Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/212

 "Mew! oh, my lord! a rabbit! I swear to you"

"Landlord," replied Mr. Fogg coolly, "don't swear, and recollect this: in former times, in India, cats were considered sacred animals. That was a good time."

"For the cats, my lord?"

"And perhaps also for the travelers!"

After this observation Mr. Fogg went on quietly with his dinner.

A few minutes after Mr. Fogg, the detective Fix also landed from the Mongolia, and hastened to the Commissioner of Police in Bombay. He made himself known in his capacity as detective, the mission with which he was charged, his position towards the robber. Had a warrant of arrest been received from London? They had received nothing. And, in fact, the warrant, leaving after Fogg, could not have arrived yet.

Fix was very much out of countenance. He wished to obtain from the Commissioner an order for the arrest of this gentleman Fogg. The director refused. The affair concerned the metropolitan government, and it alone could legally deliver a warrant. This strictness of principles, this rigorous observance of legality is easily explained with the English manners, which, in the matter of personal liberty, does not allow anything arbitrary. Fix did not persist, and understood that he would have to be resigned to waiting for his warrant. But he resolved not to lose sight of his mysterious rogue, whilst he remained in Bombay. He did not doubt that Phileas Fogg would stop there—and as we know, it was also Passepartout's conviction—which would give the warrant of arrest time to arrive.

But after the last orders which his master had given him on leaving the Mongolia, Passepartout had understood very well that it would be the same with Bombay as with Suez and Paris, that the journey would not stop here, that it would be continued at least as far as Calcutta, and perhaps further. And he began to ask himself if, after all, this bet of Mr. Fogg's was not really serious, and if a fatality was not dragging him, he who wished to live at rest, to accomplish the tour of the world in eighty days! Whilst waiting, and after having obtained some shirts and shoes, he took a walk through the streets of Bombay. There was a great crowd of people there, and among the Europeans of all