by Tony Abbott
Captain Speedy suddenly shouted to the crew. “Do as Captain Fogg commands! Full speed to England!”
Passepartout cheered. Aouda cheered. Even Fix did.
The crew leaped into action. Chairs, walls, masts, rafts, railings, even the deck itself, all were chopped up and shoved into the furnace. Thick black smoke billowed out from the smokestacks, and the ship lurched once more over the waves.
In a matter of hours, there was nothing left of the Henrietta but the hull and the spinning paddle wheels. It was no more than a flat hulk speeding over the sea.
But it was enough. When the sun rose at dawn on December 21, Passepartout sighted land. “England?”
“England!” cried Aouda in spite of herself.
We chugged into Liverpool harbor at twenty minutes before noon on December 21, the eightieth day.
We thanked the captain and he thanked us for such a memorable voyage. We stepped out onto the dock.
“England!” said Passepartout. “England!”
“Whoa,” I said to Frankie. “I can’t believe it. We’re nearly done. And we’ve nearly won!”
“In six hours we shall be London,” said Fogg. “That will give us exactly three hours and five minutes to clean up and appear at the Reform Club by eight forty-five this evening. Let us head to the train at once—”
But at that exact moment, Detective Fix stomped over, slapped his hand down on Fogg’s shoulder, pulled his badge out, and said, “Phileas Fogg, by order of the Queen of England, I hereby put you under arrest!”
Chapter 20
Detective Fix was a rat.
He wouldn’t listen to reason, either from us or from Mr. Fogg who, of course, protested that he was innocent of any crime. Ignoring everything, Fix and his policeman friends took us right off to the Liverpool jail.
Aouda burst into tears when we were led to the cell.
“This pretty much stinks,” I groaned. “And I’m not talking just about the odor of this room.”
“You’ll be taken to London tomorrow,” said Fix, with a twist of his mustache. Then he left.
“Tomorrow!” Frankie growled, looking at the watch. It was so close to being the eightieth minute, it was obvious we only had a few hours left. “That’ll be too late!”
“We won’t get back home,” I said.
“I don’t even care about getting home,” said Frankie. “Fogg is so not guilty, but his life is ruined, anyway. He’s spent all his money on this trip, and he’ll lose the bet on top of it.”
Frankie was right. I hardly cared about the zapper gates anymore. I cared about Fogg and Aouda and Passepartout.
It was way too depressing.
But you wouldn’t know it by looking at Fogg himself.
If you came into the cell right then, you would have found him seated calmly on a wooden bench, not even looking angry. He stared at the dirty ceiling for a moment; then he took up his notebook and penciled in a line. It read: Arrived in Liverpool, Saturday, December 21, 80th day, 11:40 A.M.
Then he waited, and we all waited with him.
One hour went by. Two hours. Three hours. We had less than seven hours now to make the six-hour journey to London.
Finally, Fogg breathed heavily. “I have tried to meet every obstacle we have encountered. But short of making an escape, there seems little chance now. My money is of no help here, it seems—”
It was at this point that we heard footsteps hurrying down the hall to the cell.
The door swung open and Detective Fix stumbled in, out of breath. “I am s-s-so sorry,” he stammered, bowing his head and scraping his feet. “Sir—forgive me—a most unfortunate mistake—the real robber—was arrested—three days ago—you—are free!”
“Yes!” Frankie and I whooped, jumping in the air and nearly hitting the ceiling. Aouda screamed for joy.
“Detective Fix,” said Mr. Fogg, narrrowing his eyes.
“Yes, Mr. Fogg …”
“I am not fond of you.”
“You are not?”
“No, I am not!”
Then, with probably the only emotion he had ever shown in his life, Mr. Fogg clenched his fist and let it fly.
Ka-pow! It landed exactly on the tip of Fix’s jaw.
When Detective Fix went down in a heap, we all cheered. When he sat up and rubbed his chin, his mustache was all crooked. “Yes, well, I deserved that, I’m sure.”
Before anybody could punch the weasel again, Frankie, Aouda, Passepartout, Fogg, and I were sailing out of the cell and straight to the Liverpool train station.
Frankie asked the ticket lady where the superfast express train to London was.
“It left,” she replied. “Thirty-five minutes ago.”
“Noooooooo!” I screamed. “I’m going to explode!”
“No—more—delays!” cried Frankie.
“I shall order a special train,” said Fogg, calmly taking the last few bills from the depths of his carpetbag.
Seconds later, the five of us were on a special train, flashing at top speed out of the station. The engineer really poured on the steam. We roared, we flew, we blurred past what was probably some nice scenery. But we saw none of it. Down to the wire, with only minutes left, the train screeched to a stop in London.
The Reform Club was only minutes away by foot.
But when we looked at the huge clock on the wall of the station, we couldn’t believe it.
“I’m going to faint,” said Frankie.
“I already did!” I said.
The clock, the big stinking clock on the wall of the station, said it was eight fifty P.M.
Having made a complete tour of the world, we were five minutes late.
Five minutes late!
Fogg had lost the wager.
But that wasn’t all.
“Oh, my!” said Aouda. “What is that?”
In a dim, distant corner of the train station was a flickering blue light.
“The gates!” I gasped.
It was true. Mrs. Figglehopper’s fizzling, sizzling, sparking, flashing zapper gates were there in the train station. But something was wrong. The lights were getting dimmer by the second.
“Excuse us!” Frankie said.
Together we raced across the giant room.
But by the time we got to the gates, the bright blue light had fizzled out completely.
The gates vanished.
And Frankie and I were stuck in 1872.
Forever.
Chapter 21
“It’s not fair!” I said, stamping my feet.
Frankie was quiet for a while, then said, “It can’t end like this. It just can’t. I mean, what’s the point of writing the book if you can’t have a happy ending!”
We were five minutes too late.
And everything had changed.
Fogg had no money left. His fortune was gone, all spent in eighty days and five minutes. The rest of it belonged to the members of the Reform Club.
Aouda was in tears. Passepartout, for the first time in his life, was speechless. And Frankie and I were stuck in a world without junk food, CDs, or megahold hair gel.
We must have stared at that clock for an hour. But it didn’t even matter anymore. Time meant nothing now.
“I have lost the wager,” said Fogg softly.
It was a short sentence, but it meant everything.
Then, with a sadness in his eyes that I’d never seen before, he said, “Please forgive me—all of you—for dragging you with me on this ill-fated tour of the world.”
We all objected, of course, and said that it was the best thing we’d ever done, but Fogg said no more. He just headed quietly back to his house at Number 7, Saville Row, where the story had started.
Of course, we followed him. There was nowhere else to go. Frankie and I had to sort out exactly what we would do. Without the zapper gates, we were lost.
Mr. Fogg told Passepartout to set up rooms for Aouda, Frankie, and me, then left us to be by himself.
“I
t really is unbelievable,” said Frankie when we gathered in Aouda’s room.
“Yes,” said the princess, her eyes still moist with tears. “After having gone the entire way, overcome a hundred obstacles, faced many dangers, and saved lives—to have this happen! To fail so near his goal by this sudden, unexpected event!”
She couldn’t go on. She went to sleep. Soon, so did Passepartout, still in shock at how things had ended up.
“Now what?” I said. “What does the book say?”
“Not much,” said Frankie. “We still have about fifteen pages left, but they’re so blurry I can’t read them. But I don’t even want to. When we saw the gates at the train station, it was our last chance to get back before that guy fixed them back at the library.”
“Yeah, and now we’re fixed. Fixed for good.”
“We’re as stuck as stuck can be.”
I looked around. “So, do we just start living in 1872 now? I mean, what is there to do around now?”
She shrugged. I shrugged. Lots of shrugging going on, but no answers. Mostly, though, after eighty days on the road, Frankie and I were tired.
We found our rooms and went to sleep.
The next morning Fogg called for Passepartout with a message for Aouda. We helped him deliver it.
“Princess,” said Passepartout, “Mr. Fogg will remain alone all day, but he wishes to see you in the evening.”
“Probably to send you to your cousin in Holland,” I grumbled.
“We shall see,” said Aouda, becoming suddenly thoughtful. She didn’t say much after that.
All through Sunday the house was pretty quiet. Fogg didn’t go to the Reform Club as usual. There was no point. Since he had not appeared the night before—Saturday, December 21, at 8:45 P.M.—he had lost the wager. There was no reason for him to see his friends.
At seven thirty that night, Mr. Fogg went to see Aouda. Passepartout, Frankie, and I snuck up to her room and peeked through a crack in the door.
Fogg was seated in a chair near the fireplace. Aouda sat in another chair facing him. Waiting a few minutes before saying anything, Fogg finally spoke.
“Will you pardon me for bringing you to England?”
You could see that Aouda was astonished by the question. “I, Mr. Fogg?” she said. “But I—”
“Please let me finish,” he went on. “When I decided to bring you far away from your country, I was rich, and I intended to give you some of my fortune so that you would be free and happy. But now I am ruined.”
She looked at him with those laky eyes. “I ask you to forgive me for having followed you and delayed you. Perhaps it is my fault you are ruined.”
“I could not let you be hurt,” he said. “But that is the past. Now I wish to give you whatever little I have left. It is yours.”
“But what will become of you, Mr. Fogg?” she asked. “Surely, your friends—”
“I have no real friends at the Reform Club,” he said. “Or family, either.”
She took a deep breath. “Solitude is a sad thing with no one to confide in. They say that two people might bear much more together.”
“Indeed,” said Fogg. “They do say so.”
“Mr. Fogg,” said Aouda, rising and taking his hand, “do you wish to have a friend and a family member at the same time? What I mean is, will you have me for your wife?”
There was a strange look in Fogg’s eyes that we’d never seen before. He shut them for an instant, then popped them open, and said, “Yes. I do love you, Aouda, and I will be your husband!”
That’s when Passepartout crashed through the door and started leaping around the room. But Fogg was too busy gazing into Aouda’s incredible eyes to notice.
Yeah, yeah, it was romantic goop, all right. But I sort of liked it. Frankie, of course, thought it was the best thing ever. I could tell just by looking at her wet cheeks.
Passepartout hugged Aouda, then Mr. Fogg, then both of them, then Frankie and me. Lots of hugging going on and lots of bouncing around.
“Passepartout,” Fogg said finally, “it is now five minutes past eight P.M. on this quite special Sunday. Please notify the Reverend Samuel Wilson of Marylebone Parish that there is to be a wedding at his church.”
“For tomorrow, Monday?” asked Passepartout.
Fogg turned to Aouda. “For tomorrow, Monday.”
“Yes, for tomorrow, Monday!” she said.
Passepartout leaped up. “I can’t wait!” He zoomed out of the room like a rocket.
“Indeed!” said Fogg, cracking his first smile ever.
After about a minute of Frankie and me standing there, it was clear that Fogg and Aouda didn’t really want two kids hanging around.
“Um, hey, Frankie, how about we go find Pass—”
“Good idea!”
In a flash we were out and about in London.
It actually took us a while to find Passepartout, mainly because the London streets were as twisty as Fix’s mustache, and partly because Frankie wasn’t really helping. She was trying to read the last few pages of the book to see if there were any clues about what might happen to her and me. But, no, the pages were still too blurry to make out any words.
“I guess when the gates died, the story died, too,” she said. “I mean, we’re making our own story now. Which, let me tell you, is way too weird for me.”
Finally, we saw a familiar figure racing along the street toward us.
“Passepartout!” I said. “Slow down. What’s wrong?”
But he rushed past us, shrieking, “Must hurry! Tell Mr. Fogg! Must hurry! Oh!”
We hustled to keep up with him as he screeched around the streets. “Did you find Reverend Samuel Wilson of Marylebone Parish?” I asked him.
“Yes!” he huffed. “No time to explain! Must hurry!”
We raced with Passepartout into Mr. Fogg’s house.
“What is the matter?” Mr. Fogg asked when we burst into his living room.
“Wedding impossible for tomorrow!” Passepartout blurted out. “No weddings are performed on Sunday!”
“But today is Sunday,” said Mr. Fogg.
“No, Saturday!”
“Impossible.”
“No,” cried Passepartout. “You have made a mistake of one day! We arrived twenty-four hours ahead of time. But now—there are only eleven minutes left!”
Mr. Fogg looked at Passepartout, then Aouda, then Frankie, and me. “Just a moment,” he said calmly. “I must understand this.”
And with a bare ten minutes left before the actual deadline, Mr. Fogg sat at a small table, took out that notebook of his, and began to jot down stuff.
After what seemed like forever, with Passepartout leaping about yelling things like, “Nine minutes! Eight! Only seven minutes!” Mr. Fogg finally looked up at us.
“I see now. The cause of the error is very simple. Without suspecting it, we have gained a complete day on our journey. How, you ask?”
“We didn’t ask!” said Frankie. “Let’s go!”
Fogg held up his hand. “I will tell you how. As Sir Francis Cromarty reminded us, we were traveling constantly eastward, from London to Suez, India, China, Japan, the United States, then back to London.”
“We remember those places!” I said. “Now let’s go!”
“Well, in journeying eastward,” he went on calmly, “we were always traveling toward the sun. The days were therefore four minutes shorter as we crossed each of the three hundred sixty degrees around the earth. Three hundred sixty multiplied by four minutes equals twenty-four hours. Thus, we gained a day.”
Aouda brightened. “So, while you saw the sun go down eighty times, your friends in London only saw it go down seventy-nine times.”
“Precisely,” said Fogg. “And speaking of my friends, they are no doubt waiting at the Reform Club. Now, as there are one thousand, one hundred fifty-one steps from here to the Reform Club, and five minutes and thirty-two seconds before our time runs out, by my calculations—”
&nbs
p; “Stuff the calculations!” I screamed. “Let’s get over there—NOW!” I took the book. “Hold on to your hats, everyone! I’m flipping to the next chapter!”
“Devin, don’t—” cried Frankie.
But I couldn’t take anymore delays. I flipped those blurry pages ahead to the last chapter.
And the whole room exploded in light.
Chapter 22
Kkkkk! The room lit up as if there were fireworks blasting all round us. Then a big black rip appeared up near the ceiling and started toward us.
“Oh, my!” Passepartout yelped loudly. He fell into Mr. Fogg, sending both of them out the door.
Aouda tumbled out of her chair, and Frankie and I spilled into each other on the floor. It was very messy.
Then, suddenly, it was very quiet.
I picked myself up from a very cushy, thick-pile carpet and looked around. It was the Reform Club, all right. Frankie was there. But Fogg was nowhere in sight.
“Don’t tell me he didn’t make it!” I groaned.
Frankie pulled me up. “Let’s check the main room where all the wager guys are. Hurry!”
An orangy light from the gas lamps was flickering all over the old leather chairs and the deep carpet. We crept across the room, trying not to wake up the snoring men.
The wager guys were in the main room, sitting at their usual card table. But they weren’t playing cards. They were staring at the huge clock on the wall. The clock said eight forty-one.
“What time did the last train arrive from Liverpool?” one of the men asked.
“Seven twenty-three,” replied another. “If Phileas Fogg had been on it, he would have been here by now. We can, therefore, regard the bet as won!”
The others gave a hearty chuckle at that.
The clock ticked away another minute.
“Three minutes left!” Frankie muttered. “Where is he?”
The old guys picked up their cards but didn’t play them. They continued staring at the clock, watching the second hand sweep around once more.
And once more again.
It was a moment of deep silence. The whole room was perfectly quiet. At eight forty-four, the men stood and approached the clock, counting the seconds.
“I can’t stand it!” I said.