Around the World in Eighty Days, Part 7: The Long Noses

4:22:43 Chapter XXII: In which Passepartout sees very clearly that, even at the antipodes, it is prudent to have some money in one’s pocket

4:22:43 Chapter Twenty-two. In which Passepartout sees very clearly that, even at the antipodes, it is prudent to have some money in one's pocket.

4:22:54 The Carnatic, having left Hong Kong on the seventh of November at half-past six in the evening, was heading at full steam for the shores of Japan. She carried a full cargo of goods and passengers.

4:23:07 Two cabins aft remained unoccupied. They were the ones that had been engaged on behalf of Mr. Phileas Fogg.

4:23:15 The next morning the men forward were able to see, not without some surprise, a passenger with half-dazed eyes, an unsteady gait and a tousled head, who came up out of the second-class hatchway and staggered over to sit down on the spare spars.

4:23:33 This passenger was Passepartout in person.

4:23:37 Here is what had happened.

4:23:40 A few moments after Fix had left the den, two waiters had picked up Passepartout, who was fast asleep, and laid him on the bed set aside for the smokers.

4:23:50 But three hours later Passepartout, pursued even into his nightmares by a fixed idea, awoke and began to struggle against the stupefying effect of the drug. The thought of his unfulfilled duty shook off his torpor.

4:24:06 He left that bed of stupor;

4:24:09 and stumbling, propping himself against the walls, falling down and picking himself up again, but always and irresistibly driven on by a kind of instinct, he made his way out of the den, crying as if in a dream,

4:24:23 Jean Passepartout: The Carnatic! The Carnatic!

4:24:26 The steamer lay there, smoking, ready to leave. Passepartout had only a few steps to go.

4:24:33 He dashed onto the gangplank, got through the gangway, and fell senseless in the bows just as the Carnatic was casting off her moorings.

4:24:42 A few sailors, as men well used to scenes of this kind, carried the poor fellow down to a second-class cabin; and Passepartout did not wake until the following morning, a hundred and fifty miles from the coast of China.

4:24:57 That, then, is why Passepartout was on the deck of the Carnatic that morning, drinking in the fresh sea breezes in great gulps. The pure air sobered him.

4:25:08 He began to collect his ideas, and did not manage it without some trouble. But at last he remembered the scenes of the day before, Fix's confidences, the den, et cetera.

4:25:20 Jean Passepartout: It's plain that I was abominably fuddled! What will Mr. Fogg say? Anyhow, I didn't miss the boat, and that's the main thing.

4:25:29 Then, thinking of Fix:

4:25:31 Jean Passepartout: As for that fellow, I do hope we are rid of him, and that after what he proposed to me he hasn't dared to follow us aboard the Carnatic.

4:25:39 Jean Passepartout: A police inspector, a detective, on the heels of my master, accused of that robbery at the Bank of England! Come, come! Mr. Fogg is a thief just as much as I'm a murderer!

4:25:52 Ought Passepartout to tell his master all this? Was it right to let him know the part Fix had played in the affair?

4:25:59 Would he not do better to wait until they reached London, and then tell him that an agent of the Metropolitan Police had shadowed him round the world, and have a good laugh about it with him? Yes, no doubt.

4:26:12 In any case, the question needed thinking over. The most pressing thing was to rejoin Mr. Fogg and beg him to accept his apologies for such unpardonable conduct.

4:26:24 So Passepartout got up. The sea was running high, and the steamer was rolling heavily. The worthy fellow, still none too steady on his legs, made his way as best he could to the after part of the ship.

4:26:39 On deck he saw nobody who looked like either his master or Mrs. Aouda.

4:26:45 Jean Passepartout: Ah, well, Mrs. Aouda is still in bed at this hour. As for Mr. Fogg, he'll have found some whist player, and as usual…

4:26:54 So saying, Passepartout went down to the saloon. Mr. Fogg was not there. Passepartout had only one thing to do: ask the purser which cabin Mr. Fogg occupied.

4:27:08 The purser replied that he knew of no passenger by that name.

4:27:12 Jean Passepartout: Excuse me. I mean a gentleman—tall, cold, not very talkative—travelling with a young lady…

4:27:19 the Carnatic's purser: We have no young lady on board. Besides, here is the passenger list. You may look through it.

4:27:25 Passepartout looked through the list… His master's name was not on it.

4:27:31 Everything swam before his eyes. Then an idea shot through his brain.

4:27:37 Jean Passepartout: Here, now! I am on the Carnatic, aren't I?

4:27:41 the Carnatic's purser: Yes.

4:27:43 Jean Passepartout: Bound for Yokohama?

4:27:44 the Carnatic's purser: Exactly.

4:27:46 For a moment Passepartout had been afraid that he was on the wrong ship! But if he was on the Carnatic, it was certain that his master was not.

4:27:56 Passepartout dropped into an armchair. It was a thunderbolt. And suddenly light dawned upon him.

4:28:04 He remembered that the Carnatic's hour of sailing had been put forward, and that he was to have told his master, and that he had not done so! So it was his fault that Mr. Fogg and Mrs. Aouda had missed the boat!

4:28:23 His fault, yes; but still more the fault of the traitor who, to separate him from his master and to keep his master at Hong Kong, had made him drunk! For at last he understood the police inspector's manoeuvre.

4:28:37 And now Mr. Fogg was ruined for certain, his wager lost, himself arrested, imprisoned perhaps!… At the thought, Passepartout tore his hair.

4:28:48 Ah! if ever Fix fell into his hands, what a settling of accounts there would be!

4:28:56 At length, after the first moment of despair, Passepartout recovered his self-possession and studied the situation. It was hardly an enviable one. The Frenchman was on his way to Japan. Certain of getting there, how was he to get back?

4:29:13 His pocket was empty. Not a shilling, not a penny! His passage and his food on board, however, had been paid in advance. He therefore had five or six days before him in which to decide what to do.

4:29:29 How he ate and drank during that crossing is beyond description.

4:29:34 He ate for his master, for Mrs. Aouda and for himself.

4:29:38 He ate as though Japan, where he was about to land, were a desert country, bare of every edible substance.

4:29:48 On the thirteenth, with the morning tide, the Carnatic entered the port of Yokohama.

4:29:54 This is an important port of call in the Pacific, where all the steamers carrying the mails and travellers between North America, China, Japan and the islands of Malaysia put in.

4:30:05 Yokohama lies on the Bay of Yeddo itself, a short distance from that immense city, the second capital of the Japanese empire.

4:30:14 Yeddo was once the residence of the Tycoon, in the days when that civil emperor existed, and the rival of Meako, the great city where the Mikado lives, the ecclesiastical emperor, descendant of the gods.

4:30:29 The Carnatic came alongside the quay at Yokohama, near the harbour jetties and the customs warehouses, among a great many vessels belonging to every nation.

4:30:40 Passepartout set foot, without the least enthusiasm, on that most curious land of the Sons of the Sun. He had nothing better to do than to take chance for his guide and wander at random through the streets of the town.

4:30:56 Passepartout found himself at first in an entirely European town, with low-fronted houses adorned with verandas, beneath which ran elegant colonnades;

4:31:07 and with its streets, its squares, its docks and its warehouses, it covered the whole space from Treaty Point to the river.

4:31:15 There, as at Hong Kong, as at Calcutta, swarmed a jumble of people of every race—Americans, English, Chinese, Dutch—merchants ready to sell anything and to buy anything.

4:31:29 Among them the Frenchman found himself as much a stranger as if he had dropped from the moon.

4:31:35 Passepartout did have one resource: to apply to the French or English consular agents at Yokohama. But he was loath to tell his story, so intimately bound up with his master's, and before coming to that he meant to have exhausted every other chance.

4:31:53 So, having gone through the European part of the town without chance having helped him in any way, he entered the Japanese part, resolved, if need be, to push on as far as Yeddo.

4:32:06 This Japanese quarter of Yokohama is called Benten, after a goddess of the sea who is worshipped on the neighbouring islands.

4:32:14 There were to be seen splendid avenues of firs and cedars; sacred gateways of a strange architecture; bridges buried among bamboos and reeds;

4:32:26 temples sheltered under the vast and melancholy canopy of age-old cedars; monasteries in whose depths the priests of Buddhism and the followers of the religion of Confucius lived out their quiet lives.

4:32:41 There were endless streets where one might have gathered a harvest of children with rosy skins and red cheeks, little figures who might have been cut out of some Japanese screen;

4:32:52 and they played among short-legged poodles and yellowish cats without tails, very lazy and very affectionate.

4:33:01 In the streets there was nothing but swarming and ceaseless coming and going: bonzes passing in procession, beating their monotonous tambourines;

4:33:11 yakounines, officers of the customs or the police, in pointed hats inlaid with lacquer, with two sabres in their belts;

4:33:19 soldiers dressed in blue cotton striped with white and armed with percussion muskets; the Mikado's men-at-arms, bagged up in their silk doublets, with hauberk and coat of mail;

4:33:32 and numbers of other military men of every rank—for in Japan the soldier's calling is held in high esteem.

4:33:40 Then there were mendicant friars, pilgrims in long robes, and plain townsfolk with sleek, ebony-black hair.

4:33:49 Lastly, among the carriages, the palanquins, the horses, the porters, the sail-barrows, the lacquer-sided 'norimons' and the soft 'cangos', which are true litters of bamboo, a few women could be seen moving along.

4:34:04 They went with little steps of their little feet, shod in cloth shoes, straw sandals or clogs of carved wood; their teeth were blackened in the fashion of the day; and they wore with elegance the national dress, the 'kirimon'.

4:34:19 This is a kind of dressing-gown crossed by a silk scarf, whose broad sash blossoms out behind into an extravagant knot—

4:34:28 which the Parisian ladies of today seem to have borrowed from the women of Japan.

4:34:34 For some hours Passepartout strolled among this motley crowd, looking also at the curious and opulent shops; the bazaars where all the glitter of Japanese goldsmiths' work lies heaped up;

4:34:48 the 'eating-houses' decked with streamers and banners, which he was not allowed to enter; and those tea-houses where the fragrant hot water is drunk by the cupful, along with 'saki', a liquor made from fermented rice;

4:35:03 and those comfortable smoking-houses where they smoke a very fine tobacco, and not opium, the use of which is almost unknown in Japan.

4:35:13 Then Passepartout found himself in the open country, among immense rice-fields.

4:35:19 There, with flowers giving off their last colours and their last scents, bloomed brilliant camellias, borne no longer on shrubs but on trees;

4:35:30 and in the bamboo enclosures stood cherry, plum and apple trees, which the Japanese grow for their blossom rather than for their fruit.

4:35:38 Grimacing scarecrows and shrieking whirligigs defend them from the beaks of sparrows, pigeons, ravens and other voracious birds. There was not a majestic cedar but sheltered some great eagle; not a weeping willow but covered with its foliage some heron perched mournfully on one leg.

4:35:58 Everywhere, in short, there were crows, ducks, hawks, wild geese, and a great many of those cranes which the Japanese address as 'Lordships', and which stand for long life and happiness in their eyes.

4:36:14 As he wandered along in this way, Passepartout caught sight of a few violets in the grass:

4:36:19 Jean Passepartout: Good! There's my supper.

4:36:22 But when he smelt them, he found they had no scent at all.

4:36:26 Jean Passepartout: No luck!

4:36:29 To be sure, the honest fellow had taken the precaution of eating as hearty a breakfast as he could before leaving the Carnatic; but after a whole day's walking about, he felt his stomach very hollow.

4:36:42 He had duly noticed that sheep, goats and pigs were entirely absent from the stalls of the Japanese butchers;

4:36:50 and as he knew that it is a sacrilege to kill oxen, which are kept solely for the needs of farming, he had concluded that meat was scarce in Japan.

4:37:00 He was not mistaken.

4:37:02 But for want of butcher's meat, his stomach would have done very nicely with a quarter of wild boar or of venison, with partridges or quails, with poultry or fish, on which the Japanese live almost entirely, together with the produce of their rice-fields.

4:37:19 But he had to put a brave face on his ill luck, and he put off till the next day the business of finding himself something to eat.

4:37:28 Night came. Passepartout went back into the Japanese town, and he wandered through the streets among the many-coloured lanterns, watching troupes of mountebanks perform their dazzling feats, and the open-air astrologers gathering crowds round their telescopes.

4:37:46 Then he saw the harbour again, spangled with the fires of the fishermen, who were luring the fish by the glow of blazing resin.

4:37:55 At last the streets emptied. The crowd gave way to the rounds of the yakounines. These officers, in their magnificent costumes and surrounded by their retinues, looked like ambassadors; and each time he met some dazzling patrol, Passepartout would say again, by way of a joke:

4:38:16 Jean Passepartout: Well, there now! Another Japanese embassy setting off for Europe!

4:38:21 Chapter XXIII: In which Passepartout’s nose grows inordinately long

4:38:25 Chapter Twenty-three. In which Passepartout's nose grows inordinately long.

4:38:32 The next day Passepartout, worn out and famished, told himself that he must eat at any cost, and the sooner the better. He did have the resource of selling his watch, but he would sooner have died of hunger.

4:38:47 Now or never was the moment for the good fellow to make use of the strong, if not melodious, voice with which nature had endowed him.

4:38:56 He knew a few French and English songs, and he resolved to try them. The Japanese must surely be lovers of music, since with them everything is done to the sound of cymbals, tam-tams and drums; and they could not fail to appreciate the talents of a European virtuoso.

4:39:15 But it was perhaps a little early in the day to get up a concert, and the dilettanti, abruptly awakened, might not have paid the singer in coin bearing the Mikado's head.

4:39:26 Passepartout therefore decided to wait a few hours. But as he trudged along, it occurred to him that he would look too well dressed for a strolling artist, and the idea then came to him of exchanging his clothes for some cast-off rig more in keeping with his position.

4:39:43 Besides, the exchange ought to bring him something to boot, which he could at once apply to satisfying his appetite.

4:39:52 The resolution taken, it remained to carry it out. Only after a long search did Passepartout discover a Japanese dealer in second-hand clothes, to whom he explained what he wanted.

4:40:05 The European suit took the dealer's fancy, and soon Passepartout came out rigged up in an old Japanese robe, with a sort of ribbed turban on his head, faded by time.

4:40:18 But in return a few small silver coins jingled in his pocket.

4:40:24 Jean Passepartout: Good. I'll pretend it's carnival time!

4:40:28 Passepartout's first care, once he was thus 'japanned', was to go into a tea-house of modest appearance;

4:40:35 and there, off the remains of a fowl and a few handfuls of rice, he breakfasted like a man for whom dinner would be one more problem to solve.

4:40:46 Jean Passepartout: Now,

4:40:47 he said to himself when he had eaten his fill,

4:40:50 Jean Passepartout: the thing is not to lose my head. I no longer have the resource of selling this rig for one still more Japanese. So I must find some way of leaving this land of the Sun as quickly as I can, for I shall keep nothing but a sorry memory of it!

4:41:05 Passepartout then thought of visiting the steamers about to sail for America. He meant to offer himself as a cook or a servant, asking for no other payment than his passage and his food. Once at San Francisco, he would see about getting himself out of the scrape.

4:41:22 The important thing was to cross those four thousand seven hundred miles of the Pacific that stretch between Japan and the New World.

4:41:31 Passepartout, being no man to let an idea languish, made his way towards the port of Yokohama. But the nearer he came to the docks, the more his plan, which had seemed so simple at the moment he thought of it, appeared impossible to carry out.

4:41:47 Why should an American steamer need a cook or a servant on board, and what confidence would he inspire, got up like this? What recommendations could he put forward? What references could he give?

4:42:00 As he was reflecting in this way, his eyes fell on an immense placard which a sort of clown was carrying about the streets of Yokohama. This placard was worded as follows, in English:

4:42:13 Jean Passepartout: The Honourable William Batulcar's Japanese Acrobatic Troupe! Last 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!

4:42:30 Jean Passepartout: The United States of America! That's just the thing for me!…

4:42:36 He followed the sandwich-man, and in his wake he was soon back in the Japanese town. A quarter of an hour later he stopped in front of a large booth crowned with several clusters of streamers, whose outer walls showed, without perspective but in violent colours, a whole band of jugglers.

4:42:56 It was the establishment of the Honourable Batulcar, a sort of American Barnum, the manager of a troupe of mountebanks, jugglers, clowns, acrobats, equilibrists and gymnasts,

4:43:09 which, according to the placard, was giving its last performances before leaving the empire of the Sun for the States of the Union.

4:43:18 Passepartout went in under a portico in front of the booth and asked for Mr. Batulcar. Mr. Batulcar appeared in person.

4:43:27 American showman, 55: What do you want?

4:43:29 he said to Passepartout, whom he took at first for a Japanese.

4:43:33 Jean Passepartout: Do you need a servant?

4:43:35 American showman, 55: A servant!

4:43:37 cried the Barnum, stroking the thick grey tuft of beard that bristled under his chin.

4:43:42 American showman, 55: I've got two, obedient and faithful, who have never left me and who serve me for nothing, on condition that I feed them… And here they are,

4:43:51 he added, holding up his two sturdy arms, furrowed with veins as thick as the strings of a double bass.

4:43:59 Jean Passepartout: So I can be of no use to you at all?

4:44:02 American showman, 55: None at all.

4:44:04 Jean Passepartout: Diable! And yet it would have suited me very well to go off with you.

4:44:09 American showman, 55: Look here! You're a Japanese just as much as I'm the Mikado! Why on earth are you dressed up like that?

4:44:17 Jean Passepartout: A man dresses as best he can!

4:44:19 American showman, 55: True enough. You're a Frenchman, aren't you?

4:44:22 Jean Passepartout: Yes, a Parisian from Paris.

4:44:25 American showman, 55: Then you must know how to pull faces?

4:44:28 Jean Passepartout: Ma foi,

4:44:29 replied Passepartout, vexed to find that his nationality called forth such a question,

4:44:34 Jean Passepartout: we French do know how to pull faces, it's true, but no better than the Americans!

4:44:40 American showman, 55: Right. Well, if I can't take you on as a servant, I can take you on as a clown. You see, my good fellow, in France they show off foreign buffoons, and abroad they show off French ones!

4:44:53 Jean Passepartout: Ah!

4:44:54 American showman, 55: You're strong, I suppose?

4:44:56 Jean Passepartout: Especially when I get up from table.

4:44:58 American showman, 55: And you can sing?

4:45:00 Jean Passepartout: Yes,

4:45:00 replied Passepartout, who had once taken his part in a few street concerts.

4:45:05 American showman, 55: But can you sing standing on your head, with a top spinning on the sole of your left foot and a sabre balanced on the sole of your right?

4:45:14 Jean Passepartout: Parbleu!

4:45:15 replied Passepartout, who remembered the first exercises of his early youth.

4:45:20 American showman, 55: That's the whole point, you see!

4:45:23 The engagement was concluded hic et nunc.

4:45:27 At last Passepartout had found a situation. He was engaged as a man-of-all-work in the celebrated Japanese troupe. It was not very flattering, but within a week he would be on his way to San Francisco.

4:45:43 The performance, announced with a great flourish by the Honourable Batulcar, was to begin at three o'clock, and soon the formidable instruments of a Japanese orchestra, drums and tam-tams, were thundering at the door.

4:45:57 It will be readily understood that Passepartout had had no time to study a part;

4:46:03 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.

4:46:12 This 'great attraction' of the performance was to close the series of feats.

4:46:18 Before three o'clock the spectators had invaded the great booth. Europeans and local people, Chinese and Japanese, men, women and children, rushed for the narrow benches and for the boxes facing the stage. The musicians had gone back inside, and the full orchestra—gongs, tam-tams, clappers, flutes, tambourines and bass drums—was playing away furiously.

4:46:44 The performance was what all such displays of acrobats are. But it must be admitted that the Japanese are the finest equilibrists in the world.

4:46:54 One, armed with his fan and little scraps of paper, performed the graceful trick of the butterflies and the flowers.

4:47:02 Another, with the fragrant smoke of his pipe, rapidly traced in the air a string of bluish words that made up a compliment to the audience.

4:47:11 This one juggled with lighted candles, blowing them out one after another as they passed his lips, and lighting them again one from another, without interrupting his marvellous juggling for a single instant.

4:47:25 That one produced the most improbable combinations with spinning tops. Under his hand these humming machines seemed to come alive with a life of their own in their endless whirling;

4:47:37 they ran along pipe-stems, along the edges of sabres, along wires as fine as hairs stretched from one side of the stage to the other;

4:47:47 they circled the rims of great crystal vases, they climbed bamboo ladders, they scattered into every corner, producing harmonies of a strange character by combining their different notes.

4:47:59 The jugglers juggled with them, and they spun in the air; they tossed them like shuttlecocks with wooden battledores, and still they spun;

4:48:08 they stuffed them into their pockets, and when they drew them out, they were spinning yet—until the moment when a released spring made them burst open into sprays of fireworks!

4:48:20 There is no need to describe here the prodigious feats of the troupe's acrobats and gymnasts. The tricks of the ladder, the pole, the ball, the barrels, et cetera, were performed with remarkable precision. But the chief attraction of the performance was the display of those 'Long-Noses', astonishing equilibrists whom Europe does not yet know.

4:48:42 These Long-Noses form a special guild placed under the direct patronage of the god Tingou. Dressed like heralds of the Middle Ages, they wore a splendid pair of wings on their shoulders.

4:48:55 But what distinguished them more especially was the long nose with which their faces were adorned, and above all the use they made of it.

4:49:05 These noses were nothing less than bamboos, five, six, ten feet long, some straight, others curved, some smooth, others warty. And it was on these appendages, firmly fixed, that all their feats of balance were performed.

4:49:22 A dozen of these votaries of the god Tingou lay down on their backs, and their comrades came and frolicked on their noses, which stood up like lightning-conductors, leaping and vaulting from one to the next and performing the most improbable tricks.

4:49:40 To finish, the public had been specially promised the human pyramid, in which some fifty Long-Noses were to represent the 'Car of Juggernaut'. But instead of forming this pyramid by using their shoulders as the points of support, the Honourable Batulcar's artists were to fit themselves together by their noses alone.

4:50:01 Now, one of those who formed the base of the Car had left the troupe; and since all that was needed was strength and skill, Passepartout had been chosen to replace him.

4:50:12 The worthy fellow certainly felt very sorry for himself when—sad reminder of his youth—he had put on his medieval costume, adorned with many-coloured wings, and a nose six feet long had been fitted to his face!

4:50:27 But after all, that nose was his bread and butter, and he made the best of it.

4:50:33 Passepartout came on stage and took his place among those of his colleagues who were to form the base of the Car of Juggernaut. They all stretched out on the ground, noses pointing to the sky.

4:50:45 A second section of equilibrists came and settled on these long appendages, a third rose in a tier above them, then a fourth;

4:50:54 and on those noses, which touched only at their tips, a human monument soon rose to the very flies of the theatre.

4:51:04 The applause was redoubling, and the instruments of the orchestra were crashing like so many thunderclaps, when the pyramid shook, the balance broke, one of the noses at the base gave way,

4:51:18 and the monument collapsed like a house of cards…

4:51:22 It was all Passepartout's doing. Abandoning his post, clearing the footlights without the help of his wings, and clambering up to the right-hand gallery, he fell at the feet of a spectator, crying:

4:51:34 Jean Passepartout: Ah! My master! My master!

4:51:38 Phileas Fogg: You?

4:51:39 Jean Passepartout: Me!

4:51:40 Phileas Fogg: Very well! In that case, to the steamer, my lad!…

4:51:49 Mr. Fogg, Mrs. Aouda, who was with him, and Passepartout had rushed out of the booth through the passages. But outside they found the Honourable Batulcar, furious, demanding damages for 'the breakage'. Phileas Fogg calmed his fury by throwing him a handful of banknotes.

4:52:07 And at half-past six, just as she was about to sail, Mr. Fogg and Mrs. Aouda set foot on the American steamer, followed by Passepartout, with his wings on his back, and on his face that six-foot nose which he had not yet managed to tear off!

4:52:24 Chapter XXIV: During which the crossing of the Pacific Ocean is made

4:52:29 Chapter Twenty-four. During which the crossing of the Pacific Ocean is made.

4:52:35 What had happened within sight of Shanghai will be readily understood. The signals made by the Tankadere had been seen from the Yokohama steamer. The captain, seeing a flag at half-mast, had steered towards the little schooner.

4:52:50 A few moments later Phileas Fogg, paying for his passage at the agreed price, put five hundred and fifty pounds—thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty francs—into the pocket of John Bunsby, the master.

4:53:04 Then the honourable gentleman, Mrs. Aouda and Fix had gone aboard the steamer, which had at once set her course for Nagasaki and Yokohama.

4:53:15 Having arrived that very morning, the fourteenth of November, at the scheduled hour, Phileas Fogg, leaving Fix to go about his business, had gone aboard the Carnatic.

4:53:26 There he learned, to the great joy of Mrs. Aouda—and perhaps to his own, though at least he let nothing of it show—that the Frenchman Passepartout had indeed arrived at Yokohama the day before.

4:53:40 Phileas Fogg, who was to leave again that very evening for San Francisco, at once set out in search of his servant. He applied, but in vain, to the French and English consular agents;

4:53:53 and after scouring the streets of Yokohama to no purpose, he was despairing of finding Passepartout again, when chance, or perhaps a kind of presentiment, led him into the Honourable Batulcar's booth.

4:54:07 He would certainly never have recognised his servant in that eccentric herald's rig; but Passepartout, from where he lay on his back, caught sight of his master in the gallery.

4:54:18 He could not keep his nose from moving.

4:54:22 Hence the breaking of the balance, and all that followed.

4:54:26 This is what Passepartout learned from Mrs. Aouda's own lips; and she then told him how the crossing from Hong Kong to Yokohama had been made, in the company of one Mr. Fix, aboard the schooner Tankadere.

4:54:40 At the name of Fix, Passepartout did not bat an eyelid. He thought the moment had not yet come to tell his master what had passed between the police inspector and himself.

4:54:52 And so, in the account he gave of his adventures, Passepartout blamed himself and apologised only for having been overcome by the intoxication of opium in a smoking-house in Yokohama.

4:55:05 Mr. Fogg listened coldly to this account, without replying; then he opened a credit for his servant large enough for him to buy more suitable clothes on board.

4:55:16 And indeed, before an hour had gone by, the honest fellow, having cut off his nose and clipped his wings, had nothing left about him to recall the votary of the god Tingou.

4:55:29 The steamer making the crossing from Yokohama to San Francisco belonged to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and was named the General Grant. She was a huge paddle-steamer of two thousand five hundred tons, well fitted out and very fast.

4:55:46 An enormous beam rose and fell, again and again, above the deck;

4:55:52 to one end of it was jointed a piston-rod, and to the other a connecting-rod, which, turning the straight-line motion into a circular one, acted directly on the shaft of the paddle-wheels.

4:56:04 The General Grant was rigged as a three-masted schooner and carried a great spread of canvas, which gave powerful help to the steam. Making her twelve miles an hour, the steamer would need no more than twenty-one days to cross the Pacific.

4:56:20 Phileas Fogg was therefore justified in believing that, landing at San Francisco on the second of December, he would be in New York on the eleventh and in London on the twentieth—

4:56:32 thus beating that fatal date of the twenty-first of December by a few hours.

4:56:38 There were a good many passengers on board the steamer:

4:56:41 some English, a great many Americans, a veritable emigration of Chinese labourers bound for America, and a number of officers of the Indian army, who were spending their leave in going round the world.

4:56:56 During the crossing there was no nautical incident of any kind. The steamer, borne up on her broad paddle-wheels and steadied by her great spread of sail, rolled very little. The Pacific Ocean lived up to its name well enough.

4:57:11 Mr. Fogg was as calm and as uncommunicative as usual. His young companion felt herself more and more bound to this man by other ties than those of gratitude.

4:57:23 That silent nature, so generous after all, impressed her more than she knew; and it was almost without her knowledge that she was giving way to feelings whose influence the enigmatic Fogg seemed not to feel in the least.

4:57:39 Moreover, Mrs. Aouda took a prodigious interest in the gentleman's plans. She worried over the setbacks that might endanger the success of the journey. She often chatted with Passepartout, who was not slow to read between the lines of Mrs. Aouda's heart.

4:57:55 The good fellow now had a blind and simple faith in his master; he never tired of praising the honesty, the generosity and the devotion of Phileas Fogg.

4:58:07 Then he would reassure Mrs. Aouda about the outcome of the journey, repeating that the hardest part was done; that they had left behind those strange countries, China and Japan, and were going back to familiar lands;

4:58:21 and lastly that a train from San Francisco to New York and a transatlantic liner from New York to London would no doubt be enough to complete this impossible journey round the world within the agreed time.

4:58:36 Nine days after leaving Yokohama, Phileas Fogg had travelled exactly half way round the terrestrial globe.

4:58:44 For on the twenty-third of November the General Grant crossed the hundred and eightieth meridian, the one on which, in the southern hemisphere, the antipodes of London lie.

4:58:54 Of the eighty days at his disposal, Mr. Fogg, it is true, had used up fifty-two, and he had no more than twenty-eight left to spend.

4:59:04 But it should be noted that if the gentleman was only half way 'by the difference of meridians', he had in reality covered more than two-thirds of the whole distance.

4:59:15 What forced detours, indeed, from London to Aden, from Aden to Bombay, from Calcutta to Singapore, from Singapore to Yokohama! Following the fiftieth parallel round, which is that of London, the distance would have been only about twelve thousand miles.

4:59:34 Phileas Fogg, on the other hand, was forced by the vagaries of the means of transport to cover twenty-six thousand, of which he had done about seventeen thousand five hundred by that date of the twenty-third of November.

4:59:48 But now the road ran straight, and Fix was no longer there to pile up obstacles in it!

4:59:55 It also happened that on this twenty-third 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 all the times of the countries he passed through to be wrong.

5:00:12 Now, on that day, although he had never put it either forward or back, his watch turned out to agree with the ship's chronometers.

5:00:26 That Passepartout was triumphant can be understood well enough. He would dearly have liked to know what Fix would have said, had he been there.

5:00:35 Jean Passepartout: That rascal who told me a pack of stories about meridians, about the sun, about the moon! Hah! people like that! If you listened to them, a fine state the clocks would be in!

5:00:46 Jean Passepartout: I was quite sure that one day or another the sun would make up its mind to set itself by my watch!…

5:00:52 What Passepartout did not know was this: if the dial of his watch had been divided into twenty-four hours like Italian clocks, he would have had no reason to triumph.

5:01:03 For when it was nine o'clock in the morning on board, the hands of his instrument would have shown nine o'clock in the evening, that is, the twenty-first hour after midnight—

5:01:13 a difference exactly equal to the one between London and the hundred and eightieth meridian.

5:01:19 But even if Fix had been able to explain this purely physical effect, Passepartout would no doubt have been unable, if not to understand it, at least to accept it.

5:01:30 And in any case, if by some impossibility the police inspector had suddenly appeared on board at that moment,

5:01:38 it is probable that Passepartout, with good reason to bear a grudge, would have taken up a very different subject with him, and in a very different manner.

5:01:50 Now, where was Fix at that moment?…

5:01:53 Fix was on board the General Grant, as it happened.

5:01:57 For on reaching Yokohama the agent, leaving Mr. Fogg, whom he expected to find again in the course of the day, had gone straight to the English consul.

5:02:06 There he had at last found the warrant, which had been running after him ever since Bombay and was already forty days old—

5:02:14 the warrant that had been sent on to him from Hong Kong by that very Carnatic on board which he was believed to be.

5:02:22 Judge of the detective's disappointment! The warrant had become useless! The man Fogg had left British territory! An extradition order was now needed to arrest him!

5:02:33 Fix: So be it!

5:02:35 Fix said to himself, after the first moment of anger.

5:02:39 Fix: My warrant is no good here; it will be good in England. The rogue looks very much as if he's going back to his own country, thinking he has thrown the police off the scent. Good. I'll follow him there.

5:02:51 Fix: As for the money, God grant there's some left! But what with fares, bonuses, trials, fines, an elephant and expenses of every kind, my man has already left more than five thousand pounds along his road. After all, the Bank is rich!

5:03:10 His mind made up, he at once went aboard the General Grant. He was on board when Mr. Fogg and Mrs. Aouda arrived. To his extreme surprise he recognised Passepartout under his herald's costume.

5:03:23 He immediately hid himself in his cabin, to avoid an explanation that might ruin everything;

5:03:30 and thanks to the number of passengers, he was counting on not being seen by his enemy, when on that very day he found himself face to face with him in the bows of the ship.

5:03:41 Passepartout flew at Fix's throat without further explanation;

5:03:50 and to the great delight of certain Americans, who immediately laid bets on him, he gave the unfortunate inspector a superb thrashing, which demonstrated the high superiority of French boxing over English boxing.

5:04:06 When Passepartout had finished, he found himself calm and, as it were, relieved. Fix picked himself up, in rather a sorry state, and looking at his adversary, said to him coldly:

5:04:19 Fix: Have you finished?

5:04:20 Jean Passepartout: Yes, for the moment.

5:04:22 Fix: Then come and talk to me.

5:04:24 Jean Passepartout: That I should…

5:04:26 Fix: In your master's interest.

5:04:28 Passepartout, as if subdued by such coolness, followed the police inspector, and the two of them sat down in the bows of the steamer.

5:04:37 Fix: You have given me a thrashing. Very well. Now listen to me. Until now I have been Mr. Fogg's adversary, but now I am playing his game.

5:04:47 Jean Passepartout: At last! You believe he's an honest man?

5:04:51 Fix: No, I believe he's a rogue… Hush! Don't move, and let me have my say.

5:04:56 Fix: As long as Mr. Fogg was on British territory, it was in my interest to hold him back while I waited for a warrant of arrest. I did everything I could to that end.

5:05:06 Fix: I set the priests of Bombay on him, I made you drunk at Hong Kong, I separated you from your master, I made him miss the Yokohama steamer…

5:05:15 Passepartout listened, his fists clenched.

5:05:19 Fix: Now, Mr. Fogg seems to be going back to England? Very well, I shall follow him.

5:05:24 Fix: But from now on I shall put as much care and zeal into clearing the obstacles from his path as I have put until now into piling them up.

5:05:33 Fix: You see, my game has changed, and it has changed because my interest requires it. I may add that your interest is the same as mine, for it is only in England that you will find out whether you are in the service of a criminal or of an honest man!

5:05:48 Passepartout had listened to Fix very attentively, and he was convinced that Fix was speaking in entire good faith.

5:05:57 Fix: Are we friends?

5:05:58 Jean Passepartout: Friends, no. Allies, yes, and strictly on approval; for at the slightest sign of treachery, I'll wring your neck.

5:06:07 Fix: Agreed.

5:06:10 Eleven days later, on the third of December, the General Grant entered the bay of the Golden Gate and arrived at San Francisco.

5:06:20 Mr. Fogg had as yet neither gained nor lost a single day.