Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/365

Rh "Yes, yes, yes, yes!" cried Passepartout "You have made a mistake of one day. We arrived twenty-four hours in advance—but there are not ten minutes left!"

Passepartout seized his master by the collar, and dragged him along with irresistible force!

Phileas Fogg, thus taken, without having time to reflect, left his room, went out of his house, jumped into a cab, promised one hundred pounds to the driver, and, after running over two dogs and running into five carriages, arrived at the Reform Club. The clock indicated quarter of nine, when he appeared in the grand saloon.

Phileas Fogg had accomplished this tour of the world in eighty days!

Phileas Fogg had won his bet of twenty thousand pounds!

And now, how could so exact and cautious a man have made this mistake of a day? How did he think that it was the evening of Saturday, December 21, when it was only Friday, December 20, only seventy-nine days after his departure.

This is the reason for this mistake. It is very simple.

Phileas Fogg had, without suspecting it, gained a day on his journey only because he had made the tour of the world going to the east, and on the contrary he would have lost a day going in the contrary direction, that is, towards the west.

Indeed, journeying towards the east Phileas Fogg was going towards the sun, and consequently the days became as many times four minutes less for him, as he crossed degrees in that direction. Now there are three hundred and sixty degrees to the earth's circumference, and these three hundred and sixty degrees, multiplied by four minutes, give precisely twenty-four hours—that is to say, the day unconsciously gained. In other words, while Phileas Fogg, traveling towards the east, saw the sun pass the meridian eighty times, his colleagues, remaining in London, saw it pass only seventy-nine times. Therefore this very day, which was Saturday, and not Sunday, as Mr. Fogg thought, his friends were waiting for him in the saloon of the Reform Club.

And Passepartout's famous watch, which had always kept London time, would have shown this, if it had indicated the days, as well as the minutes and hours!

Phileas Fogg then had won the twenty thousand pounds.