Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/251

 steamer, having been followed, without suspecting it, by the detective, who had also gone to the expense of a carriage.

Passepartout was waiting for them on the deck of the Rangoon. The good fellow had bought a few dozen of mangoes, as large as ordinary apples—dark brown outside, brilliant red inside—and whose white pulp, melting in the mouth, gives the true gourmand an unexcelled enjoyment. Passepartout was only too happy to offer them to Aouda, who thanked him very gracefully.

About thirteen hundred miles separate Singapore from the island of Hong Kong, a small English territory, detached from the Chinese coast. It was Phileas Fogg's interest to accomplish this in six days at the most, in order to take at Hong Kong the steamer leaving on the 6th of November for Yokohama, one of the principal ports of Japan.

The Rangoon was heavily laden. Many passengers had come aboard at Singapore—Hindoos, Ceylonese, Chinamen, Malays and Portuguese—mostly second class. The weather, which had been quite fine until this time, changed with the last quarter of the moon. The sea was high. The wind sometimes blew a gale, but fortunately from the southeast, which favored the movement of the steamer. When it was practicable, the captain had the sails unfurled. The Rangoon, brig-rigged, sailed frequently with its two topsails and foresail, and its speed increased under the double impetus of steam and sail. The vessel thus made her way over a short and sometimes fatiguing sea, along the shores of Anam and Cochin China.

But the passengers would have to blame the Rangoon rather than the ocean for their sickness and fatigue. In fact, the ships of the Peninsular Company, in the China service, are seriously defective in their construction. The proportion of their draught, when loaded, to their depth of hold, has been badly calculated, and consequently they stand the sea but poorly. Their bulk, closed, impenetrable to the water, is insufficient. They are "drowned," to use a maritime expression, and, in consequence, it does not take very many waves thrown upon the deck to slacken their speed.

Great precautions had to be taken then in bad weather. It was sometimes necessary to sail under a small head of