Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The train had left on schedule. It carried a certain number of travelers, some officers, civil servants, and dealers in opium and indigo whose trade called them to the eastern part of the peninsula.
Passepartout occupied the same compartment as his master. A third traveler was seated in the opposite corner.
It was the brigadier general, Sir Francis Cromarty, one of Mr. Fogg's partners during the crossing from Suez to Bombay, who was rejoining his troops stationed near Benares.
Sir Francis Cromarty, tall, fair-haired, about fifty years old, who had greatly distinguished himself during the last sepoy revolt, would truly have deserved to be called a native. Since his youth he had lived in India and had made only rare appearances in his home country. He was an educated man, who would gladly have given information about the customs, the history, the organization of the Hindu country, if Phileas Fogg had been the sort of man to ask for it. But this gentleman asked for nothing. He was not traveling, he was describing a circumference. He was a grave body, tracing an orbit around the terrestrial globe, following the laws of rational mechanics. At that moment he was going back over in his mind the tally of the hours consumed since he had left London, and he would have rubbed his hands together, were it in his nature to make a needless movement.
Sir Francis Cromarty had not failed to recognize the oddity of his traveling companion, even though he had studied him only cards in hand and between two rubbers. He was therefore entitled to wonder whether a human heart beat beneath that cold exterior, whether Phileas Fogg had a soul sensitive to the beauties of nature, to moral aspirations. For him, that was an open question. Of all the eccentrics the brigadier general had met, not one could compare with this product of the exact sciences.
Phileas Fogg had not hidden from Sir Francis Cromarty his plan of traveling around the world, nor the conditions under which he was carrying it out. The brigadier general saw in this wager nothing but an eccentricity without useful purpose, and one that would necessarily lack the transire benefaciendo that should guide every reasonable man. At the rate the odd gentleman was going, he would clearly pass through life without "doing" anything, either for himself or for others.
An hour after leaving Bombay, the train, crossing the viaducts, had passed over Salsette Island and was running on the mainland. At Callyan station, it left on the right the branch line that, by way of Kandallah and Poonah, descends toward the southeast of India, and it reached Pauwell station. At that point it entered the much-branched mountains of the Western Ghats, ranges with a base of trap and basalt, whose highest peaks are covered with thick woods.
From time to time, Sir Francis Cromarty and Phileas Fogg exchanged a few words, and at that moment the brigadier general, picking up a conversation that kept dropping, said:
"A few years ago, Mr. Fogg, you would have suffered at this spot a delay that would probably have wrecked your itinerary.
—Why so, Sir Francis?
—Because the railway stopped at the foot of these mountains, which had to be crossed by palanquin or on pony-back to Kandallah station, on the opposite slope.
—This delay would in no way have upset the economy of my program," replied Mr. Fogg. "I am not without having foreseen the likelihood of certain obstacles.
—Still, Mr. Fogg," the brigadier general went on, "you risked having a very nasty business on your hands with that young man's escapade."
Passepartout, his feet wrapped in his travel blanket, was sleeping soundly and hardly dreamed that he was being talked about.
"The English government is extremely severe, and rightly so, about this kind of offense," Sir Francis Cromarty went on. "It insists above all that the Hindus' religious customs be respected, and if your servant had been caught—
—Well, if he had been caught, Sir Francis," replied Mr. Fogg, "he would have been sentenced, he would have served his term, and then he would have come quietly back to Europe. I don't see how this business could have delayed his master!"
And with that, the conversation dropped again. During the night, the train crossed the Ghats, passed through Nassik, and the next day, October 21, it was rushing across a relatively flat country formed by the territory of Khandeish. The well-cultivated countryside was dotted with small towns, above which the minaret of the pagoda took the place of the European church steeple. Numerous little watercourses, most of them tributaries or sub-tributaries of the Godavery, watered this fertile region.
Passepartout, awake now, looked out and could not believe he was crossing the country of the Hindus in a train of the Great Peninsular Railway. It seemed unlikely to him. And yet nothing was more real! The locomotive, driven by the arm of an English engineer and stoked with English coal, threw its smoke over the plantations of coffee, nutmeg, clove, and red pepper. The steam coiled in spirals around the clumps of palm trees, among which appeared picturesque bungalows, a few viharas—sorts of abandoned monasteries—and marvelous temples enriched by the inexhaustible ornamentation of Indian architecture. Then vast stretches of ground unrolled as far as the eye could see, jungles that lacked neither the snakes nor the tigers that the train's roar terrified, and finally forests, split by the line of the track, still haunted by elephants that, with a pensive eye, watched the disheveled convoy go by.
During that morning, beyond Malligaum station, the travelers crossed that ill-fated territory so often drenched in blood by the followers of the goddess Kali. Nearby stood Ellora and its admirable pagodas, close by the famous Aurungabad, capital of the fierce Aurangzeb, now a mere provincial seat of one of the provinces detached from the kingdom of the Nizam. It was over this region that Feringhea, the chief of the Thugs, the king of the Stranglers, exercised his dominion. These murderers, united in an elusive brotherhood, strangled, in honor of the goddess of Death, victims of every age, without ever shedding blood, and there was a time when one could not dig anywhere in this soil without turning up a corpse. The English government has indeed managed to prevent these murders in a considerable measure, but the dreadful brotherhood still exists and still operates.
At half past twelve, the train came to a stop at Burhampour station, and Passepartout was able to get himself, at a steep price, a pair of babouches trimmed with imitation pearls, which he put on with a feeling of obvious vanity.
The travelers lunched quickly and set off again for Assurghur station, after skirting for a moment the bank of the Tapty, a small river that flows into the Gulf of Cambay, near Surat.
It is fitting to make known what thoughts then occupied Passepartout's mind. Until his arrival at Bombay, he had believed, and been able to believe, that these things would stop there. But now, since he had been racing at full steam across India, a reversal had taken place in his mind. His true nature came galloping back. He recovered the fanciful ideas of his youth, he took his master's schemes seriously, he believed in the reality of the wager, and consequently in this trip around the world and in this maximum of time that must not be exceeded. Already he was fretting over possible delays, over the accidents that might arise along the way. He felt as if he had a stake in this bet, and shuddered at the thought that the day before he might have compromised it by his unpardonable gawking. And so, far less phlegmatic than Mr. Fogg, he was far more anxious. He counted and recounted the days that had passed, cursed the train's halts, accused it of slowness, and blamed Mr. Fogg in petto for not having promised the engineer a bonus. The good fellow did not know that what was possible on a steamer was no longer possible on a railway, whose speed is regulated.
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, in answer to a question from Sir Francis Cromarty, Passepartout, having consulted his watch, answered that it was three o'clock in the morning. And indeed, that famous watch, still set to the Greenwich meridian, which lay nearly seventy-seven degrees to the west, was bound to be, and in fact was, four hours slow.
Sir Francis therefore corrected the time Passepartout had given, making him the same remark that Passepartout had already received from Fix. He tried to make him understand that he ought to set his watch by each new meridian, and that, since he was constantly heading east, that is, toward the sun, each day grew shorter by four minutes for every degree he covered. It was useless. Whether the stubborn fellow had understood the brigadier general's remark or not, he obstinately refused to set his watch forward, keeping it invariably at London time. An innocent quirk, at any rate, and one that could harm no one.
At eight in the morning, fifteen miles ahead of Rothal station, the train stopped in the middle of a vast clearing bordered by a few bungalows and workers' huts. The train conductor passed along the line of carriages saying:
"Passengers get out here."
Phileas Fogg looked at Sir Francis Cromarty, who seemed to understand 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, no more railway!
—What do you mean?" asked Sir Francis Cromarty.
—I mean the train doesn't go any farther!"
The brigadier general got out of the carriage at once. Phileas Fogg followed, in no hurry. Both turned to the conductor:
"Where are we?" asked Sir Francis Cromarty.
—At the hamlet of Kholby," the conductor replied.
—We stop here?
—No doubt about it. The railway isn't finished...
—What! It isn't finished?
—No! There's still a stretch of about fifty miles to be built between this point and Allahabad, where the line picks up again.
—But the newspapers announced the complete opening of the railway!
—What can you do, officer, the newspapers got it wrong.
—And yet you issue tickets from Bombay to Calcutta!" shot back Sir Francis Cromarty, who was beginning to heat up.
—No doubt," replied the conductor, "but the travelers know perfectly well that they have to arrange to be carried from Kholby to Allahabad."
Sir Francis Cromarty was furious. Passepartout would gladly have brained the conductor, who was not to blame. He dared not look at his master.
"Sir Francis," Mr. Fogg said simply, "we shall, if you please, see about some way of reaching Allahabad.
—Mr. Fogg, this is a delay absolutely prejudicial to your interests?
—No, Sir Francis, it was foreseen.
—What! You knew that the line—
—By no means, but I knew perfectly well that some obstacle would crop up sooner or later on my route. Now, nothing is compromised. I have two days in hand to sacrifice. There is a steamer that leaves Calcutta for Hong Kong on the 25th at noon. We are still only at the 22nd, and we shall get to Calcutta in time."
There was nothing to say to an answer given 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 prematurely announced the completion of the line. Most of the travelers knew of this break in the track, and, getting off the train, they had seized on the vehicles of every kind the town possessed—four-wheeled palki-gharis, carts drawn by zebus, a sort of humped ox, traveling wagons resembling moving pagodas, palanquins, ponies, and so on. And so Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty, having combed the whole town, came back empty-handed.
"I'll go on foot," said Phileas Fogg.
Passepartout, who was just then rejoining his master, made a meaningful grimace as he considered his splendid but inadequate babouches. Very luckily, he had gone off searching on his own side, and, hesitating a little:
"Sir," he said, "I think I've found a means of transport.
—Which one?
—An elephant! An elephant belonging to an Indian who lives a hundred paces from here.
—Let's go see the elephant," replied Mr. Fogg.
Five minutes later, Phileas Fogg, Sir Francis Cromarty, and Passepartout arrived at a hut adjoining an enclosure fenced with high palisades. In the hut there was an Indian, and in the enclosure an elephant. At their request, the Indian led Mr. Fogg and his two companions into the enclosure.
There they found themselves in the presence of a half-tamed animal that its owner was raising, not to make a beast of burden of it, but a fighting beast. To that end, he had begun to alter the naturally gentle character of the animal, so as to lead it gradually to that paroxysm of rage called "mutsh" in the Hindu tongue, and this by feeding it for three months on sugar and butter. This treatment may seem unsuited to producing such a result, but it is nonetheless successfully used by the breeders. Very luckily for Mr. Fogg, the elephant in question had only just been put on this diet, and the "mutsh" had not yet declared itself.
Kiouni—that was the beast's name—could, like all its kind, keep up a rapid pace for a long while, and, for want of any other mount, Phileas Fogg resolved to use it.
But elephants are dear in India, where they are beginning to grow scarce. The males, which alone are suited to the contests of the arenas, are extremely sought after. These animals reproduce only rarely when reduced to domestication, so that they can be obtained only by hunting. And so they are the object of extreme care, and when Mr. Fogg asked the Indian whether he would hire out his elephant to him, the Indian flatly refused.
Fogg pressed and offered an excessive price for the beast, ten pounds (250 F) an hour. Refusal. Twenty pounds? Refusal again. Forty pounds? Refusal still. Passepartout jumped at each raise. But the Indian would not be tempted.
The sum was handsome, though. Assuming the elephant took fifteen hours to reach Allahabad, that would be six hundred pounds (15,000 F) it would bring in for its owner.
Phileas Fogg, without getting worked up in the least, then proposed to the Indian to buy his beast, and offered him, right off, a thousand pounds (25,000 F).
The Indian did not want to sell! Perhaps the rascal scented a splendid piece of business.
Sir Francis Cromarty drew Mr. Fogg aside and urged him to think before going any further. Phileas Fogg replied to his companion that it was not his habit to act without reflection, 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, plainly showed that for him it was only a question of price. Phileas Fogg offered successively twelve hundred pounds, then fifteen hundred, then eighteen hundred, at last two thousand (50,000 F). Passepartout, usually so red, was pale with emotion.
At two thousand pounds, the Indian gave in.
"By my babouches," cried Passepartout, "that puts a fine price on elephant meat!"
The deal concluded, it was now only a matter of finding a guide. That was easier. A young Parsi with an intelligent face offered his services. Mr. Fogg accepted and promised him a hefty payment, which could only sharpen his wits.
The elephant was brought and equipped without delay. The Parsi knew perfectly the trade of "mahout," or elephant driver. He covered the elephant's back with a kind of caparison and rigged, on each of its flanks, two rather uncomfortable sorts of pannier seats.
Phileas Fogg paid the Indian in bank notes drawn from the famous bag. It really seemed as though they were being pulled from Passepartout's own entrails. Then Mr. Fogg offered to carry Sir Francis Cromarty to Allahabad station. The brigadier general accepted. One more traveler was not going to tire the gigantic animal.
Provisions were bought at Kholby. Sir Francis Cromarty took his place in one of the pannier seats, Phileas Fogg in the other. Passepartout sat astride the caparison between his master and the brigadier general. The Parsi perched on the elephant's neck, and at nine o'clock the animal, leaving the town, plunged by the shortest way into the thick forest of fan palms.