Вокруг света за 80 дней / Around the World in Eighty Days

”

The guide wanted to urge Kiouni forward with a peculiar whistle. But Mr. Fogg stopped him, and turned to Sir Francis Cromarty,

“Let’s save this woman.”

“Save the woman, Mr. Fogg!”

“I have twelve hours; I can devote them to that.”

“Why, you are a man of heart!”

“Sometimes,” replied Phileas Fogg, quietly; “when I have the time.”

Chapter XIII

The project was bold, full of difficulty, perhaps impracticable. Mr. Fogg was going to risk life, or at least liberty, and therefore the success of his tour.

As for Passepartout, his master’s idea charmed him; he began to love Phileas Fogg.

“Officers,” said the guide, “I am a Parsee, and this woman is a Parsee. Command me as you will.”

“Excellent!” said Mr. Fogg.

“However,” resumed the guide, “it is certain, not only that we shall risk our lives, but horrible tortures.”

“That is clear,” replied Mr. Fogg. “I think we must wait till night.”

“I think so,” said the guide.

The victim, said the Indian, was the daughter of a wealthy Bombay merchant. She received a good English education in that city. Her name was Aouda[71 - Aouda – Ауда]. She was married against her will to the old rajah of Bundelcund. She escaped, they caught her and brought to the rajah’s relatives, who wanted her death.

What did the travelers decide? The guide will direct the elephant towards the pagoda of Pillaji. They halted, half an hour afterwards, in a coppice, five hundred feet from the pagoda.

They were well concealed; but they heard the groans and cries of the fakirs distinctly.

The guide was familiar with the pagoda of Pillaji, in which the young woman was imprisoned. The abduction will happen that night. As soon as night fell, about six o’clock, they decided to make a reconnaissance around the pagoda. The cries of the fakirs ceased; the Indians were drunk. They drank liquid opium with hemp.

The Parsee led the travelers. They noiselessly crept through the wood, and in ten minutes they found themselves on the banks of a small stream, whence they perceived a pyre of wood.

On the top of it lay the embalmed body of the rajah. The Indians wanted to burn him with his wife. The pagoda stood a hundred steps away.

“Come!” whispered the guide.

Soon the Parsee stopped on the borders of the glade. The ground was covered by groups of the motionless Indians. Men, women, and children lay together.