Philip Jose Farmer (23 page)

Fix knew that Fogg had to be in New York City on the eleventh before nine o’clock in the evening. At that hour the steamer left for Liverpool and another would not be available until the next day. It seemed inevitable that Fogg would miss the steamer. But Fix came to the rescue this time. The evening before, he had been approached by a Mr. Mudge, who had offered to take Fix at once to Omaha, though by a rather unconventional conveyance. Fix had turned him down because he had to wait for Fogg. Now he informed Fogg that all was not yet lost. He could be transported on an ice-sled. This vehicle held five or six persons and was equipped with a mast which held a brig sail and afforded attachment for a jib sail. It was steered by a rudder which dug into the snow.

Would Fogg care to use this craft?

Mr. Fogg certainly would. Presently, the party was being driven by a west wind over the ice and snow of the prairie. The two hundred miles between Fort Kearney and Omaha were 
covered in five hours. Fix said nothing during the journey, but he was happy. His service in obtaining the ice-sled would be one more item in his favor to reduce Fogg’s suspicions of him.

The sled arrived just before the Chicago and Rock Island train was to leave. Fogg and party boarded it and so arrived in Chicago at four in the afternoon of the next day. This city, partially destroyed in the Great Fire of the eighth and ninth of October, 1871, had been rebuilt with some attention to beauty. The party had no time to inspect the new constructions or to take a drive along the superb Lake Michigan. They had nine hundred miles to go and so departed at once on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railway. On the evening of the eleventh of December, at eleven o’clock, the train pulled into the New York station. This was near the pier of the Cunard line but, unfortunately, the 
China
 had left for Liverpool forty-five minutes ago.

Fogg seemed to be beaten. The Inman liner would not leave until the following day and was not fast enough to make up the lost time. The Hamburg ships went directly to Le Havre, France, which meant that the trip from Le Havre to Southhampton and thence to London would make him too late. A French liner did not depart until the fourteenth.

Mr. Fogg only said, “Tomorrow, we will consult about what is best. Come.”

They took the Jersey City ferry over the Hudson and a carriage to the St. Nicholas Hotel on Broadway. The next morning, Mr. Fogg went out alone (according to Verne). Actually, Passepartout trailed him by about sixty feet to detect any shadowers or intercept any Capellean assassins. If Proctor had been sent to kill Fogg, it seemed unlikely that another attempt would not be made in New 
York. Yet, nothing of this nature happened. Perhaps Proctor was after all only a Western ruffian. But why were the Capelleans leaving him alone? What was behind this? If one thing was sure, they had not given up on him.

Mr. Fogg inquired along the banks of the Hudson for any vessels that seemed about to depart. There were many of this kind, recalling Whitman’s phrase of “many-masted Manhattan,” but sailing ships would be too slow. At the end of his quest, Fogg saw, anchored at the Battery, a steam-driven freighter with the usual auxiliary sails. The puffs of smoke from its stack indicated that it would soon be leaving. Fogg hired a boat and was rowed to the 
Henrietta.
 It was bound for Bordeaux and was carrying only ballast for this trip. Its captain, Andrew Speedy (neither Capellean nor Eridanean despite his functional name), loathed passengers. He refused to take Fogg and party at any price nor would he think of going anywhere but to Bordeaux. However, at the offer of two thousand dollars for each passenger, Speedy relented. As Verne says, passengers at this price are no longer passengers but valuable merchandise.

Speedy gave Fogg an unalterable half hour to get all aboard. Fogg hurried in a cab to the hotel and returned with the others just in time. (New York was having traffic problems even in 1872, but the fact that Fogg was able to make such speed shows that the problem was not as bad as now. Or perhaps Fogg ignored all traffic laws.) An hour later, the 
Henrietta
 passed the lighthouse marking the entrance to the Hudson, turned past Sandy Hook, and was in the sea.

Passepartout, it can be presumed, regretted not having been able to tour Manhattan. Due largely to immigration from 
Europe, New York City held a million people. It was, generally, a dirty, drab, drunken, corruptly governed city with many slums. Muggings, killings, brawls, and mob violence were common. The guidebooks warned newcomers not to walk out at night except in better areas well lit by gas. Despite this, the visitor with means might enjoy it. Passepartout would have liked to drive through the recently constructed Central Park, even if slums did ring it. Trinity Church was the tallest structure in town and, though it would be nothing unusual in London, it was notable in contrast with its surroundings. Passepartout might also have wanted to view the new residential areas with their brownstone fronts and the business sections with their cast-iron façades. He could have compared the mass-transportation problems vexing New York City with those vexing London. If he had talked to the Gothamites, he would have heard rumors of gunrunning to Cuban revolutionaries and the seriousness of the epizootic disease which was killing horses. He would have noted that it was only because of this “horse influenza” that Manhattan’s streets in summer were not as foul with manure and the air as thick with huge horseflies and a compound of dust, coal smoke, and manure particles as were London’s.

All this was not to be. Passepartout also had more to think about than the rather sleazy exotica of Baghdad-on-the-Hudson. Mr. Fogg had locked Captain Speedy up in the master’s own quarters.

Mr. Fogg, seeing that Speedy was adamant about not changing his course to Liverpool, had bribed the crew to cooperate with him. This was, as Speedy screamed behind his door, mutiny on the high seas and piracy, the penalty of which 
was hanging by the neck until dead. Fogg heard him with his customary serenity and continued to give orders from the bridge. It is here that Verne says (truly) that Fogg’s management of the craft showed that he had once been a sailor.

As for Fix, he was fighting a tendency to admire Fogg more and more. He was also wondering why he had received no orders in New York concerning Fogg. Doubtless, Nemo had changed his plans, but it would be nice to know what was going on. Perhaps one of the crew was a fellow Capellean charged with killing the Eridaneans even if he had to blow up the vessel to do it. Fix did not like to contemplate this plan, since it would mean his own demise. And, to tell the truth, he admitted, he was getting more and more excited about the wager. Several times, he had to remind himself that he had no business rooting for the chap.

On the sixteenth of December, half the trip across the Atlantic was behind the 
Henrietta
. She had passed safely through the Newfoundland Fogs and a storm. But now the chief engineer informed Fogg that the fuel supply was running out. The ship did have enough coal to go on “short steam” at a reduced speed to Liverpool. The furnaces were still on “lull steam.”

Fogg, after some deliberation, told the engineer to keep the fires at maximum until the coal was all gone. On the eighteenth, Fogg was told that the fuel would be exhausted sometime that day.

Near noon, Fogg sent for the captain. His face purple, Speedy bounded onto the bridge. “Where are we?” he cried.

“Seven hundred and seven miles from Liverpool,” Fogg said calmly.

“Pirate!”

“Sir, I have sent for you...”

“Pickaroon!”

“...to ask you to sell me the ship.”

“By all the devils, no!”

“Then I shall be forced to burn her.”

“What, burn the 
Henrietta!”

“The upper part at least. The coal has run out.”

“Burn my ship? A ship worth fifty thousand dollars!”

“Here are sixty thousand,” Fogg said. He handed him the money.

Here Verne makes his classical remark: “An American can hardly remain unmoved at the sight of sixty thousand dollars.”

True, but Verne’s ethnicism is evident in this statement. Few of any nationality, then or today, would not be emotionally affected on being presented with this sum.

Speedy forgot his hate. Money, more than music, soothes the savage beast. He was getting by far the best of the bargain.

“I will still have the iron hull?” he said.

“The iron hull and the engine. I am only buying the wood and all other combustible substances. Is it agreed?”

Fogg then gave the order to strip off all the interior seats, bunks, frames and other furniture and to put them into the furnaces.

The next day, the nineteenth, the fires received the masts, spars, and rafts. On the twentieth, the railings, fittings, and most of the deck and upper sides followed. On this day, the hulk was within sight of the Irish coast and the Fastnet lighthouse. At ten that evening, Queenstown appeared. This was the Irish port where trans-Atlantic steamers put in to deliver the mail. From there express trains sped to Dublin, from which the mail was 
carried by fast boat to Liverpool. This route got the mail into London twelve hours ahead of the ships.

The 
Henrietta
 waited three hours for high tide, after which it steamed into the harbor and discharged the Fogg party. A little after one o’clock, the travelers stepped onto dry land. Since this was British soil, Fix was in a position to arrest Fogg and clap him into jail. Verne says that Fix was much tempted to do so. But Verne could only speculate on why he refrained.

“What struggle was going on inside him? Had he changed his mind about 
his man
?”

No, Fix had not changed his mind. He just could not make it up. The long intimacy with his three enemies had forced him to acknowledge that Eridaneans could be, and were in this case, as human as he. They were, even if the deadly antagonists of his own people, not evil incarnate. He admired Fogg for his undeviating courage, quick-wittedness, resourcefulness, loyalty, and generosity. He liked him. He liked the other two for similar reasons. He liked Fogg far more than he did Nemo, who, he admitted to himself, he hated, feared, and loathed. And he had not liked Stamp Proctor; he had been glad when the colonel’s plan to kill Fogg had been spoiled by the Sioux.

Time and again, he told himself that he was thinking wrongly. No matter. He continued to think along the same lines. He could not sleep at night because of his conflicts, and his days were tearing-aparts. What was he to do?

At twenty minutes to high noon, the Fogg party got off the boat at Liverpool. Fogg had only a six-hour train ride to Charing Cross Station, London, and a brief carriage ride to the Reform Club.

Fix could no longer refuse to act. Both the English law and Capellean orders required him to proceed. He put his hand on Fogg’s shoulder, a familiarity he would not have dared except in an official capacity. Verne says that he showed the warrant in the other hand, but Verne forgot that Fix had had no opportunity to get a warrant.

“You are really Phileas Fogg?” he said.

No doubt, a variation of Pilate’s classical remark flashed through Fogg’s mind. What is truth? What is reality? What, or who is the real Fogg?

But he replied, “I am.”

“I arrest you in the Queen’s name!”

Fogg went quietly into custody in the Custom House. He would, he was informed, be transferred the next day to London.

Passepartout tried to attack Fix but was restrained by several policemen. Fix did not prefer charges against him, as he could have done for this attempted assault. One, he felt that the Frenchman was justified. Two, Passepartout was still carrying the distorter. If the Capellean chiefs still wished to get hold of it, which they surely must, they could do so much more easily if Passepartout were at large.

Aouda was paralyzed with astonishment. Contrary to what Verne said, Aouda understood what was happening. But, since Fix had not tried to arrest Fogg in Ireland, the three Eridaneans had assumed that he meant to wait until they reached London. Just as they had had plans to tie him up and leave him behind in Ireland, so they had intended to take care of him at London. They even thought that he might mean to wait until after Fogg had won the bet.

Evidently, Fogg had overlooked this particular section of the foreseen.

That gentleman, calm as ever, sat in a locked room in the Custom House and read the London 
Times.
 Among other items attracting his interest was a story about the 
Mary Celeste.
 This had first been noted by the 
Times
 of the sixteenth of December in its 
Latest Shipping Intelligence
 section. The derelict had been brought into Gibraltar by a prize crew of three from the British brigantine 
Dei Gratia
. Not many details were as yet available, but the ship had a cargo of seventeen hundred barrels of alcohol and was seaworthy.

Verne says that, while in this room, Mr. Fogg carefully put his watch on the table and looked at its advancing hands. Verne wonders what Fogg was thinking at this time.

This incident is a curious one. Except for one previous occasion in Verne’s book, Fogg had no watch to consult. He had relied on Passepartout’s watch. Furthermore, if he had had a watch, why would he have fallen into the same error that Passepartout made about the time zones? Fogg, according to Verne, thought that that day was the twenty-first of December. It was, in reality, the twentieth. Would Fogg, who was a veteran sailor by Verne’s own admission, one who had been everywhere and seen everything, who was highly educated, have not known what happened when the ship crossed the 180th meridian? By no means. Verne must have known this. But he was eager to provide drama and suspense. He cannot be blamed for using this little piece of trickery in his narrative. After all, he got it from the public report issued by Fogg himself. The Englishman had to create some excuse for the events that were to follow his 
incarceration in Liverpool. His fertile imagination supplied one which Verne was eager to accept.