Around the World in Eighty Days

Phileas Fogg was passionately in love with Belinda Maze, whose uncle, Lord Maze, sternly disapproved of the commoner Fogg marrying his niece. Fogg proposed a wager: if he could travel around the world in eighty days, then Lord Maze would give him Belinda's hand in marriage; if Fogg failed, he would abandon her. The two men also made a side bet of 20,000. Fogg was accompanied by his manservant, Jean Passepartout, and Passepartout's pet monkey, Toto. They employed all the methods of transportation available in the late 19th Century balloons, trains, elephants, and steam ships in the course of their journey. Fogg and Passepartout dispensed geographical knowledge to the audience at each of their stops. Lord Maze hired a saboteur, Mr. Fix, to interfere with Fogg and Passepartout's journey. Unlike his counterpart in Verne's novel, Fix was not a Scotland Yard detective attempting to arrest Fogg on suspicion of bank robbery.