Works of Jules Verne/Round the World in Eighty Days/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT PROVES AGAIN THAT FORTUNE SMILES UPON THE BOLD
The design was bold, full of difficulties, perhaps impracticable. Mr. Fogg was going to risk his life, or at least his liberty, and consequently the success of his plans, but he did not hesitate. He found, besides, a decided ally in Sir Francis Cromarty. As to Passepartout, he was ready and could be depended upon. His master's idea excited him. He felt that there was a heart and soul under this icy covering. He almost loved Phileas Fogg.
Then there was the guide. What part would he take in the matter? Would he not be with the Indians? In default of his aid, it was at least necessary to be sure of his neutrality. Sir Francis Cromarty put the question to him frankly.
"Officer," replied the guide, "I am a Parsee, and that women is a Parsee. Make use of me."
"Very well, guide," replied Mr. Fogg.
"However, do you know," replied the Parsee, "that we not only risk our lives, but horrible punishments if we are taken. So see."
"That is seen," replied Mr. Fogg. "I think that we shall have to wait for night to act?"
"I think so too," replied the guide. The brave Hindoo then gave some details as to the victim. She was an Indian of celebrated beauty, of the Parsee race, the daughter of a rich merchant of Bombay. She had received in that city an absolutely English education, and from her manners and cultivation she would have been thought a European. Her name was Aouda.
An orphan, she was married against her will to this old rajah of Bundelcund. Three months after she was a widow. Knowing the fate that awaited her, she fled, was retaken immediately, and the relatives of the rajah, who had an interest in her death, devoted her to this sacrifice from which it seemed that she could not escape.
This narrative could only strengthen Mr. Fogg and his companions in their generous resolution. It was decided that the guide should turn the elephant towards the pagoda of Pillaji, which he should approach as near as possible. A half hour afterwards a halt was made under a thick clump of trees, five hundred paces from the pagoda, which they could not see, but they heard distinctly the yellings of the fanatics.
The means of reaching the victim were then discussed. The guide was acquainted with the pagoda, in which he asserted that the young woman was imprisoned. Could they enter by one of the doors, when the whole band was plunged in the sleep of drunkenness, or would they have to make a hole through the wall? This could be decided only at the moment and the place. But there could be no doubt that the abduction must be accomplished this very night, and not when, daylight arrived, the victim would be led to the sacrifice. Then no human intervention could save her.
Mr. Fogg and his companions waited for night. As soon as the shadows fell, towards six o'clock in the evening, they determined to make a reconnoissance around the pagoda. The last cries of the fakirs had died out. According to their customs, these Indians were plunged in the heavy intoxication of "hang," liquid opium mixed with an infusion of hemp, and it would perhaps be possible to slip in between them to the temple.
The Parsee guiding, Mr. Fogg, Sir Francis Cromarty, and Passepartout advanced noiselessly through the forest. After ten minutes' creeping under the branches, they arrived on the edge of a small river, and there by the light of iron torches at the end of which was burning pitch, they saw a pile of wood. It was the funeral pile, made of costly sandal wood, and already saturated with perfumed oil. On its upper part the embalmed body of the rajah was resting, which was to be burned at the same time as his widow. At one hundred paces from this pile rose the pagoda whose minarets in the darkness pierced the tops of the trees. "Come!" said the guide in a low voice.
Soon the guide stopped at the end of a clearing, lit up by a few torches. The ground was covered with groups of sleepers, heavy with drunkenness.
In the background, among the trees, the temple of Pillaji stood out indistinctly. But to the great disappointment of the guide, the guards of the rajahs lighted by smoky torches, were watching at the doors, and pacing up and down with drawn sabers. Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty understood as well as himself that they could attempt nothing on this side. They stopped and talked together in a low tone.
"Let us wait," said the brigadier general, "it is not eight o'clock yet, and it is possible that these guards may succumb to sleep."
"That is possible, indeed," replied the Parsee.
Phileas Fogg and his companions stretched themselves out at the foot of a tree and waited. They waited thus until midnight. The situation did not change. The same watching outside. It was evident that they could not count on the drowsiness of the guards.
After a final conversation, the guide said he was ready to start. Mr. Fogg, Sir Francis, and Passepartout followed him. They made a pretty long detour, so as to reach the pagoda by the rear. About a half hour past midnight they arrived at the foot of the walls.
But it was not sufficient to reach the foot of the walls, it was necessary to make an opening there. For this operation Phileas Fogg and his companions had nothing at all but their pocket-knives. Fortunately, the temple walls were composed of a mixture of bricks and wood, which could not be difficult to make a hole through. The first brick once taken out, the others would easily follow. They went at it, making as little noise as possible. The Parsee, from one side, and Passepartout, from the other, worked to unfasten the bricks, so as to get an opening two feet wide.
The work was progressing, but—unfortunate mischance—some guards showed themselves at the rear of the pagoda, and established themselves there so as to hinder an approach.
It would be difficult to describe the disappointment of these four men, stopped in their work. "What can we do but leave?" asked the general in a low voice.
"We can only leave," replied the guide.
"Wait," said Fogg. "It will do if I reach Allahabad to-morrow before noon."
"But what hope have you?" replied Sir Francis Cromarty. "It will soon be daylight, and———"
"The chances which escape us now may return at the last moment."
The general would have liked to read Phileas Fogg's eyes. What was this cold-blooded Englishman counting on? Would he, at the moment of the sacrifice, rush towards the young woman, and openly tear her from her murderers?
That would have been madness, and how could it be admitted that this man was mad to this degree? Nevertheless, Sir Francis Cromarty consented to wait until the denouement of this terrible scene. The guide did not leave his companions at the spot where they had hid, but took them back to the foreground of the clearing. There, sheltered by a clump of trees, they could watch the sleeping groups.
In the meantime Passepartout, perched upon the lower branches of a tree, was meditating an idea which had first crossed his mind like a flash, and which finally imbedded itself in his brain. He had commenced by saying to himself, "What madness!" and now he repeated, "Why not, after all? It is a chance, perhaps the only one, and with such brutes———"
At all events, Passepartout did not put his thought into any other shape, but he was not slow in sliding down, with the ease of a snake, on the lower branches of the tree, the end of which bent toward the ground.
The hours were passing, and soon a few less somber shades announced the approach of day. It was like a resurrection in this slumbering crowd. The groups wakened up. The beating of tam-tams sounded, songs and cries burst out anew. The hour had come in which the unfortunate was to die.
The doors of the pagoda were now opened. A more intense light came from the interior. Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis could see the victim, all lighted up, whom two priests were dragging to the outside. It seemed to them that, shaking off the drowsiness of intoxication by the highest instinct of self-preservation, the unfortunate woman was trying to escape from her executioners. Sir Francis's heart throbbed violently, and with a convulsive movement seizing Phileas Fogg's hand, he felt that it held an open knife.
The young woman had fallen again into the stupor produced by the fumes of the hemp. She passed between the fakirs, who escorted her with their religious cries. Phileas Fogg and his companions followed her, mingling with the rear ranks of the crowd.
Two minutes after, they arrived at the edge of the river, and stopped less than fifty paces from the funeral pile, upon which was lying the rajah's body. In the semi-obscurity, they saw the victim, motionless, stretched near her husband's corpse. Then a torch was brought, and the wood, impregnated with oil, soon took fire.
At this moment, Sir Francis Cromarty and the guide held back Phileas Fogg, who in an impulse of generous madness, was going to rush toward the pile.
But Phileas Fogg had already pushed them back, when the scene changed suddenly. A cry of terror arose. The whole crowd, frightened, cast themselves upon the ground.
The old rajah was not dead, then; he was seen suddenly rising upright, like a phantom, raising the young woman in his arms, descending from the pile in the midst of the clouds of smoke which gave him a spectral appearance.
The fakirs, the priests, overwhelmed with a sudden fear, were prostrate, their faces to the ground, not daring to raise their eyes, and look at such a miracle! The inanimate victim was held by the vigorous arms carrying her, without seeming to be much of a weight. Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis had remained standing. The Parsee had bowed his head, and Passepartout, without doubt, was not less stupefied.
The resuscitated man came near the spot where Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty were, and said shortly, "Let us be off!"
It was Passepartout himself who had slipped to the pile in the midst of the thick smoke! It was Passepartout who, profiting by the great darkness still prevailing, had rescued the young woman from death! It was Passepartout who, playing his part with the boldest good-luck, passed out in the midst of the general fright!
An instant after the four disappeared in the woods, and the elephant took them onwards with a rapid trot. Cries, shouts, and even a bullet, piercing Phileas Fogg's hat, ap- prised them that the stratagem had been discovered.
Indeed, on the burning pile still lay the body of the old rajah. The priests, recovered from their fright, learned that the abduction had taken place. They immediately rushed into the forest. The guards followed them. Shots were fired; but the abductors fled rapidly, and, in a few moments they were out of range of balls or arrows.