Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Phileas Fogg was twenty hours behind. Passepartout, the unwitting cause of the delay, was in despair. He had ruined his master, no question about it!
At that moment, the inspector came up to Mr. Fogg and, looking him squarely in the face:
"Very seriously, sir," he asked him, "are you in a hurry?
"Very seriously," replied Phileas Fogg.
"I insist," Fix went on. "You do have an interest in reaching New York by the 11th, before nine o'clock that evening, the departure time of the Liverpool steamer?
"A major interest.
"And had your journey not been broken off by this Indian attack, you'd have reached New York on the 11th, first thing in the morning?
"Yes, with twelve hours to spare over the steamer.
"Good. So you're twenty hours behind. Between twenty and twelve, the gap is eight. That's eight hours to make up. Do you want to try to do it?
"On foot?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"No, by sledge," replied Fix, "by sail-sledge. A man has offered me this means of transport."
This was the man who had approached the police inspector during the night, and whose offer Fix had refused.
Phileas Fogg did not answer Fix; but Fix having pointed out to him the man in question, who was strolling in front of the station, the gentleman went over to him. A moment later, Phileas Fogg and this American, named Mudge, were entering a hut built at the foot of Fort Kearney.
There, Mr. Fogg examined a rather singular vehicle, a sort of frame, set on two long beams a little raised at the front like the runners of a sledge, on which five or six persons could take their places. A third of the way along the frame, toward the front, rose a very tall mast, on which an immense brigantine sail was bent. This mast, solidly held by metal shrouds, stretched an iron stay that served to hoist a large jib. At the rear, a kind of sculling rudder made it possible to steer the contraption.
It was, as one can see, a sledge rigged as a sloop. In winter, on the frozen plain, when the trains are held up by the snows, these vehicles make extremely rapid crossings from one station to the next. They carry, moreover, a prodigious amount of sail—more even than a racing cutter can, at risk of capsizing—and, running before the wind, they glide over the surface of the prairies at a speed equal to, if not greater than, that of the express trains.
In a few moments, a deal was struck between Mr. Fogg and the master of this land-going craft. The wind was good. It was blowing from the west in a stiff breeze. The snow had hardened, and Mudge felt confident he could take Mr. Fogg in a few hours to the Omaha station. There the trains are frequent and the lines numerous, leading toward Chicago and New York. It was not out of the question that the lost time might be recovered. There was thus no reason to hesitate in attempting the adventure.
Mr. Fogg, not wanting to expose Mrs. Aouda to the tortures of a crossing in the open air, in a cold that the speed would make still more unbearable, proposed to her that she stay under Passepartout's guard at the Kearney station. The honest fellow would take it upon himself to bring the young woman back to Europe by a better route and in more acceptable conditions.
Mrs. Aouda refused to part from Mr. Fogg, and Passepartout felt very glad of this decision. Indeed, for nothing in the world would he have wanted to leave his master, since Fix was to go along with him.
As for what the police inspector was thinking just then, it would be hard to say. Had his conviction been shaken by Phileas Fogg's return, or did he hold him to be an extremely clever rascal who, his tour of the world accomplished, must believe he would be absolutely safe in England? Perhaps Fix's opinion regarding Phileas Fogg had indeed been altered. But he was no less resolved for that to do his duty and, more impatient than anyone, to hurry the return to England with all his power.
At eight o'clock, the sledge was ready to leave. The travelers—one would be tempted to say the passengers—took their places in it and wrapped themselves tightly in their traveling blankets. The two immense sails were hoisted, and, under the wind's impulse, the vehicle sped over the hardened snow at a speed of forty miles an hour.
The distance separating Fort Kearney from Omaha is, in a straight line—as the bee flies, as the Americans say—two hundred miles at most. If the wind held, in five hours this distance could be covered. If no incident occurred, by one o'clock in the afternoon the sledge should have reached Omaha.
What a crossing! The travelers, pressed one against another, could not speak to each other. The cold, heightened by the speed, would have cut off their words. The sledge glided as lightly over the surface of the plain as a boat over the surface of the water—minus the swell. When the breeze came skimming the ground, it seemed as though the sledge were lifted off the ground by its sails, vast wings of an immense spread. Mudge, at the rudder, held to the straight line, and with a stroke of the scull he corrected the swerves the contraption tended to make. All the canvas was drawing. The jib had been hauled out and was no longer sheltered by the brigantine. A topmast was hoisted, and a topsail, spread to the wind, added its driving power to that of the other sails. One could not gauge it, mathematically, but certainly the sledge's speed could not have been less than forty miles an hour.
"If nothing breaks," said Mudge, "we'll get there!"
And Mudge had an interest in getting there within the agreed time, for Mr. Fogg, true to his system, had baited him with a hefty bonus.
The prairie, which the sledge cut across in a straight line, was flat as a sea. It was like an immense frozen pond. The railroad serving this part of the territory climbed, from the southwest to the northwest, by way of Grand Island, Columbus—an important town of Nebraska—Schuyler, Fremont, then Omaha. Along its entire course it hugged the Platte River's right bank. The sledge, cutting the route short, followed the chord of the arc traced by the railway. Mudge had no fear of being stopped by the Platte River, at that little bend it makes in front of Fremont, since its waters were frozen. The way was thus entirely clear of obstacles, and Phileas Fogg had therefore only two circumstances to dread: a breakdown of the contraption, a shift or a dropping of the wind.
But the breeze did not slacken. On the contrary. It blew hard enough to bend the mast, which the iron shrouds held solidly. These metal cables, like the strings of an instrument, resonated as if a bow had set off their vibrations. The sledge swept along amid a plaintive harmony of a quite particular intensity.
"These strings sound the fifth and the octave," Mr. Fogg said.
And those were the only words he spoke throughout the crossing. Mrs. Aouda, carefully bundled up in the furs and the traveling blankets, was, as far as possible, protected from the assaults of the cold.
As for Passepartout, his face red as the sun's disk when it sets in the mists, he drank in that biting air. With the fund of imperturbable confidence he possessed, he had taken to hoping again. Instead of reaching New York in the morning, they would get there in the evening, but there were still some chances that it might be before the departure of the Liverpool steamer.
Passepartout had even felt a strong urge to shake the hand of his ally Fix. He did not forget that it was the inspector himself who had procured the sail-sledge, and consequently the only means there was of reaching Omaha in good time. But, from some presentiment or other, he kept to his accustomed reserve.
In any case, one thing Passepartout would never forget was the sacrifice Mr. Fogg had made, without hesitating, to snatch him from the hands of the Sioux. For that, Mr. Fogg had risked fortune and life alike... No! never would his servant forget it!
While each of the travelers was giving himself over to reflections so varied, the sledge flew over the immense carpet of snow. If it crossed a few creeks, tributaries or sub-tributaries of the Little Blue River, one did not notice it. The fields and the watercourses vanished under a uniform whiteness. The plain was utterly deserted. Hemmed in between the Union Pacific Road and the spur line meant to join Kearney to Saint Joseph, it formed a kind of great uninhabited island. Not a village, not a station, not even a fort. From time to time, one saw flash past like lightning some grimacing tree, whose white skeleton writhed under the breeze. Sometimes bands of wild birds rose in a single flight. Sometimes too, some prairie wolves, in numerous packs, lean, famished, driven by a ferocious need, raced the sledge for speed. Then Passepartout, revolver in hand, stood ready to fire on the nearest ones. Had some accident stopped the sledge just then, the travelers, attacked by these ferocious carnivores, would have run the greatest risks. But the sledge held firm; it was not long in taking a lead, and soon the whole howling pack was left behind.
At noon, Mudge recognized by a few signs that he was crossing the frozen course of the Platte River. He kept silent, but he was already certain that, twenty miles farther on, he would have reached the Omaha station.
And, in fact, it was not yet one o'clock when this skillful guide, leaving the tiller, rushed to the halyards of the sails and hauled them down in a bunch, while the sledge, carried by its irresistible momentum, covered another half mile under bare poles. At last it stopped, and Mudge, pointing to a mass of snow-white roofs, said:
"We've arrived."
Arrived! Arrived indeed at that station which, by numerous trains, is daily in communication with the east of the United States!
Passepartout and Fix had jumped to the ground and were shaking their numbed limbs. They helped Mr. Fogg and the young woman down from the sledge. Phileas Fogg settled generously with Mudge, whose hand Passepartout shook as with a friend, and all of them rushed toward the Omaha station.
It is at this important city of Nebraska that the Pacific railway proper comes to an end—the one that puts the Mississippi basin in communication with the great ocean. To go from Omaha to Chicago, the railroad, under the name of "Chicago-Rock Island Road," runs straight east, serving fifty stations.
A direct train was ready to leave. Phileas Fogg and his companions had only the time to rush into a car. They had glimpsed nothing of Omaha, though Passepartout admitted to himself that there was no cause to regret it, and that sightseeing was not what it was about.
With extreme speed, this train passed through the state of Iowa, by way of Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Iowa City. In the night it forded the Mississippi at Davenport, and by way of Rock Island passed into Illinois. The next day, the 10th, at four in the afternoon, it drew into Chicago, already raised up from its ruins, and enthroned more proudly than ever on the shores of its beautiful Lake Michigan.
Nine hundred miles separate Chicago from New York. Trains were plentiful at Chicago. Mr. Fogg stepped straight from one into the next. The dashing locomotive of the "Pittsburgh-Fort Wayne-Chicago Railroad" set off at full speed, as if it had understood that the honorable gentleman had no time to lose. It crossed like lightning Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, passing through towns with ancient names, some of which had streets and streetcars, but no houses yet. At last the Hudson appeared, and, on December 11, at a quarter past eleven at night, the train halted in the station, on the river's right bank, opposite the very pier used by the Cunard line's steamers, otherwise called the "British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Co."
The China, bound for Liverpool, had left forty-five minutes before!