“Then you believe that we really are going to Liverpool?”
“Of course.”
“Ass!” replied the detective, shrugging his shoulders and turning on his heel.
Passepartout was on the point of vigorously resenting the epithet, the reason of which he could not for the life of him comprehend; but he reflected that the unfortunate Fix was probably very much disappointed and humiliated in his self-esteem, after having so awkwardly followed a false scent around the world, and refrained.
And now what course would Phileas Fogg adopt? It was difficult to imagine. Nevertheless he seemed to have decided upon one, for that evening he sent for the engineer, and said to him, “Feed all the fires until the coal is exhausted.”
A few moments after, the funnel of the Henrietta vomited forth torrents of smoke. The vessel continued to proceed with all steam on; but on the 18th, the engineer, as he had predicted, announced that the coal would give out in the course of the day.
“Do not let the fires go down,” replied Mr. Fogg. “Keep them up to the last. Let the valves be filled.”
Towards noon Phileas Fogg, having ascertained their position, called Passepartout, and ordered him to go for Captain Speedy. It was as if the honest fellow had been commanded to unchain a tiger. He went to the poop, saying to himself, “He will be like a madman!”
In a few moments, with cries and oaths, a bomb appeared on the poop-deck. The bomb was Captain Speedy. It was clear that he was on the point of bursting. “Where are we?” were the first words his anger permitted him to utter. Had the poor man be an apoplectic, he could never have recovered from his paroxysm of wrath.
“Where are we?” he repeated, with purple face.
“Seven hundred and seven miles from Liverpool,” replied Mr. Fogg, with imperturbable calmness.
“Pirate!” cried Captain Speedy.
“I have sent for you, sir—”
“Pickaroon!”
“—sir,” continued Mr. Fogg, “to ask you to sell me your vessel.”
“No! By all the devils, no!”
“But I shall be obliged to burn her.”
“Burn the Henrietta!”
“Yes; at least the upper part of her. The coal has given out.”
“Burn my vessel!” cried Captain Speedy, who could scarcely pronounce the words. “A vessel worth fifty thousand dollars!”
“Here are sixty thousand,” replied Phileas Fogg, handing the captain a roll of bank-bills. This had a prodigious effect on Andrew Speedy. An American can scarcely remain unmoved at the sight of sixty thousand dollars. The captain forgot in an instant his anger, his imprisonment, and all his grudges against his passenger. The Henrietta was twenty years old; it was a great bargain. The bomb would not go off after all. Mr. Fogg had taken away the match.
“And I shall still have the iron hull,” said the captain in a softer tone.
“The iron hull and the engine. Is it agreed?”
“Agreed.”
And Andrew Speedy, seizing the banknotes, counted them and consigned them to his pocket.
During this colloquy, Passepartout was as white as a sheet, and Fix seemed on the point of having an apoplectic fit. Nearly twenty thousand pounds had been expended, and Fogg left the hull and engine to the captain, that is, near the whole value of the craft! It was true, however, that fifty-five thousand pounds had been stolen from the Bank.
When Andrew Speedy had pocketed the money, Mr. Fogg said to him, “Don’t let this astonish you, sir. You must know that I shall lose twenty thousand pounds, unless I arrive in London by a quarter before nine on the evening of the 21st of December. I missed the steamer at New York, and as you refused to take me to Liverpool—”
“And I did well!” cried Andrew Speedy; “for I have gained at least forty thousand dollars by it!” He added, more sedately, “Do you know one thing, Captain—”
“Fogg.”
“Captain Fogg, you’ve got something of the Yankee about you.”
And, having paid his passenger what he considered a high compliment, he was going away, when Mr. Fogg said, “The vessel now belongs to me?”
“Certainly, from the keel to the truck of the masts—all the wood, that is.”