The train had started on time. It carried a certain number of travelers, some officers, civil officials, and opium and indigo merchants, whose business called them to the eastern part of the peninsula.

Passepartout occupied the same compartment as his master. A third traveler was in the opposite corner. It was the Brigadier-General, Sir Francis Cromarty, one of the partners of Mr. Fogg during the trip from Suez to Bombay, who was rejoining his troops, stationed near Benares.

Sir Francis Cromarty, tall, fair, about fifty years old, who had distinguished himself highly during the last revolt of the Sepoys, truly deserved to be called a native. From his youth he had lived in India, and had only been occasionally in the country of his birth. He was a well-posted man, who would have been glad to give information as to the manners, the history, the organization of this In- dian country, if Phileas Fogg had been the man to ask for such things. But this gentleman was not asking anything. He was not traveling, he was describing a circumference. He was a heavy body, traversing an orbit around the terrestrial globe, according to the laws of rational mechanics. At this moment he was going over in his mind the calculations of the hours consumed since his departure from London, and he would have rubbed his hands, if it had been in his nature to make a useless movement.

Sir Francis Cromarty had recognized the originality of his traveling companion, although he had only studied him with his cards in his hands, and between two rubbers. He was ready to ask whether a human heart beat beneath this cold exterior, whether Phileas Fogg had a soul alive to the beauties of nature and to moral aspirations. That was the question for him. Of all the oddities the general had met, none were to be compared to this product of the exact sciences. Phileas Fogg had not kept secret from Sir Francis Cromarty his plan for a tour around the world, nor the conditions under which he was carrying it out. The general saw in this bet only an eccentricity without a useful aim, and which was wanting necessarily in the transire benefaciendo which ought to guide every reasonable man. In the manner in which this singular gentleman was moving on, he would evidently be doing nothing, either for himself or for others.

An hour after having left Bombay, the train, crossing the viaducts, had left behind the Island of Salcette and reached the mainland. At the station Callyan, it left to the right the branch which, via Kandallah and Pounah descends towards the southeast of India, and reaches the station Panwell. At this point, it became entangled in the defiles of the Western Ghaut mountains, with bases of trappe and basalt, whose highest summits are covered with thick woods.

From time to time, Sir Francis Cromarty and Phileas Fogg exchanged a few words, and at this moment the general, recommencing a conversation which frequently lagged, said, "A few years ago, Mr. Fogg, you would have experienced at this point a delay which would have probably interrupted your journey."

"Why so, Sir Francis?"

"Because the railway stopped at the base of these mountains, which had to be crossed in a palanquin or on a pony's back as far as the station of Kandallah, on the opposite slope."

"That delay would not have deranged my programme," replied Mr. Fogg. "I would have foreseen the probability of certain obstacles."

"But, Mr. Fogg," replied the general, "you are in danger of having a bad business on your hands with this young man's adventure."

Passepartout, with his feet wrapped up in his cloak, was sleeping soundly, and did not dream that they were talking about him. "The English government is extremely severe, and rightly, for this kind of trespass," continued Sir Francis. "It insists, above all things, that the religious customs of the Hindoos shall be respected, and if your servant had been taken———"