Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/215

 dian country, if Phileas Fogg had been the man to ask for such things. But this gentleman was not asking anything. He was not traveling, he was describing a circumference. He was a heavy body, traversing an orbit around the terrestrial globe, according to the laws of rational mechanics. At this moment he was going over in his mind the calculations of the hours consumed since his departure from London, and he would have rubbed his hands, if it had been in his nature to make a useless movement.

Sir Francis Cromarty had recognized the originality of his traveling companion, although he had only studied him with his cards in his hands, and between two rubbers. He was ready to ask whether a human heart beat beneath this cold exterior, whether Phileas Fogg had a soul alive to the beauties of nature and to moral aspirations. That was the question for him. Of all the oddities the general had met, none were to be compared to this product of the exact sciences. Phileas Fogg had not kept secret from Sir Francis Cromarty his plan for a tour around the world, nor the conditions under which he was carrying it out. The general saw in this bet only an eccentricity without a useful aim, and which was wanting necessarily in the transire benefaciendo which ought to guide every reasonable man. In the manner in which this singular gentleman was moving on, he would evidently be doing nothing, either for himself or for others.

An hour after having left Bombay, the train, crossing the viaducts, had left behind the Island of Salcette and reached the mainland. At the station Callyan, it left to the right the branch which, via Kandallah and Pounah descends towards the southeast of India, and reaches the station Panwell. At this point, it became entangled in the defiles of the Western Ghaut mountains, with bases of trappe and basalt, whose highest summits are covered with thick woods.

From time to time, Sir Francis Cromarty and Phileas Fogg exchanged a few words, and at this moment the general, recommencing a conversation which frequently lagged, said, "A few years ago, Mr. Fogg, you would have experienced at this point a delay which would have probably interrupted your journey."

"Why so, Sir Francis?"

"Because the railway stopped at the base of these moun-