Latest / Daily Classic Sci Fi Books / 05 - Around The World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne

Transcript

05 - Around The World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne · Daily Classic Sci Fi Books

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter five, in which a new species of funds, unknown
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: to the moneyed men, appears on Change. Phileas Fogg rightly
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: suspected that his departure from London would create a lively
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: sensation at the West End. The news of the bet
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: spread through the Reform Club and afforded an exciting topic
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of conversation to its members. From the club, it soon
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: got into the papers throughout England. The boasted tour of
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the World was talked about, disputed, argued with as much
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: warmth as if the subject was another Alabama claim. Some
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: took sides with Phileas Fogg, but the large majority shook
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: their heads and declared against him. It was absurd, impossible.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: They declared that the tour of the world could be
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: made except theoretically and on paper, in this minimum of
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: time and with the existing means of traveling. The Times, Standard,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Morning Post and Daily News and twenty other highly respectable
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: newspapers scouted mister Fogg's project as madness. The Daily Telegraph
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: alone hesitatingly supported him. People in general thought him a
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: lunatic and blamed his Reform Club friends for having accepted
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: a wager which portrayed the mental aberration of its proposer.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Articles no less passionate than logical appeared on this question,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: for geography is one of the pet subjects of the
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: English and the columns devoted to Phileas Fogg's venture were
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: eagerly devoured by all classes of readers. At first, some
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: rash individuals, principally of the gentler sex, espoused his cause,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: which became still more popular when the Illustrated London News
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: came out with his portrait copied from a photograph, and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: the Reform Club. A few readers of the Daily Telegraph
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: even dared to say, why not, after all stranger things
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: have come to pass. At last, a long article appeared
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: on the seventh of October in the Bulletin of the
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Royal Geographical Society, which treated the question from every point
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of view and demonstrated the utter folly of the enterprise.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Everything it said was against the travelers, every obstacle imposed
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: alike by man and by nature. A miraculous agreement of
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the times of departure and arrival, which was impossible, was
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: absolutely necessary to his success. He might perhaps reckon on
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: the arrival of trains at the designated hours in Europe,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: where the distances were relatively moderate. But when he calculated
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: upon crossing India in three days and the United States
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: in seven, could he rely beyond misgiving upon accomplishing his task.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: There were accidents to machinery, the liability of trains to
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: run off the line, collisions, bad weather, the blocking up
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: by snow. Were not all these against Phileas Fogg. Would
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: he not find himself when traveling by steamer in winter
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: at the mercy of the winds and fogs. Is it
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: uncommon for the best ocean steamers to be two or
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: three days behind time. But a single delay would suffice
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: to fatally break the chain of communication. Should Phileas Fogg
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: once miss even by an hour a steamer, he would
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: have had to wait for the next and that would
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: irrevocably render his attempt vain. This article made a great
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: deal of noise, and being copied into all the papers,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: seriously depressed the advocates of the rash tourist. Everybody knows
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: that England is the world of betting men who are
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of a higher class than mere gamblers. To bet is
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: in the English temperament. Not only the members of the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Reform but the general public made heavy wages for or
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: against Phileas Fogg, who set down in the betting books
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: as if he were a race horse. Bonds were issued
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and made their appearance on change Phileas Fogg. Bonds were
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: offered at par or at a premium, and a great
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: business was done in them. But five days after the
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: article in the Bulletin of the Geographical Society appeared, the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: demand began to subside. Phileas Fogg declined. They were offered
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: by packages at first of five, then of ten, until
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: at last nobody would take less than twenty fifty a hundred.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Lord Albemarle, an elderly paralytic gentleman, was now the only
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: advocate of Phileas Fogg left. This noble lord, who was
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: fastened to his chair, would have given his fortune to
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: be able to make the tour of the world if
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: it took ten years, and he bet five thousand pounds
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: on Phileas Fogg. When the folly, as well as the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: uselessness of the adventure, was pointed out to him, he
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: contented himself with replying, if a thing is feasible, the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: first to do it ought to be an Englishman. The
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Fog party dwindled more and more. Everybody was going against him,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and the bets stood one hundred and fifty and two
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: hundred to one, and a week after his departure an
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: incident occurred which deprived him of backers at any price.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: The Commissioner of Police was sitting in his office at
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: nine o'clock one evening when the following telegraphic dispatch was
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: put into his hands Suez to London Rowan, Commissioner of Police,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Scotland Yard, I've found the bank robber Phileas Fogg. Send
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: without delay warrant of arrest to Bombay, signed Fix Detective.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: The effect of this dispatch was instantaneous, the polished gentleman
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and disappeared to give place to the bank robber. His photograph,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: which was hung with those of the rest of the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: members at the Reform Club, was minutely examined, and it
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: betrayed feature by feature the description of the robber which
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: had been provided to the police. The mysterious habits of
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Phileas Fogg were recalled, his solitary ways, his sudden departure,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and it seemed clear that in undertaking a tour round
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the world on the pretext of a wager, he had
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: had no other end in view than to elude the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: detectives and throw them off his track. End of chapter