The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (38 page)

When he next opened his eyes, he was on the deck of the tartan, which was under way again. The first thing he did was to look to see what course it was following; it was still sailing away from the Château d’If.

Dantès was so exhausted that his exclamation of joy was mistaken for a cry of pain.

As we said, he was lying on the deck. A sailor was rubbing his limbs with a woollen blanket, while another, whom he recognized as the one who had shouted
‘coraggio!’
, was putting the lip of a gourd to his mouth. A third, an old sailor, who was both the pilot and the master, looked at him with the selfish pity that men usually feel towards a misfortune that they escaped only the day before and which might be waiting for them on the following one.

A few drops of rum from the gourd stimulated the young man’s heart, while the massage that the other sailor was still giving him with the wool, kneeling in front of him, gave some movement back to his limbs.

‘Who are you?’ the master asked in broken French.

‘I am a Maltese seaman,’ Dantès replied, in broken Italian. ‘We were sailing from Syracuse, with a cargo of wine and panoline. The squall last night surprised us off Cap Morgiou and we foundered against those rocks that you see over there.’

‘And where have you come from?’

‘From those same rocks, on which I had the good fortune to wash up, while our poor captain’s head was broken against them. Our three companions were drowned. I think I must be the only one left alive. I saw your ship and, fearing that I might have to wait a long time on that isolated desert island, I took my chances on a piece of the wreckage from our boat to try and reach you. Thank you,’ Dantès went on, ‘you have saved my life. I was exhausted when one of your sailors grasped me by the hair.’

‘That was me,’ said a sailor with a frank and open face, framed in long side-whiskers. ‘It was none too soon; you were going under.’

‘Yes,’ Dantès said, offering his hand. ‘Yes, my friend. I thank you once more.’

‘Damn it!’ said the sailor. ‘I was almost reluctant to do it. With your six-inch beard and your hair a full foot long, you look more like a brigand than an honest sailor.’

Dantès remembered that he had, indeed, not cut his hair or shaved his beard in the whole time he was in the Château d’If.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This was a vow that I made to Our Lady of Pie della Grotta, in a moment of danger: to go ten years without cutting my hair or my beard. Today sees the expiation of my vow – and I nearly drowned on the anniversary of it.’

‘Now, what are we going to do with you?’ asked the master.

‘Alas!’ Dantès replied. ‘You can do what you like. The felucca on which I was sailing is lost, the captain is dead. As you can see, I escaped his fate, but totally naked: luckily I am a fairly good sailor. Put me off at the first port where you make land and I shall always find employment on some merchant vessel.’

‘Do you know the Mediterranean?’

‘I have been sailing round it since my childhood.’

‘You know the best anchorages?’

‘There are few ports, even the most difficult, where I could not sail in or out with my eyes closed.’

‘Well, how about it, patron?’ said the sailor who had cried
‘coraggio!’
to Dantès. ‘If what this comrade says is true, why shouldn’t he stay with us?’

‘Yes, if it is true,’ said the master, looking doubtful. ‘But in the present state of this poor devil, one may promise a lot, meaning to do what one can.’

‘I shall do even more than I have promised,’ said Dantès.

The master laughed. ‘We’ll see about that.’

‘Whenever you wish,’ Dantès replied, getting up. ‘Where are you headed?’

‘To Leghorn.’

‘Well, then, instead of tacking and wasting precious time, why don’t you simply sail closer into the wind?’

‘Because we would be heading directly for the Ile de Riou.’

‘You will be more than a hundred and twenty feet away from it.’

‘Take the helm, then,’ said the master, ‘and let’s judge your skill.’

The young man sat at the helm, touched it lightly to verify that the boat was responsive; seeing that it was reasonably so, though not of the finest class, he said: ‘All hands to the rigging!’

The four members of the crew ran to their posts, while the master looked on.

‘Haul away!’

The sailors obeyed quite effectively.

‘Now, make fast!’

This order was carried out as the first two had been and the little ship, instead of continuing to tack, began to make for the Ile de Riou, passing near it and leaving it off the starboard side, at about the distance Dantès had predicted.

‘Bravo!’ said the master.

‘Bravo!’ the sailors repeated, all looking with wonder at this man whose face had recovered a look of intelligence and whose body possessed a strength that they had not suspected.

‘You see,’ Dantès said, leaving the helm. ‘I might be of some use to you, at least during the crossing. If you want to leave me in Leghorn, you can do so. I shall repay you for my food up to that time, and for the clothes that you will lend me, out of my first month’s pay.’

‘Very well, then,’ said the master. ‘We can come to some arrangement if you are reasonable.’

‘One man is worth as much as another,’ said Dantès. ‘Give me what you give to my companions, and we shall be quits.’

‘That’s not fair,’ said the sailor who had pulled Dantès out of the sea. ‘You know more than we do.’

‘Who the devil asked you? Is this any of your business, Jacopo?’ said the master. ‘Every man is free to sign on at the rate which suits him.’

‘Correct,’ said Jacopo. ‘I was just commenting.’

‘Well, you would do better to lend this poor lad a pair of trousers and a jacket, if you have any to spare; he is stark naked.’

‘I haven’t,’ said Jacopo, ‘but I do have a shirt and trousers.’

‘That is all I need,’ said Dantès. ‘Thank you, my friend.’

Jacopo slid down the hatch and returned a moment later with the two articles of clothing, which Dantès was unspeakably happy to put on.

‘Do you need anything else?’ asked the master.

‘A scrap of bread and another draught of that excellent rum that you gave me. I have not eaten for a long time.’ It was, in fact, around forty hours.

They brought Dantès a piece of bread, and Jacopo offered him the flask.

‘Hard a-port!’ the captain cried, turning to the helmsman.

Dantès looked in the same direction as he put the flask to his lips, but it stopped half-way.

‘Look there!’ the master exclaimed. ‘What is going on at the Château d’If?’

A little puff of white smoke, which is what had caught Dantès’ attention, had just appeared above the battlements of the south tower of the fortress.

A second later, the sound of a distant explosion reached the tartan. The sailors looked up and exchanged glances.

‘What does that mean?’ the master asked.

‘Some prisoner escaped last night,’ said Dantès, ‘and they are firing the warning gun.’

The master looked at the young man who, as he spoke the words, brought the flask to his lips. He drank the liquid with such calm and satisfaction that, if the master had felt the shadow of a doubt, it would immediately have been dispelled.

‘This rum is devilish strong,’ Dantès said, wiping the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.

‘In any case,’ the master thought, looking at him, ‘even if it is him, so much the better. I have gained a fine man.’

Pretending that he was tired, Dantès asked if he could sit at the helm. The helmsman, delighted to be relieved of his job, looked at the master, who nodded to let him know that he could hand the bar over to his new companion. From this vantage point, Dantès could remain with his eyes fixed towards Marseille.

‘What day of the month is it?’ Dantès asked Jacopo, who had come to sit next to him, as they lost sight of the Château d’If.

‘February the twenty-eighth,’ he replied.

‘And what year?’

‘What do you mean, what year! Are you asking me what year it is?’

‘Yes,’ said the young man. ‘I am asking you the year.’

‘You have forgotten what year we are in?’

‘What do you expect! I was so terrified last night,’ Dantès said, laughing, ‘I nearly lost my mind. As it is, my memory is troubled. So I am asking you: this is the twenty-eighth of February, of what year?’

‘Of the year 1829,’ said Jacopo.

Fourteen years earlier, to the day, Dantès had been arrested. He had entered the Château d’If at the age of nineteen and was now emerging from it at thirty-three.

A pained smile crossed his lips: he was wondering what had become of Mercédès during this time, when she must have thought him dead. Then a spark of hatred lit up in his eyes, when he thought of the three men who were responsible for his long, cruel captivity. And once more he vowed that same, implacable oath of vengeance that he had already taken in prison against Danglars, Fernand and Villefort.

But now the oath was no longer an empty threat, because the finest fully-manned sailing ship in the Mediterranean could surely not have overtaken the little tartan which was making for Leghorn at full speed.

Dantès had not been a day on board before he realized the sort of people he was dealing with. Without ever having had lessons from Abbé Faria, the worthy master of the
Jeune-Amélie
(as the Genoese tartan was called) was acquainted with more or less every language spoken around the great lake known as the Mediterranean, from Arabic to Provençal. This relieved him of the need to employ an
interpreter – a class of people who are always bothersome and sometimes indiscreet – and made it easy for him to communicate, whether with any ships that he might encounter at sea, or with the little boats that he met along the coasts, or finally with those people, without name, nationality or evident profession, who are always to be found on the paved quaysides of seaports, living on mysterious and secret resources which one can only believe must come to them directly from Providence, since they have no other visible means of support: the reader may have guessed that Dantès was on a smugglers’ ship.

For this reason the master had been slightly suspicious about taking him on board. He was well known to all the Customs officers along the coast, engaging with these gentlemen in a mutual exchange of stratagems, each more cunning than the last, so he had at first thought that Dantès was an emissary of my lords the excisemen, who were using this ingenious method to root out some of the secrets of his trade. But the brilliance with which Dantès had succeeded in the test of fine navigation had entirely convinced him. Then, at the sight of the puff of smoke rising like a plume over the Château d’If and the distant sound of the explosion, he momentarily guessed that he had just taken on board one of those men – in this respect like kings – whose entrances and exits are honoured by the firing of cannon. This bothered him less, it must be said, than if the newcomer had been a Customs officer, and this new suspicion vanished like its predecessor when he saw how perfectly calm his latest recruit remained.

In this way, Edmond had the advantage of knowing what his master was, while his master did not know the same about him. Whenever the old seaman and his crew questioned him, and on whatever subject, he held firm and confessed nothing, giving a wealth of details about Naples or Malta, both of which he knew as well as he knew Marseille, and sticking to his first story with a consistency that was a credit to his memory. Thus the Genoan, wily as he was, let himself be taken in by Edmond, thanks to the young man’s gentle manner, his experience of the sea and, above all, his unusual skill at deception.

But, then, perhaps the Genoan was like those clever men who never know more than they need and believe only what it is in their interests to believe.

This was the situation when they arrived at Leghorn.

Here Edmond had to face a new trial: he had to find out if he would recognize himself, not having seen his own face for fourteen years. He could remember the young man quite clearly; now he would discover what he had become as a mature one. As far as his companions were concerned, he had fulfilled his vow. He had already been twenty times to Leghorn and knew a barber in the Rue Saint-Fernand. That was where he went to have his beard shaved and his hair cut.

The barber looked with astonishment at this man, with his long hair and thick black beard, who resembled one of those fine heads by Titian. At that time it was not yet the fashion to wear one’s beard and hair long; nowadays a barber would rather be surprised that a man who could enjoy such physical attributes should wish to deprive himself of them. He said nothing and set about his work. When it was done, when Edmond felt his chin to be clean-shaven and when his hair had been shortened to normal length, he asked for a mirror and looked in it.

Dantès was now thirty-three years old, as we have said, and his fourteen years in prison had brought what might be described as a great spiritual change to his features. He had entered the Château d’If with the round, full, radiant face of a contented young man whose first steps in life have been easy and who looks to the future as a natural extension of the past. All that had changed utterly.