Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne [easy novels to read TXT] 📗
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- Author: Jules Verne
- Performer: 014036711X
Book online «Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne [easy novels to read TXT] 📗». Author Jules Verne
the rolling of the steamer, to the after-deck. He saw no one
who resembled either his master or Aouda. “Good!” muttered he;
“Aouda has not got up yet, and Mr. Fogg has probably found some
partners at whist.”
He descended to the saloon. Mr. Fogg was not there.
Passepartout had only, however, to ask the purser the number
of his master’s state-room. The purser replied that he
did not know any passenger by the name of Fogg.
“I beg your pardon,” said Passepartout persistently. “He is a tall gentleman,
quiet, and not very talkative, and has with him a young lady—”
“There is no young lady on board,” interrupted the purser.
“Here is a list of the passengers; you may see for yourself.”
Passepartout scanned the list, but his master’s name was not upon it.
All at once an idea struck him.
“Ah! am I on the Carnatic?”
“Yes.”
“On the way to Yokohama?”
“Certainly.”
Passepartout had for an instant feared that he was on the wrong boat;
but, though he was really on the Carnatic, his master was not there.
He fell thunderstruck on a seat. He saw it all now.
He remembered that the time of sailing had been changed,
that he should have informed his master of that fact,
and that he had not done so. It was his fault, then,
that Mr. Fogg and Aouda had missed the steamer.
Yes, but it was still more the fault of the traitor who,
in order to separate him from his master, and detain
the latter at Hong Kong, had inveigled him into getting drunk!
He now saw the detective’s trick; and at this moment Mr. Fogg
was certainly ruined, his bet was lost, and he himself perhaps
arrested and imprisoned! At this thought Passepartout tore his hair.
Ah, if Fix ever came within his reach, what a settling of accounts
there would be!
After his first depression, Passepartout became calmer,
and began to study his situation. It was certainly not
an enviable one. He found himself on the way to Japan,
and what should he do when he got there? His pocket was empty;
he had not a solitary shilling, not so much as a penny.
His passage had fortunately been paid for in advance;
and he had five or six days in which to decide upon his future course.
He fell to at meals with an appetite, and ate for Mr. Fogg, Aouda,
and himself. He helped himself as generously as if Japan were a desert,
where nothing to eat was to be looked for.
At dawn on the 13th the Carnatic entered the port of Yokohama.
This is an important port of call in the Pacific, where all the
mail-steamers, and those carrying travellers between North America,
China, Japan, and the Oriental islands put in. It is situated
in the bay of Yeddo, and at but a short distance from that
second capital of the Japanese Empire, and the residence of the Tycoon,
the civil Emperor, before the Mikado, the spiritual Emperor,
absorbed his office in his own. The Carnatic anchored at the quay
near the custom-house, in the midst of a crowd of ships bearing
the flags of all nations.
Passepartout went timidly ashore on this so curious territory
of the Sons of the Sun. He had nothing better to do than,
taking chance for his guide, to wander aimlessly through the streets
of Yokohama. He found himself at first in a thoroughly European quarter,
the houses having low fronts, and being adorned with verandas,
beneath which he caught glimpses of neat peristyles. This quarter occupied,
with its streets, squares, docks, and warehouses, all the space between
the “promontory of the Treaty” and the river. Here, as at Hong Kong
and Calcutta, were mixed crowds of all races, Americans and English,
Chinamen and Dutchmen, mostly merchants ready to buy or sell anything.
The Frenchman felt himself as much alone among them as if he had dropped
down in the midst of Hottentots.
He had, at least, one resource to call on the French and English consuls
at Yokohama for assistance. But he shrank from telling the story
of his adventures, intimately connected as it was with that of his master;
and, before doing so, he determined to exhaust all other means of aid.
As chance did not favour him in the European quarter, he penetrated
that inhabited by the native Japanese, determined, if necessary,
to push on to Yeddo.
The Japanese quarter of Yokohama is called Benten, after the
goddess of the sea, who is worshipped on the islands round about.
There Passepartout beheld beautiful fir and cedar groves, sacred
gates of a singular architecture, bridges half hid in the midst
of bamboos and reeds, temples shaded by immense cedar-trees,
holy retreats where were sheltered Buddhist priests and sectaries
of Confucius, and interminable streets, where a perfect harvest of
rose-tinted and red-cheeked children, who looked as if they had been
cut out of Japanese screens, and who were playing in the midst
of short-legged poodles and yellowish cats, might have been gathered.
The streets were crowded with people. Priests were passing
in processions, beating their dreary tambourines; police and
custom-house officers with pointed hats encrusted with lac and
carrying two sabres hung to their waists; soldiers, clad in blue
cotton with white stripes, and bearing guns; the Mikado’s guards,
enveloped in silken doubles, hauberks and coats of mail;
and numbers of military folk of all ranks—for the military
profession is as much respected in Japan as it is despised
in China—went hither and thither in groups and pairs.
Passepartout saw, too, begging friars, long-robed pilgrims,
and simple civilians, with their warped and jet-black hair,
big heads, long busts, slender legs, short stature, and complexions
varying from copper-colour to a dead white, but never yellow,
like the Chinese, from whom the Japanese widely differ.
He did not fail to observe the curious equipages—carriages and palanquins,
barrows supplied with sails, and litters made of bamboo; nor the women—
whom he thought not especially handsome—who took little steps with their
little feet, whereon they wore canvas shoes, straw sandals, and clogs
of worked wood, and who displayed tight-looking eyes, flat chests,
teeth fashionably blackened, and gowns crossed with silken scarfs,
tied in an enormous knot behind an ornament which the modern
Parisian ladies seem to have borrowed from the dames of Japan.
Passepartout wandered for several hours in the midst of this motley crowd,
looking in at the windows of the rich and curious shops, the jewellery
establishments glittering with quaint Japanese ornaments, the restaurants
decked with streamers and banners, the tea-houses, where the odorous beverage
was being drunk with saki, a liquor concocted from the fermentation of rice,
and the comfortable smoking-houses, where they were puffing, not opium,
which is almost unknown in Japan, but a very fine, stringy tobacco.
He went on till he found himself in the fields, in the midst of vast
rice plantations. There he saw dazzling camellias expanding themselves,
with flowers which were giving forth their last colours and perfumes,
not on bushes, but on trees, and within bamboo enclosures, cherry, plum,
and apple trees, which the Japanese cultivate rather for their blossoms
than their fruit, and which queerly-fashioned, grinning scarecrows
protected from the sparrows, pigeons, ravens, and other voracious birds.
On the branches of the cedars were perched large eagles; amid the foliage
of the weeping willows were herons, solemnly standing on one leg;
and on every hand were crows, ducks, hawks, wild birds, and a
multitude of cranes, which the Japanese consider sacred,
and which to their minds symbolise long life and prosperity.
As he was strolling along, Passepartout espied some violets among the shrubs.
“Good!” said he; “I’ll have some supper.”
But, on smelling them, he found that they were odourless.
“No chance there,” thought he.
The worthy fellow had certainly taken good care to eat as
hearty a breakfast as possible before leaving the Carnatic;
but, as he had been walking about all day, the demands of hunger
were becoming importunate. He observed that the butchers stalls
contained neither mutton, goat, nor pork; and, knowing also that
it is a sacrilege to kill cattle, which are preserved solely for farming,
he made up his mind that meat was far from plentiful in Yokohama—
nor was he mistaken; and, in default of butcher’s meat,
he could have wished for a quarter of wild boar or deer,
a partridge, or some quails, some game or fish, which, with rice,
the Japanese eat almost exclusively. But he found it necessary
to keep up a stout heart, and to postpone the meal he craved till
the following morning. Night came, and Passepartout re-entered
the native quarter, where he wandered through the streets,
lit by vari-coloured lanterns, looking on at the dancers,
who were executing skilful steps and boundings, and the astrologers
who stood in the open air with their telescopes. Then he came
to the harbour, which was lit up by the resin torches of the fishermen,
who were fishing from their boats.
The streets at last became quiet, and the patrol, the officers
of which, in their splendid costumes, and surrounded by their suites,
Passepartout thought seemed like ambassadors, succeeded the bustling crowd.
Each time a company passed, Passepartout chuckled, and said to himself:
“Good! another Japanese embassy departing for Europe!”
IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT’S NOSE BECOMES OUTRAGEOUSLY LONG
The next morning poor, jaded, famished Passepartout said to
himself that he must get something to eat at all hazards, and the
sooner he did so the better. He might, indeed, sell his watch;
but he would have starved first. Now or never he must use the
strong, if not melodious voice which nature had bestowed upon him.
He knew several French and English songs, and resolved to try them
upon the Japanese, who must be lovers of music, since they were
for ever pounding on their cymbals, tam-tams, and tambourines, and
could not but appreciate European talent.
It was, perhaps, rather early in the morning to get up a
concert, and the audience prematurely aroused from their slumbers,
might not possibly pay their entertainer with coin bearing the
Mikado’s features. Passepartout therefore decided to wait several
hours; and, as he was sauntering along, it occurred to him that he
would seem rather too well dressed for a wandering artist. The
idea struck him to change his garments for clothes more in harmony
with his project; by which he might also get a little money to
satisfy the immediate cravings of hunger. The resolution taken,
it remained to carry it out.
It was only after a long search that Passepartout discovered a
native dealer in old clothes, to whom he applied for an exchange.
The man liked the European costume, and ere long Passepartout
issued from his shop accoutred in an old Japanese coat, and a sort
of one-sided turban, faded with long use. A few small pieces of silver,
moreover, jingled in his pocket.
Good!” thought he. “I will imagine I am at the Carnival!”
His first care, after being thus “Japanesed,” was to enter a tea-house
of modest appearance, and, upon half a bird and a little rice,
to breakfast like a man for whom dinner was as yet a problem to be solved.
“Now,” thought he, when he had eaten heartily, “I mustn’t lose my head.
I can’t sell this costume again for one still more Japanese. I must
consider how to leave this country of the Sun, of which I shall not retain
the most delightful of memories, as quickly as possible.”
It occurred to him to visit the steamers which were about to
leave for America. He would offer himself as a cook or servant,
in payment of his passage
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