Around the World in 100 Days

by Gary Blackwood

  In the days that followed, Ramesh told him many things about India: the astonishing variety of its landscape and climate; the advanced civilizations that had flourished there for over four thousand years; its rich legacy of literature and art; all the races and languages and religious beliefs that coexisted there; the changes wrought by its various “conquerors”—of whom Britain was only the latest.

  “I feel as though I should apologize,” Harry said, “for what my country has done to yours.”

  “You will be apologizing to yourself, then, for you belong to both worlds.”

  Harry stared at the man. He had always thought of himself as belonging to neither.

  “In any case,” Ramesh said, “the English will not rule us forever. Countries, like individuals, are continually reborn.”

  “Reborn? You believe in reincarnation, then?”

  “Of course. We call it samsara. Those who imagine that we have only this one life tend to become impatient and impulsive, always feeling that their time is running out.”

  “But now I know the cure for impatience,” said Harry. “Are you up for another cricket match this afternoon?”

  Ramesh smiled. “Does Ganesha have an elephant’s head?”

  “Who is Ganesha?”

  “A Hindu deity.”

  “And does he have an elephant’s head?”

  “He certainly does.”

  At the first opportunity, Harry discussed the Russian route with Johnny, who agreed that it made more sense. Elizabeth was not so sure. “According to the Graphic’s Moscow correspondent, Siberia is in rather a sorry state these days. There are severe food shortages, and an alarming number of outlaw bands who prey upon travelers. Not to mention man-eating tigers.”

  “Well,” said Harry, “China has its share of bandits and tigers, as far as that goes. In any case, we’re not helpless. We have a couple of rifles and a revolver. We’ll make it through all right, I’m sure of it.”

  Charles was even more negative. “If my father advised you to go by way of China, he must have had a good reason.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Harry.

  “See here, Fogg. I’ve told you, he would never resort to such underhanded tactics. As I said before, we English may play to win, but we play it fair and square.”

  “You may be right,” said Harry. “Perhaps he didn’t deliberately mislead me; he may simply have been mistaken.”

  “So you prefer to believe what your Indian friend tells you?”

  “Frankly, yes.”

  Charles nodded sourly. “Well, it’s your decision. I’m only an observer. But if you run into trouble in the frozen wastes of Siberia, don’t blame me or my father.”

  Harry couldn’t help smiling at Charles’s melodramatic tone. “I don’t imagine the wastes will be frozen just yet. It’s only the sixteenth of September.”

  “The seventeenth,” said Charles smugly. “We passed over the international date line a few hours ago.”

  The following day, the Belgic sailed into a typhoon really worthy of the name; the deck was deluged by wind-driven rain and drenched by such enormous waves that they might have been traveling beneath the surface of the sea, like Captain Nemo. Passengers confined themselves to their cabins or to the lounge or smoking room. A few gathered in the dining room at mealtime, but most were too nauseated to bother.

  Harry had never been subject to seasickness. He had been told that he was a born sailor, and perhaps there was some truth in that; Phileas Fogg had revealed once, in a rare unguarded moment, that as a young man he had gone to sea. But when the big ship wallowed in the waves, even the unflappable Harry had some uncomfortable moments.

  Ramesh seemed oblivious to the ship’s acrobatics, thanks to something he called yoga. “It is ancient discipline,” he explained, “which enables one to control—to some extent, at least—the functioning of both the body and the mind.”

  “Would it enable me to be more patient?” asked Harry. “Now that we can’t play cricket, I’m champing at the bit.”

  Since the dining room was so empty, he and Ramesh were seated at the main table, across from the captain, an imposing man of sixty or so, with skin like tanned leather and a neatly trimmed gray beard that didn’t quite conceal a livid scar on one cheek. “You’re the chaps who organized the cricket matches, then?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” admitted Harry. “I’m afraid we spoiled quite a lot of apples.”

  The captain laughed. “No matter. It’s kept the passengers happy.” He thrust out a callused hand. “I’m Captain Keough, by the by.”

  “Harry Fogg. And this is my friend Dhiren Ramesh.”

  The captain raised a bushy eyebrow. “Fogg? Any relation to Phileas Fogg?”

  Harry groaned inwardly. “He’s my father.”

  “The devil take me. I don’t suppose Phileas has ever mentioned me? William Keough?”

  “No, sir, not that I recall.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Keough stroked his beard thoughtfully, as if there was something on his mind but he was uncertain whether or not to bring it up. “The fact is,” he went on, in a low voice, “many years ago, your father and I were business partners.”

  Harry leaned forward eagerly. At last, a chance to write something upon the blank slate that was his father’s past. “Business partners? What sort of business?”

  “Well, it’s rather a long story.”

  Ramesh rose from the table. “If you will pardon me, gentlemen, it is time for my yoga exercises.” It was clearly an excuse; Harry knew his friend didn’t wish to intrude.

  The captain drew a tankard of dark beer for himself and one for Harry, then began his story.

  TWENTY-SEVEN In which

  LONG-BURIED SECRETS ARE DUG UP

  When they were little more than boys, he and Phileas Fogg had been deckhands aboard the same whaling vessel. For Keough it was a way of escaping a brief, brutal life in the slums of London. Fogg, by contrast, came from a family that was once quite wealthy but had fallen on hard times. He was determined to restore their fortunes.

  A quick learner and a hard worker, Fogg soon advanced to the position of first mate on a shabby schooner that plied the Irish Sea, carrying manufactured items to isolated islands and ports. It was not a profitable business, and the shipping company constantly teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

  But in time Fogg and Keough managed to buy a ship of their own and establish a flourishing trade in the West Indies, which gave them the capital to build a second ship, then a third and a fourth. Fogg handled the finances; Keough outfitted the ships and hired the crews.

  Eventually they had a falling-out and Keough sold his share in the business to his partner for a tidy sum—which Keough proceeded to squander on a series of ill-advised ventures. Fogg, meanwhile, built the shipping company into an extremely valuable enterprise; at the age of thirty-five, he sold it for an astonishing amount of money and moved to London.

  Keough clearly still resented the way things had worked out. Speaking of it seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth. He took a swig from the tankard of beer, which he gripped with both hands so the ship’s erratic motion would not send it flying.

  “Thank you for telling me all this,” said Harry. “There’s one thing I don’t understand, though. If the company you worked for at first was so hard up, how did you ever save enough for a ship of your own?”

  The captain’s scarred, weathered face took on a sardonic smile. “Well, that’s another story—one I’m not sure your father would want you to hear.” He drained the tankard, then wiped his mouth and beard carefully with his napkin. “On the other hand, I don’t much care what Phileas Fogg wants or doesn’t want.”

  Keough proceeded to fill in the missing portion of his tale. When the owners of the failing shipping company saw how eager Fogg was to advance himself, they approached him with a proposition: They would insure the schooner’s cargo—mainly flour and sugar and tools and such—for far more than it was worth
. Its new captain, Fogg, would then deliberately run her aground on some isolated, rocky coastline. The company would collect the insurance money and split it with him and his first mate, Keough.

  Though Fogg disliked the shady nature of the deal, Keough convinced him it was a sort of standard business practice, one that harmed nobody except the infernal insurance companies, which could well afford to lose a few thousand pounds.

  With a small crew aboard, the two men scuttled the schooner on a reef off the coast of Cornwall. While the sailors rowed ashore in lifeboats, local villagers swarmed out to pick the carcass of the ship clean, as they had done with so many other wrecked vessels.

  When Keough finished, Harry sat sober-faced and silent, trying to absorb all that he had heard. The captain cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Perhaps I should have left that part of the story untold. I don’t want to turn a man’s own son against him. Don’t judge him too harshly; he was young and reckless.”

  “No, no,” said Harry. “I’m glad you told me.” He cracked a bit of a grin. “It’s good to know that he wasn’t always the careful, clockwork man he is today. He had desires and ambitions; he took risks; he flouted authority. His methods weren’t quite cricket, of course, but he did what he set out to do—he restored his family’s fortunes.” Harry sipped at the dark, slightly bitter beer. “He seldom speaks of my grandfather and grand-mother. I wonder whether he ever revealed to them where the money came from.”

  The captain grimly shook his head. “He had no chance to, I’m afraid. Both his parents died that same year . . . of a fever they contracted while in debtor’s prison.”

  Harry had not seen Elizabeth since the previous evening, when she left in the middle of dinner. He suspected that she, too, was suffering from mal de mer. He ordered a container of chamomile tea and some slices of dry toast and carried them to Elizabeth’s cabin, staggering slightly each time the ship lurched. He knocked softly on her door. When there was no reply, he rapped more forcefully.

  “Go away!” groaned a wretched voice.

  “It’s Harry. May I come in?”

  “No. Just go away, will you, and let me die in peace.”

  “If you don’t open the door, I’ll be forced to summon the ship’s doctor.”

  There was a long silence. Just as Harry was about to pound again, the door opened a few inches and her pale, haggard face peered out at him. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve brought you some tea and toast.”

  Elizabeth put a hand to her mouth. “Are you deliberately trying to torture me?”

  Harry pushed the door gently open; too weak to resist, Elizabeth retreated and sank onto the bed. “You should drink a little something, at least,” said Harry. Putting down the tray, he arranged her pillows to allow her to sit up.

  She pulled her housecoat tightly about her and brushed at her hair ineffectually with one limp hand. Normally, she kept her dark tresses braided and coiled atop her head, but now they hung loose and tousled. “I must be a sight.”

  “You look lovely,” said Harry.

  “Liar.”

  The sour smell of vomit permeated the small, stuffy cabin. “I’ll open the porthole a bit, shall I?” The moment Harry unfastened the round, brass-framed glass, a gust of wind forced its way in, bringing with it a considerable quantity of salt spray. “Oops.”

  “It’s all right,” murmured Elizabeth. “It feels good.”

  Harry poured a cup of chamomile tea and held it to her lips. “Try some of this.”

  She raised her hands to guide the cup, but they trembled too much. Closing her eyes, she sipped at the tepid tea. She managed to drink half of it, and at first it seemed as though it might stay down. But after a minute she pushed him urgently aside and, leaning over the edge of her bed, spewed the tea into her bedpan. Harry busied himself at the cabin’s fold-down sink, wetting a washcloth with which he wiped her perspiring face.

  “You don’t need to do this,” said Elizabeth weakly.

  “You took care of me back in Wyoming. Turnabout is fair play.”

  “Don’t talk to me about fair. If there were any fairness in the world, you’d be as sick as the rest of us. How are the others holding up?”

  “Johnny’s not doing too badly. He spends most of his time in the cargo hold, with the Flash. I don’t know about Charles. I should look in on him. I’ll be back later, with fresh tea. And a clean bedpan.”

  Charles was in almost as sorry a state. Harry spent all that day and the next tending to him and Elizabeth by turns. Finally, after two full days of being tossed about like a medicine ball, the Belgic sailed into calmer waters.

  TWENTY-EIGHT In which

  THE MOTORISTS ARE ONCE AGAIN ON SOLID GROUND

  To Harry’s delight, the next day the cricketers continued their game. Though it did not exactly make the days fly, it kept him from losing his mind. Sensing Harry’s restlessness, Ramesh asked whether he had ever considered meditation.

  “Medication?” said Harry. “Something on the order of laudanum, you mean?”

  “No, no, meditation. It is a means of relaxing and clearing one’s mind.”

  “I could certainly use that,” said Harry. “Does it take long to learn?”

  Ramesh gave a hearty laugh.

  “What?” said Harry.

  “Pardon my amusement, my friend; it is just that you seem so impatient to learn patience. The truth is, one never really masters meditation, any more than one masters the martial arts. All we can hope is to become better students.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not much of a student.” Harry was silent for a moment, then said, “You indicated that you studied engineering. I suppose if a chap wanted to know more about machines and motorcars and such, that would be the best way?”

  “It would help. You don’t seem to relish the prospect.”

  “I’ve nothing against learning; I just don’t know that I’m cut out for it. I mean, it seems to demand so much time and effort.”

  Ramesh shrugged. “No more than, say, driving a motorcar around the world.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. It’s like cricket or rugby; it requires physical effort, not mental.”

  “It also requires persistence. And that is all one really needs in order to learn a discipline, whether it is kalarippayattu or engineering.”

  “Or meditation?”

  “Or meditation.”

  Under Ramesh’s tutelage, Harry worked hard at meditating. He failed miserably at first, but he persisted, and by the time the Belgic reached Yokohama, he could clear his brain for a good ten seconds at a time.

  They docked on the twenty-third of September; that gave the intrepid motorists and Dhiren Ramesh just enough time to obtain visas from the Russian consul and book berths on the SS Longmoon, which sailed for Vladivostok the following afternoon. Elizabeth, meanwhile, wired the Daily Graphic yet again. When she returned from the telegraph office, she thrust a wad of pound notes into his hand. “That should pay for my passage on both the Belgic and the Longmoon.”

  “You finally got a reply, I take it.”

  “Yes. And I sent them a rather lengthy story, including a riveting first-person account of what it’s like to be horribly seasick.” She played with the handles of the ornate Japanese handbag she had bought. “I also told my readers how you took care of me. I . . . I never thanked you for that.”

  Harry knew it was as close as she was likely to come to actually expressing gratitude. “You’re welcome.”

  “I put in something about the new route as well. I hope that was all right.”

  “Of course. I doubt that we’ll be mobbed by Siberian peasants who have been eagerly following our progress in the newspapers.”

  She laughed. “No, I suppose not. I only hope we’re not robbed by Siberian peasants. Or by bandits.”

  “Or eaten by tigers,” said Harry with a grin.

  Harry had expected Yokohama to be pleasantly strange and exotic but,
thanks to the influence of European traders and merchants, it looked little different from Bristol or Liverpool. He was not sorry to leave.

  It was a mere five or six hundred miles to Vladivostok as the crow flies. Unfortunately, the Longmoon couldn’t fly; it had to sail around the end of the long, narrow island of Honshu. The trip took them three full days.

  There were no cricket matches this time. Harry was sure most of the passengers hadn’t even heard of the game. To help the time pass, he practiced the meditation techniques he’d learned from Ramesh, so diligently that he sometimes turned up late for his card games.

  When Charles complained, Harry said calmly, “You need to learn to be more patient, my friend.”

  Charles gave him an odd look. “I say, Fogg; what’s come over you?”

  “I’ve just been doing a bit of meditation.”

  “Well, if you ask me,” said Charles, “you need to take a smaller dose.”

  Vladivostok proved even less exotic and attractive than Yokohama. It was populated mainly by Russian soldiers and sailors, by Korean and Chinese laborers who had recently begun laying track for the Trans-Siberian Railway, and by European merchants who supplied their needs. The streets were unpaved, and each gust of wind filled the air with grit and dust. A good deal of it decorated the sides of the square, ugly buildings.

  Harry could only imagine how bleak the place must appear to someone accustomed to a lush tropical landscape. Ramesh took it all in, then sighed in resignation and held out his hand. “I am afraid we must say farewell for a while, Hari. I am confident, though, that our paths will cross again.”

  “I still hope to make it to India someday.”

  “I have no doubt you will,” said Ramesh. “When the time is right.” Picking up his satchel, he headed off down the boardwalk. His bright red turban was one of the few spots of color in the gloomy scene. Harry watched it, bobbing above the heads of the townspeople, until it was lost from sight. Then he turned to the other intrepid young motorists.