Passepartout entered and asked for Mr. Batulcar, who straightway appeared in person. "What do you want?" said he to Passepartout, whom he at first took for a native.

This was the Honourable William Batulcar's establishment. That gentleman was a sort of Barnum, the director of a troupe of mountebanks, jugglers, clowns, acrobats, equilibrists, and gymnasts, who, according to the placard, was giving his last performances before leaving the Empire of the Sun for the States of the Union.

A quarter of an hour later he stopped before a large cabin, adorned with several clusters of streamers, the exterior walls of which were designed to represent, in violent colours and without perspective, a company of jugglers.

He followed the clown, and soon found himself once more in the Japanese quarter.

"The United States!" said Passepartout; "that's just what I want!"

What references could he give? As he was reflecting in this wise, his eyes fell upon an immense placard which a sort of clown was carrying through the streets.

What need would they have of a cook or servant on an American steamer, and what confidence would they put in him, dressed as he was?

But, as he approached them, his project, which at first had seemed so simple, began to grow more and more formidable to his mind.

Passepartout was not the man to let an idea go begging, and directed his steps towards the docks.

The difficulty was, how to traverse the four thousand seven hundred miles of the Pacific which lay between Japan and the New World.

Once at San Francisco, he would find some means of going on.

He would offer himself as a cook or servant, in payment of his passage and meals.

It occurred to him to visit the steamers which were about to leave for America.

I must consider how to leave this country of the Sun, of which I shall not retain the most delightful of memories, as quickly as possible."

"Now," thought he, when he had eaten heartily, "I mustn't lose my head. I can't sell this costume again for one still more Japanese.

"Good!" thought he. "I will imagine I am at the Carnival!" His first care, after being thus "Japanesed," was to enter a tea-house of modest appearance, and, upon half a bird and a little rice, to breakfast like a man for whom dinner was as yet a problem to be solved.

A locomotive, running on the rails laid down the evening before, brought the rails to be laid on the morrow, and advanced upon them as fast as they were put in position.

It was his fault, then, that Mr. Fogg and Aouda had missed the steamer.