Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The Rangoon, one of the steamers the Peninsular and Oriental Company employs on the China and Japan runs, was an iron screw steamer of seventeen hundred and seventy tons gross, with a nominal power of four hundred horse. She matched the Mongolia for speed but not for comfort. So Mrs. Aouda was not so well accommodated as Phileas Fogg would have wished. After all, it was only a crossing of three thousand five hundred miles, some eleven to twelve days, and the young woman did not prove a difficult passenger.
During the first days of this crossing, Mrs. Aouda came to know Phileas Fogg better. At every turn she showed him the liveliest gratitude. The phlegmatic gentleman listened to her, in appearance at least, with the utmost coldness, without an inflection or a gesture betraying in him the slightest emotion. He saw to it that she lacked for nothing. At certain hours he came regularly, if not to talk, at least to listen to her. He fulfilled toward her the duties of the strictest courtesy, but with the grace and spontaneity of an automaton whose movements had been arranged for that purpose. Mrs. Aouda hardly knew what to make of it, but Passepartout had explained a little of his master's eccentric character to her. He had told her what a wager was carrying this gentleman around the world. Mrs. Aouda had smiled; but after all, she owed him her life, and her rescuer could lose nothing by her seeing him through her gratitude.
Mrs. Aouda confirmed the account the Hindu guide had given of her touching story. She belonged, in fact, to that race which holds first rank among the native races. Several Parsi merchants have made great fortunes in India in the cotton trade. One of them, Sir James Jejeebhoy, was raised to the peerage by the English government, and Mrs. Aouda was related to this rich figure who lived in Bombay. It was indeed a cousin of Sir Jejeebhoy's, the honorable Jejeeh, whom she counted on joining at Hong Kong. Would she find refuge and help with him? She could not say for certain. To which Mr. Fogg replied that she need not worry, and that everything would sort itself out mathematically! That was his word for it.
Did the young woman understand this horrible adverb? No one knows. Still, her great eyes rested on Mr. Fogg's, her great eyes "limpid as the sacred lakes of the Himalaya"! But the unbending Fogg, as buttoned up as ever, did not seem the man to throw himself into that lake.
This first part of the Rangoon's crossing was accomplished under excellent conditions. The weather was manageable. All this stretch of the vast bay that sailors call the "fathoms of Bengal" proved favorable to the steamer's progress. The Rangoon soon raised the Great Andaman, the chief island of the group, which its picturesque Saddle-Peak, rising two thousand four hundred feet, signals from far off to navigators.
They ran fairly close along the coast. The savage Papuans of the island did not show themselves. They are beings placed on the lowest rung of the human ladder, but wrongly made out to be cannibals.
The panoramic sweep of these islands was superb. Immense forests of fan palms, areca palms, bamboo, nutmeg trees, teak, giant mimosas, and tree ferns covered the country in the foreground, and behind them stood out the elegant silhouette of the mountains. Along the coast swarmed by the thousand those precious swiftlets whose edible nests make a prized delicacy in the Celestial Empire. But all this varied spectacle offered to the eye by the Andaman group passed quickly, and the Rangoon steamed swiftly on toward the Strait of Malacca, which was to give it access to the seas of China.
What was Inspector Fix doing during this crossing, so unluckily dragged into a voyage round the world? On leaving Calcutta, after leaving instructions for the warrant, should it finally arrive, to be forwarded to him at Hong Kong, he had managed to board the Rangoon without being spotted by Passepartout, and he fully hoped to conceal his presence until the steamer's arrival. Indeed, it would have been hard for him to explain why he was aboard without rousing the suspicions of Passepartout, who was bound to believe him in Bombay. But he was led to renew his acquaintance with the honest fellow by the very logic of circumstances. How? We shall see.
All the hopes, all the wishes of the police inspector were now concentrated on a single point of the globe, Hong Kong, for the steamer stopped too briefly at Singapore for him to operate in that city. It was therefore at Hong Kong that the thief's arrest had to take place, or the thief would slip away from him, so to speak, for good.
Indeed, Hong Kong was still English soil, but the last to be met with along the route. Beyond it, China, Japan, and America offered Mr. Fogg a refuge that was more or less assured. At Hong Kong, if he at last found there the warrant of arrest that was obviously chasing after him, Fix would arrest Fogg and hand him over to the local police. No difficulty. But past Hong Kong, a mere warrant of arrest would no longer suffice. An extradition order would be needed. Hence delays, hold-ups, obstacles of every kind, which the rascal would use to escape for good. If the operation failed at Hong Kong, it would be, if not impossible, at least very hard, to take it up again with any chance of success.
"So, Fix kept repeating to himself during the long hours he spent in his cabin, so, either the warrant is at Hong Kong, and I arrest my man, or it won't be there, and this time I must at all costs delay his departure! I failed at Bombay, I failed at Calcutta! If I miss my stroke at Hong Kong, my reputation is ruined! Whatever it costs, I must succeed. But what means can I use to delay, if need be, the departure of that accursed Fogg?"
As a last resort, Fix was quite resolved to confess everything to Passepartout, to make known to him this master he served and whose accomplice he certainly was not. Passepartout, enlightened by this revelation, and fearing to be compromised, would no doubt side with him, Fix. But after all it was a risky means, one that could be used only when all else failed. A single word from Passepartout to his master would have been enough to wreck the affair beyond recall.
The police inspector was thus extremely at a loss, when the presence of Mrs. Aouda aboard the Rangoon, in Phileas Fogg's company, opened new prospects to him.
Who was this woman? What concurrence of circumstances had made her Fogg's companion? It was clearly between Bombay and Calcutta that the meeting had taken place. But at what point on the peninsula? Was it chance that had brought together Phileas Fogg and the young traveler? Had not this journey across India, on the contrary, been undertaken by that gentleman with the aim of joining this charming person? for she was charming! Fix had seen it plainly in the courtroom at Calcutta.
One can see how far the agent must have been intrigued. He wondered whether there was not in this affair some criminal abduction. Yes! that had to be it! This idea lodged itself in Fix's brain, and he recognized the whole advantage he could draw from the circumstance. Whether this young woman was married or not, there was an abduction, and it was possible, at Hong Kong, to raise for the abductor such difficulties as he could not buy his way out of.
But he must not wait for the Rangoon to arrive at Hong Kong. This Fogg had the detestable habit of leaping from one boat to the next, and, before the affair could be set going, he might already be far off.
The important thing, then, was to warn the English authorities and to report the Rangoon's passing before it landed. Now, nothing was easier, since the steamer put in at Singapore, and Singapore is linked to the Chinese coast by a telegraph wire.
Still, before acting, and in order to operate more surely, Fix resolved to question Passepartout. He knew it was not very hard to get this fellow talking, and he decided to break the incognito he had kept until then. Now, there was no time to lose. It was the 30th of October, and the very next day the Rangoon was to put in at Singapore.
So, that day, Fix, coming out of his cabin, went up on deck with the intention of being "the first" to approach Passepartout, with every mark of the utmost surprise. Passepartout was walking forward, when the inspector rushed toward him, exclaiming:
"You, on the Rangoon!
—Mr. Fix aboard! replied Passepartout, utterly surprised, recognizing his fellow traveler from the Mongolia. What! I leave you at Bombay, and I find you again on the way to Hong Kong! So you too are going round the world?
—No, no, replied Fix, and I mean to stop at Hong Kong—for a few days at least.
—Ah! said Passepartout, who seemed astonished for a moment. But how is it I haven't seen you aboard since we left Calcutta?
—My word, an indisposition... a touch of seasickness... I stayed lying down in my cabin... The Gulf of Bengal suits me less well than the Indian Ocean does. And your master, Mr. Phileas Fogg?
—In perfect health, and as punctual as his timetable! Not a day behind! Ah! Mr. Fix, you don't know this, but we also have a young lady with us.
—A young lady?" replied the agent, who looked perfectly as if he did not understand what the other meant.
But Passepartout soon had him up to date on the story. He told of the affair of the Bombay pagoda, the buying of the elephant at two thousand pounds, the suttee business, the rescue of Aouda, the sentence of the Calcutta court, the release on bail. Fix, who knew the last part of these incidents, seemed to know nothing of any of them, and Passepartout let himself be carried away by the charm of relating his adventures before a listener who showed him so much interest.
"But, in the end, asked Fix, does your master intend to take this young woman to Europe?
—Not at all, Mr. Fix, not at all! We shall simply hand her over to the care of one of her kinsmen, a wealthy merchant of Hong Kong."
"Nothing to be done!" the detective said to himself, masking his letdown. "A glass of gin, Mr. Passepartout?
—Gladly, Mr. Fix. It's the least we can do, to drink to our meeting aboard the Rangoon!"