Around the World in Eighty Days. Жюль Верн
Читать онлайн книгу.
before reaching Bombay, and she had to remain four hours at Steamer Point, to lay in her coal. But this delay could not in any way be prejudicial to Phileas Fogg’s programme. It was foreseen. Besides, the Mongolia, instead of not arriving at Aden until the morning of the 15th, put in there the evening of the 14th, a gain of fifteen hours.
Mr Fogg and his servant landed. The gentleman wished to have his passport viséd. Fix followed him without being noticed. The formality of the visé through with, Phileas Fogg returned on board to resume his interrupted play. Passepartout, according to his custom, loitered about in the midst of the population of Somalis, Banyans, Parsees, Jews, Arabs, Europeans, making up the twenty-five thousand inhabitants of Aden. He admired the fortifications which make of this town the Gibraltar of the Indian Ocean, and some splendid cisterns, at which the English engineers were still working, two thousand years after the engineers of King Solomon. “Very singular, very singular!” said Passepartout to himself on returning aboard. “I see that it is not useless travel, if we wish to see anything new.”
At six o’clock p.m. the Mongolia was ploughing the waters of the Aden harbour, and soon reached the Indian Ocean. She had one hundred and sixty-eight hours to make the distance between Aden and Bombay. The Indian Ocean was favourable to her, the wind kept in the north-west, and the sails come to the aid of the steam. The ship well balanced, rolled less. The ladies, in fresh toilets, reappeared upon the deck. The singing and dancing recommenced. Their voyage was then progressing under the most favourable circumstances. Passepartout was delighted with the agreeable companion whom chance had procured for him in the person of Fix.
On Sunday, the 20th of October, towards noon, they sighted the Indian coast. Two hours later, the pilot came aboard the Mongolia. The outlines of the hills blended with the sky. Soon the rows of palm trees which abound in the place came into distinct view. The steamer entered the harbour formed by the islands of Salcette, Colaba, Elephanta, Butcher, and at half-past four she put in at the wharves of Bombay. Phileas Fogg was then finishing the thirty-third rubber of the day, and his partner and himself, thanks to a bold manuvre, having made thirteen tricks, wound up this fine trip by a splendid victory. The Mongolia was not due at Bombay until the 22nd of October. She arrived on the 20th. This was a gain of two days, then, since his departure from London, and Phileas Fogg methodically noted it down in his memorandum-book in the column of gains.
In which Passepartout is only too happy to get off with the loss of his shoes
No one is ignorant of the fact that India, this great reversed triangle whose base is to the north and its apex to the south, comprises a superficial area of fourteen hundred thousand square miles, over which is unequally scattered a population of one hundred and eighty millions of inhabitants. The British Government exercises a real dominion over a certain portion of this vast country. It maintains a Governor-General at Calcutta, Governors at Madras, Bombay, and Bengal, and a Lieutenant-Governor at Agra.
But British India, properly so-called, counts only a superficial area of seven hundred thousand square miles, and a population of one hundred to one hundred and ten millions of inhabitants. It is sufficient to say that a prominent part of the territory is still free from the authority of the Queen; and, indeed, with some of the rajahs of the interior, fierce and terrible, Hindu independence is still absolute. Since 1756—the period at which was founded the first English establishment on the spot to-day occupied by the City of Madras—until the year in which broke out the great Sepoy insurrection, the celebrated East India Company was all-powerful. It annexed little by little the various provinces, bought from the rajahs at the price of annual rents, which it paid in part or not at all; it named its Governor-General and all its civil or military employees; but now it no longer exists, and the British possessions in India are directly under the Crown. Thus the aspect, the manners, and the distinctions of race of the peninsula are being changed every day. Formerly they travelled by all the old means of conveyance, on foot, on horseback, in carts, in small vehicles drawn by men, in palanquins, on men’s backs, in coaches, etc. Now, steamboats traverse with great rapidity the Indus and the Ganges, and a railway crossing the entire breadth of India, and branching in various directions, puts Bombay at only three days from Calcutta.
The route of this railway does not follow a straight line across India. The air-line distance is only one thousand to eleven hundred miles, and trains, going at only an average rapidity, would not take three days to make it; but this distance is increased at least one-third by the arc described by the railway rising to Allahabad, in the northern part of the peninsula. In short, these are the principal points of the route of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway. Leaving the island of Bombay, it crosses Salcette, touches the main land opposite Tannah, crosses the chain of the Western Ghauts, runs to the north-east as far as Burhampour, goes through the nearly independent territory of Bundelkund, rises as far as Allahabad, turns towards the east, meets the Ganges at Benares, turns slightly aside, and descending again to the south-east by Burdidan and the French town of Chandernagor, it reaches the end of the route at Calcutta.
It was at half-past four p.m. that the passengers of the Mongolia had landed in Bombay, and the train for Calcutta would leave at precisely eight o’clock. Mr Fogg then took leave of his partners, left the steamer, gave his servant directions for some purchases, recommended him expressly to be at the station before eight o’clock, and with his regular step which beat the second like the pendulum of an astronomical clock, he turned his steps towards the passport office. He did not think of looking at any of the wonders of Bombay, neither the city hall, nor the magnificent library, nor the forts, nor the docks, nor the cotton market, nor the shops, nor the mosques, nor the synagogues, nor the Armenian churches, nor the splendid pagoda of Malebar Hill, adorned with two polygonal towers. He would not contemplate either the masterpieces of Elephanta, or its mysterious hypogea, concealed in the south-east of the harbour, or the Kanherian grottoes of the Islands of Salcette, those splendid remains of Buddhist architecture! No, nothing of that for him. After leaving the passport office, Phileas Fogg quietly returned to the station, and there had dinner served. Among other dishes, the landlord thought he ought to recommend to him a certain giblet of “native rabbit,” of which he spoke in the highest terms. Phileas Fogg accepted the giblet and tasted it conscientiously; but in spite of the spiced sauce, he found it detestable. He rang for the landlord.
“Sir,” he said, looking at him steadily, “is that rabbit?”
“Yes, my lord,” replied the rogue boldly, “the rabbit of the jungles.”
“And that rabbit did not mew when it was killed?”
“Mew! oh, my lord! a rabbit! I swear to you—”
“Landlord,” replied Mr Fogg coolly, “don’t swear, and recollect this: in former times, in India, cats were considered sacred animals. That was a good time.”
“For the cats, my lord?”
“And perhaps also for the travellers!”
After this observation Mr Fogg went on quietly with his dinner.
A few minutes after Mr Fogg, the detective Fix also landed from the Mongolia, and hastened to the Commissioner of Police in Bombay. He made himself known in his capacity as detective, the mission with which he was charged, his position towards the robber. Had a warrant of arrest been received from London? They had received nothing. And, in fact, the warrant, leaving after Fogg, could not have arrived yet.
Fix was very much out of countenance. He wished to obtain from the Commissioner an order for the arrest of this gentleman Fogg. The director refused. The affair concerned the metropolitan government, and it alone could legally deliver a warrant. This strictness of principles, this rigorous observance of legality is easily explained with the English manners, which, in the matter of personal liberty, does not allow anything arbitrary. Fix did not persist, and understood that he would have to be resigned to waiting for his warrant. But he resolved not to lose sight of his mysterious rogue whilst he remained in Bombay. He did not doubt that Phileas Fogg would stop there—and as we know, it was also