her executioners?

This would be utter folly, and it was hard to admit that Fogg was such
a fool. Sir Francis consented, however, to remain to the end of this
terrible drama. The guide led them to the rear of the glade, where
they were able to observe the sleeping groups.

Meanwhile Passepartout, who had perched himself on the lower branches
of a tree, was resolving an idea which had at first struck him like a
flash, and which was now firmly lodged in his brain.

He had commenced by saying to himself, "What folly!" and then he
repeated, "Why not, after all? It's a chance perhaps the only one; and
with such sots!" Thinking thus, he slipped, with the suppleness of a
serpent, to the lowest branches, the ends of which bent almost to the
ground.

The hours passed, and the lighter shades now announced the approach of
day, though it was not yet light. This was the moment. The slumbering
multitude became animated, the tambourines sounded, songs and cries
arose; the hour of the sacrifice had come. The doors of the pagoda
swung open, and a bright light escaped from its interior, in the midst
of which Mr. Fogg and Sir Francis espied the victim. She seemed,
having shaken off the stupor of intoxication, to be striving to escape
from her executioner. Sir Francis's heart throbbed; and, convulsively
seizing Mr. Fogg's hand, found in it an open knife. Just at this
moment the crowd began to move. The young woman had again fallen into
a stupor caused by the fumes of hemp, and passed among the fakirs, who
escorted her with their wild, religious cries.

Phileas Fogg and his companions, mingling in the rear ranks of the
crowd, followed; and in two minutes they reached the banks of the
stream, and stopped fifty paces from the pyre, upon which still lay the
rajah's corpse. In the semi-obscurity they saw the victim, quite
senseless, stretched out beside her husband's body. Then a torch was
brought, and the wood, heavily soaked with oil, instantly took fire.

At this moment Sir Francis and the guide seized Phileas Fogg, who, in
an instant of mad generosity, was about to rush upon the pyre. But he
had quickly pushed them aside, when the whole scene suddenly changed.
A cry of terror arose. The whole multitude prostrated themselves,
terror-stricken, on the ground.

The old rajah was not dead, then, since he rose of a sudden, like a
spectre, took up his wife in his arms, and descended from the pyre in
the midst of the clouds of