Around the World in Eighty Days Chapters 16-17

**Jules Verne** (0:20)
CHAPTER XVI. In which Fix does not seem to understand in the least what is said to him.
The Rangoon, one of the Peninsula and Oriental Company's boats plying in the Chinese and Japanese seas, was a screw steamer, built of iron, weighing about 1770 tons, and with engines of 400 horsepower. She was as fast, but not as well fitted up as the Mongolia, and Ode was not as comfortably provided for on board of her as Phileas Fogg could have wished. However, the trip from Calcutta to Hong Kong only comprised some 3,500 miles, occupying from ten to twelve days, and the young woman was not difficult to please. During the first days of the journey Ode became better acquainted with her protector, and constantly gave evidence of her deep gratitude for what he had done. The phlegmatic gentleman listened to her, apparently at least with coldness, neither his voice nor his manner betraying the slightest emotion. But he seemed to be always on the watch that nothing should be wanting to Ode's comfort. He visited her regularly each day at certain hours, not so much to talk himself as to sit and hear her talk. He treated her with the strictest politeness, but with the precision of an automaton, the movements of which had been arranged for this purpose. Ode did not quite know what to make of him, although Passepartout had given her some hints of his master's eccentricity, and made her smile by telling her of the wager which was sending him around the world. After all, she owed Phileas Fogg her life, and she always regarded him through the exalting medium of her gratitude. Aouda confirmed the Parsi guide's narrative of her touching history. She did indeed belong to the highest of the native races of India. Many of the Parsi merchants have made great fortunes there by dealing in cotton, and one of them, Sir Jametsi Jadidji Boy, was made a baronet by the English government.
Aouda was a relative of this great man, and it was his cousin, Jiji, whom she hoped to join at Hong Kong. Whether she would find a protector in him she would not tell, but Mr. Fogg assayed to calm her anxieties, and to assure her that everything would be mathematically— he used the very word—arranged. Aouda fastened her great eyes, clear as the sacred lakes of the Himalaya, upon him. But the intractable Fogg, as reserved as ever, did not seem at all inclined to throw himself into this lake.
The first few days of the voyage passed prosperously, amid favourable weather and propitious winds, and they soon came in sight of the great Andaman, the principal of the islands in the Bay of Bengal, with its picturesque saddle peak, 2,400 feet high, looming above the waters. The steamer passed along near the shores, but the savage Papuans who are in the lowest scale of humanity, but are not as been asserted, cannibals, did not make their appearance. The panorama of the islands as they steamed by them was superb. Vast forests of palms, arecks, bamboo, teakwood, of the gigantic mimosa and tree-like ferns covered the foreground, while behind the graceful outline of the mountains was traced against the sky, and along the coasts swarmed by thousands of the precious swallows whose nests furnish a luxurious dish to the tables of the celestial empire.
The varied landscape afforded by the Andaman islands was soon past, however, and the Rangoon rapidly approached the Straits of Malacca, which gave access to the China Seas. What was Detective Fix so unluckily drawn on from country to country doing all this while? He had managed to embark on the Rangoon at Calcutta without being seen by Passepartout, after leaving orders that, if the Warren should arrive, it should be forwarded to him at Hong Kong, and he hoped to conceal his presence to the end of the voyage. It would have been difficult to explain why he was on board without awakening Passepartout's suspicions, who thought him still at Bombay. But necessity impelled him nevertheless to renew his acquaintance with the worthy servant, as will be seen.
All the detective's hopes and wishes were now centered on Hong Kong, for the steamer's stay at Singapore would be too brief to enable him to take any steps there. The arrest must be made at Hong Kong, or the rubber would, probably, escape him forever. Hong Kong was the last English ground on which he would set foot. Beyond, China, Japan, America offered to Fogg an almost certain refuge. If the warrant should at last make its appearance at Hong Kong, Fix could arrest him and give him into the hands of the local police, and there would be no further trouble. But beyond Hong Kong a simple warrant would be of no avail, an extradition warrant would be necessary, and that would result in delays and obstacles of which the rascal would take advantage to elude justice.