Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The bold rescue had succeeded. An hour later, Passepartout was still laughing over his success. Sir Francis Cromarty had shaken the intrepid fellow's hand. His master had said to him: "Good," which, in that gentleman's mouth, amounted to high praise. To which Passepartout had replied that all the honor of the affair belonged to his master. For his own part, he had had merely one "droll" idea, and it made him laugh to recall that, for a few moments, he—Passepartout, onetime gymnast, ex-fire-brigade sergeant—had been the widower of a charming woman, an old embalmed rajah!
As for the young Indian, she had been unaware of all that had happened. Wrapped in the travel blankets, she rested on one of the pannier seats.
Meanwhile the elephant, guided with extreme sureness by the Parsi, ran swiftly through the still-dark forest. An hour after leaving the pagoda of Pillaji, it launched out across an immense plain. At seven o'clock, they halted. The young woman still lay in utter prostration. The guide got her to swallow a few sips of water and brandy, but the stupefying influence that weighed on her was bound to last some time yet.
Sir Francis Cromarty, who knew the effects of the intoxication produced by inhaling the fumes of hemp, had no worry on her account.
But if the young Indian woman's recovery raised no question in the brigadier general's mind, he showed himself less reassured about the future. He did not hesitate to tell Phileas Fogg that if Mrs. Aouda stayed in India, she would inevitably fall back into the hands of her executioners. These zealots held themselves throughout the peninsula, and certainly, despite the English police, they would find a way to recapture their victim, be it at Madras, at Bombay, or at Calcutta. And Sir Francis Cromarty cited, in support of this claim, an incident of the same kind that had happened recently. In his view, the young woman would truly be safe only after leaving India.
Phileas Fogg replied that he would take these observations into account and would see about it.
Toward ten o'clock, the guide announced Allahabad station. There the interrupted line of the railway began again, its trains covering, in less than a day and a night, the distance that separates Allahabad from Calcutta.
Phileas Fogg was therefore to arrive in time to catch a steamer that was not to leave until the following day, October 25, at noon, for Hong Kong.
The young woman was set down in a room at the station. Passepartout was charged with going to buy for her various articles of dress—a gown, a shawl, furs, and so on, whatever he could find. His master opened him an unlimited line of credit.
Passepartout set off at once and ran through the streets of the town. Allahabad is the City of God, among the most revered in all India, because it is built at the confluence of two sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna, whose waters draw pilgrims from all over the peninsula. It is known, moreover, that, according to the legends of the Ramayana, the Ganges has its source in the sky, from where, thanks to Brahma, it descends to the earth.
While making his purchases, Passepartout soon saw the town, formerly defended by a magnificent fort that has become a state prison. No more trade, no more industry in this city, once industrial and commercial. Passepartout, who searched in vain for a fancy-goods shop, as if he had been in Regent Street a few steps from Farmer and Co., found the articles he needed only at a dealer's, an awkward old Jew, where he got a dress of Scotch cloth, a broad cloak, and a magnificent otter-skin pelisse, and he did not flinch at paying seventy-five pounds (1,875 F) for it. Then, altogether triumphant, he returned to the station.
Mrs. Aouda was beginning to come to herself. The spell that the priests of Pillaji had laid on her was clearing away little by little, and her beautiful eyes were recovering all their Indian gentleness.
When Ucaf Uddaul, the poet-king, sings the graces of the queen of Ahmehnagara, he puts it thus:
"Her glossy hair, evenly parted in two, frames the harmonious contours of her delicate white cheeks, bright with polish and freshness. Her ebony brows have the shape and the power of the bow of Kama, god of love, and under her long silky lashes, in the black pupil of her large limpid eyes, there float, as in the sacred lakes of the Himalaya, the purest reflections of the celestial light. Fine, even, and white, her teeth shine between her smiling lips like drops of dew in the half-open bosom of a pomegranate flower. Her dainty ears with their symmetrical curves, her rosy hands, her little feet arched and tender as the buds of the lotus, glow with the brilliance of the finest pearls of Ceylon, of the finest diamonds of Golconda. Her slender, supple waist, which a single hand suffices to encircle, sets off the elegant arch of her rounded hips and the richness of her bust, where youth in flower displays its most perfect treasures, and, under the silky folds of her tunic, she appears to have been fashioned in pure silver by the divine hand of Vicvacarma, the eternal sculptor."
But, without all this amplification, it is enough to say that Mrs. Aouda, the widow of the rajah of Bundelkund, was a charming woman in the full European sense of the word. She spoke English with real purity, and the guide had in no way overstated the case in asserting that this young Parsi had been transformed by education.
Meanwhile the train was about to leave Allahabad station. The Parsi was waiting. Mr. Fogg settled his wages at the agreed price, without exceeding it by a farthing. This surprised Passepartout a little, for he knew all that his master owed to the guide's devotion. The Parsi had, in fact, voluntarily risked his life in the Pillaji affair, and if, later on, the Hindus learned of it, he would hardly escape their vengeance.
There remained the question of Kiouni too. What was to be done with an elephant bought so dear?
But Phileas Fogg had already made up his mind on this point.
"Parsi," he said to the guide, "you have been obliging and loyal. I have paid for your service, though not for your loyalty. Do you want this elephant? It is yours."
The guide's eyes shone.
"It's a fortune Your Honor is giving me!" he cried.
—Accept it, guide," replied Mr. Fogg, "and I shall still be in your debt.
—Well done!" cried Passepartout. "Take it, friend! Kiouni is a brave and courageous animal!"
And, going up to the beast, he offered it a few lumps of sugar, saying:
"Here, Kiouni, here, here!"
The elephant let out a few grunts of satisfaction. Then, taking Passepartout by the waist and coiling him with its trunk, it lifted him up to the height of its head. Passepartout, not the least bit frightened, gave the animal a good caress, and to the trunk-clasp of the honest Kiouni there answered a vigorous handshake from the honest fellow.
A few moments later, Phileas Fogg, Sir Francis Cromarty, and Passepartout, settled in a comfortable carriage in which Mrs. Aouda had the best seat, were racing at full steam toward Benares.
Eighty miles at most separate this city from Allahabad, and they were covered in two hours.
During this stretch, the young woman came completely to herself; the drowsy fumes of the hang cleared away.
What was her astonishment to find herself on the railway, in this compartment, dressed in European clothes, among travelers who were entirely unknown to her!
First of all, her companions lavished their care on her and revived her with a few drops of liqueur; then the brigadier general told her her story. He dwelt on the devotion of Phileas Fogg, who had not hesitated to stake his life to save her, and on the outcome of the adventure, owed to the bold imagination of Passepartout.
Mr. Fogg let him talk without uttering a word. Passepartout, all abashed, kept repeating that "it wasn't worth the trouble"!
Mrs. Aouda thanked her rescuers with effusion, by her tears more than by her words. Her beautiful eyes, better than her lips, were the interpreters of her gratitude. Then, her thoughts carrying her back to the scenes of the suttee, her eyes seeing again that Indian land where so many dangers still awaited her, she was seized with a shudder of terror.
Phileas Fogg understood what was passing in Mrs. Aouda's mind, and, to reassure her, he offered, very coldly at that, to take her to Hong Kong, where she would stay until this affair had blown over.
Mrs. Aouda accepted the offer with gratitude. As it happened, at Hong Kong there lived one of her relatives, a Parsi like herself, and one of the principal merchants of that city, which is entirely English while occupying a point on the Chinese coast.
At half past twelve, the train drew up at Benares station. The Brahmin legends assert that this city occupies the site of the ancient Casi, which was once suspended in space, between the zenith and the nadir, like Mahomet's tomb. But, in this more realistic age, Benares, the Athens of India in the orientalists' phrase, rested quite prosaically on the ground, and Passepartout could for a moment catch a glimpse of its brick houses, its wattle huts, which gave it an utterly desolate look, without any local color.
It was there that Sir Francis Cromarty was to stop. The troops he was rejoining were camped a few miles north of the city. So the brigadier general took his leave of Phileas Fogg, wishing him all possible success, and expressing the wish that he might make this journey over again in a less eccentric but more profitable style. Mr. Fogg gave his companion's fingers a light press. Mrs. Aouda's compliments were more affectionate. Never would she forget what she owed to Sir Francis Cromarty. As for Passepartout, he was honored with a real handshake from the brigadier general. Deeply moved, he wondered where and when he might ever devote himself for him. Then they parted.
From Benares on, the railway followed in part the valley of the Ganges. Through the carriage windows, in fairly clear weather, appeared the varied landscape of Behar, then mountains covered with greenery, fields of barley, maize, and wheat, rios and ponds teeming with greenish alligators, well-kept villages, forests still verdant. A few elephants, some big-humped zebus came to bathe in the sacred river's waters, and also, despite the advanced season and the already cold temperature, bands of Hindus of both sexes, who piously performed their holy ablutions. These faithful, bitter enemies of Buddhism, are fervent followers of the Brahmin religion, which is incarnate in these three persons: Vishnu, the solar divinity, Shiva, the divine personification of the forces of nature, and Brahma, the supreme master of priests and lawgivers. But with what eye must Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu regard this now "Britishized" India, when some steamboat passed by whinnying and troubled the consecrated waters of the Ganges, frightening off the gulls that flew over its surface, the turtles that swarmed on its banks, and the devout stretched out along its shores!
This whole panorama filed past like a flash, and often a cloud of white steam hid its details. The travelers could barely catch sight of the fort of Chunar, twenty miles southeast of Benares, an old fortress of the rajahs of Behar, Ghazepour and its important rosewater works, the tomb of Lord Cornwallis that lifts above the Ganges's left bank, the fortified town of Buxar, Patna, a great industrial and commercial city where the chief opium market of India is held, Monghir, a more-than-European town, English like Manchester or Birmingham, renowned for its ironworks, its factories of edge tools and cold steel, and whose tall chimneys fouled Brahma's sky with a black smoke—a veritable punch in the face for the land of dreams!
Then night came and, amid the howls of the tigers, bears, and wolves that fled before the locomotive, the train passed at full speed, and nothing more was seen of the marvels of Bengal, neither Golconda, nor Gour in ruins, nor Murshidabad, which was once a capital, nor Burdwan, nor Hooghly, nor Chandernagor, that French point of Indian territory over which Passepartout would have been proud to see the flag of his homeland flying!
At last, at seven in the morning, Calcutta was reached. The steamer bound for Hong Kong was not to weigh anchor until noon. Phileas Fogg therefore had five hours before him.
According to his itinerary, this gentleman was to reach the capital of the Indies on October 25, twenty-three days after leaving London, and he arrived there on the appointed day. So he was neither behind nor ahead. Unfortunately, the two days he had won between London and Bombay had been squandered, we know how, in that crossing of the Indian peninsula—but it is to be supposed that Phileas Fogg did not regret them.