is pretended tour in eighty days
may conceal some secret errand--perhaps a diplomatic mission?"

"Faith, Monsieur Fix, I assure you I know nothing about it, nor would I
give half a crown to find out."

After this meeting, Passepartout and Fix got into the habit of chatting
together, the latter making it a point to gain the worthy man's
confidence. He frequently offered him a glass of whiskey or pale ale
in the steamer bar-room, which Passepartout never failed to accept with
graceful alacrity, mentally pronouncing Fix the best of good fellows.

Meanwhile the Mongolia was pushing forward rapidly; on the 13th, Mocha,
surrounded by its ruined walls whereon date-trees were growing, was
sighted, and on the mountains beyond were espied vast coffee-fields.
Passepartout was ravished to behold this celebrated place, and thought
that, with its circular walls and dismantled fort, it looked like an
immense coffee-cup and saucer. The following night they passed through
the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, which means in Arabic The Bridge of Tears,
and the next day they put in at Steamer Point, north-west of Aden
harbour, to take in coal. This matter of fuelling steamers is a
serious one at such distances from the coal-mines; it costs the
Peninsular Company some eight hundred thousand pounds a year. In these
distant seas, coal is worth three or four pounds sterling a ton.

The Mongolia had still sixteen hundred and fifty miles to traverse
before reaching Bombay, and was obliged to remain four hours at Steamer
Point to coal up. But this delay, as it was foreseen, did not affect
Phileas Fogg's programme; besides, the Mongolia, instead of reaching
Aden on the morning of the 15th, when she was due, arrived there on the
evening of the 14th, a gain of fifteen hours.

Mr. Fogg and his servant went ashore at Aden to have the passport again
visaed; Fix, unobserved, followed them. The visa procured, Mr. Fogg
returned on board to resume his former habits; while Passepartout,
according to custom, sauntered about among the mixed population of
Somalis, Banyans, Parsees, Jews, Arabs, and Europeans who comprise the
twenty-five thousand inhabitants of Aden. He gazed with wonder upon
the fortifications which make this place the Gibraltar of the Indian
Ocean, and the vast cisterns where the English engineers were still at
work, two thousand years after the engineers of Solomon.

"Very curious, very curious," said Passepartout to himself, on
returnin