Around the World in 80 Days

£20,000 says Phileas Fogg is back in this room in eighty days.

Dover, Calais, and the long way round begins.

A Detective Fix has been shadowing us since the canal, convinced the wager is cover for a bank robbery in London. Passepartout thinks he is a customs man. I think he is going to be very tired by Yokohama.

Passport stamped, Detective Fix already suspicious.

Across the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, dead on schedule.

Five hours to coal the Mongolia. Volcanic rock, a furnace wind, and crates of dates on the quay. We leave on the tide, still dead on schedule.

Off the steamer and onto India. Passepartout wanders into a pagoda still wearing his boots; I make the evening train regardless.

The railway was advertised as complete — except for fifty miles of jungle. We crossed it by elephant, rescued a princess, and still caught the boat at Calcutta.

A few green hours ashore at Singapore: nutmeg, clove, and a tortoise the size of a dinner table. Coal in, and on up the China coast.

The Carnatic sails a tide early and a fog rolls over the Peak. Detective Fix grows desperate; the schedule wobbles for the first time.

Eleven knots in a gale aboard the little Tankadere to chase down the Pacific steamer off Shanghai. We caught her by a whisker and a flare.

Lost Passepartout in Hong Kong and found him here, of all things performing with a travelling acrobatic troupe. The schedule held regardless. The schedule always holds.

The wide Pacific, then a continent of railway to cross.

Last hot meal on solid ground for a while.

Twenty-one days of grey Pacific, then America. A political brawl in the street, a swift exit, and onto the transcontinental railroad east.

Buffalo on the line, a weakened bridge, a Sioux raid — and we reach the pier just as the Liverpool steamer pulls away. Time to improvise a crossing.

The eastward day gained settles the bet. Wager won.