Around the World in Eighty Days

Part One · The Wager

In the year 1872, the most precise gentleman in London was Mr. Phileas Fogg, who lived alone in a quiet house and did everything, every day, at exactly the same minute. He left home at half past eleven. He walked exactly five hundred and seventy-five steps to his club, ate his breakfast, read his newspapers, played cards, and returned home at midnight. Nobody knew where his fortune had come from, and nobody had ever seen him hurry. That very morning he had dismissed his servant for bringing him shaving water two degrees too cold. His new servant, a cheerful Frenchman called Passepartout, had once been a singer, a circus rider and a firefighter, and wanted nothing more than a calm, orderly life.

That evening at the Reform Club, Mr. Fogg's friends were talking about a robbery. A thief had stolen fifty-five thousand pounds from the Bank of England. One gentleman insisted that the thief would never escape, and another argued that the world was enormous. "It was once," said Mr. Fogg quietly. Now that a new railway had opened in India, he explained, a traveler could circle the entire globe in eighty days. The others laughed. So Mr. Fogg calmly bet twenty thousand pounds, half his fortune, that he could accomplish it himself. He would leave that very night, at a quarter to nine. He would return to this exact room by a quarter to nine on Saturday, the twenty-first of December.

Passepartout was horrified. He had hoped for peace and quiet. Instead he found himself racing to the station with a carpetbag stuffed with banknotes, while his master consulted a guidebook of steamship and railway timetables as calmly as if he were reading the weather report. Meanwhile, a detective named Fix had noticed that Mr. Fogg resembled the description of the bank robber, and an enormous sum of money leaving England in a hurry seemed extremely suspicious. Fix was sure he had found the thief. He sent a telegram to London for an arrest warrant. While he waited for it, he decided to follow Mr. Fogg around the world, as far as necessary, and stop him at the first opportunity.

Part Two · The Elephant

The steamship carried them across the Mediterranean, through the brand new Suez Canal, and over the Indian Ocean to Bombay, two days ahead of schedule. Mr. Fogg noted the gain in his little book without the slightest excitement and boarded the train across India. Then, in the middle of the forest, the train shook to a halt, and every passenger climbed out. The newspapers had been wrong, because fifty miles of the railway had never been built. While the other travelers argued and complained, Mr. Fogg discovered a man who owned an elephant called Kiouni, and after several offers, each one larger than the last, he purchased the animal for the astonishing sum of two thousand pounds.

They hired a young guide and set off through the dense forest, swaying high on Kiouni's back, while Passepartout bounced about like a circus clown and laughed at every jolt. That evening, hidden among the trees, they discovered that a band of men was holding a young woman prisoner. Her name was Aouda. She was clever and brave, and she was in terrible danger. Mr. Fogg, who had a whole day to spare, announced without hesitation that he would spend it rescuing her. In the dead of night, Passepartout crept into the camp, and by morning Aouda was riding safely beside them on the elephant, while her captors were left searching the forest in confusion.

At the railway station, Mr. Fogg presented Kiouni to the faithful guide as a gift, and the travelers caught the train to Calcutta and then a steamer to Hong Kong, where Aouda hoped to find a relative. But her relative had moved away. So Mr. Fogg invited her to continue the journey with them, as politely as if he were offering her a cup of tea. Detective Fix was waiting in Hong Kong, and the arrest warrant still had not arrived. Desperate to keep Fogg in British territory, Fix tricked Passepartout into missing an important message, so that the poor servant boarded the ship for Japan alone, leaving his master behind without knowing anything about the departure.

Part Three · Storms, Trains and Ships

Mr. Fogg did not panic, because he never panicked about anything. He hired a tiny pilot boat called the Tankadere, sailed it through a ferocious storm that nearly capsized it, and caught an American steamer at Shanghai with only minutes to spare. Meanwhile, in Yokohama, Passepartout had arrived without a single penny, so he joined a troupe of acrobats who were performing that very evening. He was standing at the bottom of a magnificent human pyramid when he spotted his master in the audience. With a shout of joy, he abandoned his position, and the entire pyramid tumbled into a heap of furious acrobats, but Passepartout was too delighted to care.

They crossed the vast Pacific Ocean to San Francisco and boarded a train that would carry them all the way across America. The trip was full of surprises, and none of them were in the guidebook. Once they waited for three hours while an immense herd of buffalo crossed the tracks. Another time they reached a bridge that was too weak to hold the train, so the engineer simply accelerated to tremendous speed and flew across it, while the bridge collapsed into the river behind them. Then, on the frozen plains of Nebraska, a blizzard delayed them so badly that Mr. Fogg hired a wooden sledge with a sail, and the howling wind blew them across the glittering ice faster than any locomotive, with Passepartout clinging to the mast.

They reached New York forty-five minutes after the ship to Liverpool had left. Passepartout was devastated, and even Aouda lost hope, but Mr. Fogg merely consulted his timetables and walked down to the docks. He found a cargo steamer called the Henrietta and persuaded its grumpy captain to carry them across the Atlantic Ocean. Halfway across the ocean, the coal that fed the roaring engine ran out completely. Without the slightest change of expression, Mr. Fogg purchased the entire ship from its outraged captain, and then he ordered the crew to burn its wooden cabins, its furniture, its decks and finally its masts, until only a metal shell was left, steaming furiously toward Ireland.

Part Four · The Last Five Minutes

They landed in Liverpool with nearly six hours remaining, which was plenty of time to reach London by train. Then Detective Fix stepped forward, placed his hand on Mr. Fogg's shoulder, and arrested him in the name of the Queen. Mr. Fogg was locked in a cell. He sat there quietly, watching the minutes slip away on his watch. At last the door burst open, and an extremely embarrassed Fix announced that the real bank robber had been captured three days earlier. Mr. Fogg was innocent. They raced to the station, but they had missed the regular express. Their special train arrived in London at ten minutes to nine, five minutes too late.

Mr. Fogg returned to his house in silence. He had lost the bet, and after the cost of the trip, he had lost almost everything else as well. He still behaved as precisely and politely as ever, but that evening he apologized to Aouda, because he could no longer offer her the comfortable life he had intended. Aouda took his hand. She did not care about money, she told him, and she asked whether he would allow her to marry him. For the first time in his life, Mr. Fogg's voice trembled when he answered. He sent Passepartout to ask the minister to hold the wedding the next day, Monday. Passepartout ran off, grinning from ear to ear, and Aouda and Mr. Fogg sat by the fire and waited.

A few minutes later, Passepartout came sprinting back into the room, breathless and hatless, and gasping that the wedding was impossible tomorrow. "Why?" asked Mr. Fogg. "Because tomorrow is Sunday!" cried Passepartout. "Today is only Saturday!" They had traveled around the world toward the east, toward the rising sun, and each time they crossed into a new region, their day had become a little shorter. Altogether they had gained an entire twenty-four hours without noticing, and their eighty days had really been only seventy-nine. There was no time to explain. Mr. Fogg seized his hat, leaped into a cab, promised the driver an extravagant reward, and raced through the streets of London toward the Reform Club.

In the club, his companions sat watching the great clock. At forty-four minutes past eight, they were already sure they had won. At forty-four minutes and fifty seconds, the door had not opened. Then, at fifty-seven seconds, the door flew open, and before the pendulum could swing again, Mr. Fogg stepped calmly into the room. "Here I am, gentlemen," he said. He had won his wager, although the journey had cost him nearly everything he gained, and he shared the remainder with Passepartout and even with Fix. But he had gained something far more valuable than money. Two days later, he married Aouda, and he admitted at last that a journey around the world had been worth taking for that alone.