Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The plan was daring, bristling with difficulties, perhaps impracticable. Mr. Fogg was about to risk his life, or at the very least his freedom, and consequently the success of his projects, but he did not hesitate. He found, moreover, in Sir Francis Cromarty, a determined helper.
As for Passepartout, he was ready, one could count on him. His master's idea thrilled him. He felt a heart, a soul beneath that casing of ice. He was coming to love Phileas Fogg.
There remained the guide. What side would he take in the affair? Would he not lean toward the Hindus? Failing his help, they had at least to secure his neutrality.
Sir Francis Cromarty put the question to him frankly.
"Officer," replied the guide, "I am a Parsi, and this woman is a Parsi. Dispose of me as you will.
—Good, guide," replied Mr. Fogg.
—Only, understand this clearly," the Parsi went on, "not only do we stake our lives, but face horrible tortures, should we be caught. So, look sharp.
—Understood," replied Mr. Fogg. "I think we shall have to wait for nightfall to act?
—I think so too," replied the guide.
This brave Hindu then gave a few details about the victim. She was an Indian woman of famous beauty, of Parsi stock, the daughter of wealthy Bombay merchants. In that city she had received an entirely English education, and from her manners and her schooling one would have taken her for a European. Her name was Aouda.
An orphan, she had been married against her will to this old rajah of Bundelkund. Three months later, she became a widow. Aware of the fate in store for her, she fled, was retaken at once, and the rajah's kin, to whom her death was profitable, doomed her to this ordeal from which it seemed there was no escape for her.
This account could only root Mr. Fogg and his companions more firmly in their generous resolve. It was decided that the guide would steer the elephant toward the pagoda of Pillaji, getting as close to it as possible.
Half an hour later, a halt was made under a thicket, five hundred paces from the pagoda, which could not be seen; but the howls of the fanatics could be heard distinctly.
The means of reaching the victim were then discussed. The guide knew this pagoda of Pillaji, in which he maintained the young woman was imprisoned. Could they get in through one of the doors, when the whole band was sunk in the sleep of drunkenness, or would they have to make a hole in a wall? That could only be decided at the very moment and place. But one thing admitted no doubt: the abduction had to be carried out that very night, and not when, day having come, the victim would be led to her ordeal. At that point, no human intervention could have saved her.
Mr. Fogg and his companions waited for night. As soon as darkness fell, toward six in the evening, they resolved to scout the ground around the pagoda. The last cries of the fakirs were then dying away. According to their habit, these Indians were bound to be sunk in the thick drunkenness of "hang"—liquid opium mixed with an infusion of hemp—and it might perhaps be possible to creep between them as far as the temple.
The Parsi, guiding Mr. Fogg, Sir Francis Cromarty, and Passepartout, advanced noiselessly through the forest. After ten minutes of crawling under the boughs, they reached the edge of a small river, and there, by the light of iron torches burning resin at their tips, they made out a heap of piled wood. It was the pyre, made of precious sandalwood and already soaked with a scented oil. On its upper part rested the embalmed body of the rajah, who was to be burned along with his widow. A hundred paces from this pyre rose the pagoda, whose minarets pierced the treetops in the darkness.
"Come!" said the guide in a low voice.
And, redoubling his caution, followed by his companions, he slipped silently through the tall grass.
The silence was now broken only by the murmur of the wind in the branches.
Soon the guide stopped at the edge of a clearing. A few resin torches lit the place. The ground was strewn with clusters of sleepers, heavy with drunkenness. It looked like a battlefield covered with the dead. Men, women, children, all were jumbled together. A few drunkards were still groaning here and there.
In the background, among the mass of trees, the temple of Pillaji rose up dimly. But to the guide's great disappointment, the rajah's guards, lit by smoky torches, kept watch at the doors and paced about, sabers drawn. One could suppose that inside the priests were keeping watch as well.
The Parsi went no farther. He had recognized the impossibility of forcing the temple entrance, and he led his companions back.
Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty had understood as he had that they could attempt nothing on that side.
They stopped and conferred in low voices.
"Let's wait," said the brigadier general. "It's only eight o'clock yet, and it's possible that these guards may give in to sleep as well.
—That is possible, indeed," replied the Parsi.
Phileas Fogg and his companions therefore stretched out beneath a tree and waited.
The time seemed long to them! The guide left them now and then and went to watch the edge of the wood. The rajah's guards were still on watch by the light of the torches, and a faint light filtered through the windows of the pagoda.
They waited like this until midnight. The situation did not change. The same watch outside. It was clear they could not count on the guards' dozing off. The drunkenness of "hang" had probably been spared them. They would therefore have to act otherwise and get in through an opening made in the pagoda's walls. There remained the question of whether the priests were watching over their victim with as much care as the soldiers at the temple door.
After a last conversation, the guide declared himself ready to set out. Mr. Fogg, Sir Francis, and Passepartout followed him. They made a fairly long detour in order to reach the pagoda from the rear.
Toward half past midnight, they arrived at the foot of the walls without having met anyone. No watch had been set on that side, but it is true to say that windows and doors were entirely lacking.
The night was dark. The moon, then in its last quarter, was barely leaving the horizon, which was piled with heavy clouds. The tallness of the trees deepened the darkness still further.
But it was not enough to have reached the foot of the walls; an opening still had to be made in them. For this operation, Phileas Fogg and his companions had absolutely nothing but their pocketknives. Very luckily, the temple walls were made of a mixture of brick and wood that could not be hard to pierce. Once the first brick was removed, the others would come away easily.
They set to work, making as little noise as possible. The Parsi on one side, Passepartout on the other, worked at prying loose the bricks, so as to obtain an opening two feet wide.
The work was coming along when a cry rang out inside the temple, and almost at once other cries answered it from outside.
Passepartout and the guide broke off their work. Had they been discovered? Had the alarm been raised? The most ordinary prudence urged them to slip away—which they did, along with Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty. They crouched down again under the cover of the wood, waiting for the alarm, if it was one, to die away, and ready, in that case, to resume their operation.
But—dire mischance—guards appeared at the rear of the pagoda and posted themselves there so as to bar any approach.
It would be hard to describe the disappointment of these four men, halted in their work. Now that they could no longer reach the victim, how would they save her? Sir Francis Cromarty gnawed his knuckles. Passepartout was frantic, and the guide had some trouble restraining him. The impassive Fogg waited without showing his feelings.
"Have we nothing left but to leave?" asked the brigadier general in a low voice.
—We have nothing left but to leave," replied the guide.
—Wait," said Fogg. "It's enough that I be at Allahabad tomorrow before noon.
—But what do you hope for?" replied Sir Francis Cromarty. "In a few hours the day will break, and...
—The chance that eludes us may present itself at the supreme moment."
The brigadier general would have liked to be able to read in Phileas Fogg's eyes.
What, then, was this cold Englishman counting on? Did he mean, at the moment of the ordeal, to rush toward the young woman and openly tear her from her executioners?
That would have been madness, and how could one admit that this man was mad to that degree? Nevertheless, Sir Francis Cromarty consented to wait until the denouement of this terrible scene. However, the guide did not leave his companions at the spot where they had taken refuge, and he led them back toward the forward part of the clearing. There, sheltered by a clump of trees, they could observe the sleeping groups.
Meanwhile Passepartout, perched among the lowest branches of a tree, kept turning over an idea that had first crossed his mind like a flash of lightning, and that ended by lodging itself in his brain.
He had begun by saying to himself: "What madness!" and now he kept repeating: "Why not, after all? Here's a chance, maybe the only one, and with brutes like these!..."
In any case, Passepartout put his thought into no clearer words, but he was not slow to slip, with the suppleness of a snake, along the low branches of the tree, whose ends bent toward the ground.
The hours slipped by, and soon a few less somber shades announced the approach of day. The darkness was still deep, however.
It was the moment. Something like a resurrection stirred in that drowsy crowd. The groups came to life. Strokes of the tom-tom rang out. Chants and cries burst out anew. The hour had come at which the unfortunate woman was to die.
Indeed, the doors of the pagoda opened. A brighter light escaped from within. Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty could make out the victim, brightly lit, whom two priests were dragging outside. It even seemed to them that, shaking off the numbness of drunkenness by a supreme instinct of self-preservation, the unfortunate woman was trying to escape her executioners. Sir Francis Cromarty's heart leaped, and with a convulsive movement, seizing Phileas Fogg's hand, he felt that this hand was holding an open knife.
At that moment, the crowd stirred into motion. The young woman had sunk back into that torpor brought on by the fumes of hemp. She was borne along among the fakirs, who flanked her with their religious howling.
Phileas Fogg and his companions, mingling with the last ranks of the crowd, followed her.
Two minutes later, they arrived at the bank of the river and stopped less than fifty paces from the pyre, on which lay the body of the rajah. In the half-darkness, they saw the victim utterly inert, stretched out beside her husband's corpse.
Then a torch was brought near, and the oil-soaked wood caught fire at once.
At that moment, Sir Francis Cromarty and the guide held back Phileas Fogg, who in a fit of generous madness was flinging himself toward the pyre...
But Phileas Fogg had already pushed them off, when the scene suddenly changed. A cry of terror rose up. The whole crowd threw itself to the ground, aghast.
Was the old rajah not dead, then, that he should be seen to rise up all at once, like a ghost, lift the young woman in his arms, and come down from the pyre amid whirls of vapor that gave him a spectral appearance?
The fakirs, the guards, the priests, seized with a sudden terror, lay there face to the ground, not daring to raise their eyes and look upon such a prodigy!
The inanimate victim passed between the vigorous arms that carried her, and without seeming to weigh on them at all. Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty had remained standing. The Parsi had bowed his head, and Passepartout, no doubt, was no less astounded!...
This risen figure came thus close to the spot where Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty were standing, and there, in a curt voice:
"Let's clear off!..." he said.
It was Passepartout himself who had slipped up to the pyre amid the thick smoke! It was Passepartout who, taking advantage of the still-deep darkness, had snatched the young woman back from death! It was Passepartout who, acting out his part with daring luck, was passing through the general terror!
A moment later, all four vanished into the wood, and the elephant bore them off at a rapid trot. But cries, clamors, and even a bullet, piercing Phileas Fogg's hat, told them the trick had been discovered.
Indeed, on the flaming pyre the body of the old rajah now stood out. The priests, recovered from their fright, had understood that an abduction had just been carried out.
At once they had dashed into the forest. The guards had followed them. A volley was fired, but the abductors were fleeing fast, and in a few instants they were out of range of the bullets and arrows.