Around the World in Eighty Days Part 13

"That's it," muttered Pa.s.separtout. "These are the rogues who were going to burn our young lady."

The priests took their places in front of the judge, and the clerk proceeded to read in a loud voice a complaint of sacrilege against Phileas Fogg and his servant, who were accused of having violated a place held consecrated by the Brahmin religion.

"You hear the charge?" asked the judge.

"Yes, sir," replied Mr. Fogg, consulting his watch, "and I admit it."

"You admit it?"

"I admit it, and I wish to hear these priests admit, in their turn, what they were going to do at the paG.o.da of Pillaji."

The priests looked at each other. They did not seem to understand what was said.

"Yes," cried Pa.s.separtout, warmly; "at the paG.o.da of Pillaji, where they were on the point of burning their victim."

The judge stared with astonishment, and the priests were stupefied.

"What victim?" said Judge Obadiah. "Burn whom? In Bombay itself?"

"Bombay?" cried Pa.s.separtout.

"Certainly, we are not talking of the paG.o.da of Pillaji, but of the paG.o.da of Malabar Hill, at Bombay."

"And as a proof," added the clerk, "here are the desecrator's very shoes, which he left behind him."

Whereupon he placed a pair of shoes on his desk.

"My shoes!" cried Pa.s.separtout, in his surprise permitting this imprudent exclamation to escape him.

The confusion of master and man, who had quite forgotten the affair at Bombay, for which they were now detained at Calcutta, may be imagined.

Fix, the detective, had foreseen the advantage which Pa.s.separtout's escapade gave him, and, delaying his departure for twelve hours, had consulted the priests of Malabar Hill. Knowing that the English authorities dealt very severely with this kind of misdemeanor, he promised them a goodly sum in damages, and sent them forward to Calcutta by the next train. Owing to the delay caused by the rescue of the young widow, Fix and the priests reached the Indian capital before Mr. Fogg and his servant. The magistrates had been already warned by a despatch to arrest them should they arrive. Fix's disappointment when he learned that Phileas Fogg had not made his appearance in Calcutta may be imagined. He made up his mind that the robber had stopped somewhere on the route and taken refuge in the southern provinces. For twenty-four hours Fix watched the station with feverish anxiety. At last he was rewarded by seeing Mr. Fogg and Pa.s.separtout arrive, accompanied by a young woman, whose presence he was wholly at a loss to explain. He hastened for a policeman, and this was how the party came to be arrested and brought before Judge Obadiah.

Had Pa.s.separtout been a little less preoccupied, he would have seen the detective settled in a corner of the courtroom, watching the proceedings with an interest easily understood; for the warrant had failed to reach him at Calcutta, as it had done at Bombay and Suez.

Judge Obadiah had unfortunately caught Pa.s.separtout's rash exclamation, which the poor fellow would have given the world to recall.

"The facts are admitted?" asked the judge.

"Admitted," replied Mr. Fogg, coldly.

"Inasmuch," resumed the judge, "as the English law protects equally and sternly the religions of the Indian people, and as the man Pa.s.separtout has admitted that he violated the sacred paG.o.da of Malabar Hill, at Bombay, on the 20th of October, I condemn the said Pa.s.separtout to imprisonment for fifteen days and a fine of three hundred pounds."

"Three hundred pounds!" cried Pa.s.separtout, startled at the largeness of the sum.

"Silence!" shouted the constable.

"And inasmuch," continued the judge, "as it is not proved that the act was not done by the connivance of the master with the servant, and as the master in any case must be held responsible for the acts of his paid servant, I condemn Phileas Fogg to a week's imprisonment and a fine of one hundred and fifty pounds."

Fix rubbed his hands softly with satisfaction. If Phileas Fogg could be detained in Calcutta a week, it would be more than time for the warrant to arrive. Pa.s.separtout was stupefied. This sentence ruined his master. A wager of twenty thousand pounds lost, because he, like a precious fool, had gone into that abominable paG.o.da!

Phileas Fogg, as self-composed as if the judgment did not in the least concern him, did not even lift his eyebrows while it was being p.r.o.nounced. Just as the clerk was calling the next case, he rose, and said, "I offer bail."

"You have that right," returned the judge. Fix's blood ran cold, but he resumed his composure when he heard the judge announce that the bail required for each prisoner would be one thousand pounds.

"I will pay it at once," said Mr. Fogg, taking a roll of bank bills from the carpetbag, which Pa.s.separtout had by him, and placing them on the clerk's desk.

"This sum will be restored to you upon your release from prison," said the judge. "Meanwhile, you are liberated on bail."

"Come!" said Phileas Fogg to his servant.

"But let them at least give me back my shoes!" cried Pa.s.separtout angrily.

"Ah, these are pretty dear shoes!" he muttered, as they were handed to him. "More than a thousand pounds apiece. Besides, they pinch my feet."

Mr. Fogg, offering his arm to Aouda, then departed, followed by the crestfallen Pa.s.separtout. Fix still nourished hopes that the robber would not, after all, leave the two thousand pounds behind him, but would decide to serve out his week in jail, and issued forth on Mr. Fogg's traces. That gentleman took a carriage, and the party were soon landed on one of the quays.

The Rangoon was moored half a mile off in the harbor. Its signal of departure was hoisted at the masthead. Eleven o'clock was striking. Mr. Fogg was an hour in advance of time. Fix saw them leave the carriage and push off in a boat for the steamer, and stamped his feet with disappointment.

"The rascal is off, after all!" he exclaimed. "Two thousand pounds sacrificed! He's as prodigal as a thief! I'll follow him to the end of the world if necessary; but, at the rate he is going on, the stolen money will soon be exhausted."

The detective was not far wrong in making this conjecture. Since leaving London, what with traveling expenses, bribes, the purchase of the elephant, bails and fines, Mr. Fogg had already spent more than five thousand pounds on the way, and the percentage of the sum recovered from the bank robber, promised to the detectives, was rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng.

Chapter 16

In Which Fix Does Not Seem to Understand in the Least What is Said to Him

The Rangoon--one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's boats plying in the Chinese and j.a.panese seas--was a screw steamer, built of iron, weighing about seventeen hundred and seventy tons, and with engines of four hundred horsepower. She was as fast, but not as well fitted up, as the Mongolia, and Aouda was not as comfortably provided for on board her as Phileas Fogg could have wished. However, the trip from Calcutta to Hong Kong only comprised some three thousand five hundred miles, occupying from ten to twelve days, and the young woman was not difficult to please.

During the first days of the journey Aouda became better acquainted with her protector, and constantly gave evidence of her deep grat.i.tude for what he had done. The phlegmatic gentleman listened to her, apparently at least, with coldness, neither his voice nor his manner betraying the slightest emotion; but he seemed to be always on the watch that nothing should be wanting to Aouda's comfort. He visited her regularly each day at certain hours, not so much to talk himself, as to sit and hear her talk.

He treated her with the strictest politeness, but with the precision of an automaton, the movements of which had been arranged for this purpose. Aouda did not quite know what to make of him, though Pa.s.separtout had given her some hints of his master's eccentricity, and made her smile by telling her of the wager which was sending him round the world. After all, she owed Phileas Fogg her life, and she always regarded him through the exalting medium of her grat.i.tude.

Aouda confirmed the Pa.r.s.ee guide's narrative of her touching history. She did, indeed, belong to the highest of the native races of India. Many of the Pa.r.s.ee merchants have made great fortunes there by dealing in cotton. One of them, Sir Jametsee Jeejeebhoy, was made a baronet by the English government. Aouda was a relative of this great man, and it was his cousin, Jeejeeh, whom she hoped to join at Hong Kong. Whether she would find a protector in him she could not tell; but Mr. Fogg tried to calm her anxieties, and to a.s.sure her that everything would be mathematically--he used the very word--arranged. Aouda fastened her great eyes, "clear as the sacred lakes of the Himalaya," upon him; but the intractable Fogg, as reserved as ever, did not seem at all inclined to throw himself into this lake.

The first few days of the voyage pa.s.sed happily, amid favorable weather and propitious winds, and the s.h.i.+p soon came in sight of the great Andaman, the princ.i.p.al of the islands in the Bay of Bengal, with its picturesque Saddle Peak, two thousand four hundred feet high, looming above the waters. The steamer pa.s.sed along near the sh.o.r.es, but the savage Papuans, who are in the lowest scale of humanity, but are not, as has been a.s.serted, cannibals, did not make their appearance.

The panorama of the islands, as they steamed by them, was superb.

Vast forests of palms, arecs, bamboo, teakwood, of the gigantic mimosa and tree-like ferns covered the foreground. Behind, the graceful outlines of the mountains were traced against the sky; and along the coasts swarmed thousands of the precious swallows whose nests furnish a luxurious dish to the tables of the Celestial Empire. The varied landscape afforded by the Andaman Islands was soon pa.s.sed, however, and the Rangoon rapidly approached the Straits of Malacca, which give access to the China seas.

What was detective Fix, so unluckily drawn on from country to country, doing all this while? He had managed to embark on the Rangoon at Calcutta without being seen by Pa.s.separtout, after leaving orders that, if the warrant should arrive, it should be forwarded to him at Hong Kong; and he hoped to conceal his presence to the end of the voyage. It would have been difficult to explain why he was on board without awakening Pa.s.separtout's suspicions, who thought him still at Bombay. But necessity impelled him, nevertheless, to renew his acquaintance with the worthy servant, as will be seen.

All the detective's hopes and wishes were now centered on Hong Kong; for the steamer's stay at Singapore would be too brief to enable him to take any steps there. The arrest must be made at Hong Kong, or the robber would probably escape him forever. Hong Kong was the last English ground on which he would set foot.

Beyond, China, j.a.pan, America offered to Fogg an almost certain refuge. If the warrant should at last make its appearance at Hong Kong, Fix could arrest him and be no further trouble. But beyond Hong Kong? a simple warrant would be of no avail. An extradition warrant would be necessary, and that would result in delays and obstacles, of which the rascal would take advantage to elude justice.

Fix thought over these probabilities during the long hours which he spent in his cabin, and kept repeating to himself, "Now, either the warrant will be at Hong Kong, in which case I shall arrest my man, or it will not be there. This time it is absolutely necessary that I should delay his departure. I have failed at Bombay, and I have failed at Calcutta. If I fail at Hong Kong, my reputation is lost. Cost what it may, I must succeed! But how shall I prevent his departure, if that should turn out to be my last resource?"