Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The distance between Suez and Aden is exactly thirteen hundred and ten miles, and the Company's terms of service allot its steamers a span of one hundred and thirty-eight hours to cover it. The Mongolia, her fires driven hard, was running so as to arrive ahead of the scheduled time.
Nearly all the passengers who had boarded at Brindisi were bound for India. Some were headed to Bombay, others to Calcutta, but by way of Bombay, for now that a railway crosses the whole width of the Indian peninsula, there is no longer any need to round the tip of Ceylon.
Among these passengers of the Mongolia were various civil servants and officers of every rank. Of the latter, some belonged to the British army proper, others commanded the native sepoy troops, all handsomely paid, even now that the government has taken over the rights and obligations of the old East India Company: second lieutenants at 7,000 F, brigadiers at 60,000, generals at 100,000[1].
[1] The pay of the civil servants is higher still. The mere assistants, at the first rung of the hierarchy, get 12,000 francs; the judges, 60,000 F; the presiding judges of the court, 250,000 F; the governors, 300,000 F; and the governor general, more than 600,000 F. (Author's note.)
So life aboard the Mongolia was good, in this society of officials, among whom were mixed a few young Englishmen who, with a million in their pockets, were off to found trading houses far away. The purser, the Company's trusted man, the captain's equal aboard, did things lavishly. 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 the dishes of fresh meat and the side dishes supplied by the steamer's butchery and pantries. The women passengers—there were a few—changed their outfits twice a day. There was music, there was even dancing, when the sea allowed it.
But the Red Sea is highly capricious and too often foul, like all these long, narrow gulfs. When the wind blew either from the Asian coast or from the African coast, the Mongolia, a long screw-driven spindle, caught broadside, rolled frightfully. The ladies then vanished; the pianos fell silent; songs and dances ceased together. And yet, despite the squall, despite the swell, the steamer, driven by its powerful engine, ran without delay toward the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb.
What was Phileas Fogg doing all this while? One might suppose that, forever worried and anxious, he fretted over the shifts of wind that hampered the ship's progress, over the disorderly heaving of the swell that risked causing an accident to the engine, in short over all the possible breakdowns that, by forcing the Mongolia to put in at some port, would have compromised his journey?
Not at all; or at least, if this gentleman gave a thought to such contingencies, he let nothing of it show. He was still the impassive man, the imperturbable Reform Club member whom no mishap or accident could catch off guard. He seemed no more stirred than the ship's chronometers. He was rarely seen on deck. He cared little to observe that Red Sea, so rich in memories, that stage of humanity's first historical scenes. He did not come up to make out the curious towns strewn along its shores, whose picturesque outline sometimes stood out against the horizon. He did not even dream of the dangers of that Arabian gulf, which the ancient historians—Strabo, Arrian, Artemidorus, Edrisi—always spoke of with dread, and onto which navigators in the old days never ventured without first consecrating their voyage with propitiatory sacrifices.
What, then, was this odd character doing, shut up in the Mongolia? First, he ate his four meals a day, without either roll or pitch ever managing to derange a machine so marvelously ordered. Then he played whist.
Yes! He had found partners as rabid as himself: a tax collector on his way to his post at Goa, a minister, the Reverend Decimus Smith, returning to Bombay, and an English-army brigadier general on his way to rejoin his corps at Benares. These three passengers shared Mr. Fogg's passion for whist, and they played for hours on end, no less silently than he.
As for Passepartout, seasickness had no hold on him. He occupied a cabin forward and ate, he too, conscientiously. It must be said that, decidedly, this journey, made under such conditions, no longer displeased him. He was making the best of it. Well fed, well lodged, he was seeing the world, and besides he kept assuring himself that this whole fancy would end at Bombay.
The day after leaving Suez, October 10, it was not without a certain pleasure that he met on deck the obliging person he had approached on landing in Egypt.
"I'm not mistaken," he said, coming up to him with his most amiable smile, "you are indeed the gentleman who so obligingly served as my guide at Suez?
—Indeed I am," replied the detective, "I recognize you! You're the servant of that eccentric Englishman—
—Precisely, Mr.—?
—Fix.
—Mr. Fix," replied Passepartout. "Delighted to run into you aboard. And where are you headed?
—Why, to Bombay, same as you.
—Splendid! Have you made this trip before?
—Several times," replied Fix. "I'm an agent of the Peninsular Company.
—Then you know India?
—Well... yes...," replied Fix, who did not care to commit himself too far.
—And is it a curious place, this India?
—Very curious indeed! Mosques, minarets, temples, fakirs, pagodas, tigers, snakes, and dancing girls! But let's hope you'll have the time to see the country?
—I hope so, Mr. Fix. You'll understand that a man in his right mind can hardly spend his life leaping from a steamer into a railway and from a railway into a steamer, on the pretext of going around the world in eighty days! No. All this gymnastics will stop at Bombay, have no doubt of 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 eat 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.
—Do you know, Mr. Passepartout, that this supposed eighty-day trip could well be hiding some secret mission... a diplomatic mission, for instance!
—Honestly, Mr. Fix, I have no idea, I'll admit it, and at bottom I wouldn't give half a crown to find out."
From that meeting on, Passepartout and Fix often chatted together. The police inspector was keen to get on good terms with Mr. Fogg's servant. It might serve him when the occasion arose. So he often stood him, in the Mongolia's bar-room, 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, moreover, this Fix a thoroughly decent gentleman.
Meanwhile the steamer was pushing on rapidly. On the 13th they sighted Mocha, which appeared in 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 delighted to gaze at this famous town, and even thought that, with its circular walls and a dismantled fort shaped like the handle of a cup, it looked like an enormous demitasse.
During the following night, the Mongolia made its way through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, whose Arabic name means the Gate of Tears, and the next day, the 14th, it put in at Steamer Point, northwest of the roadstead of Aden. There it was to take on fuel again.
A grave and important matter, this feeding of the steamers' furnaces at such distances from the centers of production. For the Peninsular Company alone it comes to an annual expense running to eight hundred thousand pounds (20 million francs). Depots have in fact had to be set up at several ports, and in these far-off seas coal comes to eighty francs a ton.
The Mongolia still had sixteen hundred and fifty miles to go before reaching Bombay, and it was to stay four hours at Steamer Point in order to fill its bunkers.
But this delay could in no way harm Phileas Fogg's program. It had been foreseen. Besides, the Mongolia, instead of reaching Aden only on the morning of October 15, entered there on the evening of the 14th. That was a gain of fifteen hours.
Mr. Fogg and his servant went ashore. The gentleman wanted to have his passport stamped. Fix followed him without being noticed. The visa formality done, Phileas Fogg returned aboard to take up his interrupted game.
Passepartout, for his part, strolled, as was his habit, through this population of Somalis, Banians, Parsis, Jews, Arabs, and Europeans that made up Aden's twenty-five thousand inhabitants. He admired the fortifications that make this town the Gibraltar of the Indian Ocean, along with the magnificent cisterns still being worked on by English engineers two thousand years after King Solomon's engineers.
"Very curious, very curious!" Passepartout said to himself as he came back aboard. "I see that it isn't useless to travel, if one wants to see something new."
At six in the evening, the Mongolia beat the waters of the Aden roadstead with the blades of its screw and was soon running over the Indian Ocean. It was allowed one hundred and sixty-eight hours to make the crossing between Aden and Bombay. In any case, that Indian sea was kind to it. The wind held in the northwest. The sails came to the aid of the steam.
The ship, better steadied, rolled less. The women passengers, in fresh outfits, 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 that chance had procured him in the person of Fix.
On Sunday, October 20, toward noon, they sighted the coast of India. Two hours afterward, the pilot came aboard the Mongolia. On the horizon, a backdrop of hills traced itself harmoniously against the sky. Soon the rows of palm trees that cover the city stood out sharply. The steamer entered the roadstead formed by the islands of Salsette, Colaba, Elephanta, and Butcher, and at half past four it drew alongside the quays of Bombay.
Phileas Fogg was then finishing the thirty-third rubber of the day, and he and his partner, thanks to a bold maneuver, having taken all thirteen tricks, ended this fine crossing with an admirable grand slam.
The Mongolia was not due to reach Bombay until October 22. Yet it arrived on the 20th. That was, since its departure from London, a gain of two days, which Phileas Fogg methodically entered in his itinerary in the column of gains.