“Can you doubt it?”
“I—doubt it! But when shall we know?”
“In a day or two!” said Barbicane.
Did he see that the attempt had failed?
Possibly. But he never would have admitted it to the monarch of the Wamasai.
Two days afterwards Barbicane and Nicholl took their leave of Bali-Bali, not without paying a good round sum for the destruction done to the surface of his kingdom. And as the money went to his own private pocket, and his subjects got not a dollar, he had no cause to regret so lucrative an affair.
Then the two friends, followed by their foremen, reached Zanzibar, where they found a vessel starting for Suez. There, under assumed names, they took passage to Marseilles, whence by the P.L.M. and the Ouest they reached Havre, where they went on board the Bourgogne and crossed the Atlantic.
In twenty-two days after they left the Wamasai they were in New York.
On the 15th of October, at three o’clock in the afternoon, they knocked at the door of the mansion in New Park.
A minute afterwards they were in the presence of Mrs. Scorbitt and J. T. Maston.