Around the World in Eighty Days. Junior Deluxe EditionVerne, Jules
General
Around the World in Eighty Days. Junior Deluxe Edition
Verne, Jules
Adventure stories; Voyages around the world -- Fiction
In a few moments, with cries and oaths, a bomb appeared on the
poop-deck. The bomb was Captain Speedy. It was clear that he was
on the point of bursting. "Where are we?" were the first words
his anger permitted him to utter. Had the poor man been
apoplectic, he could never have recovered from his paroxysm of
wrath.
"Where are we?" he repeated, with purple face.
"Seven hundred and seven miles from Liverpool," replied Mr. Fogg,
with imperturbable calmness.
"Pirate!" cried Captain Speedy.
"I have sent for you, sir--"
"Pickaroon!"
"--sir," continued Mr. Fogg, "to ask you to sell me your vessel."
"No! By all the devils, no!"
"But I shall be obliged to burn her."
"Burn the Henrietta!"
"Yes, at least the upper part of her. The coal has given
out."
"Burn my vessel!" cried Captain Speedy, who could scarcely
pronounce the words. "A vessel worth fifty thousand dollars!"
"Here are sixty thousand," replied Phileas Fogg, handing the
captain a roll of bank bills. This had a prodigious effect on
Andrew Speedy. An American can scarcely remain unmoved at the
sight of sixty thousand dollars. The captain forgot in an instant
his anger, his imprisonment, and all his grudges against his
passenger. The Henrietta was twenty years old. It was a great
bargain. The bomb would not go off after all. Mr. Fogg had taken
away the match.
"And I shall still have the iron hull," said the captain in a
softer tone.
"The iron hull and the engine. Is it agreed?"
"Agreed."
And Andrew Speedy, seizing the banknotes, counted them and
consigned them to his pocket.
During this colloquy, Passepartout was as white as a sheet, and
Fix seemed on the point of having an apoplectic fit. Nearly
twenty thousand pounds had been expended, and Fogg left the hull
and engine to the captain, that is, near the whole value of the
craft! It was true, however, that fifty-five thousand pounds had
been stolen from the Bank.
When Andrew Speedy had pocketed the money, Mr. Fogg said to him,
"Don't let this astonish you, sir. You must know that I shall
lose twenty thousand pounds, unless I arrive in London by a
quarter before nine of the evening of the 21st of December. I
missed the steamer at New York, and as you refused to take me to
Liverpool--"
"And I did well," cried Andrew Speedy; "for I have gained at
least forty thousand dollars by it!" He added, more sedately, "Do
you know one thing, Captain--"
"Fogg."
"Captain Fogg, you've got something of the Yankee about you."
And, having paid his passenger what he considered a high
compliment, he was going away, when Mr. Fogg said, "The vessel
now belongs to me?"
"Certainly, from the keel to the truck of the masts--all the
wood, that is."
"Very well. Have the interior seats, bunks, and frames pulled
down, and burn them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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