Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The guide, in order to shorten the distance to be covered, left on his right the line of the track, whose works were still under way. This route, much thwarted by the capricious ramifications of the Vindhia mountains, did not follow the shortest path, which it was in Phileas Fogg's interest to take. The Parsi, thoroughly familiar with the roads and trails of the country, claimed to gain a good twenty miles by cutting across the forest, and they trusted him on it.
Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty, buried up to the neck in their pannier seats, were badly jolted by the stiff trot of the elephant, to which its mahout gave a rapid gait. But they endured the situation with the most British composure, saying little, moreover, and barely seeing each other.
As for Passepartout, posted on the beast's back and directly exposed to its jolts and counter-jolts, he took good care, on his master's advice, not to keep his tongue between his teeth, for it would have been sliced clean off. The good fellow, now flung onto the elephant's neck, now thrown back onto its rump, did acrobatics like a clown on a springboard. But he joked, he laughed in the midst of his flying leaps, and from time to time he pulled a lump of sugar out of his bag, which the intelligent Kiouni took with the tip of its trunk without interrupting its steady trot for a moment.
After two hours' march, the guide halted the elephant and gave it an hour's rest. The animal devoured branches and shrubs, after first slaking its thirst at a nearby pool. Sir Francis Cromarty did not complain of this halt. He was worn out. Mr. Fogg seemed as fresh as if he had just got out of bed.
"Why, the man is made of iron!" said the brigadier general, looking at him with admiration.
—Of forged iron," replied Passepartout, who busied himself with getting a quick breakfast ready.
At noon, the guide gave the signal to set off. The country soon took on a very wild aspect. The great forests gave way to thickets of tamarind and dwarf palms, then to vast arid plains bristling with meager shrubs and studded with big blocks of syenite. This whole part of the upper Bundelkund, little visited by travelers, is home to a fanatical population, hardened in the most terrible practices of the Hindu religion. The rule of the English could not be established in any regular way over a territory subject to the influence of the rajahs, who would have been hard to reach in their inaccessible retreats in the Vindhias.
Several times they caught sight of bands of fierce Indians, who made a gesture of anger at seeing the swift quadruped go by. Besides, the Parsi avoided them as much as possible, holding them to be dangerous company. Few animals were seen during that day, hardly a few monkeys, which fled with a thousand contortions and grimaces that greatly amused Passepartout.
One thought, among many others, was troubling this fellow. What was Mr. Fogg to do with the elephant once he reached Allahabad station? Would he take it along? Impossible! The cost of transport added to the cost of purchase would make a ruinous animal of it. Would it be sold, or set free? This estimable beast surely deserved to be treated with regard. If, by chance, Mr. Fogg were to make a present of it to him, Passepartout, he would be quite embarrassed by it. It did not cease to weigh on his mind.
At eight in the evening, the main range of the Vindhias had been crossed, and the travelers halted at the foot of the northern slope, in a ruined bungalow.
The distance covered during that day was about twenty-five miles, and as much again remained to reach Allahabad station.
The night was cold. Inside the bungalow, the Parsi lit a fire of dry branches, whose warmth was much appreciated. Supper consisted of the provisions bought at Kholby. The travelers ate like men worn out and battered. The conversation, which began with a few broken phrases, soon ended in sonorous snoring. The guide kept watch beside Kiouni, who slept standing up, leaning against the trunk of a big tree.
No incident marked that night. A few roars from cheetahs and panthers now and then broke the silence, mingled with the sharp sniggering of monkeys. But the carnivores kept to their cries and made no hostile demonstration against the bungalow's guests. Sir Francis Cromarty slept heavily like a brave soldier worn out by fatigues. Passepartout, in a restless sleep, went through in his dreams the tumbling of the day before, while Mr. Fogg rested as peacefully as though he lay in his own quiet house on Savile Row.
At six in the morning, they set off again. The guide hoped to reach Allahabad station that very evening. In that way, Mr. Fogg would forfeit only part of the forty-eight hours he had banked since the journey began.
They came down the last slopes of the Vindhias. Kiouni had taken up its rapid pace again. Toward noon, the guide skirted the town of Kallenger, which stands on the Cani, one of the Ganges's sub-tributaries. He always avoided inhabited places, feeling safer in these deserted stretches of country that mark the first depressions of the great river's basin. Allahabad station was not twelve miles off to the northeast. They halted under a clump of banana trees, whose fruit, as wholesome as bread, "as luscious as cream," so travelers say, was extremely welcome.
At two o'clock, the guide entered under the cover of a thick forest, which he was to cross over a stretch of several miles. He preferred to travel thus in the shelter of the woods. In any case, he had so far met no unpleasant encounter, and the journey seemed likely to go off without mishap, when the elephant, giving a few signs of uneasiness, suddenly stopped.
It was four o'clock then.
"What is it?" asked Sir Francis Cromarty, raising his head above his pannier seat.
—I don't know, officer," replied the Parsi, listening to a confused murmur that passed beneath the thick boughs.
A few moments later, this murmur became more distinct. It sounded like a concert, still quite far off, of human voices and brass instruments.
Passepartout was all eyes, all ears. Mr. Fogg waited patiently, without uttering a word.
The Parsi jumped to the ground, tied the elephant to a tree, and pushed off into the thickest of the undergrowth. A few minutes later, he came back, saying:
"A procession of Brahmins coming this way. If we can, let's avoid being seen."
The guide untied the elephant and led it into a thicket, warning the travelers not to set foot on the ground. He himself kept ready to mount his beast quickly, should flight become necessary. But he reckoned that the troop of the faithful would pass without noticing him, for the thickness of the foliage hid him completely.
The discordant noise of voices and instruments came nearer. Monotonous chanting mingled with the sound of drums and cymbals. Soon the head of the procession appeared under the trees, some fifty paces from the post held by Mr. Fogg and his companions. Through the branches they easily made out the curious personnel of this religious ceremony.
In the front rank advanced priests, wearing miters and dressed in long richly trimmed robes. Around them pressed men, women, and children who set up a kind of funereal chant, broken at even intervals by strokes of tom-toms and cymbals. Behind them, on a car with broad wheels whose spokes and rim figured an interlacing of snakes, appeared a hideous statue, drawn by two pairs of richly caparisoned zebus. This statue had four arms; its body was colored a dark red, its eyes haggard, its hair matted, its tongue hanging out, its lips tinted with henna and betel. Around its neck coiled a necklace of skulls, at its flanks a belt of severed hands. It stood upright on a felled giant whose head was missing.
Sir Francis Cromarty recognized this statue.
"The goddess Kali," he murmured, "the goddess of love and death.
—Of death, I'll grant, but of love, never!" said Passepartout. "The ugly old hag!"
The Parsi signaled him to keep quiet.
Around the statue there stirred, thrashed about, and writhed a group of old fakirs, striped with ocher bands, covered with cross-shaped incisions that let their blood escape drop by drop—stupid zealots who, in the great Hindu ceremonies, still hurl themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut's car.
Behind them, a few Brahmins, in all the sumptuousness of their oriental costume, were dragging along a woman who could barely hold herself up.
This woman was young, white as a European. Her head, her neck, her shoulders, her ears, her arms, her hands, her toes were loaded down with jewels—necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings. A gold-lamé tunic, covered with a light muslin, traced the contours of her figure.
Behind this young woman—a violent contrast to the eye—guards armed with bare sabers thrust through their belts and with long damascened pistols carried a corpse on a palanquin.
It was the corpse of an aged man, clad in his opulent rajah's garments, wearing, as in life, the pearl-embroidered turban, the robe woven of silk and gold, the diamond-set cashmere belt, and his magnificent weapons of an Indian prince.
Then musicians and a rear guard of fanatics, whose cries sometimes drowned the deafening din of the instruments, closed the procession.
Sir Francis Cromarty watched all this pomp with a singularly saddened air, and, turning to the guide:
"A suttee!" he said.
The Parsi gave a nod and put a finger to his lips. The long procession wound slowly away beneath the trees, and before long its rearmost ranks vanished into the depths of the forest.
Little by little, the chanting died away. There were still a few bursts of distant cries, and at last all this tumult gave way to a deep silence.
Phileas Fogg had heard that word, spoken by Sir Francis Cromarty, and the moment the procession had vanished:
"What is a suttee?" he asked.
—A suttee, Mr. Fogg," replied the brigadier general, "is a human offering—though a willing one. The woman you saw just now will be burned tomorrow at the first hours of daylight.
—Ah! the wretches!" cried Passepartout, who could not hold back this cry of indignation.
—And that corpse?" asked Mr. Fogg.
—It's that of the prince, her husband," replied the guide, "an independent rajah of Bundelkund.
—What!" Phileas Fogg went on, without his voice betraying the least emotion, "these barbarous customs still survive in India, and the English have not been able to stamp them out?
—In the greater part of India," replied Sir Francis Cromarty, "these sacrifices no longer take place, but we have no influence over these wild regions, and chiefly over this territory of Bundelkund. The whole northern flank of the Vindhias is the scene of ceaseless murders and pillage.
—The poor woman!" murmured Passepartout, "burned alive!
—Yes," the brigadier general went on, "burned, and if she were not, you would not believe to what a wretched condition she would be reduced by her own relatives. They would shave off her hair, they would feed her scarcely a few handfuls of rice, they would cast her out, she would count as an unclean creature and perish in some corner like a mangy dog. And so the prospect of that dreadful existence often drives these unfortunate women to their doom, far more than love or religious fanaticism does. Sometimes, however, the sacrifice really is voluntary, and it takes the energetic intervention of the government to prevent it. Thus, a few years ago, I was living in Bombay when a young widow came to ask the governor's leave to burn herself with her husband's body. As you may well imagine, the governor refused. So the widow fled the city, sought shelter with an independent rajah, and there she completed her sacrifice."
During the brigadier general's account, the guide kept shaking his head, and when the account was finished:
"The sacrifice that is to take place tomorrow at daybreak is not voluntary," he said.
—How do you know that?
—It's a story that everyone in Bundelkund knows," replied the guide.
—And yet this unfortunate woman seemed to be putting up no resistance," observed Sir Francis Cromarty.
—That's because they have drugged her with the smoke of hemp and opium.
—But where are they taking her?
—To Pillaji's pagoda, two miles off from here. There she will spend the night, awaiting the hour of the sacrifice.
—And this sacrifice will take place?...
—Tomorrow, at the first appearance of day."
After this answer, the guide brought the elephant out of the thick thicket and hoisted himself onto the animal's neck. But just as he was about to spur it on with a peculiar whistle, Mr. Fogg checked him, and, addressing Sir Francis Cromarty:
"What if we saved this woman?" he said.
—Save this woman, Mr. Fogg!..." cried the brigadier general.
—I still have twelve hours in hand. I can devote them to that.
—Well now! So you're a man of heart!" said Sir Francis Cromarty.
—Sometimes," replied Phileas Fogg simply, "when I have the time."