Phileas Fogg was now twenty hours behind schedule.
Passepartout was crushed by guilt. He believed the delay was entirely his fault.
“I have ruined my master’s journey,” he thought miserably.
Fix approached Mr. Fogg and looked at him carefully.
“Sir, may I ask you something? Are you in a great hurry?”
“Very much so.”
“Then I have one more question. Do you absolutely have to be in New York before nine o’clock on the evening of the 11th? That is when the ship to Liverpool leaves.”
“I absolutely must be there.”
“And if the Indians had not stopped your train, you would have arrived in New York on the morning of the 11th?”
“Yes. I would have had eleven hours to spare.”
“Then you are twenty hours behind schedule. If we can make up twelve of those hours, you will only be eight hours behind. Would you like to try?”
“On foot?” Fogg asked.
“No. On a sledge.”
“A sledge?”
“With sails.”
Fix pointed toward a man walking outside the station.
“That man offered me a way to travel by sail-sledge during the night. I refused him then, but I believe his idea may save you now.”
Fogg immediately walked over to the man.
“Are you the owner of the sledge?”
“Yes, sir. My name is Mudge.”
“I would like to see it.”
Mudge led him to a small hut below the fort.
Inside was a strange vehicle. It looked like a long wooden frame resting on two runners, with the front slightly raised like a normal sledge. There was enough room for five or six people.
A tall mast stood in the middle, secured by strong metal cables. A large sail was attached to it, with another smaller sail at the front. At the back was a simple rudder for steering.
It was basically a sailing boat built to travel over snow.
During winter, when trains could not move through deep snow, these sledges were used to cross the frozen plains. With a strong wind behind them, they could move incredibly fast—sometimes as fast as, or even faster than, an express train.
Fogg examined the machine carefully.
“How fast can it travel?”
“If the wind stays strong, forty miles an hour or more.”
“And can you take us to Omaha?”
“I can.”
“How much?”
Mudge named his price.
Fogg agreed immediately and offered him an additional reward if he reached Omaha within the promised time.
The wind was blowing strongly from the west, exactly what they needed. The snow had hardened into a smooth surface.
There was a real chance of making up some of the lost time.
Fogg then turned to Aouda.
“The journey will be extremely uncomfortable. I suggest that you remain here with Passepartout. He can take you to Europe later by a safer route.”
Aouda shook her head.
“No. I am going with you.”
“There is no need for you to suffer through such a journey.”
“I would rather suffer with you than remain behind.”
Passepartout was secretly delighted.
“Thank you, madam!” he thought.
There was no way he would leave his master either, especially with Fix still traveling with them.
As for Fix, his thoughts were impossible to read.
Had everything that had happened changed his opinion of Fogg?
Perhaps.
But Fix still believed it was his duty to arrest Fogg if he was truly the bank robber he had been pursuing. He was determined to get the entire party back to England as quickly as possible.
At eight o’clock, the sledge was ready.
The travelers climbed aboard and wrapped themselves tightly in their coats and furs.
Mudge raised the two large sails.
The wind caught them.
The sledge shot forward across the frozen snow.
Fort Kearney was roughly two hundred miles from Omaha in a straight line. At forty miles an hour, they could reach the city in about five hours.
If everything went well, they would arrive around one o’clock.
The journey was brutal.
The travelers sat close together, unable to talk because of the freezing wind.
The sledge flew over the snow as smoothly as a boat moving across water.
Whenever a strong gust struck the sails, the vehicle seemed almost to lift from the ground.
Mudge stood at the rudder, keeping the sledge on a straight course. Whenever it began to swing sideways, he corrected it with a quick movement of his hand.
He had raised every sail he could.
The main sail caught the wind, while the smaller sails added even more power.
The speed was difficult to measure exactly, but they were certainly traveling at around forty miles an hour.
Mudge shouted over the wind.
“If nothing breaks, we’ll make it!”
Fogg remained calm.
He had made it very much in Mudge’s interest to keep his promise.
The prairie stretched endlessly around them.
It was so flat that it looked like a frozen ocean.
The railroad followed a much longer route, passing through several towns before reaching Omaha. Fogg’s sledge took a direct line across the plain, cutting across the curve of the railway.
Mudge was not worried about the Platte River. It was frozen solid.
There was almost nothing to stop them.
Fogg had only two things to fear: a mechanical failure or a sudden change in the wind.
Fortunately, the wind grew stronger rather than weaker.
The metal cables holding the mast began to vibrate and hum under the pressure. They made a strange musical sound as the wind passed through them.
Fogg listened for a moment.
“The cables are producing a fifth and an octave,” he said.
Those were almost the only words he spoke during the entire journey.
Aouda was buried beneath thick furs and cloaks. Mudge did everything possible to keep her protected from the freezing air.
Passepartout had no such luck.
His face had become bright red from the cold, and every breath hurt his lungs.
Yet his spirits were rising again.
They might still reach New York on the 11th.
They might even arrive before the ship sailed for Liverpool.
For the first time in a long while, hope returned.
Passepartout even felt an urge to shake Fix’s hand.
After all, Fix had been the one who found the man with the sledge.
Without this vehicle, they would have had almost no chance of reaching Omaha in time.
But something stopped Passepartout.
He kept his distance.
There was one thing, however, that he could never forget.
His master had risked everything to rescue him from the Sioux.
Fogg had risked his money.
He had risked his life.
Passepartout knew that no matter what happened in the future, he would never forget that sacrifice.
The sledge continued racing across the endless snow.
Streams and small rivers disappeared beneath the white surface.
The entire landscape looked like one enormous frozen sheet.
There were no villages.
No stations.
No forts.
No people.
Every now and then, they passed a lonely tree, its branches white with snow and twisting violently in the wind.
Sometimes a flock of wild birds suddenly rose from the plain.
At other times, a pack of thin, hungry prairie wolves appeared.
They ran after the sledge, howling desperately.
Passepartout pulled out his revolver.
“If they get too close, I’ll shoot,” he said.
The danger was real.
If the sledge broke down, the travelers could easily become prey for the starving animals.
But the vehicle kept moving.
The wolves gradually fell behind.
Soon their howls faded into the distance.
Around noon, Mudge recognized several landmarks.
He knew they had crossed the Platte River.
He said nothing, but he was now certain that Omaha was less than twenty miles away.
Less than an hour later, Mudge finally left the rudder.
He lowered and secured the sails.
The sledge continued forward for another half mile, carried by the enormous momentum it had built up.
Then it finally stopped.
Mudge pointed toward a distant group of snow-covered rooftops.
“There it is.”
They had arrived.
Omaha.
There were trains here every day connecting the city with the eastern United States.
Passepartout and Fix immediately jumped off the sledge and stretched their stiff arms and legs.
They helped Fogg and Aouda down.
Fogg paid Mudge a generous reward.
Passepartout warmly shook the man’s hand.
“You saved us,” he said.
Then the group hurried toward the railway station.
Omaha was the western terminus of the Pacific Railroad.
From there, another railway connected the city with Chicago, running east through dozens of stations.
When Fogg and the others reached the station, a train was already preparing to leave.
They barely had time to board.
Passepartout looked around.
“We haven’t seen anything of Omaha.”
Then he smiled.
“But I suppose that’s not important. We’re not traveling around the world to see the sights.”
The train raced across Iowa.
It passed Council Bluffs, Des Moines, and Iowa City.
During the night, it crossed the Mississippi River at Davenport and entered Illinois at Rock Island.
The next day was the 10th.
At four in the afternoon, they reached Chicago.
The city had risen again after the terrible destruction it had suffered years earlier and now stood proudly beside Lake Michigan.
But Fogg had no time to admire it.
Nine hundred miles still separated Chicago from New York.
Fortunately, another train was ready.
Fogg immediately transferred to it.
The locomotive of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railway pulled away at full speed.
It seemed almost as though the engine understood that Fogg had no time to waste.
The train raced through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
Town after town flashed past the windows.
Some had old-fashioned names and streets with tram tracks, but hardly any houses.
At last, the Hudson River appeared.
At a quarter past eleven on the night of the 11th, the train finally stopped at the station on the eastern side of the river, directly beside the Cunard Line pier.
Fogg stepped down.
His heart sank.
The ship to Liverpool—the China—had sailed forty-five minutes earlier.