Around the World in Eighty Days, Part 10: Sails on the Snow

6:27:19 Chapter XXX: In which Phileas Fogg simply does his duty

6:27:19 Mrs. Aouda had withdrawn to a room in the station, and there, alone, she waited, thinking of Phileas Fogg, of that simple and great generosity, of that tranquil courage.

6:27:33 Mr. Fogg had sacrificed his fortune, and now he was staking his life, and all this without hesitation, from duty, without fine words. Phileas Fogg was a hero in her eyes.

6:27:52 Inspector Fix, for his part, did not think so, and he could not contain his agitation. He paced feverishly up and down the station platform.

6:28:02 Subdued for a moment, he was becoming himself again. Now that Fogg was gone, he saw what folly he had committed in letting him go. What! this man whom he had just followed round the world, he had consented to part from him!

6:28:19 His nature was getting the upper hand again; he charged himself, he accused himself, he treated himself as though he had been the head of the Metropolitan Police reprimanding a detective caught red-handed in an act of simplicity.

6:28:34 Fix: I have been a fool! The other fellow will have told him who I was! He has gone, he won't come back! Where am I to lay hands on him now? But how could I let myself be bewitched like that—I, Fix, I, who have the warrant for his arrest in my pocket!

6:28:50 Fix: Decidedly, I am nothing but an ass!

6:28:56 So reasoned the police inspector, while the hours went by, far too slowly for his liking. He did not know what to do. At times he felt like telling Mrs. Aouda everything. But he could well imagine how the young woman would receive him. What course should he take?

6:29:15 He was tempted to set off across the long white plains in pursuit of this Fogg! It did not seem to him impossible to find him again. The footprints of the detachment were still printed on the snow!… But soon, under a fresh layer, every trace was blotted out.

6:29:33 Then discouragement took hold of Fix. He felt something like an insurmountable longing to give up the game. Now, as it happened, that very opportunity of leaving Kearney station and continuing this journey, so fertile in disappointments, was offered to him.

6:29:52 Towards two o'clock in the afternoon, in fact, while the snow was falling in great flakes, long whistles were heard coming from the east.

6:30:02 An enormous shadow, preceded by a tawny glow, was slowly advancing, greatly enlarged by the mist, which gave it a fantastic appearance.

6:30:13 Yet no train was expected from the east as yet. The help asked for by telegraph could not arrive so soon, and the train from Omaha to San Francisco was not due to pass until the next day.

6:30:26 The mystery was soon cleared up.

6:30:30 This locomotive, coming on slowly under low steam and giving great blasts on its whistle, was the one which, after being uncoupled from the train, had gone on its way at such terrifying speed, carrying off the unconscious fireman and driver.

6:30:47 It had run along the rails for several miles. Then the fire had sunk for want of fuel. The steam had slackened, and an hour later, slowing down little by little, the engine had at last come to a stop twenty miles beyond Kearney station.

6:31:04 Neither the driver nor the fireman had succumbed, and after a rather prolonged swoon they had come to themselves.

6:31:12 The engine had by then stopped. When he found himself in the wilderness, the locomotive alone, with no cars behind it, the driver understood what had happened. How the locomotive had come to be uncoupled from the train he could not guess, but he had no doubt that the train, left behind, was in distress.

6:31:35 The driver did not hesitate over what he ought to do. To continue in the direction of Omaha was prudent; to go back to the train, which the Sioux were perhaps still pillaging, was dangerous… No matter!

6:31:48 Shovelfuls of coal and wood were thrust into the firebox of his boiler, the fire revived, the pressure rose again, and towards two o'clock in the afternoon the engine was running back towards Kearney station.

6:32:02 It was this engine that was whistling in the mist.

6:32:06 It was a great satisfaction to the passengers when they saw the locomotive take its place at the head of the train. They would be able to continue their journey, so unfortunately interrupted.

6:32:18 When the engine arrived, Mrs. Aouda had come out of the station and, addressing the conductor:

6:32:25 Aouda: You are going to leave?

6:32:27 the Pacific Railroad conductor: Right away, madam.

6:32:28 Aouda: But those prisoners… our unfortunate companions…

6:32:33 the Pacific Railroad conductor: I can't interrupt the service. We're three hours late already.

6:32:37 Aouda: And when will the next train from San Francisco come through?

6:32:40 the Pacific Railroad conductor: Tomorrow evening, madam.

6:32:42 Aouda: Tomorrow evening! But that will be too late. You must wait…

6:32:47 the Pacific Railroad conductor: That's impossible. If you want to go, get aboard.

6:32:50 Aouda: I shall not go.

6:32:52 Fix had heard this conversation. A few moments before, when every means of transport was lacking, he had made up his mind to leave Kearney. And now that the train was there, ready to dash off, and he had only to take his seat in the car again, an irresistible force held him to the ground.

6:33:12 The station platform burned his feet, and yet he could not tear himself away from it. The struggle began again within him. The anger of failure was choking him. He meant to fight on to the end.

6:33:27 Meanwhile the passengers and a few of the wounded—Colonel Proctor, for one, who was in a grave condition—had taken their seats in the cars. The overheated boiler could be heard humming, and steam was hissing out through the valves.

6:33:42 The driver blew his whistle;

6:33:45 the train got under way and was soon lost to sight, its white smoke mingling with the whirl of the snow.

6:33:53 Inspector Fix had stayed behind.

6:33:57 Some hours went by. The weather was very bad, the cold very sharp. Fix sat motionless on a bench in the station. One might have thought him asleep.

6:34:09 Mrs. Aouda, in spite of the squalls, kept leaving the room which had been put at her disposal. She would go to the end of the platform, trying to see through the snowstorm, seeking to pierce the mist that narrowed the horizon around her, listening for any sound. But nothing.

6:34:29 Then she would go back in, chilled to the bone, only to come out again a few moments later, and always in vain.

6:34:37 Evening came. The little detachment had not returned.

6:34:42 Where was it at that moment? Had it been able to overtake the Sioux? Had there been a fight, or were those soldiers, lost in the mist, wandering at random? The captain of Fort Kearney was very anxious, though he would let nothing of his anxiety appear.

6:35:05 Night came; the snow fell less heavily, but the cold grew more intense. The boldest eye could not have looked without dread upon that dark immensity.

6:35:16 An absolute silence reigned over the plain. Neither the flight of a bird nor the passing of a wild beast disturbed its infinite calm.

6:35:27 All that night Mrs. Aouda, her mind full of sinister forebodings, her heart full of anguish, wandered along the edge of the prairie. Her imagination carried her far away and showed her a thousand dangers. What she suffered during those long hours is beyond words.

6:35:48 Fix was still motionless in the same place, but he, too, was not asleep. At one moment a man had come up to him and had even spoken to him, but the detective had sent him away after answering his words with a shake of the head.

6:36:05 So the night passed. At dawn the half-extinguished disc of the sun rose over a misty horizon. The eye, however, could now reach to a distance of two miles.

6:36:18 It was towards the south that Phileas Fogg and the detachment had gone… The south was absolutely empty. It was then seven o'clock in the morning.

6:36:29 The captain, extremely uneasy, did not know what course to take. Should he send a second detachment to the help of the first? Should he sacrifice more men with so little chance of saving those who had been sacrificed in the first place?

6:36:45 But his hesitation did not last; with a gesture he summoned one of his lieutenants and was giving him the order to push a reconnaissance to the south, when shots rang out.

6:36:57 Was it a signal? The soldiers rushed out of the fort, and half a mile away they saw a little troop returning in good order.

6:37:10 Mr. Fogg was marching at its head, and beside him Passepartout and the two other passengers, snatched from the hands of the Sioux.

6:37:19 There had been a fight ten miles south of Kearney. A few moments before the detachment arrived, Passepartout and his two companions were already struggling against their guards, and the Frenchman had knocked three of them senseless with his fists, when his master and the soldiers rushed to their rescue.

6:37:36 All of them, rescuers and rescued, were greeted with shouts of joy, and Phileas Fogg distributed among the soldiers the reward he had promised them, while Passepartout kept repeating to himself, not without some reason:

6:37:51 Jean Passepartout: There's no getting round it, I do cost my master dear!

6:37:57 Fix, without uttering a word, was looking at Mr. Fogg, and it would have been hard to analyse the feelings then at war within him. As for Mrs. Aouda, she had taken the gentleman's hand and was pressing it in her own, unable to utter a word!

6:38:15 Meanwhile Passepartout, the moment he arrived, had looked for the train at the station. He expected to find it there, ready to speed off to Omaha, and he hoped that the lost time might still be made up.

6:38:28 Jean Passepartout: The train! the train!

6:38:30 Fix: Gone.

6:38:32 Phileas Fogg: And the next train—when does it come through?

6:38:35 Fix: Not until this evening.

6:38:37 Phileas Fogg: Ah!

6:38:38 was all the impassive gentleman replied.

6:38:43 Chapter XXXI: In which Inspector Fix takes the interests of Phileas Fogg very seriously

6:38:47 Chapter Thirty-one. In which Inspector Fix takes the interests of Phileas Fogg very seriously.

6:38:55 Phileas Fogg was now twenty hours behind. Passepartout, the unwitting cause of this delay, was in despair. There was no doubt about it: he had ruined his master!

6:39:08 At this moment the inspector came up to Mr. Fogg and, looking him full in the face:

6:39:14 Fix: Very seriously, sir, you are in a hurry?

6:39:18 Phileas Fogg: Very seriously.

6:39:20 Fix: I insist. It really is in your interest to be in New York on the eleventh before nine at night, when the Liverpool steamer sails?

6:39:28 Phileas Fogg: A paramount interest.

6:39:30 Fix: And had your journey not been broken off by this attack of the Sioux, you would have arrived in New York early on the eleventh?

6:39:37 Phileas Fogg: Yes, with twelve hours to spare before the steamer.

6:39:41 Fix: Good. So you are twenty hours behind. Between twenty and twelve the difference is eight. That makes eight hours to be made up. Do you wish to try to do it?

6:39:51 Phileas Fogg: On foot?

6:39:52 Fix: No, by sledge, by sailing sledge. A man has offered me this means of transport.

6:39:58 It was the man who had spoken to the police inspector in the night, and whose offer Fix had turned down.

6:40:05 Phileas Fogg did not answer Fix; but when Fix had pointed out to him the man in question, who was walking up and down in front of the station, the gentleman went over to him.

6:40:17 A moment later Phileas Fogg and this American, whose name was Mudge, were entering a hut built at the foot of Fort Kearney.

6:40:27 There Mr. Fogg examined a rather singular vehicle, a kind of frame built on two long beams, slightly turned up in front like the runners of a sledge, on which five or six persons could find room.

6:40:41 A third of the way along the frame, towards the front, rose a very tall mast, on which an immense mainsail was bent. This mast, firmly held by metal shrouds, stretched an iron stay on which a jib of great size was hoisted.

6:40:57 At the stern a kind of steering oar made it possible to guide the craft.

6:41:03 It was, as can be seen, a sledge rigged as a sloop. In winter, on the frozen plain, when the trains are held up by the snow, these vehicles make extremely rapid passages from one station to another.

6:41:17 They carry, moreover, a prodigious spread of sail—more even than a racing cutter, which is liable to capsize, could ever carry—and, with the wind astern, they glide over the surface of the prairies at a speed equal to, if not greater than, that of the express trains.

6:41:37 In a few moments a bargain was struck between Mr. Fogg and the skipper of this land-boat. The wind was good. It was blowing a stiff breeze from the west. The snow had hardened, and Mudge undertook to carry Mr. Fogg to Omaha station in a few hours.

6:41:54 There trains are frequent, and the lines which lead to Chicago and New York are many. It was not impossible that the lost time might be made up. There was no cause, then, to hesitate about attempting the adventure.

6:42:09 Mr. Fogg, not wishing to expose Mrs. Aouda to the tortures of a passage in the open air, in a cold which the speed would make more unbearable still, proposed that she should remain at Kearney station in Passepartout's care.

6:42:24 The honest fellow would undertake to bring the young woman back to Europe by a better route and under more acceptable conditions.

6:42:32 Mrs. Aouda refused to be separated from Mr. Fogg, and Passepartout was very glad of her decision. For nothing in the world, indeed, would he have left his master,

6:42:44 since Fix was to go with him.

6:42:47 As for what the police inspector was thinking at that moment, it would be hard to say. Had his conviction been shaken by Phileas Fogg's return, or did he take him for an exceedingly clever rogue who, once his tour of the world was accomplished, must believe himself perfectly safe in England?

6:43:06 Perhaps Fix's opinion of Phileas Fogg had indeed changed. But he was none the less determined to do his duty and, more impatient than any of them, to hasten the return to England with all his might.

6:43:21 At eight o'clock the sledge was ready to start. The travellers—one is tempted to say the passengers—took their places in it and wrapped themselves tightly in their travelling rugs.

6:43:33 The two immense sails were hoisted, and, driven by the wind, the vehicle sped over the hardened snow at a speed of forty miles an hour.

6:43:43 The distance between Fort Kearney and Omaha is, in a straight line—in a bee-line, as the Americans say—two hundred miles at most. If the wind held, this distance could be covered in five hours. If no incident occurred, the sledge should have reached Omaha by one o'clock in the afternoon.

6:44:04 What a passage! The travellers, huddled against one another, could not speak. The cold, made sharper by the speed, would have cut their words short.

6:44:15 The sledge glided as lightly over the surface of the plain as a boat over the surface of the water—without the swell. When the breeze came skimming along the ground, it seemed as though the sledge were being lifted from the earth by its sails, vast wings of immense spread.

6:44:33 Mudge, at the helm, kept to the straight line, and with a stroke of his steering oar corrected the swerves the craft tended to make. Every stitch of canvas was drawing.

6:44:46 The jib had been boomed out and was no longer blanketed by the mainsail. A topmast was sent up, and a gaff-topsail, spread to the wind, added its driving power to that of the other sails. It could not be reckoned mathematically, but the speed of the sledge was certainly not less than forty miles an hour.

6:45:06 Mudge: If nothing breaks, we'll get there!

6:45:09 And Mudge had good reason to get there within the agreed time, for Mr. Fogg, true to his system, had tempted him with a handsome bonus.

6:45:19 The prairie, which the sledge was crossing in a straight line, was as flat as a sea. One would have said it was an immense frozen pond.

6:45:28 The railroad which served this part of the territory ran up from the south-west to the north-west by way of Grand Island, Columbus—an important town of Nebraska—Schuyler, Fremont, and then Omaha. Throughout its course it followed the right bank of the Platte River.

6:45:46 The sledge, cutting the route short, took the chord of the arc described by the railway. 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.

6:46:01 The way was thus entirely clear of obstacles, and Phileas Fogg had therefore only two things to fear: an accident to the craft, or a change or a drop in the wind.

6:46:13 But the breeze did not slacken. Quite the contrary. It blew hard enough to bend the mast, which the iron shrouds held firmly.

6:46:22 These metal ropes, like the strings of an instrument, resounded as if a bow had set them vibrating. The sledge flew along in the midst of a plaintive harmony of quite peculiar intensity.

6:46:35 Phileas Fogg: Those strings give the fifth and the octave.

6:46:39 And these were the only words he uttered during the whole passage. Mrs. Aouda, carefully bundled up in furs and travelling rugs, was protected as far as possible from the bite of the cold.

6:46:52 As for Passepartout, his face as red as the sun's disc when it sets in the mists, he was drinking in the biting air. With the fund of imperturbable confidence that was in him, he had begun to hope again.

6:47:07 Instead of reaching New York in the morning they would reach it in the evening, but there was still some chance that it would be before the Liverpool steamer sailed.

6:47:18 Passepartout had even felt a strong desire to shake hands with his ally Fix. He did not forget that it was the inspector himself who had procured the sailing sledge, and consequently the only means there was of reaching Omaha in time. But, from some presentiment or other, he kept to his usual reserve.

6:47:38 In any case, one thing Passepartout would never forget was the sacrifice Mr. Fogg had made, without hesitating, to snatch him from the hands of the Sioux. For that, Mr. Fogg had risked his fortune and his life… No! his servant would not forget it!

6:47:58 While each of the travellers gave himself up to such varied reflections, the sledge flew over the immense carpet of snow. If it crossed any creeks, tributaries or sub-tributaries of the Little Blue River, no one noticed it. Fields and streams vanished under a uniform whiteness.

6:48:18 The plain was absolutely deserted. Lying between the Union Pacific Road and the branch line which is to join Kearney to Saint Joseph, it formed a kind of great uninhabited island. Not a village, not a station, not even a fort.

6:48:34 From time to time some grimacing tree flashed past, its white skeleton writhing in the wind. Sometimes flocks of wild birds rose all together in a single flight.

6:48:47 Sometimes, too, prairie wolves in large packs, gaunt, famished, driven by ferocious need, raced the sledge. Then Passepartout, revolver in hand, stood ready to fire on the nearest of them.

6:49:02 Had any accident stopped the sledge just then, the travellers, set upon by these ferocious beasts of prey, would have run the gravest risks. But the sledge held on; it soon drew ahead, and before long the whole howling pack was left behind.

6:49:21 At noon Mudge recognised by certain signs that he was crossing the frozen course of the Platte River. He said nothing, but he was already sure that twenty miles farther on he would reach Omaha station.

6:49:35 And indeed it was not yet one o'clock when this skilful guide, leaving the helm, sprang to the halyards and let the sails come down by the run, while the sledge, carried on by its irresistible impetus, covered another half-mile under bare poles.

6:49:53 At last it stopped, and Mudge, pointing to a cluster of snow-white roofs, said:

6:49:59 Mudge: We've arrived.

6:50:01 Arrived! Arrived indeed, at that station which, by its numerous trains, is in daily communication with the east of the United States!

6:50:11 Passepartout and Fix had jumped down and were shaking their numbed limbs. They helped Mr. Fogg and the young woman down from the sledge. Phileas Fogg settled generously with Mudge, whose hand Passepartout shook as a friend's, and they all hurried to Omaha station.

6:50:29 It is at this important city of Nebraska that the Pacific Railroad proper comes to an end, the line which links the basin of the Mississippi 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.

6:50:50 A through train was ready to leave. Phileas Fogg and his companions had only just time to rush into a car. They had seen nothing of Omaha;

6:51:00 but Passepartout admitted to himself that there was no cause for regret, and that seeing was not the object.

6:51:08 At extreme speed this train ran on into the State of Iowa, through Council Bluffs, Des Moines and Iowa City. In the night it crossed the Mississippi at Davenport and passed by way of Rock Island into Illinois.

6:51:23 On the following day, the tenth, at four in the afternoon, it pulled into Chicago, a city already raised again from its ruins and sitting more proudly than ever upon the shores of its lovely Lake Michigan.

6:51:37 Nine hundred miles separate Chicago from New York. There was no lack of trains at Chicago. Mr. Fogg passed straight from the one into the other.

6:51:48 The dashing locomotive of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad set off at full speed, as though it understood that the honourable gentleman had no time to lose.

6:51:59 It shot like lightning across Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, passing through towns with names out of antiquity, some of which had streets and tramways,

6:52:11 but as yet no houses.

6:52:15 At last the Hudson came in sight, and on the eleventh of December, at a quarter past eleven at night, the train drew up in the station on the right bank of the river,

6:52:25 before the very pier of the steamers of the Cunard Line, otherwise known as the 'British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company.'

6:52:35 The China, bound for Liverpool, had left forty-five minutes before!

6:52:43 Chapter XXXII: In which Phileas Fogg engages in a direct struggle against ill luck

6:52:47 Chapter Thirty-two. In which Phileas Fogg engages in a direct struggle against ill luck.

6:52:55 In leaving, the China seemed to have carried off with her the last hope of Phileas Fogg.

6:53:01 For none of the other steamers which run direct between America and Europe—neither the French transatlantic liners, nor the ships of the White Star Line,

6:53:10 nor the steamers of the Imman Company, nor those of the Hamburg line, nor any others—could serve the gentleman's purpose.

6:53:19 The Pereire, indeed, of the French Transatlantic Company—whose admirable ships equal in speed, and surpass in comfort, all those of the other lines without exception—did not sail until the day after next, the fourteenth of December.

6:53:35 And besides, like those of the Hamburg Company, she did not go direct to Liverpool or London, but to Havre; and that additional crossing from Havre to Southampton, by delaying Phileas Fogg, would have brought his last efforts to nothing.

6:53:51 As for the Imman steamers, one of which, the City of Paris, was putting to sea the next day, they were not to be thought of. These ships are chiefly employed in carrying emigrants; their engines are weak, they go as much under sail as under steam, and their speed is middling.

6:54:07 They took longer over this crossing from New York to England than Mr. Fogg had left in which to win his wager.

6:54:14 Of all this the gentleman made himself perfectly aware by consulting his Bradshaw, which gave him, day by day, the movements of transoceanic shipping.

6:54:26 Passepartout was crushed. To have missed the steamer by forty-five minutes—it was killing him. It was his fault, his alone, for instead of helping his master he had never ceased strewing obstacles in his path!

6:54:41 And when he went over in his mind all the incidents of the journey, when he reckoned up the sums spent to no purpose and on his account alone,

6:54:50 when he reflected that this enormous wager, together with the considerable expenses of a journey now made useless, would ruin Mr. Fogg completely, he heaped insults upon his own head.

6:55:03 Mr. Fogg, however, did not reproach him in the least, and on leaving the pier of the transatlantic steamers he said only these words:

6:55:13 Phileas Fogg: We shall decide tomorrow. Come.

6:55:17 Mr. Fogg, Mrs. Aouda, Fix and Passepartout crossed the Hudson in the Jersey City ferry-boat and got into a cab, which drove them to the Saint Nicholas Hotel, in Broadway.

6:55:29 Rooms were put at their disposal, and the night went by—short for Phileas Fogg, who slept a perfect sleep, but very long for Mrs. Aouda and her companions, whose agitation would not allow them to rest.

6:55:44 The following day was the twelfth of December.

6:55:48 Between seven in the morning on the twelfth and eight forty-five in the evening on the twenty-first, nine days, thirteen hours and forty-five minutes remained.

6:55:58 So, had Phileas Fogg sailed the evening before in the China, one of the fastest ships of the Cunard Line, he would have been at Liverpool, and then in London, within the time required!

6:56:11 Mr. Fogg left the hotel alone, after telling his servant to wait for him and to warn Mrs. Aouda to hold herself in readiness at any moment.

6:56:22 Mr. Fogg went down to the banks of the Hudson, and among the ships moored at the quays or anchored in the river he searched carefully for those about to sail.

6:56:32 Several vessels were flying their departure flag and preparing to put to sea on the morning tide, for in that immense and admirable port of New York there is not a day on which a hundred ships do not set out for every point of the globe;

6:56:48 but most of them were sailing ships, and they could not suit Phileas Fogg.

6:56:53 The gentleman seemed fated to fail in this last attempt, when he caught sight of a screw merchantman of fine lines, lying at anchor off the Battery, a cable's length away at most,

6:57:05 whose funnel, pouring out great puffs of smoke, showed that she was preparing to get under way.

6:57:12 Phileas Fogg hailed a boat and got into it, and a few strokes of the oars brought him to the ladder of the Henrietta, a steamer with an iron hull, all of whose upperworks were of wood.

6:57:25 The captain of the Henrietta was on board. Phileas Fogg went up on deck and asked for the captain. The latter presented himself at once.

6:57:35 He was a man of fifty, a sort of sea dog, a grumbler who was evidently no easy customer. Bulging eyes, a complexion of oxidised copper, red hair, a thick neck—nothing of the look of a man of the world.

6:57:52 Phileas Fogg: The captain?

6:57:53 Captain Andrew Speedy: That's me.

6:57:54 Phileas Fogg: I am Phileas Fogg, of London.

6:57:57 Captain Andrew Speedy: And I'm Andrew Speedy, of Cardif.

6:58:00 Phileas Fogg: You are about to sail?…

6:58:02 Captain Andrew Speedy: In an hour.

6:58:03 Phileas Fogg: You are bound for…?

6:58:05 Captain Andrew Speedy: Bordeaux.

6:58:07 Phileas Fogg: And your cargo?

6:58:08 Captain Andrew Speedy: Stones in her belly. No freight. I'm sailing in ballast.

6:58:12 Phileas Fogg: You have passengers?

6:58:14 Captain Andrew Speedy: No passengers. Never any passengers. Cumbersome cargo, and it answers back.

6:58:22 Phileas Fogg: Your ship is fast?

6:58:23 Captain Andrew Speedy: Between eleven and twelve knots. The Henrietta—well known.

6:58:28 Phileas Fogg: Will you carry me to Liverpool, myself and three others?

6:58:31 Captain Andrew Speedy: To Liverpool? Why not to China?

6:58:34 Phileas Fogg: I said Liverpool.

6:58:37 Captain Andrew Speedy: No!

6:58:39 Phileas Fogg: No?

6:58:40 Captain Andrew Speedy: No. I'm about to sail for Bordeaux, and to Bordeaux I go.

6:58:45 Phileas Fogg: Whatever the price?

6:58:47 Captain Andrew Speedy: Whatever the price.

6:58:49 The captain had spoken in a tone that admitted of no reply.

6:58:53 Phileas Fogg: But the owners of the Henrietta…

6:58:55 Captain Andrew Speedy: I am the owners. The ship belongs to me.

6:58:59 Phileas Fogg: I will charter her.

6:59:00 Captain Andrew Speedy: No.

6:59:01 Phileas Fogg: I will buy her.

6:59:02 Captain Andrew Speedy: No.

6:59:04 Phileas Fogg did not turn a hair. Yet the situation was serious. New York was not Hong Kong, nor was the captain of the Henrietta the skipper of the Tankadere.

6:59:16 Until now the gentleman's money had always got the better of obstacles.

6:59:21 This time money failed.

6:59:24 And yet some means had to be found of crossing the Atlantic by boat—unless it were crossed by balloon, which would have been a most venturesome undertaking and which, besides, was not practicable.

6:59:37 It appears, however, that Phileas Fogg had hit upon an idea, since he said to the captain:

6:59:43 Phileas Fogg: Well, then, will you take me to Bordeaux?

6:59:46 Captain Andrew Speedy: No, not even if you paid me two hundred dollars!

6:59:50 Phileas Fogg: I offer you two thousand.

6:59:52 Ten thousand francs.

6:59:54 Captain Andrew Speedy: A head?

6:59:55 Phileas Fogg: A head.

6:59:56 Captain Andrew Speedy: And there are four of you?

6:59:58 Phileas Fogg: Four.

7:00:00 Captain Speedy began to scratch his forehead, as if he meant to tear the skin off it. Eight thousand dollars to be earned without altering his voyage: that was well worth his putting aside his pronounced antipathy to passengers of every kind.

7:00:16 Besides, passengers at two thousand dollars apiece are no longer passengers; they are precious merchandise.

7:00:25 Captain Andrew Speedy: I sail at nine o'clock,

7:00:27 said Captain Speedy simply,

7:00:29 Captain Andrew Speedy: and if you and yours are here?…

7:00:31 Phileas Fogg: At nine o'clock we shall be on board!

7:00:34 replied Mr. Fogg, no less simply.

7:00:38 It was half-past eight. To land from the Henrietta, take a carriage, drive to the Saint Nicholas Hotel and bring back Mrs. Aouda, Passepartout and even the inseparable Fix, to whom he graciously offered a passage—all this the gentleman did with that calm which never deserted him in any circumstances.

7:00:58 At the moment the Henrietta got under way, all four were on board.

7:01:03 When Passepartout learned what this last passage would cost, he let out one of those long-drawn 'Oh!'s which run through every interval of the descending chromatic scale!

7:01:14 Jean Passepartout: Oh!…

7:01:17 As for Inspector Fix, he told himself that the Bank of England would decidedly not come out of this affair unscathed.

7:01:26 For by the time they arrived, and supposing the said Fogg did not throw a few more handfuls into the sea, more than seven thousand pounds—one hundred and seventy-five thousand francs—would be missing from the bag of bank-notes!

7:01:42 Chapter XXXIII: In which Phileas Fogg shows himself equal to the occasion

7:01:46 Chapter Thirty-three. In which Phileas Fogg shows himself equal to the occasion.

7:01:53 An hour later the steamer Henrietta passed the lightship that marks the entrance to the Hudson, rounded the point of Sandy Hook and stood out to sea. During the day she coasted along Long Island, off the Fire Island light, and ran rapidly eastward.

7:02:11 The next day, the thirteenth of December, at noon, a man went up on to the bridge to take the ship's position.

7:02:18 One would certainly suppose that this man was Captain Speedy!

7:02:22 Not in the least.

7:02:24 It was Phileas Fogg, Esquire.

7:02:28 As for Captain Speedy, he was quite simply locked up in his cabin, and was letting out howls which betokened a rage—a very pardonable one—worked up to the highest pitch.

7:02:42 What had happened was very simple. Phileas Fogg wanted to go to Liverpool; the captain would not take him there.

7:02:50 So Phileas Fogg had agreed to take passage for Bordeaux, and in the thirty hours he had been on board he had manoeuvred so well by dint of bank-notes that the crew, sailors and stokers alike—a somewhat shady crew, on rather bad terms with the captain—belonged to him.

7:03:08 And that was why Phileas Fogg was in command in the stead of Captain Speedy, why the captain was locked in his cabin, and why, in short, the Henrietta was heading for Liverpool.

7:03:21 Only, it was very clear, to see Mr. Fogg handle the ship, that Mr. Fogg had been a sailor.

7:03:29 Now, how the adventure would end would be known later. Mrs. Aouda, however, could not help being anxious, though she said nothing of it. Fix, for his part, had been dumbfounded at first. As for Passepartout, he found the whole thing simply delightful.

7:03:49 Captain Andrew Speedy: Between eleven and twelve knots,

7:03:51 Captain Speedy had said, and indeed the Henrietta was keeping up that average speed.

7:03:57 If, then—how many more 'ifs'!—if, then, the sea did not become too rough, if the wind did not shift into the east, if no damage befell the vessel and no accident the engine,

7:04:10 the Henrietta could cover, in the nine days counted from the twelfth of December to the twenty-first, the three thousand miles which separate New York from Liverpool.

7:04:21 It is true that, once he had arrived, the affair of the Henrietta coming on top of the affair of the Bank might carry the gentleman a little further than he would wish.

7:04:32 During the first days the voyage went on under excellent conditions. The sea was not too heavy; the wind seemed settled in the north-east; the sails were set, and under her fore-and-aft canvas the Henrietta went along like a real transatlantic liner.

7:04:49 Passepartout was enchanted. His master's latest exploit, whose consequences he refused to see, filled him with enthusiasm. Never had the crew seen a merrier or a nimbler fellow.

7:05:02 He showered the sailors with friendliness and astonished them with his acrobatic feats. He lavished on them the finest of names and the most tempting of drinks. For him they worked the ship like gentlemen, and the stokers stoked like heroes.

7:05:18 His good humour, which was very catching, spread to everyone. He had forgotten the past, its vexations, its perils. He thought only of the goal, so nearly reached, and at times he boiled over with impatience, as if he had been heated by the Henrietta's furnaces.

7:05:37 Often, too, the worthy fellow would hover round Fix; he would look at him with an eye 'that spoke volumes'! but he did not speak to him, for there was no longer any intimacy between the two former friends.

7:05:53 Besides, Fix, it must be said, could no longer make head or tail of it! The conquest of the Henrietta, the buying of her crew, this Fogg handling the ship like a seasoned sailor—the whole business left him dizzy. He no longer knew what to think!

7:06:11 But after all, a gentleman who began by stealing fifty-five thousand pounds might very well end by stealing a ship.

7:06:19 And Fix was naturally led to believe that the Henrietta, under Fogg's direction, was not going to Liverpool at all, but to some spot on the globe where the thief, turned pirate, would quietly put himself in safety!

7:06:33 This hypothesis, it must be admitted, was as plausible as could be, and the detective was beginning to regret very seriously that he had ever embarked upon this affair.

7:06:45 As for Captain Speedy, he went on howling in his cabin; and Passepartout, who was charged with feeding him, did so only with the greatest precautions, vigorous as he was.

7:06:58 Mr. Fogg, for his part, no longer even seemed aware that there was a captain on board.

7:07:05 On the thirteenth they passed over the tail of the Newfoundland Bank. These are bad waters. In winter especially, fogs are frequent there and gales formidable.

7:07:16 Since the day before, the barometer, which had fallen sharply, had given warning of an approaching change in the weather. And indeed, during the night the temperature changed, the cold grew sharper, and at the same time the wind shifted into the south-east.

7:07:34 It was a setback. Mr. Fogg, in order not to depart from his course, had to furl his sails and crowd on steam.

7:07:43 Nevertheless the ship's progress was slowed, owing to the state of the sea, whose long rollers broke against her stem. She pitched very violently, and that at the expense of her speed.

7:07:56 The breeze was turning little by little into a hurricane, and already the moment could be foreseen when the Henrietta would no longer be able to keep her head to the sea. And if she had to run before it, that meant the unknown, with all its evil chances.

7:08:14 Passepartout's face darkened along with the sky, and for two days the honest fellow went through mortal terrors. But Phileas Fogg was a bold seaman who knew how to stand up to the sea, and he kept on his course without even easing to low steam.

7:08:31 When the Henrietta could not rise to a wave she went through it, and her deck was swept from end to end; but through it she went.

7:08:41 Sometimes, too, when a mountain of water lifted the stern clear of the waves, the screw came out of the water, beating the air with its maddened blades; but the ship still drove ahead.

7:08:55 The wind, however, did not freshen as much as might have been feared. It was not one of those hurricanes which sweep by at ninety miles an hour. It held at a stiff gale; but unfortunately it blew obstinately from the south-east quarter and would not allow any sail to be set.

7:09:14 And yet, as will be seen, it would have been most useful to come to the help of the steam!

7:09:21 The sixteenth of December was the seventy-fifth day since the departure from London.

7:09:26 All in all, the Henrietta was not yet seriously behindhand. Nearly half the crossing had been made, and the worst waters had been passed. In summer, one could have answered for success. In winter, they were at the mercy of the bad season.

7:09:43 Passepartout gave no opinion. At heart he was hopeful, and if the wind failed them, at least he counted on the steam.

7:09:52 Now, on that day the engineer, having come up on deck, met Mr. Fogg and had a rather animated conversation with him.

7:10:00 Without knowing why—from some presentiment, no doubt—Passepartout felt a kind of vague uneasiness. He would have given one of his ears to hear with the other what was being said there. He did, however, catch a few words, these among others, spoken by his master:

7:10:18 Phileas Fogg: You are certain of what you say?

7:10:20 the Henrietta's engineer: Certain, sir. Don't forget that ever since we left we've been stoking with all our furnaces alight;

7:10:27 the Henrietta's engineer: and though we had coal enough to go at low steam from New York to Bordeaux, we haven't enough to go at full steam from New York to Liverpool!

7:10:36 Phileas Fogg: I shall see to it.

7:10:39 Passepartout had understood. A mortal anxiety seized him.

7:10:44 The coal was going to run out!

7:10:47 Jean Passepartout: Ah! if my master parries that one, he'll be quite a man, and no mistake!