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Page 31
They set noiselessly to work, and the Parsee on one side
and Passepartout on the other began to loosen the bricks
so as to make an aperture two feet wide. They were getting on rapidly,
when suddenly a cry was heard in the interior of the temple,
followed almost instantly by other cries replying from the outside.
Passepartout and the guide stopped. Had they been heard? Was the
alarm being given? Common prudence urged them to retire, and they
did so, followed by Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis. They again hid
themselves in the wood, and waited till the disturbance, whatever
it might be, ceased, holding themselves ready to resume their attempt
without delay. But, awkwardly enough, the guards now appeared
at the rear of the temple, and there installed themselves,
in readiness to prevent a surprise.
It would be difficult to describe the disappointment of the party,
thus interrupted in their work. They could not now reach the victim;
how, then, could they save her? Sir Francis shook his fists,
Passepartout was beside himself, and the guide gnashed his teeth with rage.
The tranquil Fogg waited, without betraying any emotion.
"We have nothing to do but to go away," whispered Sir Francis.
"Nothing but to go away," echoed the guide.
"Stop," said Fogg. "I am only due at Allahabad tomorrow before noon."
"But what can you hope to do?" asked Sir Francis. "In a few hours
it will be daylight, and--"
"The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment."
Sir Francis would have liked to read Phileas Fogg's eyes.
What was this cool Englishman thinking of? Was he planning
to make a rush for the young woman at the very moment
of the sacrifice, and boldly snatch her from her executioners?
This would be utter folly, and it was hard to admit that Fogg
was such a fool. Sir Francis consented, however, to remain
to the end of this terrible drama. The guide led them to the rear
of the glade, where they were able to observe the sleeping groups.
Meanwhile Passepartout, who had perched himself on the lower branches
of a tree, was resolving an idea which had at first struck him like a flash,
and which was now firmly lodged in his brain.
He had commenced by saying to himself, "What folly!" and then he repeated,
"Why not, after all? It's a chance perhaps the only one; and with such sots!"
Thinking thus, he slipped, with the suppleness of a serpent,
to the lowest branches, the ends of which bent almost to the ground.
The hours passed, and the lighter shades now announced the
approach of day, though it was not yet light. This was the moment.
The slumbering multitude became animated, the tambourines sounded,
songs and cries arose; the hour of the sacrifice had come.
The doors of the pagoda swung open, and a bright light escaped
from its interior, in the midst of which Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis
espied the victim. She seemed, having shaken off the stupor of intoxication,
to be striving to escape from her executioner. Sir Francis's heart throbbed;
and, convulsively seizing Mr. Fogg's hand, found in it an open knife.
Just at this moment the crowd began to move. The young woman had again
fallen into a stupor caused by the fumes of hemp, and passed among
the fakirs, who escorted her with their wild, religious cries.
Phileas Fogg and his companions, mingling in the rear ranks of the crowd,
followed; and in two minutes they reached the banks of the stream,
and stopped fifty paces from the pyre, upon which still lay the rajah's corpse.
In the semi-obscurity they saw the victim, quite senseless, stretched out
beside her husband's body. Then a torch was brought, and the wood,
heavily soaked with oil, instantly took fire.
At this moment Sir Francis and the guide seized Phileas Fogg, who,
in an instant of mad generosity, was about to rush upon the pyre.
But he had quickly pushed them aside, when the whole scene suddenly changed.
A cry of terror arose. The whole multitude prostrated themselves,
terror-stricken, on the ground.
The old rajah was not dead, then, since he rose of a sudden,
like a spectre, took up his wife in his arms, and descended from
the pyre in the midst of the clouds of smoke, which only
heightened his ghostly appearance.
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