"You have given me a thrashing," said Fix. "Good, I expected it. Now, listen to me. Up to this time I have been Mr. Fogg's adversary. I am now in his game."
"Aha!" cried Passepartout. "You are convinced he is an honest man?"
"No," replied Fix coldly, "I think him a rascal. Sh! don't budge, and let me speak. As long as Mr. Fogg was on English ground, it was for my interest to detain him there until my warrant of arrest arrived. I did everything I could to keep him back. I sent the Bombay priests after him. I got you intoxicated at Hong Kong. I separated you from him, and I made him miss the Yokohama steamer."
Passepartout listened, with closed fists.
"Now," resumed Fix, "Mr. Fogg seems to be going back to England. Well, I will follow him there. But hereafter I will do as much to keep obstacles out of his way as I have done up to this time to put them in his path. I've changed my game, you see, and simply because it was in my interest to change it. Your interest is the same as mine, for it is only in England that you will know whether you are in the service of a criminal or an honest man."
Passepartout listened very attentively to Fix, and was convinced that he spoke with entire good faith.
"Are we friends?" asked the detective.
"Friends? No," replied Passepartout. "But allies, perhaps. At the least sign of treason, however, I'll twist your neck for you.
"Agreed," said the detective quietly.
Eleven days later, on the 3rd of December, the General Grant entered the bay of the Golden Gate, and reached San Francisco.
Mr. Fogg had neither gained nor lost a single day.
Chapter 25
In Which a Slight GlimpseIs Had of San Francisco
It was seven in the morning when Mr. Fogg, Aouda and Passepartout set foot upon the American continent, if this name can be given to the floating quay upon which they disembarked. These quays, rising and falling with the tide, thus facilitate the loading and unloading of vessels. Alongside them were clippers of all sizes, steamers of all nationalities, and the steamboats, with several decks rising one above the other, which ply on the Sacramento and its tributaries. There were also heaped up the products of a commerce which extends to Mexico, Chili, Peru, Brazil, Europe, Asia and all the Pacific islands.
Passepartout, in his joy on reaching at last the American continent, thought he would show it by executing a perilous vault in fine style; but, tumbling upon some worm-eaten planks, he fell through them. Put out of countenance by the manner in which he thus "set foot" upon the New World, he uttered a loud cry. This so frightened the innumerable cormorants and pelicans that are always perched upon these movable quays, that they flew noisily away.
Mr. Fogg, on reaching shore, proceeded to find out at what hour the first train left for New York, and learned that this was at six o'clock P.M. He had, therefore, an entire day to spend in the Californian city. Taking a carriage for three dollars, he and Aouda entered it, while Passepartout mounted the box beside the driver, and they set out for the International Hotel.
>From his exalted position Passepartout observed with much curiosity the wide streets, the low, evenly ranged houses, the Anglo-Saxon Gothic churches, the great docks, the palatial wooden and brick warehouses, the numerous conveyances, omnibuses, horse-cars, and upon the side-walks, not only Americans and Europeans, but Chinese and Indians. Passepartout was surprised at all he saw. San Francisco was no longer the legendary city of 1849 - a city of banditti, assassins and incendiaries, who had flocked here in crowds in pursuit of plunder. Formerly a paradise of outlaws, where they gambled with gold-dust, a revolver in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other, it was now a great commercial emporium.
The lofty tower of its City Hall overlooked the whole panorama of the streets and avenues, which cut each other at right-angles, and in the midst of which appeared pleasant, verdant squares. Beyond appeared the Chinese quarter, seemingly imported from the Celestial Empire in a toy-box.