Phileas Fogg, a respectable English gentleman of phlegmatic temperament and methodical habits, maintains, during a discussion at his club in London, that a man can travel around the world in eighty days; and to prove it, he makes a wager of half his fortune that he can do it himself in that time. The bet is accepted, and he starts the same night, taking his French servant Passepartout with him. He wins his wager, after a series of adventures in which nature, man, accident, and the novelist combine to defeat him, but are all baffled by his unfailing resource, iron will, invincible coolness, and Napoleonic readiness to sacrifice everything else to the one essential point;—everything except humanity, in whose behalf he twice risks defeat, first to save from suttee the beautiful young Hindoo widow Aouda, and second to save Passepartout from murder by a Chinese mob. His virtue is rewarded by success and Aouda.