About an hour later, the Henrietta passed the lighthouse at the entrance to the Hudson River, rounded Sandy Hook, and headed out to sea.
During the day, she sailed along Long Island, passed Fire Island, and then turned sharply east.
At noon the next day, a man climbed onto the bridge to check the ship’s position.
It was not Captain Speedy.
It was Phileas Fogg.
Captain Speedy, meanwhile, was locked inside his cabin, shouting and cursing at the top of his lungs. His anger was understandable, but certainly excessive.
The situation was simple enough.
Fogg wanted to go to Liverpool, but Captain Speedy had refused to take him there.
So Fogg had booked a passage to Bordeaux instead.
But during the thirty hours he had been aboard, Fogg had quietly used his money to win over the sailors and stokers. They were only temporary workers, and they were already unhappy with their captain.
One by one, they came over to Fogg.
By the end, the entire crew was on his side.
That was how Fogg had taken command of the Henrietta, while Captain Speedy was locked in his cabin.
And that was why the ship was now heading for Liverpool.
Anyone watching Fogg handle the ship could see that he knew his way around a vessel. He had clearly been a sailor before.
How the adventure would end remained to be seen.
Aouda was worried, although she said nothing.
Passepartout, on the other hand, thought his master’s latest move was absolutely brilliant.
Captain Speedy had said the ship could make between eleven and twelve knots, and so far the Henrietta was proving him right.
There were still plenty of things that could go wrong.
If the sea remained calm enough…
If the wind did not turn to the east…
If nothing happened to the ship or its machinery…
Then the Henrietta could cover the three thousand miles from New York to Liverpool in nine days, arriving sometime between December 12 and December 21.
But once they reached Liverpool, Fogg might face even bigger problems than he expected.
Taking over the Henrietta and the theft of fifty-five thousand pounds from the Bank of England were not exactly matters the authorities would ignore.
For the first few days, everything went smoothly.
The sea was fairly calm. The wind stayed in the northeast. The sails were raised, and the Henrietta cut through the waves like a proper Atlantic liner.
Passepartout was delighted.
He knew nothing about the possible consequences of what his master had done. All he could see was that Fogg had once again found a way to keep moving.
The crew had never met anyone as cheerful and skillful as Passepartout.
He quickly became friends with the sailors and entertained them with his acrobatic tricks.
He admired the sailors for handling the ship so well and thought the stokers were heroes for keeping the furnaces burning.
His cheerful talk and endless jokes lifted everyone’s spirits.
He had completely forgotten the troubles of the past—the delays, the missed trains, and all the other disasters.
He was thinking only about the finish line, which was now so close.
Sometimes he became so impatient that he seemed ready to burst, as though the heat from the Henrietta’s furnaces had entered his own body.
He also kept an eye on Fix.
From time to time, he would walk around him and study him suspiciously.
But he never spoke to him.
Their old friendship was gone.
Fix, meanwhile, understood almost nothing.
The takeover of the Henrietta, the crew changing sides, and Fogg handling the ship like an experienced sailor had left the detective completely confused.
He had no idea what to think.
After all, he was chasing a man accused of stealing fifty-five thousand pounds.
If that man could steal money, perhaps he could steal a ship too.
Fix began to suspect that Fogg had no intention of going to Liverpool at all.
Perhaps, he thought, Fogg planned to sail somewhere far away, become a pirate, and disappear forever.
It was not a completely unreasonable theory.
Fix began to seriously regret getting involved in the whole affair.
Captain Speedy continued to shout and growl inside his cabin.
Passepartout was responsible for taking him his meals.
Even though Passepartout was usually fearless, he approached the captain with extreme caution.
Fogg, meanwhile, behaved as if there were no captain on board at all.
On December 13, they reached the edge of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, one of the most dangerous areas of the Atlantic.
In winter, thick fogs and violent storms were common there.
The barometer had begun falling sharply the previous evening, warning them that the weather was about to change.
During the night, the temperature dropped.
The cold became more severe.
Then the wind shifted toward the southeast.
This was bad news.
Fogg did not want the ship to leave its course, so he lowered the sails and relied more heavily on the engines.
But the rough sea slowed the Henrietta down.
Huge waves crashed against the stern.
The ship pitched violently.
The storm grew stronger, and there was a real danger that the Henrietta might not remain upright.
Passepartout’s face became as gloomy as the sky.
For two days, the poor man lived in constant fear.
Fogg, however, remained calm.
He was an experienced sailor and knew how to keep a ship moving through rough water.
He refused to reduce the steam.
When the Henrietta could not climb over a wave, she simply drove straight through it.
Water flooded across the deck, but the ship kept moving.
At times, the propeller came completely out of the water when a huge wave lifted the stern high above the sea.
The propeller would then spin wildly in the air before dropping back into the water.
Still, the Henrietta continued straight ahead.
Fortunately, the wind did not become as violent as they had feared.
It was not one of those terrifying hurricanes that could race along at ninety miles an hour.
The wind remained strong, but it stayed stubbornly in the southeast.
That made the sails useless.
December 16 arrived.
It was the seventy-fifth day since Fogg had left London.
Despite everything, the Henrietta had not suffered any serious delay.
Almost half the journey had been completed, and the most dangerous part of the Atlantic had been passed.
If it had been summer, their success would have seemed almost certain.
But it was winter.
Now they were completely dependent on the weather.
Passepartout said nothing, but he secretly remained hopeful.
Even if the wind could not help them, they still had the steam engine.
That day, the engineer came onto the deck and walked over to Fogg.
He spoke to him in a serious voice.
Passepartout immediately sensed that something was wrong.
He desperately wanted to hear what they were saying.
He would almost have given one of his ears just to hear clearly with the other.
Finally, he caught a few words.
Fogg asked,
“Are you certain of what you’re telling me?”
“Completely certain, sir,” the engineer replied.
“You must remember that we’ve kept every furnace burning at full strength since leaving New York. We had enough coal to reach Bordeaux using less steam, but we don’t have enough coal to reach Liverpool at full speed.”
“I’ll think about it,” Fogg replied.
Passepartout understood immediately.
He felt as if his heart had stopped.
They were running out of coal.
“Ah,” he muttered, “if my master can solve this problem, he’ll be a truly remarkable man!”
He could not resist telling Fix what he had overheard.
“So you really believe we’re going to Liverpool?” Fix asked.
“Of course!”
“Idiot,” Fix replied, shaking his head before walking away.
Passepartout was about to angrily demand an explanation.
But then he stopped himself.
Perhaps Fix was simply bitter and humiliated.
After all, the detective had followed the wrong man around the world and made himself look ridiculous.
Passepartout decided to let it go.
The question now was what Fogg would do.
No one could imagine.
But that evening, Fogg called the engineer and gave him a surprising order.
“Keep every furnace burning until all the coal is gone.”
A few minutes later, thick clouds of smoke poured from the Henrietta’s funnel.
The ship continued at full steam.
On December 18, the engineer came to Fogg again.
“As I warned you, sir, the coal will be completely gone today.”
“Do not reduce the fires,” Fogg replied.
“Keep them burning until the very last piece of coal. Keep the boilers at full pressure.”
Around noon, Fogg checked their position.
Then he called Passepartout.
“Bring Captain Speedy here.”
Passepartout felt as if he had just been ordered to unlock a cage containing a tiger.
He walked toward the stern, muttering to himself.
“He’s going to go completely mad.”
A few moments later, a furious figure stormed onto the deck, shouting and swearing.
It was Captain Speedy.
He looked ready to explode.
“Where are we?” he demanded.
His face was bright red with rage.
“Where are we?” he shouted again.
“Seven hundred and seven miles from Liverpool,” Fogg answered calmly.
“Pirate!” Captain Speedy yelled.
“I sent for you, sir—”
“Thief!”
Fogg continued calmly.
“I sent for you because I want to buy your ship.”
“No! Absolutely not!”
“But I’ll have to burn it.”
“Burn the Henrietta?”
“Yes. At least the wooden parts. We’ve run out of coal.”
“Burn my ship?”
Captain Speedy could barely get the words out.
“This ship is worth fifty thousand dollars!”
“Here are sixty thousand.”
Fogg handed him a thick roll of banknotes.
The effect was immediate.
It was difficult for an American to remain angry when sixty thousand dollars were placed in front of him.
Captain Speedy instantly forgot about his anger, his imprisonment, and his hatred of Fogg.
The Henrietta was already twenty years old.
Sixty thousand dollars was an excellent price.
The furious captain suddenly had nothing left to explode about.
“I’ll still have the iron hull,” he said more calmly.
“And the hull and the engine,” Fogg replied. “Do we have a deal?”
“Deal.”
Captain Speedy grabbed the money, counted it carefully, and put it into his pocket.
Passepartout had turned as white as a sheet.
Fix looked as if he might collapse.
Fogg had just spent nearly twenty thousand pounds.
And he was leaving the iron hull and engine to Captain Speedy.
In other words, he had paid almost the full value of the ship just to get to Liverpool.
It was true that fifty-five thousand pounds had been stolen from the Bank of England.
But still, this was an enormous amount of money.
After putting the banknotes safely away, Captain Speedy looked at Fogg.
“Don’t be surprised by what you’ve just done, sir,” Fogg said. “You should know that I’ll lose twenty thousand pounds if I don’t reach London before a quarter to nine on the evening of December 21.”
“I missed the steamer at New York, and you refused to take me to Liverpool.”
“And I was right to refuse!” Captain Speedy replied. “I’ve made at least forty thousand dollars because of it!”
Then he looked at Fogg with new respect.
“You know, Captain…”
“Fogg.”
“Captain Fogg, you’ve got a bit of the Yankee in you.”
Captain Speedy clearly meant this as a great compliment.
He turned to leave.
Fogg stopped him.
“The ship belongs to me now?”
“Certainly. Everything from the keel to the top of the masts.”
“Good. Have the seats, bunks, and wooden frames removed.”
“And?”
“Burn them.”
They needed dry wood to keep the steam pressure high.
So that day, the ship began to disappear piece by piece.
The poop deck, cabins, bunks, and spare deck were torn apart and fed into the fires.
The next day, December 19, the crew burned the masts, rafts, and spars.
Everyone worked as hard as possible to keep the furnaces alive.
Passepartout worked like a madman.
He chopped, cut, and sawed through the ship with all his strength.
There was almost a frenzy of destruction on board.
By December 20, the railings, fittings, most of the deck, and much of the ship’s upper structure had disappeared.
The once-proud Henrietta had been reduced to little more than a flat iron hull.
But that same day, they finally saw the coast of Ireland.
They spotted Fastnet Light.
By ten that evening, they were passing Queenstown.
Fogg had only twenty-four hours left.
That was just enough time to reach Liverpool if the Henrietta could keep going at full steam.
But the steam was almost gone.
Captain Speedy had become deeply interested in Fogg’s desperate race.
“Sir,” he said, “I truly feel sorry for you. Everything seems to be working against you. We’re only opposite Queenstown.”
“Is that Queenstown?” Fogg asked.
“Yes. Those lights.”
“Can we enter the harbor?”
“Not for another three hours. We have to wait for high tide.”
“Very well,” Fogg said calmly.
His face revealed nothing.
But inside, he had just found another possible way to defeat his bad luck.
Queenstown was an important Irish port for transatlantic ships.
Ocean liners stopped there to unload their mail.
The mail was immediately placed on express trains waiting to leave for Dublin.
From Dublin, it was transferred to the fastest boats sailing to Liverpool.
Using this system could save twelve hours compared with waiting for the ocean liner to reach Liverpool.
Fogg immediately saw his opportunity.
Instead of staying aboard the Henrietta until Liverpool, he could get off at Queenstown.
From there, he could take the express train to Dublin and then a fast boat to Liverpool.
He could save twelve hours.
That would put him in Liverpool around noon instead of the following evening.
He would then have enough time to reach London before a quarter to nine.
At one o’clock in the morning, the Henrietta entered Queenstown Harbor.
The tide was finally high enough.
Captain Speedy shook Fogg’s hand warmly.
The two men had gone from enemies to something very close to friends.
Fogg left him standing on the ruined remains of the Henrietta.
Even after being stripped of almost everything, the hull was still worth about half of what Speedy had sold the ship for.
Fogg, Aouda, Passepartout, and Fix immediately went ashore.
Fix had every reason to arrest Fogg right there.
But he didn’t.
Why?
What was happening inside the detective’s mind?
Had he begun to doubt his own case?
Had he finally realized that he might have made a terrible mistake?
Whatever he thought, Fix still followed Fogg.
At half past one, they all boarded the train.
It was ready to leave.
By dawn, they had reached Dublin.
Without wasting a moment, they transferred to a steamer bound for Liverpool.
The ship moved quickly through the waves instead of rising over them.
At last, on December 21, Phileas Fogg stepped onto the quay at Liverpool.
The time was twenty minutes before noon.
He was only six hours away from London.
Six hours to complete his journey.
But before he could take another step, Fix approached him.
The detective placed a hand on Fogg’s shoulder.
Then he produced his warrant.
“Are you really Phileas Fogg?”
“I am.”
Fix looked him directly in the eyes.
“I arrest you in the name of the Queen!”