What a Trip! (6 page)

We had to say good-bye to Kiouni, but it was okay because Jahib was so happy and we knew he would take good care of her. And we would always remember the cool jungle rescue adventure we had.

“That's the thing about trips,” said Frankie, looking misty eyed. “You go to new places and meet great people, but then you have to say good-bye to them, too.”

I understood. “It's too bad you can't just hold on to everything. Like the jungle rescue. It was fun, but now it's over.”

“Perhaps there is more to come,” said Passepartout. “If only we make our connection!”

And with a
fwit-fwit-fwit!
we were on the train, rattling and chugging its way out of Allahabad toward the city of Calcutta.

With all six of us settled into our compartment, we entered jungle after jungle where we heard the roaring of tigers and howling of wolves. I was sure glad to be in a train that wasn't going to run out of track anytime soon.

Since we had time, Frankie settled back with her nose stuck in the book. After about ten minutes she grinned.

“What's going on?” I asked her.

“Watch this.” Then turning to Sir Francis, she asked, “What happens to Aouda, now that we've rescued her?”

“Surely, she will be hunted down,” said Sir Francis.

Fogg glanced at a page in his notebook, then looked up. “Then she shall accompany us to Hong Kong.”

“My cousin is a merchant there!” Aouda said.

“Good,” said Fogg. “Everything will be mathematically arranged in Hong Kong.”

Her eyes filled with tears and we could see that she was really grateful for everything and grateful especially to Mr. Fogg for stopping his journey to rescue her.

“But let us not lose sight of the main point,” said Fogg. “We are twenty-three days into our journey. The steamer leaves Calcutta for Hong Kong today, October twenty-fifth, at noon. We must be on it.”

The train kept chugging along through the fields and farms. Finally, at around eleven in the morning, the scenery began to thin out, and a great city lay ahead.

“Calcutta, with one hour to spare,” said Passepartout.

The train pulled into the station and slowed to a stop.

“It's time for me to say good-bye,” said Sir Francis. “Mr. Fogg, Passepartout, Aouda, Frankie, Devin, I doubt whether leading my battalion will be as exciting as our adventures together. Well, then, good-bye!”

He saluted, and we saluted him back.

“Now to the steamer,” said Mr. Fogg. “We have fifty-one minutes to make the connection. Steamer, ho!”

But it wasn't going to be so easy to ho any steamer. Because as soon as we stepped off the train and onto the station platform, a voice yelled out, “Stop—all of you!”

We whirled around, and there was a policeman standing there with several officers behind him. “Excuse me, are you Phileas Fogg?”

“I am,” said Fogg.

“Then, in the name of the British Government,” the policeman said, “I ask you to follow me at once.”

Without a word, we followed the policemen to a big courthouse in the center of Calcutta. Inside, we were led to a small courtroom. We were told to sit on a bench opposite a high desk where the judge sat. He glared down at us. “Bring in the witnesses!” he boomed.

A door swung open, and three guys wearing long robes came in. One of them spoke. “We charge Mr. Fogg's servant and his companions of trespassing on a holy temple!”

I jumped up. “Oh, yeah? Well, we charge them with trying to kill this princess here!”

The judge banged that hammer of his on his desk. “What are you talking about? Bring in the evidence!”

A policeman entered and slapped two things down hard on the courtroom desk in front of Passepartout.

“My wonderful French shoes!” he squealed. “How did they get here?”

But as I watched Passepartout jump up and down about his shoes, it suddenly struck me exactly how they had gotten there, all the way across India from Bombay to Calcutta. I whirled around and saw the reason. He was was trying to hide in the shadows, but I saw him.

“Fix!”

I grabbed the book. Flipping back a few pages, I reread the part where Fix twisted his weird little mustache tips at the Bombay train station.

“His devious little brain was planning this all along,” I whispered to Frankie. “To get us thrown in jail and delay Mr. Fogg's trip!”

“Yeah?” Frankie snarled. “Well, it's working.”

“Your trial shall be next week,” boomed the judge. “And Mr. Fogg shall also be held accountable for the acts of his servant.”

Passepartout squealed again, this time in outrage. “But we shall miss our steamer! And lose our wager!”

“Excuse me,” said Mr. Fogg. “Judge, may we be set free by posting a certain amount of money as bail?”

The judge breathed out heavily. “I suppose I must grant you that right. I hereby set bail at two thousand pounds. Once you pay, you will be free until the trial.”

Mr. Fogg calmly plunked down his giant carpetbag, withdrew a wad of cash, and set it on the judge's desk. “Two thousand pounds, sir.”

“You may go, for now,” said the judge.

Twenty minutes later, Fogg led us to the Calcutta harbor where the steamship
Rangoon
was moored.

“Mr. Fogg, you shall lose your money,” Aouda said.

“The money is not important,” said Fogg. “As long as we do not lose a moment. And on we go!”

As we tramped up the plank and onto the ship, I turned to Frankie. “I'm sure glad to leave Detective Fix grumbling in the background.”

“Something tells me he won't give up so easily,” she said.

Unfortunately, Frankie was right.

Chapter 12

The steamship
Rangoon
sailed past a bunch of cool islands as it steamed south from Calcutta. Vast forests of palm trees, green bamboo trees, and wild ferns sprouted out of the islands, while hot breezes swept over the deck and the ship rolled over the waves.

Still, Detective Fix was all we could think about.

“As unbelievable as it sounds, Devin, I know he's on board,” said Frankie, as we patrolled the deck. “I haven't seen him, but I feel him lurking.”

“I do, too,” I said. “I say, we go on the prowl right now.”

Well, we didn't have to prowl more than a minute before we saw a sneaky guy darting up the stairs from a lower deck. It was Detective Fix, all right, in his regular suit, pointy mustaches, and all.

I snorted. “This guy never quits. Let's follow him!”

Fix crept along behind Fogg and Aouda, muttering stuff to himself. We skulked along behind the skulker.

“I lost him in Suez, I lost him in Bombay,” he was muttering to himself. “I lost him in Calcutta. If I don't delay him for sure in Hong Kong, I will have lost him for good!”

I turned to Frankie. “He's just so evil!”

“You get no argument from me,” said Frankie.

“And who is this woman?” Fix wondered aloud.

Even before Fix wandered off into the shadows again, we had something new to worry about.

A ferocious storm whipped up from nowhere and began tossing the ship roughly from side to side.

Passepartout came stumbling out of his cabin, shaking his fist at the sky and saying things in French that didn't sound all that good.

Frankie and I were a little panicked, too, but there was not much we could do about it. We could reread all we wanted, but the book's pages got all blurry when we started to read beyond where the story was.

Through it all, Mr. Fogg stood at the railing and gazed at the storm as if it were a still life. Nothing seemed to bother him. While Passepartout almost had a stroke with his moaning and groaning about possibly missing our next ship, the
Carnatic
, our fearless leader was so calm you would have thought the storm was part of his plans.

“He's very strange,” I said, trying to keep from getting pitched overboard. “I mean, I like him, but I wonder if he's really human.”

“Yeah. It's like everything with him is mathematical and exact. Sometimes, I just want to run up behind him and yell ‘Blaga-blaga!,' just to see what he'd do.”

“He'd probably just say—‘Blaga-blaga,
indeed!'”

Splash!
A big wave washed over the deck.

“Let's get inside,” I said. “The book's getting wet. Not to mention me!”

The storm blasted and howled for two days before it finally let up. Even though we lost a day, when we got to Hong Kong—on November 7, thirty-six days after leaving London—the steamship
Carnatic
, bound for Japan, was still waiting in the harbor.

“We set sail at five o'clock in the morning,” said the captain of the
Carnatic
. “Bright and early.”

“Arrgh!” Fix muttered to himself.

“What luck!” said Passepartout.

“There is no such thing as luck,” Mr. Fogg noted, scribbling in his book. “Now, Princess Aouda, as we are in Hong Kong, we must find your cousin.”

The look she gave him then would have melted most people into a puddle, but Fogg appeared not to notice.

We all got into a carriage and rode through the streets of Hong Kong. It was a busy place, with hundreds of buildings crowded into a small half-circle of mountains that slanted right down into the sea. There were English soldiers everywhere, and a lot of the people were dressed like the people back in London.

Fogg found where Aouda's cousin lived, but it turned out that he had moved to Holland two years earlier.

A look of distress crossed Aouda's face. In her sweet, soft voice, she said, “What should I do, Mr. Fogg?”

Without a pause, Fogg said, “Princess, I should be honored if you would come with us the rest of the way.”

She practically leaped for joy. “Oh, Mr. Fogg—”

“Once in London,” Fogg continued, “we can make arrangements for your journey to Holland.”

Aouda unleaped for joy. “Oh. Yes. Thank you, of course.” I don't think she wanted to hear that last part.

“Passepartout,” said Fogg. “Go to the
Carnatic
, and purchase five tickets instead of four.”

Of course, Passepartout was delighted. He made it no secret that he liked Aouda a lot. He skipped all the way to the ship, and we skipped all the way with him.

And it was a good thing we did, because when we arrived at the
Carnatic
to get tickets, we found that the captain had changed the time for sailing.

“We leave tonight,” he said. “At midnight.”

“We must tell my master at once!” said Passepartout.

Now, who should appear just then, but Mr. Fix, the sneaky, snaky guy himself, popping out of the shadows with the ends of his mustache twisted up tight.

“Have you heard?” asked Fix when he reached us.

“That you're bad?” said Frankie. “Loud and clear.”

He gave us a look. “That our ship will leave tonight.”

“And,” said Passepartout, “I must tell Mr. Fogg—”

“Wait!” Fix said sharply. Then he grabbed Passepartout by the arm and tried to hold him. “I have something to tell you about your master—”

“Oh, no you don't!” I said. I tried to free Passepartout, but Fix leaped at me and grabbed my hand. I swung around and wriggled free of his grasp. The problem was that I staggered back into Frankie, knocking the book from her hand. It tumbled to the ground, bounced across the dock, and landed right at the feet of Detective Fix. He picked it up.

“Don't read that!” I said.

“Why?” he snarled. “Is it Mr. Fogg's notebook? Does it describe his crime?”

“Crime?” said Passepartout. “What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about Mr. Fogg being a bank robber!” said Fix. “There, I've told you! Yes, Mr. Fogg is a bank robber making his escape around the world! And I am a police detective sent here from London to arrest him!”

He began to flip a page or two of the book.

“Don't do that!” shrieked Frankie. “Don't read it!”

There was a reason Frankie was shrieking. We had learned the extreme hard way that if you flip ahead of where the story actually is, the whole scene rips in half and darkness crashes down on you. Crashes really hard.

“Oh, the book is evidence, is it?” the detective said, flipping page after page. “It says here, the
Carnatic
, setting sail from Hong Kong at midnight on the seventh of November, directed her course at full steam toward Japan … wait … what is going on—?”

“Oh, no, it's happening!” I screamed. “Frankie, grab the book! Close it before—”

But it was already too late.

Kkkrrpp!
There was a horrible ripping sound, and the sky above us turned instantly black. A sudden large V-shaped tear appeared over our heads.

“Meltdown!” I cried, as we all toppled to the dock in a mess of arms and legs and the flipping, flapping pages of the old and crusty classic book.

“Help!” Frankie cried out.

“Help me, too!” I shouted.

“Sacré bleu!”
groaned Passepartout.

But nothing helped. We were all tossed like a salad and tumbled over and over until everything went dark around us. The next thing I knew, the dock had vanished and I was falling, falling, falling—
thud!

I hit the ground hard. When I scrambled to my feet, I was still at the dock, but instead of its being night, it was now the next morning, and I was alone.

Passepartout was gone. Fix was gone. Frankie was gone. The book was gone.

And something else was gone, too.

Chapter 13

Instead of the really big steamship sitting in the water, there was a really big empty space.

The
Carnatic
was gone. Departed. Left. Not there.

“No, no, no, no,” I began mumbling to myself. “This is not good. This is bad. This is very,
very
bad.”