "are you in a hurry?"
"In all seriousness," Phileas Fogg replied.
"Let me press the point," Fix went on. "You have a real stake in reaching New York by the eleventh, before nine in the evening — the hour the Liverpool steamer sails?"
"A very great stake."
"And if your journey had not been broken by that attack, you would have reached New York on the eleventh, first thing in the morning?"
"Yes — twelve hours ahead of the steamer."
"Good. So you're twenty hours behind. The gap between twenty and twelve is eight. That's eight hours to make up. Do you want to try?"
"On foot?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"No — by sledge," Fix answered. "A wind-sledge. A man offered me the ride."
It was the man who had spoken to the detective in the night, and whose offer Fix had turned down.
Phileas Fogg made no answer to Fix; but when Fix pointed out the man in question, strolling in front of the station, the gentleman went over to him. A moment later Phileas Fogg and this American — named Mudge — stepped into a shed built at the foot of Fort Kearney.
There Mr. Fogg examined a rather curious vehicle: a kind of frame set on two long beams, turned up a little at the front like the runners of a sled, with room aboard for five or six people. A third of the way along the frame, toward the front, rose a very tall mast, and on it a huge mainsail was bent. This mast, held firm by wire shrouds, carried an iron stay from which a large jib could be hoisted. At the stern, a sort of scull-oar rudder served to steer the thing.
It was, as you can see, a sledge rigged like a sloop. In winter, out on the frozen plain, when the trains are stopped by the snows, these vehicles make astonishingly fast crossings from one station to the next. They carry a prodigious spread of canvas — more even than a racing cutter, which risks capsizing — and, running before the wind, they skim over the prairie at a speed equal to that of an express train, if not greater.
In a few minutes a deal was struck between Mr. Fogg and the skipper of this land-craft. The wind was good. It was blowing hard out of the west. The snow was packed and hard, and Mudge was confident he could get Mr. Fogg to the Omaha station in a matter of hours. There the trains were frequent and the lines many, running on to Chicago and New York. It was not impossible that the lost time could be recovered. There was no reason, then, to hesitate over the venture.
Mr. Fogg, not wanting to expose Aouda to the miseries of a crossing in the open air — in a cold that speed would only make more unbearable — offered to leave her at the Kearney station in Passepartout's care. The good fellow would see to bringing the young woman back to Europe by a better route and under more tolerable conditions.
Aouda refused to be parted from Mr. Fogg, and Passepartout was very glad of her decision. For nothing in the world would he have left his master, since Fix was to go along too.
As for what the detective was thinking just then, that would be hard to say. Had his conviction been shaken by Phileas Fogg's return? Or did he still take him for an extremely cool scoundrel who, his tour of the world complete, would suppose himself perfectly safe once back in England? Perhaps Fix's opinion of Phileas Fogg really had shifted. But he was no less resolved to do his duty, and — more impatient than any of them — to press the return to England with all his might.
By eight o'clock the sledge was ready to start. The travelers — one is tempted to say the passengers — took their places and wrapped themselves tightly in their traveling blankets. The two great sails were hoisted, and, driven by the wind, the vehicle went flying over the hardened snow at forty miles an hour.
The distance separating Fort Kearney from Omaha is, in a straight line — as the bee flies, as the Americans say — two hundred miles at most. If the wind held, that distance could be covered in five hours. Barring any mishap, the sledge would reach Omaha by one in the afternoon.
What a crossing it was! The travelers, pressed close against one another, could not speak. The cold, sharpened by their speed, would have cut the words off. The sledge slid over the surface of the plain as lightly as a boat slides over water — minus the swell. When the breeze came skimming low across the ground, it seemed to lift the sledge clear off the earth by its sails, vast wings of enormous span. Mudge, at the helm, held to a straight course, and with a flick of the scull-oar he corrected the yawing the craft was inclined to. Every stitch of canvas was drawing. The jib had been pushed out and was no longer blanketed by the mainsail. A topmast was hoisted, and a topsail, stretched to the wind, added its thrust to that of the other sails. There was no measuring it exactly, but certainly the sledge could not have been making less than forty miles an hour.
"If nothing breaks," said Mudge, "we'll get there!"
And Mudge had every reason to get there on time, for Mr. Fogg, true to his system, had baited him with a handsome bonus.
The prairie, which the sledge cut straight across, was as flat as a sea. It looked like one enormous frozen pond. The railroad serving this part of the territory ran up from southwest to northwest, by Grand Island, by Columbus — an important Nebraska town — by Schuyler, by Fremont, and so on to Omaha. All along its course it followed the right bank of the Platte River. The sledge, cutting the route short, took the string of the arc the railway described. Mudge had no fear of being stopped by the Platte River, at the little bend it makes just before Fremont, since its waters were frozen. The way ahead was entirely clear of obstacles, and so Phileas Fogg had only two things to dread: some damage to the craft, or a shift or a dying of the wind.
But the breeze did not slacken. Quite the opposite. It blew hard enough to bend the mast, which the iron shrouds held firmly in place. These metal cables, like the strings of an instrument, hummed as though a bow had set them vibrating. The sledge swept along in the midst of a plaintive music, unusually intense.
"Those strings are sounding the fifth and the octave," said Mr. Fogg.
And those were the only words he spoke during the whole crossing. Aouda, carefully bundled in the furs and traveling blankets, was kept as far as possible from the reach of the cold.
As for Passepartout, his face as red as the sun's disk when it sets in the mist, he drank in the biting air. With the bottom of imperturbable confidence he had in him, he had begun to hope again. Instead of reaching New York in the morning, they would reach it in the evening — but there was still some chance it would be before the Liverpool steamer sailed.
Passepartout had even felt a strong urge to shake the hand of his ally Fix. He had not forgotten that it was the inspector himself who had procured the wind-sledge, and therefore the only means there was of reaching Omaha in time. But, by some presentiment he could not have named, he kept to his usual reserve.
One thing, at any rate, Passepartout would never forget: the sacrifice Mr. Fogg had made, without a moment's hesitation, to tear him out of the hands of the Sioux. For that, Mr. Fogg had risked his fortune and his life. No! His servant would never forget it!
While each of the travelers gave himself up to reflections so different, the sledge flew on over the boundless carpet of snow. If it crossed a few creeks, tributaries and sub-tributaries of the Little Blue River, no one noticed. Fields and watercourses vanished under one uniform whiteness. The plain was utterly deserted. Lying between the Union Pacific Road and the branch line that is to link Kearney with St. Joseph, it formed a kind of great uninhabited island. Not a village, not a station, not so much as a fort. Now and then some grimacing tree flashed past, its white skeleton writhing in the wind. Sometimes flocks of wild birds took flight all together. Sometimes, too, packs of prairie wolves — lean, starving, driven by a savage hunger, and running in great numbers — raced the sledge for speed. Then Passepartout, revolver in hand, stood ready to fire on the nearest of them. If some accident had stopped the sledge just then, the travelers, set upon by these ferocious brutes, would have run the gravest risk. But the sledge held firm; it was not long in pulling ahead, and soon the whole howling pack was left behind.
At noon Mudge recognized, by a few signs, that he was passing the frozen course of the Platte River. He said nothing, but he was already sure that twenty miles farther on he would have reached the Omaha station.
And in fact it was not yet one o'clock when this skillful guide, letting go of the tiller, sprang to the halyards and hauled the sails down in a heap, while the sledge, carried on by its irresistible momentum, ran another half mile under bare poles. At last it stopped, and Mudge, pointing to a cluster of snow-white roofs, said:
"We're here."
Here indeed! Arrived at that station which, by way of its many trains, is in daily communication with the eastern United States!
Passepartout and Fix had jumped down and were shaking the numbness out of their limbs. They helped Mr. Fogg and the young woman out of the sledge. Phileas Fogg settled generously with Mudge, whose hand Passepartout shook as he would a friend's, and they all rushed for the Omaha station.
It is at this important city of Nebraska that the Pacific Railroad proper comes to an end — the line that puts the Mississippi basin in touch with the great ocean. To go from Omaha to Chicago, the railroad, under the name of the Chicago–Rock Island Road, runs due east, serving fifty stations along the way.
A through train was ready to leave. Phileas Fogg and his companions had just time to fling themselves into a car. They had seen nothing of Omaha, but Passepartout admitted to himself that there was no cause for regret, and that seeing the sights was not the object.
With tremendous speed the train ran across the state of Iowa, by Council Bluffs, Des Moines, and Iowa City. During the night it crossed the Mississippi at Davenport, and by way of Rock Island it entered Illinois. The next day, the tenth, at four in the afternoon, it reached Chicago — already risen from its ruins, and seated more proudly than ever on the shores of its lovely Lake Michigan.
Nine hundred miles separate Chicago from New York. Trains were not lacking at Chicago. Mr. Fogg passed straight from one to another. The spirited locomotive of the Pittsburgh–Fort Wayne–Chicago Railroad set off at full speed, as though it understood that the honorable gentleman had no time to lose. It flashed like lightning across Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, passing through towns with ancient-sounding names, some of which had streets and streetcars but no houses yet. At last the Hudson came into view, and on the eleventh of December, at a quarter past eleven in the evening, the train stopped in the station on the right bank of the river, before the very pier of the Cunard line steamers — otherwise known as the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Co.
The China, bound for Liverpool, had sailed forty-five minutes earlier!
When the China steamed away, it seemed to carry off Phileas Fogg's last hope with it.
For none of the other liners that run direct between America and Europe could serve the gentleman's plans — not the French transatlantic boats, not the ships of the White Star Line, not the steamers of the Inman Company, not the Hamburg line, not any of them.
The Pereire, of the French Transatlantic Company — whose splendid vessels match in speed and surpass in comfort every ship of every other line without exception — did not sail until the day after next, the 14th of December. And in any case, like the Hamburg boats, she went not to Liverpool or London but to Le Havre, and that extra crossing from Le Havre to Southampton would have delayed Phileas Fogg and undone his last efforts.
As for the Inman steamers, one of which, the City of Paris, put to sea the very next day, there was no point even thinking of it. Those ships are given over chiefly to carrying emigrants; their engines are weak, they sail as much under canvas as under steam, and their speed is poor. They took longer on the run from New York to England than Mr. Fogg had time left to win his wager.
The gentleman took all of this in perfectly as he consulted his Bradshaw, which laid out the transoceanic sailings for him day by day.
Passepartout was crushed. To have missed the steamer by forty-five minutes — it was killing him. And it was his own fault. Instead of helping his master, he had done nothing but strew obstacles across his path! And when he ran back over every incident of the journey in his mind, when he tallied up all the money spent to no purpose and on his account alone, when he thought that this enormous wager, together with the crushing expense of a trip now made useless, would ruin Mr. Fogg completely, he heaped abuse on himself.
Mr. Fogg, however, made him no reproach whatever. Leaving the transatlantic pier, he said only these words:
"We'll see about it tomorrow. Come along."
Mr. Fogg, Aouda, Fix, and Passepartout crossed the Hudson in the Jersey City ferryboat and climbed into a cab, which took them to the St. Nicholas Hotel on Broadway. Rooms were made ready for them, and the night went by — short for Phileas Fogg, who slept a perfect sleep, but very long for Aouda and her companions, whose agitation would not let them rest.
The next day was the 12th of December. From seven in the morning on the 12th to a quarter to nine in the evening on the 21st, there remained nine days, thirteen hours, and forty-five minutes. Had Phileas Fogg left the day before aboard the China, one of the best sailers of the Cunard line, he would have reached Liverpool, and then London, in good time!
Mr. Fogg left the hotel alone, after instructing his servant to wait for him and to warn Aouda to be ready to leave at any moment.
Mr. Fogg made his way to the banks of the Hudson, and among the ships moored to the quays or anchored out in the river, he searched carefully for any that were about to sail. Several vessels had their departure pennants flying and were making ready to put to sea on the morning tide, for in that vast and magnificent port of New York not a day passes without a hundred ships setting out for every corner of the globe; but most of them were sailing ships, and they would not do for Phileas Fogg.
The gentleman seemed bound to fail in this last attempt, when he caught sight of a vessel moored off the Battery, a cable's length away at most — a trading steamer with a propeller and trim lines, its funnel throwing off great rolls of smoke, a sure sign that it was getting ready to weigh anchor.
Phileas Fogg hailed a boat, jumped in, and with a few strokes of the oars found himself at the gangway of the Henrietta, an iron-hulled steamer with all her upper works in wood.
The captain of the Henrietta was on board. Phileas Fogg went up on deck and asked for him. The man appeared at once.
He was about fifty, a sort of sea dog, a grumbler who plainly would not be easy to deal with. Big eyes, a complexion like oxidized copper, red hair, a thick neck — nothing of the gentleman about him.
"The captain?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"That's me."
"I'm Phileas Fogg, of London."
"And I'm Andrew Speedy, of Cardiff."
"You're about to sail?"
"In an hour."
"You're bound for—?"
"Bordeaux."
"And your cargo?"
"Stones in the belly. No freight. I'm sailing in ballast."
"You have passengers?"
"No passengers. Never any passengers. Cargo that gets underfoot and talks back."
"Your ship's a good sailer?"
"Eleven to twelve knots. The Henrietta's well known."
"Will you carry me to Liverpool — me and three others?"
"To Liverpool? Why not to China?"
"I said Liverpool."
"No!"
"No?"
"No. I'm bound for Bordeaux, and to Bordeaux I go."
"No matter the price?"
"No matter the price."
The captain had spoken in a tone that allowed no reply.
"But the Henrietta's owners—" Phileas Fogg began.
"The owner is me," the captain answered. "The ship is mine."
"I'll charter her from you."
"No."
"I'll buy her from you."
"No."
Phileas Fogg did not so much as blink. Still, the situation was grave. This was not Hong Kong, and the captain of the Henrietta was not the skipper of the Tankadère. Until now the gentleman's money had always carried the day against every obstacle. This time, money failed.
And yet a way had to be found to cross the Atlantic by ship — short of crossing it by balloon, which would have been a wildly risky business, and in any case impossible.
It seems, however, that Phileas Fogg hit on an idea, for he said to the captain:
"Well then, will you take me to Bordeaux?"
"No, not if you paid me two hundred dollars!"
"I offer you two thousand."
"Apiece?"
"Apiece."
"And there are four of you?"
"Four."
Captain Speedy began to scratch his forehead as if he meant to peel the skin off it. Eight thousand dollars to be earned without altering his voyage — that was well worth setting aside his pronounced distaste for passengers of every kind. Besides, passengers at two thousand dollars a head are no longer passengers; they are precious cargo.
"I sail at nine o'clock," said Captain Speedy simply, "and if you and yours are here—?"
"At nine o'clock we'll be aboard!" Mr. Fogg answered, no less simply.
It was half past eight. To step off the Henrietta, get into a carriage, drive to the St. Nicholas Hotel, and bring back Aouda, Passepartout, and even the inseparable Fix — to whom he graciously offered the passage — was all accomplished by the gentleman with that calm which never once deserted him.
By the time the Henrietta weighed anchor, all four were aboard.
When Passepartout learned what this last crossing would cost, he let out one of those long, drawn-out "Oh!"s that slide down every step of the descending scale.
As for Inspector Fix, he told himself that the Bank of England would most decidedly not come out of this affair unscathed. By the time they arrived, and assuming that Mr. Fogg didn't fling a few more handfuls of it into the sea, more than seven thousand pounds would be missing from the banknote bag!
An hour later, the steamer Henrietta passed the light-ship that marks the mouth of the Hudson, rounded the point of Sandy Hook, and stood out to sea. Through the day she ran along Long Island, well off the Fire Island light, and drove eastward at a fine clip.
The next day, the 13th of December, at noon, a man climbed to the bridge to take the ship's bearings. You would naturally suppose this man to be Captain Speedy. Not in the least. It was Phileas Fogg, Esq.
As for Captain Speedy, he was quite simply locked in his cabin, roaring in a way that betrayed a rage — a thoroughly pardonable rage — worked up to its absolute peak.
What had happened was very simple. Phileas Fogg wanted to reach Liverpool; the captain would not carry him there. So Phileas Fogg had agreed to take passage for Bordeaux, and in the thirty hours he had been aboard he had maneuvered so cleverly, with fistfuls of banknotes, that the crew — sailors and stokers alike, a somewhat shady lot who were on poor terms with the captain — now belonged to him body and soul. And that was why Phileas Fogg was giving the orders in Captain Speedy's place; why the captain was locked in his cabin; and why the Henrietta was steaming toward Liverpool. One thing was very clear from the way Mr. Fogg handled the ship: Mr. Fogg had once been a sailor.
How the adventure would end, no one could yet say. Even so, Aouda could not shake a certain uneasiness, though she said nothing of it. Fix, for his part, had been utterly dumbfounded at first. As for Passepartout, he found the whole thing simply delightful.
"Between eleven and twelve knots," Captain Speedy had said, and sure enough, the Henrietta held to that average speed.
So if — how many "ifs" there still were! — so if the sea did not turn too foul, if the wind did not veer round to the east, if no damage came to the hull and no accident to the engine, the Henrietta might, in the nine days counted from the 12th of December to the 21st, cover the three thousand miles that separate New York from Liverpool. True enough, once she arrived, the business of the Henrietta laid on top of the business of the Bank might carry the gentleman a good deal further than he cared to go.
For the first few days the voyage went beautifully. The sea was not too rough; the wind seemed settled in the northeast; the sails were set, and under her fore-and-aft canvas the Henrietta ran like a genuine transatlantic liner.
Passepartout was overjoyed. His master's latest exploit — whose consequences he refused to let himself consider — thrilled him to the core. The crew had never seen a more cheerful, more nimble young fellow. He showered the sailors with friendship and amazed them with his acrobatic stunts. He lavished the best of nicknames on them and the most tempting of drinks. In his eyes they worked the ship like gentlemen, and the stokers stoked like heroes. His good humor, wildly contagious, spread to every man aboard. He had forgotten the past, the troubles, the dangers. He thought only of the goal, now so near, and now and then he fairly boiled with impatience, as though he too were being fired up by the Henrietta's furnaces. Often, as well, the worthy fellow would drift in circles around Fix; he would fix him with a look that "said a great deal" — but he did not speak to him, for there was no shred of friendship left between the two former friends.
And Fix, it must be said, no longer understood a thing! The conquest of the Henrietta, the buying-up of her crew, this Fogg maneuvering like a seasoned sailor — the whole business left his head spinning. He no longer knew what to think! But then again, a gentleman who began by stealing fifty-five thousand pounds might very well end by stealing a ship. And so Fix was led, naturally enough, to conclude that the Henrietta, under Fogg's command, was not bound for Liverpool at all, but for some corner of the globe where the thief, turned pirate, meant to settle himself comfortably out of reach! It was a hypothesis, one has to admit, that could not have been more plausible, and the detective was beginning to regret, very seriously, that he had ever gotten himself mixed up in this affair.
As for Captain Speedy, he went on roaring in his cabin, and Passepartout, whose job it was to see him fed, did so only with the greatest precautions, strong as he was. Mr. Fogg, meanwhile, no longer seemed even to suspect that there was a captain aboard at all.
On the 13th they passed over the tail of the Newfoundland Bank. These are dangerous waters. In winter especially, fogs are frequent there and the squalls fearsome. Since the day before, the barometer had dropped sharply, hinting at a coming change in the weather. And sure enough, during the night the temperature shifted, the cold grew keener, and at the same time the wind swung round to the southeast.
This was a setback. To keep from wandering off his course, Mr. Fogg had to take in sail and force the engine. Even so, the ship's progress slowed, given the state of the sea, whose long rollers broke against her stem. She pitched violently, and her speed suffered for it. Little by little the breeze was building toward a hurricane, and men were already foreseeing the moment when the Henrietta might no longer be able to hold her head to the waves. And if she had to run before them, that meant the unknown, with all its evil chances.
Passepartout's face darkened along with the sky, and for two days the honest fellow went through mortal agonies. But Phileas Fogg was a bold sailor who knew how to stand up to the sea, and he held his course, without even easing off to half steam. When the Henrietta could not ride over a wave, she went straight through it, and her deck was swept clean fore and aft — but through it she went. Sometimes, too, the screw would lift clear of the water, its blades thrashing wildly at the air as a mountain of sea heaved her stern above the surface — but the ship kept driving forward all the same.
Still, the wind did not freshen as badly as one might have feared. This was none of those hurricanes that come tearing past at ninety miles an hour. It held to a strong gale, but unfortunately it blew with stubborn persistence out of the southeast and made setting canvas impossible. And yet — as we shall see — a little help for the steam would have come in very handy!
The 16th of December was the seventy-fifth day since the departure from London. All told, the Henrietta was not yet running any alarming amount behind. Roughly half the crossing was done, and the worst stretches of water were behind her. In summer, success would have been a safe bet. In winter, they were at the mercy of the bad season. Passepartout offered no opinion. Deep down he was hopeful, and if the wind failed him, at least he was counting on the steam.
Now, that very day, the chief engineer came up on deck, ran into Mr. Fogg, and fell into a rather heated conversation with him.
Without knowing why — by some presentiment, no doubt — Passepartout felt a vague unease come over him. He would have given one of his ears to catch what was being said. As it was, he managed to snatch a few words, these among them, spoken by his master:
"You're certain of what you're telling me?"
"Certain, sir," the engineer answered. "Don't forget that since we set out, we've been burning with every furnace lit, and while we had coal enough to run at half steam from New York to Bordeaux, we haven't got enough to run at full steam from New York to Liverpool!"
"I'll see to it," replied Mr. Fogg.
Passepartout had understood. He was seized with mortal dread.
The coal was going to run out!
"Ah, if my master gets us out of this one," he told himself, "he'll be a mighty fine man indeed!"
And, running into Fix, he could not help bringing him up to date on the situation.
"So," the agent answered through clenched teeth, "you believe we're going to Liverpool!"
"Of course!"
"Idiot!" replied the inspector, who walked off with a shrug.
Passepartout was on the point of paying him back sharply for the epithet — though he could not, in any case, grasp its true meaning — but he told himself that the unlucky Fix must be badly disappointed, badly wounded in his self-esteem, after so clumsily chasing a false trail all the way around the world, and he let the matter drop.
And now, what course would Phileas Fogg take? It was hard to imagine. And yet it seems the phlegmatic gentleman settled on one, for that very evening he sent for the engineer and said to him:
"Pile on the fires and hold our course until the fuel is completely used up."
A few moments later, the Henrietta's funnel was belching torrents of smoke.
The ship kept driving on at full steam; but, just as he had warned, two days later, on the 18th, the engineer reported that the coal would run out before the day was through.
"Don't let the fires go down," replied Mr. Fogg. "On the contrary. Load the safety valves."
That day, around noon, after taking his altitude and calculating the ship's position, Phileas Fogg sent for Passepartout and gave him the order to go fetch Captain Speedy. It was rather like ordering the good fellow to go turn loose a tiger, and he went down to the poop, telling himself:
"He'll be positively rabid!"
Sure enough, a few minutes later, amid shouts and curses, a bomb came flying up onto the poop deck. This bomb was Captain Speedy. He was plainly about to explode.
"Where are we?" These were the first words he got out through his fits of choking fury — and truly, had the good man been the least bit apoplectic, he would never have recovered from it.
"Where are we?" he repeated, his face purple.
"Seven hundred and seventy miles from Liverpool," replied Mr. Fogg with imperturbable calm.
"Pirate!" cried Andrew Speedy.
"I sent for you, sir —"
"Sea rover!"
"— sir," Phileas Fogg went on, "to ask you to sell me your ship."
"No! By all the devils, no!"
"The trouble is, I'm going to be forced to burn her."
"Burn my ship!"
"At least the upper works, since we're out of fuel."
"Burn my ship!" cried Captain Speedy, who could barely get the syllables out anymore. "A ship worth fifty thousand dollars!"
"Here are sixty thousand!" replied Phileas Fogg, holding out a bundle of banknotes to the captain.
This produced a prodigious effect on Andrew Speedy. You cannot be an American without the sight of sixty thousand dollars stirring a certain emotion in you. In an instant the captain forgot his rage, his imprisonment, all his grievances against his passenger. His ship was twenty years old. This might turn into a golden bargain!... The bomb could no longer go off. Mr. Fogg had pulled its fuse.
"And I keep the iron hull," said Speedy, in a curiously softened tone.
"The iron hull and the engine, sir. Is it a deal?"
"It's a deal."
And Andrew Speedy, snatching up the bundle of banknotes, counted them and made them vanish into his pocket.
Through this whole scene, Passepartout had gone white. As for Fix, he nearly had a stroke. Close to twenty thousand pounds spent — and on top of that, this Fogg handing the seller back the hull and the engine, that is to say nearly the entire value of the ship! True, the sum stolen from the bank came to fifty-five thousand pounds!
When Andrew Speedy had pocketed the money, Mr. Fogg said to him:
"Sir, don't let any of this astonish you. Understand that I lose twenty thousand pounds if I am not back in London on the 21st of December, at eight forty-five in the evening. Now, I had missed the New York steamer, and since you refused to carry me to Liverpool —"
"And I did well to refuse, by the fifty thousand devils of hell," cried Andrew Speedy, "since I clear at least forty thousand dollars by it."
Then, more calmly:
"Do you know something, captain?" he added.
"Fogg."
"Captain Fogg — well, there's a bit of the Yankee in you."
And having paid his passenger what he took to be a compliment, he was going off when Phileas Fogg said to him:
"Then this ship now belongs to me?"
"Certainly — from the keel to the masthead, for everything that's timber, of course!"
"Good. Have the interior fittings torn out and burn the wreckage."
One can imagine how much of that dry wood it took to keep the steam at sufficient pressure. That day the poop, the deckhouses, the cabins, the quarters, the false deck — all of it went into the fire.
The next day, the 19th of December, they burned the masting, the spare spars, the booms. They cut down the masts and chopped them up with axes. The crew went at it with unbelievable zeal. Passepartout — hewing, hacking, sawing — did the work of ten men. It was a frenzy of demolition.
The next day, the 20th, the bulwarks, the rails, the upperworks, the greater part of the deck, were all devoured. The Henrietta was nothing now but a hulk cut down flush like a pontoon.
But that day they had raised the coast of Ireland and the Fastnet light.
Even so, by ten in the evening the ship was still only abreast of Queenstown. Phileas Fogg had no more than twenty-four hours left to reach London! And that was exactly the time the Henrietta needed to make Liverpool — even running at full steam. And now the steam itself was about to fail the audacious gentleman!
"Sir," said Captain Speedy to him then, for he had ended up taking an interest in the man's schemes, "I truly pity you. Everything is against you! We're still only off Queenstown."
"Ah," said Mr. Fogg, "so that's Queenstown, that town whose lights we can see?"
"Yes."
"Can we enter the harbor?"
"Not for three hours. Only at high tide."
"Then we'll wait!" Phileas Fogg answered quietly, without letting his face betray that, by one last stroke of inspiration, he was about to try once again to beat the odds stacked against him!
For Queenstown is a port on the Irish coast where the transatlantic liners coming from the United States drop their mailbags in passing. Those letters are carried to Dublin by expresses always standing ready to leave. From Dublin they reach Liverpool aboard high-speed steamers — beating, by a full twelve hours, the fastest ships of the great shipping lines.
Those twelve hours that the American mail gained in this way, Phileas Fogg meant to gain as well. Instead of arriving on the Henrietta at Liverpool the following evening, he would be there by noon, and would consequently have the time to reach London before eight forty-five in the evening.
Toward one in the morning, the Henrietta entered the port of Queenstown on the high tide, and Phileas Fogg, after receiving a hearty handshake from Captain Speedy, left him standing on the razed carcass of his ship — which was still worth half of what he had sold it for!
The passengers went ashore at once. At that moment Fix felt a savage urge to arrest the man Fogg. But he did not do it! Why? What struggle was going on inside him? Had he come round about Mr. Fogg? Did he at last understand that he had been mistaken? Whatever the reason, Fix did not give Mr. Fogg up. Along with him, along with Aouda, along with Passepartout — who no longer even took the time to breathe — he climbed aboard the Queenstown train at half past one in the morning, reached Dublin at daybreak, and immediately boarded one of those steamers — true spindles of steel, all engine — that scorn to ride over the waves and drive invariably straight through them.
At twenty minutes to noon, on the 21st of December, Phileas Fogg at last stepped ashore on the quay at Liverpool. He was now only six hours from London.
But at that moment Fix stepped up, laid a hand on his shoulder, and, producing his warrant, said:
"You are the man Phileas Fogg?"
"I am, sir."
"In the name of the Queen, I arrest you!"
Phileas Fogg was in prison. They had locked him up in the station house of the Custom House, the Liverpool customs office, and there he was to spend the night while he awaited his transfer to London.
At the moment of the arrest, Passepartout had tried to fling himself at the detective. Policemen held him back. Aouda, horrified by the sheer brutality of the thing and knowing nothing of its cause, could make no sense of it. Passepartout explained the situation to her. Mr. Fogg — that honest, courageous gentleman to whom she owed her life — had been arrested as a thief. The young woman protested against so monstrous a charge; her heart rose up in indignation, and tears streamed from her eyes when she saw that there was nothing she could do, nothing she could even attempt, to save her savior.
As for Fix, he had arrested the gentleman because his duty commanded him to make the arrest, guilty or not. The courts would decide.
And then a thought came to Passepartout — that terrible thought that he, and no one else, was the cause of the whole disaster. For why had he hidden this business from Mr. Fogg? When Fix had revealed both his standing as a police inspector and the mission he had been charged with, why had Passepartout taken it upon himself not to warn his master? Mr. Fogg, forewarned, would surely have given Fix proof of his innocence; he would have shown him his mistake; at the very least, he would not have carried this wretched agent along at his own expense and on his own heels — an agent whose first act had been to arrest him the moment he set foot on the soil of the United Kingdom. Brooding over his blunders, his recklessness, the poor fellow was seized with unbearable remorse. He wept; he was pitiful to see. He could have knocked his own head against the wall.
He and Aouda had stayed, in spite of the cold, under the portico of the customs house. Neither of them would leave the spot. They wanted to see Mr. Fogg one more time.
As for that gentleman, he was well and truly ruined — and ruined at the very moment he was about to reach his goal. This arrest destroyed him beyond recovery. Having reached Liverpool at eleven-forty in the morning on the 21st of December, he had until eight forty-five that evening to present himself at the Reform Club — nine hours and fifteen minutes — and he needed only six of them to reach London.
At that moment, anyone who had entered the station house would have found Mr. Fogg sitting motionless on a wooden bench, without anger, imperturbable. Resigned, you could not have called him; but even this last blow had failed to move him, at least on the surface. Had there formed within him one of those secret rages, all the more terrible for being contained, that break out only at the last instant with an irresistible force? No one could say. But Phileas Fogg was there, calm, waiting — for what? Did he still keep some hope? Did he still believe in success, now that the prison door had closed on him?
Whatever the case, Mr. Fogg had carefully laid his watch on a table and sat watching the hands go round. Not a word escaped his lips, but his gaze had a strange fixity to it.
At any rate, the situation was a terrible one, and to anyone who could not read that conscience, it came down to this:
An honest man, Phileas Fogg was ruined.
A dishonest man, he was caught.
Did the thought of escape occur to him then? Did he think of looking to see whether this station house offered any practicable way out? Did he think of running? One is tempted to believe he did, for at a certain moment he made a circuit of the room. But the door was solidly locked and the window fitted with iron bars. So he came and sat down again, and he drew from his pocketbook the itinerary of the journey. On the line that bore the words:
"December 21st, Saturday, Liverpool," he added:
"80th day, 11:40 in the morning," and he waited.
One o'clock struck on the Custom House clock. Mr. Fogg noted that his watch was two minutes fast against it.
Two o'clock! Supposing he boarded an express at this very moment, he could still reach London and the Reform Club before eight forty-five that evening. His brow creased faintly.
At thirty-three minutes past two, a noise rang out beyond the door, a clatter of doors flung open. He heard Passepartout's voice; he heard Fix's voice.
Phileas Fogg's gaze flashed for an instant.
The door of the station house opened, and he saw Aouda, Passepartout, and Fix rush toward him.
Fix was out of breath, his hair in wild disorder. He could not speak.
"Sir," he stammered, "sir — forgive me — a wretched resemblance — the thief was arrested three days ago — you — are free!"
Phileas Fogg was free! He walked up to the detective. He looked him full in the face and, making the one and only swift movement he had ever made or would ever make in his life, he drew both arms back and then, with the precision of an automaton, struck the unlucky inspector with both fists.
"Well struck!" cried Passepartout, who, allowing himself an atrocious pun quite worthy of a Frenchman, added: "By Jove, there's what you'd call a fine piece of English handiwork!"
Fix, knocked flat, did not utter a word. He had gotten no more than he deserved. But at once Mr. Fogg, Aouda, and Passepartout left the customs house. They threw themselves into a carriage and in a few minutes reached the Liverpool railway station.
Phileas Fogg asked whether there was an express ready to leave for London.
It was two-forty. The express had departed thirty-five minutes before.
Phileas Fogg then ordered a special train.
There were several high-speed locomotives under steam; but, given the demands of the service, the special could not leave the station before three o'clock.
At three o'clock, having said a few words to the engine driver about a certain bonus to be earned, Phileas Fogg was racing off toward London in the company of the young woman and his faithful servant.
The distance that separates Liverpool from London had to be covered in five and a half hours — an entirely feasible thing, when the line is clear the whole way. But there were forced delays, and when the gentleman reached the station, ten minutes to nine was striking on every clock in London.
Phileas Fogg, having completed this journey around the world, had arrived five minutes late!
He had lost.
The next day, the people of Savile Row would have been very surprised to learn that Mr. Fogg had come home. Doors and windows were all shut. Nothing about the place had changed on the outside.
For, in fact, after leaving the station, Phileas Fogg had told Passepartout to buy a few provisions, and had gone into his house.
He had taken the blow with his usual composure. Ruined! And through the blunder of that clumsy police inspector! After marching so surely across that long road, after knocking down a thousand obstacles, braving a thousand dangers, even finding the time to do a little good along the way — to founder in sight of harbor, over some brute fact he could not have foreseen and against which he was helpless: it was a terrible thing. Of the considerable sum he had carried off at the start, only a trifling remnant was left. His whole fortune now came to the twenty thousand pounds deposited with Baring Brothers, and those twenty thousand pounds he owed to his colleagues at the Reform Club. After so much money spent, this wager, even won, would surely not have made him rich — and it is likely he had never sought to grow rich, being one of those men who bet for honor's sake — but this wager lost ruined him utterly. Still, the gentleman had made up his mind. He knew what remained for him to do.
One room of the house on Savile Row had been set aside for Aouda. The young woman was in despair. From certain words Mr. Fogg had let fall, she had understood that he was turning over some grim design.
For it is well known to what deplorable extremes these obsessive Englishmen will sometimes go under the pressure of a fixed idea. And so Passepartout, without seeming to, was keeping watch on his master.
But first of all, the honest fellow had gone up to his room and put out the gas jet that had been burning for eighty days. In the letterbox he had found a bill from the gas company, and he thought it was more than time to stop these charges, for which he was responsible.
The night passed. Mr. Fogg had gone to bed — but had he slept? As for Aouda, she could not find a single moment's rest. And Passepartout kept watch like a dog at his master's door.
The next morning Mr. Fogg sent for him and instructed him, in very few words, to see to Aouda's breakfast. For himself, he would make do with a cup of tea and a slice of toast. Aouda would be so good as to excuse him for breakfast and dinner both, since all his time was given over to putting his affairs in order. He would not be coming down. Only in the evening would he ask Aouda's leave to speak with her for a few minutes.
Passepartout, having his marching orders for the day, had nothing to do but follow them. He looked at his master, as unruffled as ever, and could not bring himself to leave the room. His heart was heavy, his conscience gnawed with remorse, for he blamed himself more than ever for this irreparable disaster. Yes! If only he had warned Mr. Fogg, if only he had told him what Fix was planning, Mr. Fogg would surely never have dragged the man all the way to Liverpool, and then —
Passepartout could hold it in no longer.
"Master! Mr. Fogg!" he cried. "Curse me! It's my fault that —"
"I blame no one," said Phileas Fogg, in his calmest tone. "Go."
Passepartout left the room and went to find the young woman, to whom he made his master's wishes known.
"Madame," he added, "I can do nothing on my own, nothing! I have no sway over my master's mind. But you, perhaps —"
"What sway could I have?" said Aouda. "Mr. Fogg yields to none! Has he ever once understood that my gratitude for him was ready to overflow? Has he ever once read my heart? My friend, we must not leave him — not for a single moment. You say he means to speak with me this evening?"
"Yes, madame. No doubt it's to see your position secured here in England."
"We shall wait, then," said the young woman, and she sank into thought.
And so, all through that Sunday, the house on Savile Row stood as though no one lived in it, and for the first time since he had made it his home, Phileas Fogg did not go to his club when half past eleven struck from the Parliament tower.
And why should the gentleman have shown himself at the Reform Club? His colleagues no longer expected him there. Since, the evening before — on that fatal date of Saturday, December 21, at eight forty-five — Phileas Fogg had failed to appear in the club's drawing room, his wager was lost. He need not even call on his banker to draw out that sum of twenty thousand pounds. His opponents held a check signed in his own hand, and it would take no more than a single stroke of the pen at Baring Brothers to carry the twenty thousand pounds over to their credit.
So Mr. Fogg had no reason to go out, and he did not go out. He stayed in his room and set his affairs in order. Passepartout never stopped going up and down the stairs of the house on Savile Row. For the poor fellow, the hours would not move. He listened at the door of his master's room, and in doing so felt he was committing no indiscretion at all! He peered through the keyhole, and imagined he had every right to! At every moment Passepartout dreaded some catastrophe. Now and then his thoughts turned to Fix, but a change had come over him. He no longer held a grudge against the police inspector. Fix had been mistaken about Phileas Fogg, like everyone else, and in shadowing him, in arresting him, he had only done his duty — whereas he himself... The thought crushed him, and he counted himself the lowest of wretches.
When at last Passepartout grew too miserable to be alone, he would knock at Aouda's door, slip into her room, sit down in a corner without a word, and watch the young woman, still lost in thought.
Toward half past seven in the evening, Mr. Fogg sent to ask Aouda whether she could receive him, and a few moments later the two of them were alone together in that room.
Phileas Fogg took a chair and sat down by the fireplace, facing Aouda. His face betrayed no emotion. The Fogg who had come home was exactly the Fogg who had set out. The same calm, the same composure.
He sat without speaking for five minutes. Then, raising his eyes to Aouda:
"Madame," he said, "will you forgive me for having brought you to England?"
"I, Mr. Fogg?" said Aouda, pressing down the beating of her heart.
"Allow me to finish," Mr. Fogg went on. "When I first thought of carrying you far from that country, which had become so dangerous for you, I was a rich man, and I meant to place part of my fortune at your disposal. Your life would have been happy and free. Now I am ruined."
"I know it, Mr. Fogg," the young woman answered, "and I must ask you in my turn: will you forgive me for having followed you, and — who knows? — for having perhaps, by delaying you, helped to bring about your ruin?"
"Madame, you could not remain in India, and your safety was assured only if you went far enough away that those fanatics could not seize you again."
"So, Mr. Fogg," Aouda went on, "not content with snatching me from a horrible death, you believed yourself bound to secure my position abroad as well?"
"Yes, madame, but events have turned against me. Still, of the little that remains to me, I ask your leave to make it over to you."
"But you, Mr. Fogg — what will become of you?" asked Aouda.
"I, madame," the gentleman answered coldly, "I have need of nothing."
"But how, sir, do you look upon the fate that awaits you?"
"As a man ought to," answered Mr. Fogg.
"At any rate," Aouda went on, "want could never touch a man like you. Your friends —"
"I have no friends, madame."
"Your relatives —"
"I have no relatives left."
"Then I pity you, Mr. Fogg, for to be alone is a sad thing. What! Not one heart to pour your sorrows into? And yet they say that with two, even misery itself can be borne."
"So they say, madame."
"Mr. Fogg," said Aouda then, rising and holding out her hand to the gentleman, "will you have both a kinswoman and a friend at once? Will you have me for your wife?"
At these words Mr. Fogg rose in his turn. There was something like an unaccustomed light in his eyes, something like a tremor on his lips. Aouda was looking at him. The sincerity, the uprightness, the firmness and gentleness of that beautiful gaze — the gaze of a noble woman who dares everything to save the man to whom she owes everything — astonished him first, then went straight through him. He closed his eyes for an instant, as if to keep that look from sinking any deeper. When he opened them again:
"I love you!" he said simply. "Yes, in truth, by all that is most sacred in the world, I love you, and I am wholly yours!"
"Ah!" cried Aouda, pressing her hand to her heart.
Passepartout was rung for. He came at once. Mr. Fogg still held Aouda's hand in his own. Passepartout understood, and his broad face blazed like the sun at its zenith over the tropics.
Mr. Fogg asked him whether it would be too late to go and notify the Reverend Samuel Wilson, of the parish of Marylebone.
Passepartout gave his very best smile.
"Never too late," he said.
It was only five past eight.
"It would be for tomorrow, Monday!" he said.
"For tomorrow, Monday?" asked Mr. Fogg, looking at the young woman.
"For tomorrow, Monday!" answered Aouda.
Passepartout dashed off at a run.
It is time to record here the great swing of public opinion that ran through the United Kingdom when word came of the arrest of the real bank robber — one James Strand — which had taken place on the 17th of December, at Edinburgh.
Three days earlier, Phileas Fogg had been a criminal hunted relentlessly by the police; now he was the most honest gentleman alive, carrying out his eccentric journey around the world with mathematical precision.
What a stir it made, what an uproar in the papers! Every bettor, for him or against, who had long since forgotten the whole affair, sprang back to life as if by magic. Every transaction was good again. Every wager revived, and — it must be said — the betting started up with fresh energy. The name of Phileas Fogg was once again at a premium on the market.
The gentleman's five colleagues at the Reform Club spent those three days in no small anxiety. This Phileas Fogg they had all but forgotten was suddenly before their eyes again! Where was he at this moment? On the 17th of December — the day James Strand was arrested — seventy-six days had passed since Phileas Fogg set out, and not a word from him! Had he come to grief? Had he given up the struggle, or was he still pressing on along the agreed route? And on Saturday, the 21st of December, at eight forty-five in the evening, would he appear, like the very god of punctuality, on the threshold of the Reform Club's drawing room?
There is no use trying to paint the suspense in which, for three days, all this English society lived. Telegrams were fired off to America and to Asia for news of Phileas Fogg! Morning and evening, men were sent to watch the house on Savile Row... Nothing. The police themselves no longer knew what had become of Detective Fix, who had so unluckily thrown himself onto a false trail. None of which kept the betting from starting up again on a still grander scale. Phileas Fogg, like a racehorse, was rounding the final turn. He was no longer quoted at a hundred to one, but at twenty, at ten, at five; and the palsied old Lord Albermale was taking him at even money.
And so, on the Saturday evening, there was a crowd in Pall Mall and the neighboring streets. You might have taken it for a vast, permanent gathering of brokers camped around the Reform Club. Traffic was at a standstill. People argued, disputed, shouted the going price of "Phileas Fogg" as they would the price of English government stock. The policemen had all they could do to hold back the crowd, and as the hour drew on at which Phileas Fogg was due to arrive, the excitement swelled to unbelievable proportions.
That evening the gentleman's five colleagues had been gathered since eight o'clock in the great drawing room of the Reform Club. The two bankers, John Sullivan and Samuel Fallentin; the engineer Andrew Stuart; Gauthier Ralph, a director of the Bank of England; and the brewer Thomas Flanagan — all waited in anxious suspense.
The moment the drawing-room clock marked eight twenty-five, Andrew Stuart rose to his feet and said:
"Gentlemen, in twenty minutes the deadline agreed between Mr. Phileas Fogg and ourselves will have expired."
"What time did the last train from Liverpool get in?" asked Thomas Flanagan.
"At seven twenty-three," answered Gauthier Ralph, "and the next one doesn't arrive until ten past midnight."
"Well then, gentlemen," Andrew Stuart went on, "if Phileas Fogg had come in on the seven twenty-three, he'd already be here. So we may consider the wager won."
"Let's wait — let's not commit ourselves," replied Samuel Fallentin. "You know our colleague is an eccentric of the first order. His exactness in everything is well known. He's never too late nor too early, and if he turned up here at the very last minute, I shouldn't be the least bit surprised."
"For my part," said Andrew Stuart, as jumpy as ever, "if I saw him I wouldn't believe it."
"Quite," Thomas Flanagan put in. "Phileas Fogg's whole scheme was madness. However exact he might be, he couldn't keep unavoidable delays from piling up, and a delay of only two or three days was enough to wreck the whole journey."
"You'll notice, too," added John Sullivan, "that we've had no word whatever from our colleague — and there was no shortage of telegraph wires along his route."
"He's lost, gentlemen," Andrew Stuart resumed, "lost a hundred times over! You know, besides, that the China — the only New York steamer he could have taken to reach Liverpool in time — got in yesterday. Well, here is the passenger list, printed in the Shipping Gazette, and the name of Phileas Fogg is nowhere on it. Granting him even the best of luck, our colleague is barely in America by now! I put the delay he'll run up past the agreed date at twenty days at the very least — and old Lord Albermale will be out his five thousand pounds into the bargain!"
"It's plain enough," answered Gauthier Ralph. "Tomorrow we'll have nothing to do but present Mr. Fogg's check at Baring Brothers."
At that moment the drawing-room clock struck eight forty.
"Five minutes more," said Andrew Stuart.
The five colleagues looked at one another. One may suppose that the beating of their hearts had quickened a little, for even for cool-headed players the stakes were high! But they let nothing show, and at Samuel Fallentin's suggestion they took their places at a card table.
"I wouldn't give up my four-thousand-pound share in the wager," said Andrew Stuart as he sat down, "even if I were offered three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine for it!"
At that instant the hand stood at eight forty-two.
The players had picked up their cards, but every moment their eyes went back to the clock. However sure of themselves they were, never — one may safely say — had minutes seemed so long!
"Eight forty-three," said Thomas Flanagan, cutting the deck that Gauthier Ralph held out to him.
Then came a moment of silence. The club's great room was still. But outside, one could hear the din of the crowd, pierced now and then by shrill cries. The pendulum of the clock beat off the seconds with mathematical regularity. Each player could count the sixty beats of the minute as they struck his ear.
"Eight forty-four!" said John Sullivan, in a voice that betrayed an emotion he could not help.
One minute more, and the wager was won. Andrew Stuart and his colleagues had stopped playing. They had dropped the cards! They were counting the seconds!
At the fortieth second, nothing. At the fiftieth, still nothing!
At the fifty-fifth, a sound like thunder was heard outside — applause, hurrahs, even curses — rolling on in one unbroken roar.
The players rose to their feet.
At the fifty-seventh second, the drawing-room door opened; and before the pendulum had beaten the sixtieth second, Phileas Fogg appeared, followed by a delirious crowd that had forced its way into the club, and in his calm voice said:
"Here I am, gentlemen."
Yes! Phileas Fogg himself.
You will remember that at five past eight that evening — some twenty-five hours after the travelers had reached London — Passepartout had been sent by his master to notify the Reverend Samuel Wilson about a certain wedding, one that was to take place the very next day.
So Passepartout had set off, delighted. He walked briskly to the home of the Reverend Samuel Wilson, who had not yet come in. Naturally, Passepartout waited — and he waited a good twenty minutes at least.
In short, it was thirty-five minutes past eight when he came out of the reverend's house. But in what a state! Hair wild, hat gone, running, running as no man has ever been seen to run in all of human memory, knocking pedestrians flat, tearing along the sidewalks like a whirlwind!
In three minutes he was back at the house on Savile Row, and he collapsed, gasping, into Mr. Fogg's room.
He could not speak.
"What is it?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"My master —" Passepartout stammered. "The wedding — impossible."
"Impossible?"
"Impossible — for tomorrow."
"Why?"
"Because tomorrow — is Sunday!"
"Monday," replied Mr. Fogg.
"No — today — is Saturday."
"Saturday? Impossible!"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes!" cried Passepartout. "You've made a mistake of one day! We arrived twenty-four hours early — but there are only ten minutes left!"
Passepartout had seized his master by the collar, and he was dragging him along with irresistible force.
Phileas Fogg, hauled off like that, without so much as time to think, left his room, left his house, sprang into a cab, promised the driver a hundred pounds, and — after flattening two dogs and clipping five carriages — arrived at the Reform Club.
The clock read eight forty-five when he appeared in the great drawing room.
Phileas Fogg had completed his tour of the world in eighty days!
Phileas Fogg had won his wager of twenty thousand pounds!
And now — how could a man so exact, so meticulous, have committed such a blunder of a day? How could he believe it was Saturday evening, the 21st of December, when he stepped ashore in London, when in fact it was only Friday the 20th, a mere seventy-nine days after his departure?
Here is the reason for the mistake. It is quite simple.
Phileas Fogg had, "without suspecting it," gained a day on his itinerary — and that solely because he had made the tour of the world traveling eastward. Had he gone the opposite way, toward the west, he would have lost that same day.
For, traveling eastward, Phileas Fogg was going to meet the sun, and so the days grew shorter for him by four minutes for every degree he crossed in that direction. Now, there are three hundred and sixty degrees around the circumference of the earth, and those three hundred and sixty degrees, multiplied by four minutes, come to exactly twenty-four hours — that is, the day he had unknowingly gained. In other words, while Phileas Fogg, traveling eastward, saw the sun cross the meridian eighty times, his colleagues who had stayed behind in London saw it cross only seventy-nine. Which is why, on that very day — which was the Saturday, and not the Sunday as Mr. Fogg believed — they sat waiting for him in the drawing room of the Reform Club.
And this is exactly what Passepartout's famous watch — which had never stopped keeping London time — would have shown, if only, along with the minutes and the hours, it had also marked the days!
So Phileas Fogg had won the twenty thousand pounds. But since he had spent about nineteen thousand of them along the way, the financial result was slim. Still, as we have said, the eccentric gentleman had sought in this wager only the contest, not the fortune. And indeed, the thousand pounds that remained, he divided between the honest Passepartout and the luckless Fix, against whom he found it impossible to hold a grudge. Only — for the sake of good order — he docked from his servant's share the cost of the one thousand nine hundred and twenty hours of gas that had burned by his fault.
That very evening, Mr. Fogg, as impassive, as unflappable as ever, said to Aouda:
"Does this marriage still suit you, madam?"
"Mr. Fogg," Aouda replied, "it is for me to ask you that question. You were ruined; now you are rich —"
"Forgive me, madam, but this fortune belongs to you. If you had not had the idea of this marriage, my servant would not have gone to the Reverend Samuel Wilson, I would never have learned of my error, and —"
"Dear Mr. Fogg —" said the young woman.
"Dear Aouda —" replied Phileas Fogg.
It goes without saying that the wedding took place forty-eight hours later, and Passepartout — magnificent, resplendent, positively dazzling — stood there as the bride's witness. Had he not saved her, and was the honor not owed to him?
Only, the next day, at the crack of dawn, Passepartout came pounding thunderously at his master's door.
The door opened, and the impassive gentleman appeared.
"What is it, Passepartout?"
"What is it, sir! It's that I've only just this instant found out —"
"Found out what?"
"That we could have made the tour of the world in only seventy-eight days."
"No doubt," replied Mr. Fogg, "by not crossing India. But if I had not crossed India, I would not have saved Aouda, she would not be my wife, and —"
And Mr. Fogg quietly closed the door.
So, then, Phileas Fogg had won his wager. He had accomplished, in eighty days, this journey around the world! To do it he had used every means of transport — steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading vessels, sledges, an elephant. Through it all the eccentric gentleman had displayed his marvelous gifts of coolness and precision. But what then? What had he gained by all that going and coming? What had he brought back from the journey?
Nothing, you will say? Nothing, granted — nothing but a charming wife who, however unlikely it may seem, made him the happiest of men!
And in truth — would a man not go around the world for less?