Dantès merely paused to take a deep breath and then he dived again to avoid being seen. When he rose the second time, he was already fifty yards from the spot where he had been thrown into the sea. He saw above him a black and tempestuous sky; before him was the vast expanse of dark, surging waters; while behind him, more gloomy than the sea and more sombre than the sky, rose the granite giant like some menacing phantom, whose dark summit appeared to Dantès like an arm stretched out to seize its prey. He had always been reckoned the best swimmer in Marseilles, and he was now anxious to rise to the surface to try his strength against the waves. To his joy he found that his enforced inaction had not in any way impaired his strength and agility, and he felt he could still master the element in which he had so often sported when a boy.
An hour passed. Exalted by the feeling of liberty, Dantès continued to cleave the waves in what he reckoned should be a direct line for the Isle of Tiboulen. Suddenly it seemed to him that the sky, which was already black, was becoming blacker than ever, and that a thick, heavy cloud was rolling down on him. At the same time he felt a violent pain in his knee. With the incalculable rapidity of imagination, he thought it was a shot that had struck him, and he expected every moment to hear the report. But there was no sound. He stretched out his hand and encountered an obstacle; he drew his leg up and felt land; he then saw what it was he had mistaken for a cloud. Twenty yards from him rose a mass of strangely formed rocks looking like an immense fire petrified at the moment of its most violent combustion: it was the Isle of Tiboulen.
Dantès rose, advanced a few steps and with a prayer of gratitude on his lips, stretched himself out on the jagged rocks which seemed to him more restful and comfortable than the softest bed he had ever slept on. Then, in spite of the wind and storm, in spite of the rain that began to fall, worn out with fatigue as he was, he fell into the delicious sleep of a man whose body becomes torpid but whose mind remains alert in the consciousness of unexpected happiness.
For an hour he slept thus, and was awakened by the roar of a tremendous clap of thunder. A flash of lightning that seemed to open the heavens to the very throne of God, illuminated all around, and by its light he saw about a quarter of a mile away, between the Isle of Lemaire and Cap Croisille, a small fishing boat borne along by the wind, and riding like a phantom on the top of a wave only to disappear in the abyss below. A second later it appeared on the crest of another wave advancing with terrifying rapidity. By the light of another flash, he saw four men clinging to the masts and rigging; a fifth was clinging to the broken rudder. Then he heard a terrific crash followed by agonizing cries. As he clung to his rock like a limpet, another flash revealed to him the little boat smashed to pieces and, amongst the wreckage, heads with despairing faces, and arms stretched heavenward. Then all was dark again. There was nothing left but tempest.
By degrees the wind abated; the huge grey clouds rolled toward the west. Shortly afterward a long, reddish streak was seen along the horizon; the waves leaped and frolicked, and a sudden light played on their foamy crests, turning them into golden plumes. Daylight had come.
It must have been five o’clock in the morning; the sea continued to grow calm. “In two or three hours,” Dantès said to himself, “the turnkeys will enter my cell, and find the dead body of my poor friend, recognize him, seek me in vain, and give the alarm. Then they will find the aperture and the passage; they will question the men who flung me into the sea and who must have heard the cry I uttered. Boats filled with armed soldiers will immediately give chase to the wretched fugitive who, they know, cannot be far off. The cannon will warn the whole coast that no one shall give shelter to a naked, famished wanderer. The spies and police of Marseilles will be notified, and they will beat the coast while the Governor of the Château d’If beats the sea. And what will become of me pursued by land and by sea? I am hungry and cold and have even lost my knife. I am at the mercy of the first peasant who cares to hand me over to the police for the reward of twenty francs. Oh God! my God! Thou knowest I have suffered to excess; help me now that I cannot help myself!”
As Dantès finished this fervent prayer that was torn from his exhausted and anguished heart, he saw appearing on the horizon what he recognized as a Genoese tartanaj coming from Marseilles.
“To think that I could join this vessel in half an hour if it were not for the fear of being questioned, recognized as a fugitive, and taken back to Marseilles,” said Dantès to himself. “What am I to do? What can I say? What story can I invent which might sound credible? I might pass as one of the sailors wrecked last night.” So saying he turned his gaze toward the wreck and gave a sudden start. There, caught on a point of rock, he perceived the cap of one of the shipwrecked sailors, and close by still floated some of the planks of the unfortunate vessel.
Dantès soon thought out a plan and as quickly put it into action. He dived into the sea, swam toward the cap, placed it on his head, seized one of the timbers, and turning back, struck out in a direction which would cut the course the vessel must take.
The boat changed her course, steering toward him, and Dantès saw that they made ready to lower a boat. He summoned all his strength to swim toward it, but his arms began to stiffen, his legs lost their flexibility, and his movements became heavy and difficult. Breath was failing him. A wave that he had not the strength to surmount passed over his head, covering him with foam. Then he saw and heard nothing more.
When he opened his eyes again, Dantès found himself on the deck of the tartan; a sailor was rubbing his limbs with a woollen cloth, another was holding a gourd to his mouth, and a third, who was the master of the vessel, was looking at him with that feeling of pity which is uppermost in the hearts of most people when face to face with a misfortune which they escaped yesterday, and of which they may be the victim to morrow.
“Who are you?” the skipper asked in bad French.
“I am a Maltese sailor,” replied Dantès in equally bad Italian. “We were coming from Syracuseak laden with wine and grain. We were caught in a storm last night off Cape Morgion, and we were wrecked on the rocks you see yonder.”
“Where have you come from?”
“From those rocks over there. Fortunately for me I was able to cling to them, but our poor captain and my three companions were drowned. I believe I am the sole survivor. I saw your ship, and I risked swimming towards you. Thank you,” he continued, “you have saved my life. I was lost when one of your sailors caught hold of my hair.”
“It was I,” said a sailor with a frank and open face, encircled by long black whiskers. “It was time, too, for you were sinking.”
“Yes,” said Dantès, holding out his hand to him. “I know, and I thank you once more.”
“Lord! but you nearly frightened me,” the sailor replied. “You looked more like a brigand than an honest man with your beard six inches long and your hair a foot in length.”
Dantès suddenly recollected that neither his hair nor his beard had been cut all the time that he had been at the Château d’If.
“Once when I was in danger,” he said, “I made a vow to the Madonna of Piedigrotta not to cut my hair or beard for ten years. The time is up this very day, and I nearly celebrated the event by being drowned.”
“Now, what are we going to do with you?” asked the skipper.
“Alas! do with me what you will,” replied Dantès. “The bark I sailed in is lost, my captain is dead, and I nearly shared the same fate. Fortunately I am a good sailor. Leave me at the first port you touch at, and I shall be sure to find employment in some merchantman.”
“Take the helm and let us see how you frame.”
The young man did as he was bid. Ascertaining by a slight pressure that the vessel answered to the rudder, he saw that, without being a first-rate sailor, she was yet tolerably obedient.
“Man the lee-braces,”al he cried.
The four seamen, who composed the crew, obeyed, whilst the skipper looked on.
“Haul away!”
They obeyed.
“Belay!”
This order was also executed, and, instead of tacking about, the vessel made straight for the Isle of Rion, leaving it about twenty fathoms to starboard.
“Bravo!” said the captain.
“Bravo!” repeated the sailors.
And they all regarded with astonishment this man whose eye had recovered an intelligence and his body a vigour they were far from suspecting him to possess.
“You see,” said Dantès, handing over the tiller to the helmsman, “I shall be of some use to you, at any rate during the voyage. If you do not want me at Leghorn, you can leave me there and with the first wages I earn, I will pay you for my food and for the clothes you lend me.”
“Very well,” said the captain. “We can fix things up if you are not too exacting.”
“Give me what you give the others,” returned Dantès.
“Hallo! What’s the matter at the Château d’If ?” exclaimed the captain.
A small white cloud crowned the summit of the bastion of the Château d’If. At the same moment, the faint report of a gun was heard. The sailors all looked at one another.
“A prisoner has escaped from the Château d’If, and they are firing the alarm gun,” said Dantès calmly.
“What is the day of the month?” he presently asked of Jacopo, the sailor who had saved him and who now sat beside him.
“The twenty-eighth of February.”
“What year?”
“Have you forgotten, that you ask such a question?”
“I was so frightened last night,” replied Dantès, with a smile, “that I have almost lost my memory. What year is it?”
“The year eighteen-twenty-nine,” returned Jacopo.
It was fourteen years to the very day since Dantès’ arrest. He was nineteen when he entered the Château d’If; he was thirty-three when he escaped.
A sad smile passed over his lips. He wondered what had become of Mercédès, who must now believe him dead. Then his eyes flashed with hatred as he thought of the three men to whom he owed so long and cruel a captivity. Against Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort he renewed the oath of implacable vengeance which he had vowed in his dungeon.
This oath was no longer a vain threat, for the fastest sailor in the Mediterranean could never have overhauled the little tartan, which, with all sails set, was scudding before the wind in the direction of Leghorn.
Dantès had not been a day on board before he realized who the people were with whom he was sailing. With his experience of the ways of seafaring men it was not difficult to guess that the Jeune Amélie—for such was the name of the Genoese tartan—was a smuggler. The skipper had received Dantès on board with a certain amount of misgiving. He was well known to all the customs officers of the coast, and as there was between these worthies and himself an interchange of the most cunning stratagems, he had at first thought that Dantès might be an emissary of the excise authorities, who had employed this ingenious means of penetrating some of the secrets of his trade. The skilful manner in which Dantès had manœuvred the little bark, however, had entirely reassured him, and when he saw the light smoke floating like a plume above the bastion of the Château d’If and heard the distant report, it occurred to him for an instant that he had on board his vessel one for whom, as for the arrivals and departures of kings, they accord a salute of guns. This made him less uneasy, it must be owned, than if the newcomer had been a custom-house officer, but even this latter supposition disappeared like the first, when he beheld the perfect tranquillity of his recruit.
Edmond thus had the advantage of knowing what the skipper was, without the skipper knowing what he was; and, however much the old sailor and his crew tried to pump him, they extracted nothing more from him: he gave accurate descriptions of Naples and Malta, which he knew equally as well as Marseilles, and persisted stoutly in his first statement. Thus, subtle as he was, the Genoese was duped by Edmond, whose gentle demeanour, nautical skill, and admirable dissimulation stood him in good stead. Moreover, it is possible that the Genoese was one of those shrewd persons who know nothing but what they should know, and believe nothing but what it suits them to believe. Such was the position when they reached Leghorn.
As Dantès had landed at Leghorn very many times before, he knew a barber in the Via San Fernando and went straight there to have his hair and beard cut, for his comrades believed his vow was now fulfilled.
When the operation was concluded and Edmond’s chin was smooth and his hair reduced to the fashionable length, he asked for a mirror. He was now, as we have said, thirty-three years of age, and the fourteen years’ imprisonment had worked a great change in his features.
When he first went to the Château d’If his face was the round, smiling, cheerful face of a happy young man whose early years had passed smoothly, and who looked forward to his future in the light of his past. All this was now changed.
His oval face had lengthened; his smiling mouth had assumed the firm and determined lines indicative of resolution; his eyebrows had become arched beneath a single pensive wrinkle; his eyes had a look of deep sadness in them, and at times gloomy fires of misanthropy and hatred would sparkle in their depths; his skin, hidden from the light of day and the rays of the sun for so long, had assumed the pale and soft colour which, when the face is encircled with black hair, makes the aristocratic beauty of the North. The deep learning he had acquired was reflected on his face in an expression of intelligent self-confidence; in addition, though naturally tall, he had acquired the healthy vigour of a body continuously concentrating all its force within itself.
The elegance of his wiry, slender form had given way to the solidity of a round, muscular figure. His voice, too, had undergone a change. The continuous prayers, sobs, and imprecations had given it at times a strangely soft intonation, while at others it was gruff and almost hoarse. Moreover, his eyes, having been accustomed to twilight and darkness, had acquired the peculiar faculty of distinguishing objects in the dark, like those of the hyena and the wolf.
Edmond smiled when he saw himself: it was impossible that even his best friend, if he had any friends left, would recognize him: he did not even recognize himself.
The skipper of the Jeune Amélie, who was most anxious to keep amongst his crew such a valuable man as Dantès, offered to re-engage him, but Dantès had other plans in view, and would only accept for three months.
The Jeune Amélie had a very active crew ready to obey their master’s orders, and he was accustomed to losing no time. He had barely been at Leghorn a week when the rounded sides of his vessel were stacked with printed muslins and prohibited cottons, English powders and tobacco, on which the excise authorities had forgotten to affix their seal. He had to get all this out of Leghorn free of duty and land it on the shores of Corsica, whence certain speculators undertook to transmit the cargo to France.
They put off, and Dantès was once more sailing the blue ocean, which he had seen so often in his dreams while in confinement.
The next morning when the captain went on deck, which he always did at a very early hour, he found Dantès leaning over the bulwarks and gazing with a strange expression on his face at a pile of granite rocks that the rising sun had tinged a rosy hue: it was the Isle of Monte Cristo. The Jeune Amélie left it about three-quarters of a league to starboard and kept to her course for Corsica.
Fortunately Dantès had learnt to wait: he had waited fourteen years for his liberty. Now that he was free he could easily wait six months or a year for his treasure. Besides, was not this treasure chimerical? Born in the diseased brain of poor Abbé Faria, had it not died with him? It is true Cardinal Spada’s letter was singularly convincing, and Dantès repeated it word for word from beginning to end: he had not forgotten a single syllable of it.
Two months and a half passed in similar trips, and he had become as skilful a coasteram as he had been a hardy sailor. He had struck up an acquaintance with all the smugglers on the coast, and had learned all the
masonic signs by which these semi-pirates recognize each other. He had passed and repassed his Isle of Monte Cristo twenty times, but had never once found an opportunity of going ashore. He therefore made up his mind that immediately after the termination of his engagement with the skipper of the Jeune Amélie, he would hire a small bark on his own account (he was able to do so for he had picked up a hundred piastres or so on his different voyages), and under some pretext or other make for the Isle of Monte Cristo.
Once there he would be free to make his researches, perhaps not entirely free, for he was fully aware that he would be spied upon by those who accompanied him. But in this world one must risk something.
Dantès was trying to solve the problem when one evening the skipper, who placed great confidence in him and was very anxious to keep him in his service, took him by his arm and led him to a tavern in the Via del Oglio, where the aristocrats of the Leghorn smugglers were wont to congregate.
It was here they discussed the affairs of the coast. This time a matter of great importance was debated: it concerned a ship laden with Turkish carpets, materials from the Levant, and cashmere shawls. They would have to find some neutral ground where an exchange could be made, and then endeavour to land the goods on the coast of France. The prize-money would be enormous, and if they succeeded it would mean fifty or sixty piastres for each one of the crew. The skipper proposed the Isle of Monte Cristo as a suitable place for discharging the cargo. Trembling with joy, Dantès got up to hide his emotion and paced round the smoky tavern where all the known languages of the world are mixed into a lingua franca.an When he joined the skipper again, it was already decided that they should touch at Monte Cristo, and that they should start on the expedition the following evening. When Edmond was consulted, he gave it as his opinion that the island afforded every possible security, and that if enterprises were to succeed, they should be carried out quickly.
Nothing was changed in the program: they were to weigh anchor the next morning and, given a good sea and a favourable wind, they hoped to be in the waters of the neutral island by the evening of the following day.
Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 15
