"Seven hundred and seventy miles from Liverpool," replied Mr. Fogg, with imperturbable calmness.
"Pirate!" cried Andrew Speedy.
"I have sent for you, sir———"
"Sea-skimmer!"
—"Sir," continued Phileas Fogg, "to ask you to sell me your ship."
"No! by all the devils, no!"
"I shall be obliged to burn her."
"To burn my ship!"
"At least her upper portions, for we are out of fuel."
"Burn my ship!" cried Captain Speedy, who could no longer pronounce his syllables. "A ship that is worth fifty thousand dollars!"
"Here are sixty thousand!" replied Phileas Fogg, offering him a roll of bank notes.
This produced a powerful effect upon Andrew Speedy. No American is without emotion at the sight of sixty thousand dollars. The captain forgot in an instant his anger, his imprisonment, all his grievances from his passenger. His ship was twenty years old. It might be quite a bargain! The bomb could not explode. Mr. Fogg had withdrawn the fuse.
"And the iron hull will be left me," he said in a singularly softened tone.
"The iron hull and the engine, sir. It is a bargain?"
"A bargain."
And Andrew Speedy, snatching the roll of bank notes, counted them and slipped them into his pocket.
During this scene, Passepartout was white as a sheet. As for Fix he narrowly escaped an apoplectic fit. Nearly twenty thousand pounds spent, and yet this Fogg was going to relinquish to the seller the hull and the engine, that is, nearly the entire value of the vessel! It is true that the sum stolen from the bank amounted to fifty-five thousand pounds!
When Andrew Speedy had pocketed his money, Mr. Fogg said to him: "Sir, don't let all this astonish you. Know that I lose twenty thousand pounds if I am not in London on the 21st of December, at a quarter before nine in the evening. Now, I had missed the steamer from New York, and as you refused to take me to Liverpool———"
