Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
An hour later, the steamer Henrietta passed the Light-boat that marks the entrance to the Hudson, rounded the point of Sandy Hook, and put out to sea. During the day it ran along Long Island, off the Fire Island light, and headed rapidly eastward.
The next day, December 13, at noon, a man went up onto the bridge to take the ship's position. Surely one must suppose this man was Captain Speedy! Not in the least. It was Phileas Fogg, esq.
As for Captain Speedy, he was quite simply locked up in his cabin, letting out howls that betrayed an anger—quite pardonable—driven to the point of frenzy.
What had taken place was very simple. Phileas Fogg wanted to go to Liverpool; the captain would not take him there. So Phileas Fogg had agreed to take passage for Bordeaux, and, in the thirty hours he had been aboard, he had maneuvered so well with banknotes that the crew—sailors and stokers, a somewhat shady crew that was on rather bad terms with the captain—belonged to him. And that is why Phileas Fogg was in command in place of Captain Speedy, why the captain sat locked in his cabin, and why, in a word, the Henrietta was steering for Liverpool. Only, from watching Mr. Fogg handle her, it was very clear that Mr. Fogg had once been a sailor.
Now, how the adventure would end, one would learn later. Even so, Mrs. Aouda could not help being uneasy, though she said nothing of it. Fix, for his part, had been dumbfounded at first. As for Passepartout, he found the whole thing simply delightful.
"Between eleven and twelve knots," Captain Speedy had said, and indeed the Henrietta held to that average speed.
If then—so many "ifs" still!—if then the sea did not turn too rough, if the wind did not shift into the east, if no damage befell the vessel, no accident the engine, the Henrietta, in the nine days counted from December 12 to the 21st, could cover the three thousand miles that separate New York from Liverpool. True, once he arrived, the affair of the Henrietta coming on top of the affair of the Bank might carry the gentleman a little farther than he would wish.
During the first few days, the passage went on in excellent conditions. The sea was not too hard; the wind seemed settled in the northeast; the sails were set, and, under her fore-and-aft canvas, the Henrietta ran like a true transatlantic liner.
Passepartout was enchanted. His master's latest exploit, whose consequences he refused to see, filled him with enthusiasm. Never had the crew seen a merrier, nimbler fellow. He showered a thousand friendly attentions on the sailors and astonished them with his acrobatic tricks. He lavished the finest names on them and the most tempting drinks. To his mind, they handled the ship like gentlemen, and the stokers stoked like heroes. His good humor, very catching, spread to everyone. He had forgotten the past, the troubles, the perils. He thought only of that goal, so near being reached, and sometimes he seethed with impatience, as though he were being fired by the Henrietta's furnaces. Often, too, the worthy fellow circled around Fix; he watched him with an eye "that said a great deal"! yet he never spoke to him, for no intimacy any longer existed between the two former friends.
Besides, Fix, it must be said, no longer understood a thing of it! The conquest of the Henrietta, the buying of her crew, this Fogg handling her like a consummate seaman, the whole combination of things bewildered him. He no longer knew what to think! But, after all, a gentleman who started out stealing fifty-five thousand pounds might well finish by stealing a ship. And Fix was naturally led to believe that the Henrietta, steered by Fogg, was not bound for Liverpool at all, but for some point of the globe where the thief, turned pirate, would quietly put himself out of reach! This hypothesis, it must be admitted, was as plausible as could be, and the detective began to regret very seriously having embarked on this business.
As for Captain Speedy, he went on howling in his cabin, and Passepartout, charged with supplying his food, did so only with the greatest precautions, vigorous though he was. Mr. Fogg, for his part, no longer even seemed to suspect there was a captain aboard.
On the 13th, they passed the tail of the Newfoundland bank. These are bad waters. In winter especially, fogs are frequent there, gusts of wind formidable. Since the day before, the barometer, dropping abruptly, had given warning of a coming change in the atmosphere. And indeed, during the night the temperature altered, the cold grew sharper, and at the same time the wind shifted into the southeast.
It was a setback. Mr. Fogg, so as not to stray from his course, had to take in his sails and force the steam. Even so, the ship's progress was slowed, given the state of the sea, whose long waves broke against her stem. She pitched very violently, and that to the detriment of her speed. The breeze was turning little by little into a hurricane, and one already foresaw the case in which the Henrietta might no longer be able to hold her head to the sea. Now, if she had to run before it, that meant the unknown with all its evil chances.
Passepartout's face darkened along with the sky, and, for two days, the honest fellow went through mortal agonies. But Phileas Fogg was a bold seaman, who knew how to stand up to the sea, and he held his course, even without reducing steam. The Henrietta, whenever she could not rise to the wave, drove through it, and her deck was swept clean from end to end, but she got through. Sometimes, too, the propeller emerged, thrashing the air with its frantic blades, when a mountain of water lifted the stern out of the seas, but the ship kept forging ahead.
However, the wind did not freshen as much as one might have feared. It was not one of those hurricanes that tear past at ninety miles an hour. It held at a strong gale, but unfortunately it blew stubbornly out of the southeast and did not allow any canvas to be carried. And yet, as we shall see, it would have been very useful to come to the aid of the steam!
On December 16, it was the seventy-fifth day elapsed since the departure from London. All in all, the Henrietta was not yet behind by any alarming amount. Half the crossing was roughly done, and the worst waters were behind them. In summer, one could have answered for success. In winter, they lay at the mercy of the foul season. Passepartout did not commit himself. At bottom, he had hope, and, if the wind failed, at least he counted on the steam.
Now, that day, the engineer, having come up on deck, met Mr. Fogg and talked with him rather heatedly.
Without knowing why—by a presentiment, no doubt—Passepartout felt a kind of vague unease. He would gladly have given an ear to catch with the other what was being said there. Still, he managed to catch a few words, these among others, spoken by his master:
"You are certain of what you assert?
—Certain, sir, replied the engineer. Don't forget that, since our departure, we have been stoking with all our furnaces lit, and if we had enough coal to run under low steam from New York to Bordeaux, we have not got enough to run under full steam from New York to Liverpool!
—I shall see to it," replied Mr. Fogg.
Passepartout had understood. He was seized with a mortal dread.
The coal was going to run out!
"Ah! if my master gets past this one," he said to himself, "he'll be a famous man indeed!"
And, having run into Fix, he could not help letting him in on the situation.
"So," the agent answered him through clenched teeth, "you believe we're going to Liverpool!
—Of course!
—Idiot!" replied the inspector, who walked off, shrugging his shoulders.
Passepartout was on the point of sharply flinging back the epithet, whose real meaning he could not, however, grasp; but he told himself that the unfortunate Fix must be very disappointed, very humiliated in his self-esteem, after so clumsily following a false trail around the world, and he let it pass.
And now what course was Phileas Fogg going to take? It was hard to imagine. Yet it appears the phlegmatic gentleman took one, for that very evening he summoned the engineer and told him:
"Stoke the fires and hold the course until the fuel is completely used up."
A few moments later, the Henrietta's funnel was vomiting torrents of smoke.
So the ship went on running at full steam; but, just as he had announced, two days later, on the 18th, the engineer let it be known that the coal would give out within the day.
"Don't let the fires die down," replied Mr. Fogg. "On the contrary. Load the valves."
That day, toward noon, after taking the altitude and calculating the ship's position, Phileas Fogg sent for Passepartout and gave him the order to go and fetch Captain Speedy. It was as if this brave fellow had been ordered to go and unchain a tiger, and he went down into the poop, saying to himself:
"He'll be positively rabid!"
And indeed, a few minutes later, amid shouts and oaths, a bombshell arrived on the poop. This bombshell was Captain Speedy. It was plain that it was about to burst.
"Where are we?" were the first words he uttered amid the chokings of his rage, and truly, had the worthy man been the least bit apoplectic, he would never have recovered from it.
"Where are we? he repeated, his face congested.
—Seven hundred and seventy miles from Liverpool (300 leagues), replied Mr. Fogg with imperturbable calm.
—Pirate! cried Andrew Speedy.
—I sent for you, sir...
—Sea-rover!
—...sir, resumed Phileas Fogg, to beg you to sell me your ship.
—No! by all the devils, no!
—The thing is, I am going to be obliged to burn her.
—Burn my ship!
—Yes, at least her upper works, for we are short of fuel.
—Burn my ship! cried Captain Speedy, who could no longer even get the syllables out. A ship worth fifty thousand dollars (250,000 F)!
—Here are sixty thousand (300,000 F)! replied Phileas Fogg, holding out to the captain a bundle of banknotes.
The effect on Andrew Speedy was prodigious. One is not an American without the sight of sixty thousand dollars stirring a certain emotion. In an instant the captain forgot his anger, his imprisonment, all his grievances against his passenger. His ship was twenty years old. This might turn into a golden bargain!... The bombshell could burst no longer. Mr. Fogg had torn out its fuse.
"And the iron hull stays mine, he said in a singularly softened tone.
—The iron hull and the engine, sir. Is it agreed?
—Agreed."
And Andrew Speedy, seizing the bundle of banknotes, counted them and made them vanish into his pocket.
During this scene, Passepartout was white. As for Fix, he nearly had a fit. Nearly twenty thousand pounds spent, and this Fogg on top of it leaving his seller the hull and the engine, that is to say almost the whole value of the ship! True, the sum stolen from the bank came to fifty-five thousand pounds!
When Andrew Speedy had pocketed the money:
"Sir, said Mr. Fogg to him, don't let all this astonish you. Understand that I lose twenty thousand pounds if I am not back in London on December 21, at eight forty-five in the evening. Now, I had missed the New York steamer, and since you refused to take me to Liverpool...
—And I did well, by the fifty thousand devils of hell, cried Andrew Speedy, since I gain at least forty thousand dollars by it."
Then, more composedly:
"Do you know something, he added, captain?...
—Fogg.
—Captain Fogg, well now, there's a bit of the Yankee in you."
And after paying his passenger what he took to be a compliment, he was walking off, when Phileas Fogg said to him:
"Now this ship belongs to me?
—Certainly, from the keel to the mastheads, for everything that is 'wood,' that is!
—Good. Have the interior fittings torn out and stoke with the wreckage."
One can judge how much of this dry wood had to be consumed to keep the steam at sufficient pressure. That day, the poop, the deckhouses, the cabins, the quarters, the false deck, all of it went.
The next day, December 19, they burned the masting, the spare spars, the booms. They brought down the masts, they chopped them up with axes. The crew put an incredible zeal into it. Passepartout, hewing, cutting, sawing, did the work of ten men. It was a fury of demolition.
The next day, the 20th, the bulwarks, the rails, the topsides, the greater part of the deck, were devoured. The Henrietta was now no more than a vessel razed like a hulk.
But, that day, they had sighted the coast of Ireland and the Fastnet light.
Even so, at ten in the evening, the ship was still only abreast of Queenstown. Phileas Fogg now had but twenty-four hours left to reach London! Now, that was the time the Henrietta needed to make Liverpool—even running at full steam. And the steam was going to fail the audacious gentleman at last!
"Sir, said Captain Speedy to him then, having ended by taking an interest in his plans, I really pity you. Everything is against you! We are still only off Queenstown.
—Ah! said Mr. Fogg, so it is Queenstown, that town whose lights we can see?
—Yes.
—Can we enter the port?
—Not for three hours yet. Only at high tide.
—Let us wait!" replied Phileas Fogg calmly, without letting his face betray that, by a stroke of supreme inspiration, he was about to try once more to conquer the contrary luck!
For Queenstown is a port on the Irish coast where the transatlantic liners coming from the United States drop their mailbags in passing. These letters are carried to Dublin by expresses always ready to leave. From Dublin they reach Liverpool by high-speed steamers—thus outstripping by twelve hours the fastest runners of the shipping companies.
Those twelve hours that the American mail gained in this way, Phileas Fogg meant to gain as well. Instead of arriving on the Henrietta the next evening at Liverpool, he would be there at noon, and consequently he would have time to be in London before eight forty-five in the evening.
Toward one in the morning, the Henrietta entered the port of Queenstown at high tide, and Phileas Fogg, after receiving a vigorous handshake from Captain Speedy, left him on the razed carcass of his ship, which was still worth half of what he had sold it for!
The passengers landed at once. Fix, at that moment, had a fierce urge to arrest the man Fogg. Yet he did not do it! Why? What battle was being fought within him? Had his opinion of Mr. Fogg changed? Did he understand at last that he had been mistaken? All the same, Fix did not abandon Mr. Fogg. With him, with Mrs. Aouda, with Passepartout, who no longer took the time to breathe, he boarded the train from Queenstown at half past one in the morning, reached Dublin at daybreak, and immediately embarked on one of those steamers—true spindles of steel, all engine—which, disdaining to rise to the wave, invariably drive straight through it.
At twenty to noon, on December 21, Phileas Fogg landed at last on the quay of Liverpool. He was now only six hours from London.
But at that moment, Fix came up, laid his hand on his shoulder, and, producing his warrant:
"You are the man Phileas Fogg? he said.
—Yes, sir.
—In the name of the Queen, I arrest you!"