Read the chapter
Around the World in Eighty Days
Chapter 13. IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT RECEIVES A NEW PROOF THAT FORTUNE FAVORS THE BRAVE
The plan was bold, full of danger, and maybe not possible.
Mr. Fogg was going to risk his life, or at least his freedom, and so the success of his trip.
But he didn't hesitate, and he found in Sir Francis Cromarty an eager helper.
As for Passepartout, he was ready for anything they might ask.
His master's idea pleased him, he saw a heart and a soul under that cold outside.
He began to love Phileas Fogg.
There was the guide to think about.
What would he do? Would he join the Indians?
If he didn't help, they had to be sure he'd stay neutral.
Sir Francis asked him the question openly.
"Officers," the guide said, "I'm a Parsee, and this woman is a Parsee. Order me as you want."
"Excellent!" said Mr. Fogg.
"However," the guide went on, "it's certain we'll risk our lives, and terrible pain, if we're caught."
"That's expected," Mr. Fogg said.
"I think we must wait until night before we act."
"I think so," said the guide.
The good Indian then told them about the woman.
He said she was a famous beauty of the Parsee people, and the daughter of a rich Bombay merchant.
She had a full English education in that city, and by her manners and mind she'd look like a European.
Her name was Aouda, Left an orphan, she was married against her will to the old rajah of Bundelcund.
Knowing the fate that was coming, she ran away but was caught.
The rajah's family, who wanted her dead, gave her to the sacrifice, from which it seemed she could not escape.
The Parsee's story only made Mr. Fogg and his friends more sure of their kind plan.
They decided the guide should lead the elephant toward the pagoda of Pillaji, which he did as quickly as he could.
They stopped, half an hour later, in a small wood, about five hundred feet from the pagoda, where they were well hidden.
They could hear the fakirs groan and cry clearly.
They then talked about how to reach the woman.
The guide knew the pagoda of Pillaji, where he said the young woman was kept.
Could they enter through a door while the Indians slept drunk, or was it safer to make a hole in the wall?
They could only decide at the place.
But it was sure the abduction had to be that night, not at daybreak when the woman would be taken to her funeral fire.
Then no one could save her.
When night fell, about six o'clock, they decided to look around the pagoda.
The fakirs' cries were just ending.
The Indians were starting to get drunk on liquid opium mixed with hemp.
And it might be possible to slip among them to the temple.
The Parsee led the others and crept through the wood without noise, and in ten minutes they were on the banks of a small stream.
By torchlight they saw a wooden pyre where the dead rajah lay to be burned with his wife.
The pagoda, with its towers above the trees, stood a hundred steps away.
"Come!" whispered the guide.
He moved more carefully than before through the brush, followed by his friends.
The silence around was only broken by the low sound of the wind in the branches.
Soon the Parsee stopped at the edge of the open space lit by the torches.
The ground was covered with groups of Indians, motionless in drunken sleep, it looked like a field covered with the dead.
Men, women, and children lay together.
In the back, among the trees, the pagoda of Pillaji stood out clearly.
Much to the guide's shame, the rajah's guards, with torches, watched the doors and walked with naked sabres, priests likely watched inside.
The Parsee, now sure it was impossible to force the temple, didn't go on, and led his friends back.
Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty also saw nothing could be tried there.
They stopped and whispered to each other.
"It's only eight now," said the brigadier, "and these guards may go to sleep."
"It isn't impossible," the Parsee answered.
They lay down at the foot of a tree and waited.
Time seemed very long as they waited in the dark, worried and tired.
The guide often left them to watch from the edge of the wood.
The guards watched steadily by torch light, and a faint light moved through the pagoda windows.
They waited until midnight, but no change came among the guards, and it was clear they couldn't count on them falling asleep.
The other plan must be used.
A hole in the pagoda walls must be made.
They had to know whether the priests were watching the victim as carefully as the soldiers watched the doors.
After a last talk, the guide said he was ready, and went forward with the others.
They took a round path to reach the back of the pagoda.
They got to the walls about half past twelve, without meeting anyone.
There was no guard there, and no windows or doors.
The night was dark, the moon, getting smaller, hardly rose and was covered with heavy clouds.
The high trees made the darkness deeper.
It wasn't enough to reach the walls.
They had to make an opening, and they only had pocket knives.
Luckily the temple walls were made of brick and wood, which they could get through without much trouble.
After one brick was taken out, the rest would come easily.
They began to work without noise.
The Parsee on one side and Passepartout on the other started to loosen the bricks to make an opening two feet wide.
They were making fast progress when suddenly a cry came from inside the temple, followed almost at once by other cries from outside.
Passepartout and the guide stopped, Had they been heard?
Was an alarm being raised? Common sense told them to go back, and they did, followed by Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis.
They hid again in the wood and waited until the trouble ended, ready to start again at once.
But badly for them, the guards now showed up at the back of the temple and set themselves there, ready to stop any surprise.
It's hard to describe how disappointed the group was, stopped in their work.
They couldn't reach the woman now.
How could they save her? Sir Francis shook his fists, Passepartout was beside himself, and the guide ground his teeth with anger.
Calm Fogg waited without showing any feeling.
"We have nothing to do but go away," whispered Sir Francis.
"Nothing but go away," the guide echoed.
"Stop," said Fogg.
"I'm only due at Allahabad tomorrow before noon."
"But what can you hope to do?" asked Sir Francis.
"In a few hours it'll be daylight and, "
"The chance that seems lost now may come at the last moment," Fogg said.
Sir Francis wanted to read Phileas Fogg's face.
What was this cool Englishman thinking?
Was he planning to rush at the woman at the very moment of the sacrifice and boldly snatch her from the killers?
This would be total madness, and it was hard to think Fogg was such a fool.
Sir Francis agreed, however, to stay to the end of this terrible scene.
The guide led them to the back of the open area where they could watch the sleeping groups.
Meanwhile Passepartout had climbed to the lower branches of a tree.
He thought of an idea that first struck him like a flash and then stayed in his mind.
He had first said to himself, "What madness!"
And then he repeated, "Why not, after all? It's a chance, maybe the only one, and with such fools!"
"Thinking so, he slipped like a snake to the lowest branches that bent almost to the ground."
The hours passed and the lighter shades showed the day was near, though it wasn't yet light.
This was the time, the sleeping crowd woke up, the drums sounded, songs and shouts rose.
The hour of the sacrifice had come.
The pagoda doors swung open and a bright light came from inside, in which Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis saw the victim.
She seemed, having shaken off the drunken sleep, to try to get away from her executioner.
Sir Francis's heart beat, and, grabbing Mr. Fogg's hand, he found an open knife in it.
Just then the crowd began to move.
The young woman, senseless from hemp fumes, was carried by the fakirs, who walked with wild cries.
Phileas Fogg and his friends mixed into the rear of the crowd and followed it.
In two minutes they reached the stream and stopped fifty paces from the pyre where the rajah's body still lay.
In the half dark they saw the woman senseless stretched beside her husband's body.
Then a torch was brought and the wood, heavy with oil, caught fire.
At that moment Sir Francis and the guide seized Phileas Fogg, who in a wild fit of generosity was going to rush on the pyre.
But he had quickly pushed them aside when the whole scene suddenly changed.
A cry of terror rose, the whole crowd lay down, struck with fear, on the ground.
The old rajah wasn't dead then.
He rose all of a sudden like a ghost, picked up his wife in his arms, and stepped down from the pyre.
The smoke made him look more ghostly.
Fakirs, soldiers and priests, seized by sudden fear, lay with faces on the ground and did not lift their eyes.
The lifeless woman was carried by the strong arms that held her, and she didn't seem to be any weight to him.
Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis stood up, the Parsee bowed his head, and Passepartout was, no doubt, nearly as stunned.
The revived rajah came to Sir Francis and Mr. Fogg and, in a short tone, said, "Let us be off!"
Passepartout crept onto the pyre in the smoke and, in the thick darkness, saved the young woman from death.
It was Passepartout who, with bold daring, had passed through the crowd in their general fear.
A moment later all four of the party had gone into the wood, and the elephant was carrying them away fast.
But the cries and noise and a ball that buzzed through Phileas Fogg's hat told them the trick had been found out.
The old rajah's body was now on the burning pyre, and the priests, having come back from their fear, saw that an abduction had happened.
They rushed into the forest, followed by the soldiers, who fired a volley after the runaways.
But the fugitives quickly made the distance between them grow, and soon they were out of reach of the bullets and arrows.