"The chances which escape us now may return at the last moment."

The general would have liked to read Phileas Fogg's eyes. What was this cold-blooded Englishman counting on? Would he, at the moment of the sacrifice, rush towards the young woman, and openly tear her from her murderers?

That would have been madness, and how could it be admitted that this man was mad to this degree? Nevertheless, Sir Francis Cromarty consented to wait until the denouement of this terrible scene. The guide did not leave his companions at the spot where they had hid, but took them back to the foreground of the clearing. There, sheltered by a clump of trees, they could watch the sleeping groups.

In the meantime Passepartout, perched upon the lower branches of a tree, was meditating an idea which had first crossed his mind like a flash, and which finally imbedded itself in his brain. He had commenced by saying to himself, "What madness!" and now he repeated, "Why not, after all? It is a chance, perhaps the only one, and with such brutes———"

At all events, Passepartout did not put his thought into any other shape, but he was not slow in sliding down, with the ease of a snake, on the lower branches of the tree, the end of which bent toward the ground.

The hours were passing, and soon a few less somber shades announced the approach of day. It was like a resurrection in this slumbering crowd. The groups wakened up. The beating of tam-tams sounded, songs and cries burst out anew. The hour had come in which the unfortunate was to die.

The doors of the pagoda were now opened. A more intense light came from the interior. Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis could see the victim, all lighted up, whom two priests were dragging to the outside. It seemed to them that, shaking off the drowsiness of intoxication by the highest instinct of self-preservation, the unfortunate woman was trying to escape from her executioners. Sir Francis's heart throbbed violently, and with a convulsive movement seizing Phileas Fogg's hand, he felt that it held an open knife.

The young woman had fallen again into the stupor produced by the fumes of the hemp. She passed between the fakirs, who escorted her with their religious cries. Phileas Fogg and his companions followed her, mingling with the rear ranks of the crowd.

Two minutes after, they arrived at the edge of the river, and stopped less than fifty paces from the funeral pile, upon which was lying the rajah's body. In the semi-obscurity, they saw the victim, motionless, stretched near her husband's corpse. Then a torch was brought, and the wood, impregnated with oil, soon took fire.

At this moment, Sir Francis Cromarty and the guide held back Phileas Fogg, who in an impulse of generous madness, was going to rush toward the pile.

But Phileas Fogg had already pushed them back, when the scene changed suddenly. A cry of terror arose. The whole crowd, frightened, cast themselves upon the ground.