Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
From that day on, Passepartout and the detective met often, but the agent kept extremely reserved toward his companion, and made no attempt to draw him out. Only once or twice did he catch a glimpse of Mr. Fogg, who was glad to stay in the Rangoon's grand saloon, either keeping company with Mrs. Aouda or playing whist, according to his unvarying habit.
As for Passepartout, he had set himself very seriously to brooding over the singular chance that had once more put Fix on his master's road. And indeed, one might have wondered at less. This gentleman, very amiable, very obliging to be sure, whom you first meet at Suez, who boards the Mongolia, who lands at Bombay, where he says he must stay, whom you find again on the Rangoon, bound for Hong Kong—in a word, following step by step Mr. Fogg's itinerary—that was worth thinking about. There was a coincidence here that was at the very least odd. What was this Fix after? Passepartout was ready to bet his slippers—he had carefully kept them—that Fix would leave Hong Kong at the same time as they, and probably on the same steamer.
Passepartout might have pondered for a century without ever guessing what mission the agent had been charged with. Never would he have imagined that Phileas Fogg was being "shadowed," like a thief, around the globe. But since it is in human nature to find an explanation for everything, here is how Passepartout, suddenly enlightened, interpreted Fix's constant presence—and, truly, his interpretation was quite plausible. According to him, in fact, Fix was and could only be an agent set on Mr. Fogg's trail by his colleagues of the Reform Club, in order to establish that this journey was being made properly around the world, following the agreed itinerary.
"It's obvious! it's obvious! the honest fellow kept telling himself, quite proud of his own shrewdness. He's a spy those gentlemen have set on our heels! Now there's something unworthy! Mr. Fogg so upright, so honorable! To have him spied on by an agent! Ah! gentlemen of the Reform Club, this will cost you dear!"
Passepartout, delighted with his discovery, resolved nonetheless to say nothing of it to his master, fearing the latter might be justly hurt by this mistrust his adversaries were showing him. But he firmly promised himself to twit Fix on occasion, in veiled terms and without giving himself away.
On Wednesday, the 30th of October, in the afternoon, the Rangoon passed into the Strait of Malacca, which divides the peninsula of that name from the lands of Sumatra. Steep, very picturesque mountainous islets hid the great island from the passengers' view.
The next day, at four in the morning, the Rangoon, having gained half a day on its regulation crossing, put in at Singapore to renew its supply of coal.
Phileas Fogg entered this gain in the column of profits and, this time, went ashore, accompanying Mrs. Aouda, who had expressed a wish to walk about for a few hours.
Fix, to whom Fogg's every action seemed suspect, followed him without letting himself be seen. As for Passepartout, who laughed in petto at watching Fix's maneuver, he went off to do his usual shopping.
The island of Singapore is neither large nor imposing in appearance. It lacks mountains—that is, skylines. Still, it is charming in its very slightness. It is a park cut through by fine roads. A handsome carriage, drawn by those elegant horses imported from New Holland, carried Mrs. Aouda and Phileas Fogg through clumps of palms with brilliant foliage and clove trees whose cloves are formed from the very bud of the half-opened flower. There, thickets of pepper plants replaced the thorny hedges of the European countryside; sago palms and great ferns with their superb fronds varied the aspect of this tropical region; nutmeg trees with glossy foliage saturated the air with a penetrating scent. Monkeys, in brisk, grimacing bands, were not lacking in the woods, nor perhaps the tigers in the jungles. To anyone surprised to learn that on this island, so relatively small, these terrible carnivores had not been wiped out to the last one, the answer is that they come over from Malacca by swimming across the strait.
After roaming the countryside for two hours, Mrs. Aouda and her companion—who looked about him a little without seeing—came back into the town, a vast huddle of heavy, squat houses surrounded by charming gardens where mangosteens, pineapples, and all the best fruits in the world grow.
At ten o'clock they were returning to the steamer, having been followed, without suspecting it, by the inspector, who had likewise had to go to the expense of hiring a carriage.
Passepartout was waiting for them on the Rangoon's deck. The good fellow had bought a few dozen mangosteens, big as medium-sized apples, a deep brown outside, a bright red within, and whose white flesh, melting between the lips, gives true gourmets a pleasure beyond compare. Passepartout was only too happy to offer them to Mrs. Aouda, who thanked him very graciously.
At eleven o'clock the Rangoon, having her full load of coal, cast off her moorings, and, a few hours later, the passengers lost sight of those high mountains of Malacca, whose forests shelter the finest tigers on earth.
About thirteen hundred miles separate Singapore from the island of Hong Kong, a small English territory detached from the Chinese coast. Phileas Fogg had an interest in covering them in six days at most, so as to catch at Hong Kong the boat due to sail on the 6th of November for Yokohama, one of the chief ports of Japan.
The Rangoon was heavily loaded. Numerous passengers had boarded at Singapore—Hindus, Ceylonese, Chinese, Malays, Portuguese—who, for the most part, occupied the second-class places.
The weather, fair enough until then, changed with the moon's last quarter. There was a heavy sea. The wind sometimes blew in a stiff breeze, but very luckily from the southeast, which favored the steamer's progress. When it was manageable, the captain had sail set. The Rangoon, brig-rigged, often sailed with her two topsails and her foresail, and her speed increased under the double action of steam and wind. In this way they ran, over a short and sometimes very trying swell, along the coasts of Annam and Cochinchina.
But the fault lay with the Rangoon rather than with the sea, and it was this steamer that the passengers, most of whom fell ill, had to blame for their exhaustion.
In fact, the Peninsular Company's ships that serve the China seas have a serious defect in their build. The ratio of their loaded draft to their depth of hold has been badly calculated, and, as a result, they offer only a feeble resistance to the sea. Their enclosed, watertight volume is insufficient. They are "swamped," to use the seaman's expression, and, in consequence of this arrangement, it takes only a few seas thrown aboard to alter their trim. These ships are therefore much inferior—if not in engine and evaporating apparatus, at least in construction—to the types of the French Messageries, such as the Impératrice and the Cambodge. Whereas, according to the engineers' calculations, the latter can take on a weight of water equal to their own before foundering, the Peninsular Company's boats, the Golgonda, the Corea, and finally the Rangoon, could not take on a sixth of their weight without going to the bottom.
So, in bad weather, great precautions had to be taken. It was sometimes necessary to lie to under low steam. This was a loss of time that seemed to affect Phileas Fogg in no way, but at which Passepartout showed himself extremely irritated. He then blamed the captain, the engineer, the Company, and consigned to the devil all those who meddle with carrying travelers. Perhaps, too, the thought of that gas jet still burning on his account in the house on Saville Row counted for much in his impatience.
"But are you in such a hurry, then, to get to Hong Kong? the detective asked him one day.
—In a great hurry! replied Passepartout.
—You think Mr. Fogg is eager to catch the Yokohama steamer?
—Terribly eager.
—So you now believe in this singular journey round the world?
—Absolutely. And you, Mr. Fix?
—Me? I don't believe in it!
—You joker!" replied Passepartout with a wink.
This word left the agent thoughtful. That description worried him, without his quite knowing why. Had the Frenchman guessed? He hardly knew what to think. But his status as a detective, whose secret he alone held, how could Passepartout have recognized it? And yet, in speaking to him thus, Passepartout had certainly had some ulterior meaning.
It even happened that the good fellow went further, another day, but he could not help it. He could not hold his tongue.
"Come now, Mr. Fix, he asked his companion in a sly tone, once we've reached Hong Kong, shall we have the misfortune of leaving you there?
—Well, replied Fix, rather embarrassed, I don't know!... Perhaps that...
—Ah! said Passepartout, if you were to come along with us, it would be a joy for me! Come now! an agent of the Peninsular Company couldn't stop halfway! You were bound only for Bombay, and now here you are in China! America isn't far, and from America to Europe is but a step!"
Fix watched his interlocutor closely, as the latter showed him the most amiable face in the world, and he made up his mind to laugh along with him. But the other, who was in the vein, asked him whether "it brought in a lot, this trade of his?"
"Yes and no, replied Fix without flinching. There are good and bad pieces of business. But you can well understand that I don't travel at my own expense!
—Oh! as for that, I'm sure of it!" cried Passepartout, laughing all the harder.
The conversation over, Fix went back into his cabin and set himself to thinking. He had evidently been found out. One way or another, the Frenchman had recognized his status as a detective. But had he warned his master? What role was he playing in all this? An accomplice or not? Was the affair blown, and consequently ruined? The agent spent some difficult hours there, now believing all was lost, now hoping that Fogg was unaware of the situation, and finally not knowing what course to take.
Still, calm returned to his brain, and he resolved to deal frankly with Passepartout. If he were not in the required conditions to seize Fogg at Hong Kong, and should Fogg be preparing to quit English territory for good this time, he, Fix, would tell Passepartout everything. Either the servant was his master's accomplice—and the master knew all, and in that case the affair was compromised for good—or the servant had no part in the theft, and then it would be in his interest to abandon the thief.
Such, then, was the respective position of these two men, and above them Phileas Fogg soared in his majestic indifference. He was rationally completing his orbit around the world, without troubling himself over the asteroids gravitating about him.
And yet, in the vicinity, there was—to use the astronomers' expression—a disturbing body that ought to have produced certain perturbations in this gentleman's heart. But no! Mrs. Aouda's charm had no effect, to Passepartout's great surprise, and the perturbations, if they existed, would have been harder to calculate than those of Uranus that brought about the discovery of Neptune.
Yes! it was a daily astonishment for Passepartout, who read so much gratitude toward his master in the young woman's eyes! Decidedly, Phileas Fogg had no more heart than was needed to behave heroically, but amorously, no! As for the anxieties that the hazards of this voyage might rouse in him, there was not a trace of them. But Passepartout, for his part, lived in continual dread. One day, leaning on the rail of the "engine-room," he was watching the powerful machine that sometimes raced away, when in a violent pitch the screw thrashed clear of the waves. The steam then hissed out through the valves, which stirred the worthy fellow to anger.
"They aren't loaded enough, these valves! he cried. We aren't moving! That's the English for you! Ah! if it were an American ship, we might blow up, but at least we'd go faster!"