Around the World in Eighty Days (20 page)
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IT IS TIME TO RELATE WHAT A CHANGE TOOK PLACE IN English public opinion, when it transpired that the real bank-robber, a certain James Strand, had been arrested, on the 17th of December, at Edinburgh. Three days before, Phileas Fogg had been a criminal, who was being desperately followed up by the police; now he was an honourable gentleman, mathematically pursuing his eccentric journey round the world.
The papers resumed their discussion about the wager; all those who had laid bets, for or against him, revived their interest, as if by magic; the “Phileas Fogg bonds” again became negotiable, and many new wagers were
made. Phileas Fogg’s name was once more at a premium on ’Change.
made. Phileas Fogg’s name was once more at a premium on ’Change.
His five friends of the Reform Club passed these three days in a state of feverish suspense. Would Phileas Fogg, whom they had forgotten, reappear before their eyes! Where was he at this moment? The 17th of December, the day of James Strand’s arrest, was the seventy-sixth since Phileas Fogg’s departure, and no news of him had been received. Was he dead? Had he abandoned the effort, or was he continuing his journey along the route agreed upon? And would he appear on Saturday, the 21st of December, at a quarter before nine in the evening, on the threshold of the Reform Club saloon?
The anxiety in which, for three days, London society existed, cannot be described. Telegrams were sent to America and Asia for news of Phileas Fogg. Messengers were despatched to the house in Saville Row morning and evening. No news. The police were ignorant what had become of the detective, Fix, who had so unfortunately followed up a false scent. Bets increased, nevertheless, in number and value. Phileas Fogg, like a race-horse, was drawing near his last turning-point. The bonds were quoted, no longer at a hundred below par, but at twenty, at ten, and at five; and paralytic old Lord Albemarle bet even in his favour.
A great crowd was collected in Pall Mall and the neighbouring streets on Saturday evening; it seemed like a multitude of brokers permanently established around the Reform Club. Circulation was impeded, and everywhere disputes, discussions, and financial transactions were going on. The police had great difficulty in keeping back the crowd, and as the hour when Phileas Fogg was due approached, the excitement rose to its highest pitch.
The five antagonists of Phileas Fogg had met in the great saloon of the club. John Sullivan and Samuel Fallentin, the bankers, Andrew Stuart, the engineer, Gauthier Ralph, the director of the Bank of England,
and Thomas Flanagan, the brewer, one and all waited anxiously.
and Thomas Flanagan, the brewer, one and all waited anxiously.
When the clock indicated twenty minutes past eight, Andrew Stuart got up, saying, “Gentlemen, in twenty minutes the time agreed upon between Mr. Fogg and ourselves will have expired.”
“What time did the last train arrive from Liverpool?” asked Thomas Flanagan.
“At twenty-three minutes past seven,” replied Gauthier Ralph; “and the next does not arrive till ten minutes after twelve.”
“Well, gentlemen,” resumed Andrew Stuart, “if Phileas Fogg had come in the 7.23 train, he would have got here by this time. We can therefore regard the bet as won.”
“Wait; don’t let us be too hasty,” replied Samuel Fallentin. “You know that Mr. Fogg is very eccentric. His punctuality is well known; he never arrives too soon, or too late; and I should not be surprised if he appeared before us at the last minute.”
“Why,” said Andrew Stuart nervously, “if I should see him, I should not believe it was he.”
“The fact is,” resumed Thomas Flanagan, “Mr. Fogg’s project was absurdly foolish. Whatever his punctuality, he could not prevent the delays which were certain to occur; and a delay of only two or three days would be fatal to his tour.”
“Observe, too,” added John Sullivan, “that we have received no intelligence from him, though there are telegraphic lines all along his route.”
“He has lost, gentlemen,” said Andrew Stuart,—“he has a hundred times lost! You know, besides, that the ‘China’—the only steamer he could have taken from New York to get here in time—arrived yesterday. I have seen a list of the passengers, and the name of Phileas Fogg is not among them. Even if we admit that fortune has favoured him, he can scarcely have reached America.
I think he will be at least twenty days behindhand, and that Lord Albemarle will lose a cool five thousand.”
I think he will be at least twenty days behindhand, and that Lord Albemarle will lose a cool five thousand.”
“It is clear,” replied Gauthier Ralph; “and we have nothing to do but to present Mr. Fogg’s check at Barings to-morrow.”
At this moment, the hands of the club clock pointed to twenty minutes to nine.
“Five minutes more,” said Andrew Stuart.
The five gentlemen looked at each other. Their anxiety was becoming intense; but, not wishing to betray it, they readily assented to Mr. Fallentin’s proposal of a rubber.
“I wouldn’t give up my four thousand of the bet,” said Andrew Stuart, as he took his seat, “for three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.”
The clock indicated eighteen minutes to nine.
The players took up their cards, but could not keep their eyes off the clock. Certainly, however secure they felt, minutes had never seemed so long to them!
“Seventeen minutes to nine,” said Thomas Flanagan, as he cut the cards which Ralph handed to him.
Then there was a moment of silence. The great saloon was perfectly quiet; but the murmurs of the crowd outside were heard, with now and then a shrill cry. The pendulum beat the seconds, which each player eagerly counted, as he listened, with mathematical regularity.
“Sixteen minutes to nine!” said John Sullivan, in a voice which betrayed his emotion.
One minute more, and the wager would be won. Andrew Stuart and his partners suspended their game. They left their cards, and counted the seconds.
At the fortieth second, nothing. At the fiftieth, still nothing.
At the fifty-fifth, a loud cry was heard in the street, followed by applause, hurrahs, and some fierce growls.
The players rose from their seats.
At the fifty-seventh second the door of the saloon
opened; and the pendulum had not beat the sixtieth second when Phileas Fogg appeared, followed by an excited crowd who had forced their way through the club doors, and in his calm voice, said, “Here I am, gentlemen!”
opened; and the pendulum had not beat the sixtieth second when Phileas Fogg appeared, followed by an excited crowd who had forced their way through the club doors, and in his calm voice, said, “Here I am, gentlemen!”
YES; PHILEAS FOGG IN PERSON.
The reader will remember that at five minutes past eight in the evening—about five and twenty hours after the arrival of the travellers in London—Passepartout had been sent by his master to engage the services of the Reverend Samuel Wilson in a certain marriage ceremony, which was to take place the next day.
Passepartout went on his errand enchanted. He soon reached the clergyman’s house, but found him not at home. Passepartout waited a good twenty minutes, and when he left the reverend gentleman, it was thirty-five minutes past eight. But in what a state he was! With his hair in disorder, and without his hat, he ran along the street as never man was seen to run before, overturning passers-by, rushing over the sidewalk like a waterspout.
In three minutes he was in Saville Row again, and staggered breathlessly into Mr. Fogg’s room.
He could not speak.
“What is the matter?” asked Mr. Fogg.
“My master!” gasped Passepartout,—“marriage—im-possible—”
“Impossible?”
“Impossible—for to-morrow.”
“Why so?”
“Because to-morrow—is Sunday!”
“Monday,” replied Mr. Fogg.
“No—to-day—is Saturday.”
“Saturday? Impossible!”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” cried Passepartout. “You have made a mistake of one day! We arrived twenty-four hours ahead of time; but there are only ten minutes left!”
Passepartout had seized his master by the collar, and was dragging him along with irresistible force.
Phileas Fogg, thus kidnapped, without having time to think, left his house, jumped into a cab, promised a hundred pounds to the cabman, and, having run over two dogs and overturned five carriages, reached the Reform Club.
The clock indicated a quarter before nine when he appeared in the great saloon.
Phileas Fogg had accomplished the journey round the world in eighty days!
Phileas Fogg had won his wager of twenty thousand pounds!
How was it that a man so exact and fastidious could have made this error of a day? How came he to think that he had arrived in London on Saturday, the twenty-first day of December, when it was really Friday, the twentieth, the seventy-ninth day only from his departure?
The cause of the error is very simple.
Phileas Fogg had, without suspecting it, gained one day on his journey, and this merely because he had travelled constantly eastward; he would, on the contrary, have lost a day, had he gone in the opposite direction, that is,
westward.
westward.
In journeying eastward he had gone towards the sun, and the days therefore diminished for him as many times four minutes as he crossed degrees in this direction. There are three hundred and sixty degrees on the circumference of the earth; and these three hundred and
sixty degrees, multiplied by four minutes, gives precisely twenty-four hours—that is, the day unconsciously gained. In other words, while Phileas Fogg, going eastward, saw the sun pass the meridian
eighty
times, his friends in London only saw it pass the meridian
seventy-nine
times. This is why they awaited him at the Reform Club on Saturday, and not Sunday, as Mr. Fogg thought.
sixty degrees, multiplied by four minutes, gives precisely twenty-four hours—that is, the day unconsciously gained. In other words, while Phileas Fogg, going eastward, saw the sun pass the meridian
eighty
times, his friends in London only saw it pass the meridian
seventy-nine
times. This is why they awaited him at the Reform Club on Saturday, and not Sunday, as Mr. Fogg thought.
And Passepartout’s famous family watch, which had always kept London time, would have betrayed this fact, if it had marked the days as well as the hours and minutes!
Phileas Fogg, then, had won the twenty thousand pounds; but as he had spent nearly nineteen thousand on the way, the pecuniary gain was small. His object was, however, to be victorious, and not to win money. He divided the one thousand pounds that remained between Passepartout and the unfortunate Fix, against whom he cherished no grudge. He deducted, however, from Passepartout’s share the cost of the gas which had burned in his room for nineteen hundred and twenty hours, for the sake of regularity.
That evening, Mr. Fogg, as tranquil and phlegmatic as ever, said to Aouda, “Is our marriage still agreeable to you?”
“Mr. Fogg,” replied she, “it is for me to ask that question. You were ruined, but now you are rich again.”
“Pardon me, madam; my fortune belongs to you. If you had not suggested our marriage, my servant would not have gone to the Reverend Samuel Wilson’s, I should not have been apprised of my error, and—”
“Dear Mr. Fogg!” said the young woman.
“Dear Aouda!” replied Phileas Fogg.
It need not be said that the marriage took place forty-eight hours after, and that Passepartout, glowing and dazzling, gave the bride away. Had he not saved her, and was he not entitled to this honour?
The next day, as soon as it was light, Passepartout
rapped vigorously at his master’s door. Mr. Fogg opened it, and asked, “What’s the matter, Passepartout?”
rapped vigorously at his master’s door. Mr. Fogg opened it, and asked, “What’s the matter, Passepartout?”
“What is it, sir? Why, I’ve just this instant found out—”
“What?”
“That we might have made the tour of the world in only seventy-eight days.”
“No doubt,” returned Mr. Fogg, “by not crossing India. But if I had not crossed India, I should not have saved Aouda; she would not have been my wife, and—”
Mr. Fogg quietly shut the door.
Phileas Fogg had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this, he had employed every means of conveyance—steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey?
Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!
Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?
Jules Verne was born February 8, 1828, on an island near the middle of the seaport town of Nantes. His father, Pierre, was a stern, nervous, and puritanical lawyer. His mother, who had a more romantic temperament, came from an old and wealthy merchant family whose riches came from the slave trade. At a large family dinner party celebrating Jules’s baptism, relatives suggested that he might become a sailor or a poet, but his father severely insisted that he must become a lawyer.
Young Jules performed just well enough in school to keep his father’s hopes alive. He shone more at athletics. His great love was for sea stories like
Robinson Crusoe
and
Swiss Family Robinson
. At eleven, he bribed a cabinboy to smuggle him into the three-master sailing ship
Coralie
, bound for the Indies. His father, however, took a steam launch and caught up with him a few hours later. “From now on,” he promised his mother, “I’ll travel only in my imagination.”
Robinson Crusoe
and
Swiss Family Robinson
. At eleven, he bribed a cabinboy to smuggle him into the three-master sailing ship
Coralie
, bound for the Indies. His father, however, took a steam launch and caught up with him a few hours later. “From now on,” he promised his mother, “I’ll travel only in my imagination.”
Travel, indeed, he did, though not just imaginatively. In the one hundred three volumes he wrote before his death in 1905, Jules Verne invented science fiction and anticipated, in great detail, airplanes, modern submarines, radio, TV, and many other technological innovations. He imagined a moonship that was about the shape and weight of Apollo 8, and had it return to Earth with the same splashdown. Later in life Verne also came to see a darker and more complicated future, with fiercesome war weapons, overpopulation, and pollution. Above all, his eccentric and colorful characters, brought together in adventuresome
expeditions into the unknown, allowed him to enthrall his readers with real scientific detail, explaining how natural and especially man-made things worked, or might be made to work. He taught the world to see itself in a new way and to envision a rapidly changing future.
expeditions into the unknown, allowed him to enthrall his readers with real scientific detail, explaining how natural and especially man-made things worked, or might be made to work. He taught the world to see itself in a new way and to envision a rapidly changing future.
So Verne did not become a lawyer, though he did pass his law school exams. After some lean years in Paris, writing plays and novels with moderate success, he married Honorine Morel, a young widow of twenty-six with two young girls, in 1857. Michel, their only child together, was born in 1861. Verne’s first major public notice came with the publication of
Five Weeks in a Balloon
in 1863. Then followed rapidly hugely successful works such as
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island, From the Earth to the Moon
, and
Voyage to the Center of the Earth
. International fame and adulation was capped by the publication of
Around the World in Eighty Days
in 1873, a work that eventually earned Verne half a million dollars.
Five Weeks in a Balloon
in 1863. Then followed rapidly hugely successful works such as
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island, From the Earth to the Moon
, and
Voyage to the Center of the Earth
. International fame and adulation was capped by the publication of
Around the World in Eighty Days
in 1873, a work that eventually earned Verne half a million dollars.
Raised in a narrowly religious and provincial environment, surrounded by snobbery of social class and race, he had come to passionately condemn superstition and the many forms of religious, class, and racial fanaticism and bigotry. But he rarely preached. Rather, he exalted his readers with an unflagging and loving interest in all forms of humanity, indeed in all living, mechanical, and natural things. Showered with honors, he spent the last fifteen years of his life in a palatial house in Amiens. Yet Verne remained the shy, silent, and imaginative boy he had always been, leaving to Honorine the enjoyment of entertaining his many visitors in the opulent dowstairs, while he adventured through space and time in his sparse upstairs workroom next to his large library and his carefully maintained collection of over one hundred thousand notes on scientific, technological, geographical, and cultural matters.
—Justin Leiber
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