Welcome back to the blog-tour commemorating Phileas Fogg’s trip Around the World in Eighty Days, 150 years later. The one-day train ride from Allahabad to Kolkata (then spelled Calcutta) went well.
Along the way, the train stopped at Benares, where Sir Francis Cromarty departed the group. At 7:00 am on the 25th, the train pulled in the station in Calcutta, giving them 5 hours until the steamer would leave at noon. Fogg and Passepartout had covered 7325 miles, about 29.8% of the total distance, and they’d consumed 28.8% of the time.
Princess Aouda had recovered from her drugged state, surprised to be in the company of strangers, her rescuers. When told a relative of hers resided in Hong Kong, Fogg decided to convey her there.
A policeman arrived, ordering Fogg and Passepartout to accompany him. He escorted them to the office of a judge. Three Brahmin priests accused them, not of interfering with a suttee ceremony in Pillaji, as they thought, but of desecrating a temple in Bombay by wearing shoes inside (see my Day 18 entry).
The judge imposed a sentence of 300 pounds and 15 days imprisonment for Passepartout, and 150 pounds and 1 week in prison for Phileas Fogg. Watching from a hidden corner, Detective Fix rubbed his hands in delight since the warrant for Fogg’s arrest as a bank robber had not yet reached Calcutta, but would likely do so in that time.
Detective Fix might have wanted to accuse Phileas Fogg of theft, but you can get my new ebook, 80 Hours, for a steal at only $2.99. What are they thinking at Vivlio, Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Rakuten Kobo, Scribd, and Tolino anyway?
Back to Verne’s story. Unperturbed, Fogg stated his willingness to pay bail. Without batting an eye, he handed over 2000 pounds bail money and the judge released them both. Passepartout even got his shoes back.
At the time of the story, Calcutta’s population had reached 633,000. Low-lying areas of the city had suffered terrible losses in the cyclones of 1864, 1867, and 1870. In 2022, Kolkata boasts a population over 7 times that number—4.5 million.
Today, if you travel from Allahabad to Kolkata, you don’t need a full day, as Fogg did. An airline flight takes as little as five or six hours, though you may have to stop in Raipur or Gorakhpur on the way.
For this blogpost series, you can’t fly. Like Fogg, you must board the steamer Rangoon. Fogg estimated the travel time to Hong Kong as ten to twelve days, so look for the next entry on November 4 (good weather) or 6 (bad weather).
Kindly watch your step on the gangway, along with Fogg, Passepartout, Aouda, Fix, and—
Poseidon’s Scribe