Page 290 - AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

Around the World in 80 Days

and the jib was so arranged as not to screen the brigantine.
A top-mast was hoisted, and another jib, held out to the
wind, added its force to the other sails. Although the speed
could not be exactly estimated, the sledge could not be

going at less than forty miles an hour.
‘If nothing breaks,’ said Mudge, ‘we shall get there!’
Mr. Fogg had made it for Mudge’s interest to reach
Omaha within the time agreed on, by the offer of a
handsome reward.
The prairie, across which the sledge was moving in a
straight line, was as flat as a sea. It seemed like a vast frozen
lake. The railroad which ran through this section ascended
from the south-west to the north-west by Great Island,
Columbus, an important Nebraska town, Schuyler, and
Fremont, to Omaha. It followed throughout the right
bank of the Platte River. The sledge, shortening this
route, took a chord of the arc described by the railway.
Mudge was not afraid of being stopped by the Platte
River, because it was frozen. The road, then, was quite
clear of obstacles, and Phileas Fogg had but two things to
fear— an accident to the sledge, and a change or calm in
the wind.
But the breeze, far from lessening its force, blew as if to
bend the mast, which, however, the metallic lashings held

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