Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/268

 "I regret it," replied the pilot, "but it is impossible."

"I offer you one hundred pounds per day, and a reward of two hundred pounds if I arrive in time."

"You are in earnest?" asked the pilot.

"Very much in earnest," replied Mr. Fogg.

The pilot withdrew to one side. He looked at the sea, evidently struggling between the desire to gain an enormous sum and the fear of venturing so far. Fix was in mortal suspense.

During this time, Mr. Fogg had returned to Aouda. "You will not be afraid, madame?" he asked.

"With you—no, Mr. Fogg," replied the young woman.

The pilot had come towards the gentleman again, and was twisting his hat in his hands.

"Well, pilot?" said Mr. Fogg.

"Well, your honor," replied the pilot, "I can risk neither my men, nor myself, nor yourself, in so long a voyage on a boat scarcely twenty tons, at this time of the year. Besides, we would not arrive in time, for it is sixteen hundred and fifty miles from Hong Kong to Yokohama."

"Only sixteen hundred," said Mr. Fogg.

"It is the same thing."

Fix took a good long breath.

"But," added the pilot, "there might perhaps be a means to arrange it otherwise."

Fix did not breathe any more.

"How?" asked Phileas Fogg.

"By going to Nagasaki, the southern extremity of Japan, eleven hundred miles, or only to Shanghai, eight hundred miles from Hong Kong. In this last journey, we would not be at any distance from the Chinese coast, which would be a great advantage, all the more so that the currents run to the north."

"Pilot," replied Phileas Fogg, "I must take the American mail steamer at Yokohama, and not at Shanghai or Nagasaki."

"Why not?" replied the pilot. "The San Francisco steamer does not start from Yokohama. She stops there and at Nagasaki, but her port of departure is Shanghai."

"You are certain of what you are saying?"

"Certain."

"And when does the steamer leave Shanghai?"