"Saturday? Impossible!"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes!" cried Passepartout. "You have made a mistake of one day! We arrived twenty-four hours ahead of time, but there are only ten minutes left!"
Passepartout had seized his master by the collar, and was dragging him along with irresistible force.
Phileas Fogg, thus kidnapped, without having time to think, left his house, jumped into a cab, promised a hundred pounds to the cabman, and, having run over two dogs and overturned five carriages, reached the Reform Club.
The clock indicated a quarter before nine when he appeared in the great saloon.
Phileas Fogg had accomplished the journey round the world in eighty days!
Phileas Fogg had won his wager of twenty thousand pounds!
How was it that a man so exact and fastidious could have made this error of a day? How came he to think that he had arrived in London on Saturday, the twenty-first day of December, when it was really Friday, the twentieth, the seventy-ninth day only from his departure?
The cause of the error is very simple.
Phileas Fogg had, without suspecting it, gained one day on his journey, and this merely because he had traveled constantly eastward. He would, on the contrary, have lost a day had he gone in the opposite direction, that is, westward.