Читать книгу Вокруг света за 80 дней / Around the World in 80 Days - Жюль Верн, Жуль Верн - Страница 14

The project was a bold one, 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, he was ready for anything that might be proposed. 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, if we are taken.”

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

“I think so,” said the guide.

The victim, said the Indian, was the daughter of a wealthy Bombay merchant. She had received a thoroughly English education in that city. Her name was Aouda[72]. Left an orphan, she was married against her will to the old rajah of Bundelcund; and, knowing the fate that awaited her, she escaped, was retaken, and devoted by the rajah’s relatives, who had an interest in her death, to the sacrifice from which it seemed she could not escape.

It was decided that the guide should direct the elephant towards the pagoda of Pillaji, which he accordingly approached as quickly as possible. They halted, half an hour afterwards, in a copse, some five hundred feet from the pagoda, where they were well concealed; but they could hear the groans and cries of the fakirs distinctly.

The guide was familiar with the pagoda of Pillaji, in which, as he declared, the young woman was imprisoned. Could they enter any of its doors while the whole party of Indians was plunged in a drunken sleep, or was it safer to attempt to make a hole in the walls? It was certain that the abduction must be made that night, and not when the victim was led to her funeral pyre.