Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/221

 of extreme care, and when Mr Fogg asked the Indian if he would hire him his elephant he flatly refused.

Fogg persisted and offered an excessive price for the animal, ten pounds per hour. Refused. Twenty pounds. Still refused. Forty pounds. Refused again. Passepartout jumped at every advance in price. But the Indian would not be tempted. The sum was a handsome one, however. Admitting the elephant to be employed fifteen hours to reach Allahabad, it was six hundred pounds earned for his owner.

Phileas Fogg, without being at all excited, proposed then to the Indian to buy his animal, and offered him at first one thousand pounds. The Indian would not sell! Perhaps the rogue scented a large transaction.

Sir Francis Cromarty took Mr. Fogg aside and begged him to reflect before going further. Phileas Fogg replied to his companion that he was not in the habit of acting without reflection, that a bet of twenty thousand pounds was at stake, that this elephant was necessary to him, and that, should he pay twenty times his value, he would have this elephant.

Mr. Fogg went again for the Indian, whose small eyes, lit up with greed, showed that with him it was only a question of price. Phileas Fogg offered successively twelve hundred, fifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, and finally two thousand pounds. Passepartout, so rosy oridnarilyordinarily [sic], was pale with emotion.

At two thousand pounds the Indian gave up.

"By my slippers," cried Passepartout, "here is a magnificent price for elephant meat!"

The business concluded, all that was necessary was to find a guide. That was easier. A young Parsee, with an intelligent face, offered his services. Mr. Fogg accepted him, and offered him a large reward to sharpen his wits. The elephant was brought out and equipped without delay. The Parsee understood perfectly the business of "mahout," or elephant driver. He covered with a sort of saddle cloth the back of the elephant, and put on each flank two kinds of rather uncomfortable howdahs.

Phileas Fogg paid the Indian in bank notes taken from the famous carpet bag. It seemed as if they were taken from Passepartout's very vitals. Then Mr. Fogg offered