Kitabı oku: «Вокруг света за 80 дней / Around the World in 80 Days», sayfa 12

“Mr. Fogg, this is a delay greatly to your disadvantage.”

“No, Sir Francis; it was foreseen.”

“What! You knew that the way—”

“Not at all; but I knew that some obstacle or other would sooner or later arise on my route. Nothing, therefore, is lost. I have two days to sacrifice. A steamer leaves Calcutta for Hong Kong at noon, on the 25th. This is the 22nd, and we shall reach Calcutta in time.”

The greater part of the travellers were aware of this interruption, and, leaving the train, they began to engage such vehicles as the village could provide wagons drawn by zebus, carriages that looked like pagodas, palanquins, ponies, and what not.

Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty, after searching the village from end to end, came back without having found anything.

“I shall go afoot,” said Phileas Fogg.

Passepartout, after a moment’s hesitation, said,

“Monsieur, I think I have found a means of conveyance.”

“What?”

“An elephant! An elephant that belongs to an Indian who lives but a hundred steps from here.”

“Let’s go and see the elephant,” replied Mr. Fogg.

They soon reached a small hut. An Indian came out of the hut, his elephant was half domesticated.

Kiouni⁶⁷—this was the name of the beast—could travel rapidly for a long time, and Mr. Fogg resolved to hire him. But elephants are not cheap in India. When Mr. Fogg proposed to the Indian to hire Kiouni, he refused. Mr. Fogg persisted, offering the excessive sum of ten pounds an hour for the loan of the beast to Allahabad. Refused. Twenty pounds? Refused also. Forty pounds? Still refused.

Phileas Fogg, without getting in the least flurried, then proposed to purchase the animal, and at first offered a thousand pounds for him. The Indian still refused. His small, sharp eyes were glistening with avarice.

Mr. Fogg offered first twelve hundred, then fifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, two thousand pounds. At two thousand pounds the Indian yielded.

“What a price, good heavens!” cried Passepartout. “For an elephant!”

It only remained now to find a guide, which was comparatively easy. A young Parsee, with an intelligent face, offered his services, which Mr. Fogg accepted. The elephant was led out and equipped. The Parsee, who was an accomplished elephant driver, covered his back with a sort of saddle-cloth, and attached to each of his flanks some curiously uncomfortable howdahs. Phileas Fogg paid the Indian with some banknotes which he extracted from the famous carpet-bag.

Provisions were purchased at Kholby, and, while Sir Francis and Mr. Fogg took the howdahs on either side, Passepartout got astride the saddle-cloth between them. The Parsee perched himself on the elephant’s neck, and at nine o’clock they set out from the village, the animal marching off through the dense forest of palms.