Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
On leaving Great Salt Lake and the Ogden station, the train climbed northward for an hour, up to the Weber River, having covered about nine hundred miles since San Francisco. From that point on, it turned east again through the rugged mass of the Wahsatch Mountains. It is in this stretch of country, lying between these mountains and the Rocky Mountains proper, that the American engineers ran up against their most serious difficulties. And so, along this section, the Union government's subsidy rose to forty-eight thousand dollars a mile, whereas on the plains it came to only sixteen thousand; but the engineers, as has been said, did not do violence to nature—they outwitted it, working around the obstacles, and to reach the great basin, a single tunnel, fourteen thousand feet long, was bored along the whole run of the railroad.
It was at Salt Lake itself that the line had so far reached its highest point of altitude. From there its profile traced a very long curve, dropping toward the valley of the Bitter Creek before rising again to the watershed divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The rivers were numerous in this mountainous region. The Muddy, the Green, and others had to be crossed on small bridges. Passepartout had grown more impatient as he drew nearer the goal. But Fix, for his part, would have liked to be out of this difficult country already. He feared the delays, he dreaded the accidents, and he was in more of a hurry than Phileas Fogg himself to set foot on English soil!
At ten o'clock at night, the train stopped at the Fort Bridger station, which it left almost at once, and, twenty miles farther on, it entered the state of Wyoming—the former Dakota—following the whole valley of the Bitter Creek, from which flow part of the waters that form the hydrographic system of the Colorado.
The next day, December 7, there was a fifteen-minute stop at the Green River station. Snow had fallen fairly heavily during the night, but, mixed with rain and half melted, it could not hinder the train's progress. Still, this bad weather did not fail to worry Passepartout, for the piling up of snow, by bogging down the carriage wheels, would surely have compromised the journey.
"What an idea," he said to himself, "for my master to have taken it into his head to travel in winter! Couldn't he have waited for the fine season to improve his chances?"
But at that very moment, when the honest fellow was concerned only with the state of the sky and the dropping temperature, Mrs. Aouda was feeling sharper fears, which sprang from a wholly different cause.
Indeed, a few travelers had stepped down from their car and were strolling on the platform of the Green River station, waiting for the train to depart. Now, through the window, the young woman recognized among them Colonel Stamp W. Proctor, that American who had behaved so coarsely toward Phileas Fogg during the San Francisco meeting. Mrs. Aouda, not wanting to be seen, drew back.
This circumstance made a keen impression on the young woman. She had become attached to the man who, coldly though it might be, gave her every day the marks of the most complete devotion. She did not, no doubt, grasp the full depth of the feeling her rescuer inspired in her, and to that feeling she still gave only the name of gratitude, but, unknown to herself, there was more than that in it. And so her heart clenched when she recognized the coarse fellow of whom Mr. Fogg meant sooner or later to demand satisfaction for his conduct. Clearly it was chance alone that had brought Colonel Proctor onto this train, but there he was, all the same, and Phileas Fogg had to be prevented at all costs from catching sight of his adversary.
Mrs. Aouda, once the train had started off again, seized on a moment when Mr. Fogg was dozing to bring Fix and Passepartout up to speed on the situation.
"That Proctor is on the train!" cried Fix. "Well, rest easy, madam—before he has anything to settle with Mr.— with Mr. Fogg, he'll have to settle with me! It seems to me that in all this, I'm still the one who received the gravest insults!
"And what's more," added Passepartout, "I'll take charge of him myself, colonel or no colonel."
"Monsieur Fix," Mrs. Aouda went on, "Mr. Fogg will leave to no one the task of avenging him. He is the kind of man, as he has said, to come back to America to hunt down this insulter. So if he catches sight of Colonel Proctor, we won't be able to prevent an encounter that could lead to deplorable results. He must therefore not see him."
"You are right, madam," replied Fix, "an encounter could ruin everything. Winner or loser, Mr. Fogg would be delayed, and..."
"And," added Passepartout, "that would play into the hands of the Reform Club's gentlemen. Within four days we'll be in New York! Well, if for four days my master doesn't leave his car, we can hope that chance won't bring him face to face with this cursed American, God confound him! So we'll manage well enough to keep it from happening..."
The conversation was cut short. Mr. Fogg had woken up and was looking out at the countryside through the snow-flecked window. But later, without being overheard by his master or by Mrs. Aouda, Passepartout said to the police inspector:
"Would you really fight for him?
"I'll do anything to bring him back alive to Europe!" replied Fix simply, in a tone that marked an implacable resolve.
Passepartout felt something like a shiver run through his body, but his convictions concerning his master did not waver.
And now, was there any way at all to keep Mr. Fogg in this compartment so as to prevent any encounter between the colonel and himself? It could not be difficult, the gentleman being by nature little given to moving about or to curiosity. In any case, the police inspector thought he had found the way, for a few moments later he was saying to Phileas Fogg:
"They're long, slow hours, sir, that one spends this way on the railway.
"Indeed," replied the gentleman, "but they pass.
"Aboard the steamers," the inspector went on, "you were in the habit of playing your whist?
"Yes," replied Phileas Fogg, "but here it would be difficult. I have neither cards nor partners.
"Oh! the cards, we'll easily find some to buy. They sell everything in the American cars. As for partners, if, by chance, madam...
"Certainly, sir," the young woman replied at once, "I know whist. It's part of an English upbringing.
"And I," Fix went on, "have some pretensions to playing this game well. Now, the three of us and a dummy...
"As you please, sir," replied Phileas Fogg, delighted to take up his favorite game again—even on the railway.
Passepartout was sent off to find the steward, and he soon came back with two full decks, counters, chips, and a cloth-covered board. Nothing was missing. The game began. Mrs. Aouda knew whist quite well enough, and she even received a few compliments from the stern Phileas Fogg. As for the inspector, he was quite simply first-rate, and a worthy match for the gentleman.
"Now," Passepartout said to himself, "we've got him. He won't budge again!"
At eleven o'clock in the morning, the train had gained the divide between the waters of the two oceans. This was at Bridger Pass, at a height of seven thousand five hundred twenty-four English feet above sea level, one of the highest points touched by the line's profile in this passage through the Rocky Mountains. After about two hundred miles, the travelers would at last find themselves on those long plains that stretch to the Atlantic, and that nature had made so favorable to the laying of a railway.
On the slope of the Atlantic basin the first rivers were already spreading out, tributaries or sub-tributaries of the North Platte River. The whole northern and eastern horizon was covered by that immense semicircular curtain that forms the northern portion of the Rocky Mountains, dominated by Laramie Peak. Between this curve and the rail line stretched vast, well-watered plains. To the right of the railroad rose in tiers the first slopes of the mountain mass that rounds off southward as far as the headwaters of the Arkansas River, one of the Missouri's great tributaries.
At half past noon, the travelers caught a glimpse for a moment of Fort Halleck, which commands this country. A few hours more, and the crossing of the Rocky Mountains would be accomplished. So one could hope that no accident would mark the train's passage through this difficult region. The snow had stopped falling. The weather was turning to a dry cold. Great birds, frightened by the locomotive, fled off into the distance. No wild beast, bear or wolf, showed itself on the plain. It was the desert in its immense bareness.
After a fairly comfortable lunch, served in the car itself, Mr. Fogg and his partners had just taken up their interminable whist again, when violent whistle blasts made themselves heard. The train stopped.
Passepartout put his head out the door and saw nothing to account for this halt. No station was in sight.
Mrs. Aouda and Fix could fear for a moment that Mr. Fogg might think of getting down onto the track. But the gentleman merely said to his servant:
"Go and see what it is."
Passepartout sprang out of the car. Some forty travelers had already left their seats, and among them Colonel Stamp W. Proctor.
The train had stopped in front of a signal turned to red that closed the line. The engineer and the conductor, having climbed down, were arguing rather heatedly with a trackman whom the stationmaster of Medicine Bow, the next station, had sent out to meet the train. Some travelers had come up and were taking part in the discussion—among them the aforesaid Colonel Proctor, with his loud voice and his imperious gestures.
Passepartout, having joined the group, heard the trackman saying:
"No! there's no way through! The Medicine Bow bridge is weakened and wouldn't bear the weight of the train."
This bridge in question was a suspension bridge, thrown across a rapid a mile from the spot where the train had stopped. According to the trackman, it was on the verge of collapse, several of the cables were broken, and it was impossible to risk crossing it. The trackman was in no way exaggerating, then, in stating that they could not get through. And besides, given the careless habits of the Americans, one may say that when they do take to being cautious, it would be madness not to be.
Passepartout, not daring to go warn his master, listened, teeth clenched, motionless as a statue.
"Well now!" cried Colonel Proctor, "we're not going to sit here, I suppose, taking root in the snow!
"Colonel," replied the conductor, "we've telegraphed the Omaha station to ask for a train, but it isn't likely to reach Medicine Bow before six o'clock.
"Six hours!" cried Passepartout.
"No doubt," replied the conductor. "Besides, that time will be needed for us to reach the station on foot.
"On foot!" cried all the travelers.
"But how far away is this station, then?" one of them asked the conductor.
"Twelve miles, on the other side of the river.
"Twelve miles in the snow!" cried Stamp W. Proctor.
The colonel let fly a broadside of curses, blaming the company, blaming the conductor, and Passepartout, furious, was not far from joining the chorus with him. Here was a material obstacle against which, this time, all his master's bank notes would fail.
What was more, the disappointment was general among the travelers, who, quite apart from the delay, saw themselves obliged to make some fifteen miles across the snow-covered plain. So there was an uproar, exclamations, shouting, that would certainly have drawn the attention of Phileas Fogg, had that gentleman not been absorbed in his game.
Meanwhile Passepartout found himself under the necessity of warning him, and, head down, he was heading toward the car when the train's engineer—a true Yankee named Forster—raising his voice, said:
"Gentlemen, there might perhaps be a way to get through.
"Over the bridge?" replied a traveler.
"Over the bridge.
"With our train?" asked the colonel.
"With our train."
Passepartout had stopped, and was drinking in the engineer's words.
"But the bridge is on the verge of collapse!" the conductor objected.
"No matter," replied Forster. "I believe that by launching the train at its top speed, we'd have some chance of getting across.
"The devil!" said Passepartout.
But a fair number of travelers had been immediately won over by the proposal. It pleased Colonel Proctor in particular. This hothead found the thing quite feasible. He even recalled that engineers had once had the idea of crossing rivers "without a bridge" using rigid trains launched at full speed, and so on. And in the end, all those with a stake in the matter came round to the engineer's opinion.
"We have fifty chances of getting across," said one.
"Sixty," said another.
"Eighty!... ninety out of a hundred!"
Passepartout was dumbfounded, though he was ready to try anything to bring off the crossing of the Medicine Creek, but the attempt struck him as a little too "American."
"Besides," he thought, "there's a much simpler thing to do, and these people don't even give it a thought!..."
"Sir," he said to one of the travelers, "the method the engineer proposes strikes me as a bit rash, but...
"Eighty chances!" replied the traveler, who turned his back on him.
"I know that," replied Passepartout, addressing another gentleman, "but a simple thought...
"No thought, it's pointless!" replied the American thus buttonholed, shrugging his shoulders, "since the engineer assures us we'll get across!
"No doubt," Passepartout went on, "we'll get across, but it might perhaps be more prudent...
"What! prudent!" cried Colonel Proctor, whom that word, caught by chance, made leap. "At full speed, you're being told! Do you understand? At full speed!
"I know... I understand...," Passepartout kept repeating, though no one would let him finish his sentence, "but it would prove—if not more prudent, seeing as the word offends you—at least more natural...
"Who? what? eh? What's the matter with this one and his natural?..." came the cries from all sides.
The poor fellow no longer knew whom to make himself heard by.
"Are you afraid, then?" Colonel Proctor asked him.
"Me, afraid!" cried Passepartout. "Well, so be it! I'll show this crowd that a Frenchman can be every bit as American as they are!
"All aboard! all aboard!" the conductor was shouting.
"Yes! all aboard," Passepartout repeated, "all aboard! And right away! But no one will stop me from thinking that it would have been more natural to send us across this bridge on foot first, we travelers, and the train afterward!..."
But no one heard this wise reflection, and no one would have cared to acknowledge that it was right.
The travelers were back inside their car. Passepartout took his seat again, saying nothing of what had happened. The players were wholly given over to their whist.
The locomotive gave a vigorous whistle. The engineer, throwing the steam into reverse, drew his train back for nearly a mile—pulling away like a jumper who wants to take a running start.
Then, at a second whistle blast, the forward march began again: it picked up speed; soon the pace became fearful; nothing could be heard but a single neighing coming from the locomotive; the pistons beat twenty strokes to the second; the axles of the wheels smoked in their grease boxes. One felt, so to speak, that the whole train, moving at a hundred miles an hour, no longer bore down on the rails. Speed was devouring weight.
And they got across! And it was like a flash of lightning. Nothing was seen of the bridge. The train leaped, one might say, clear across from bank to bank, and the engineer only managed to halt his runaway machine five miles beyond the station.
But scarcely had the train cleared the river when the bridge, ruined for good, crashed down with a great din into the rapid of the Medicine Bow.