Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/244

 but, at the rate at which he is going, all the stolen money will be gone!

The detective had good reason for making this remark. In fact, since he left London, what with traveling expenses, rewards, the elephant purchase, bail, and fines, Phileas Fogg had already scattered more than five thousand pounds on his route, and the percentage of the sum recovered, promised to the detectives, was constantly diminishing.

Rangoon, one of the vessels employed by the Peninsular and Oriental Company in the Chinese and Japanese seas, was an iron screw steamer, of seventeen hundred and seventy tons, and nominally of four hundred horse-power. She was equally swift, but not so comfortable as the Mongolia. Aouda was not as well fixed in her as Phileas Fogg would have desired. But, after all, it was only a distance of three thousand five hundred miles, and the young woman did not show herself a troublesome passenger.

During the first few days of the passage Aouda became better acquainted with Phileas Fogg. On every occasion she showed him the liveliest gratitude. The phlegmatic gentleman listened to her, at least in appearance, with the most extreme indifference, not one tone of his voice or gesture betraying in him the slightest emotion. He saw that she was wanting in nothing. At certain hours he came regularly, if not to talk with her, at least to listen to her. He fulfilled toward her the duties of the strictest politeness, but with the grace and startling effects of an automaton whose movements had been put together for that purpose. Aouda did not know what to think of him, but Passepartout had explained to her a little the eccentric character of his master. He had told her what sort of a wager was taking him round the world. Aouda had smiled; but, after all, she owed her life to him, and her deliverer could not lose, because she saw him through her gratitude.

Aouda confirmed the narrative of the guide in reference