The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (40 page)

Daylight found him almost as feverish as he had been at night, but it also brought logic to assist imagination, and Dantès managed to draw up a plan that had, until now, been only vaguely outlined in his mind.

With evening came the preparations for departure. These preparations gave Dantès an opportunity to hide his anxiety. Bit by bit, he had acquired an authority over his companions that allowed him to give orders as though he were the captain of the vessel; and since his orders were always clear, precise and easy to carry out, the crew obeyed him not only promptly but with pleasure.

The old seaman let him do as he pleased: he too had recognized Dantès’ superiority both to the others and to himself. He saw the
young man as his natural successor and regretted that he did not have a daughter so that he might bind Edmond to him in that way.

At seven o’clock all was ready, and at ten past they rounded the lighthouse, just as it was being lit.

The sea was calm, with a fresh wind from the south-east. They were sailing under a clear sky in which God too was progressively putting on His lights, each another world. Dantès announced that everyone could go to bed and that he would take over the helm. When the Maltese – as they called him – made such an announcement, that was enough for everyone and they all went easily to bed.

This sometimes happened: from time to time, Dantès, driven out of solitude into the world, felt an imperative need for solitude. And what solitude is more vast and more poetic than that of a ship sailing alone on the sea, in the darkness of night and the silence of infinity, under the eye of the Lord?

This time his solitude was peopled with thoughts, the night illuminated by his dreams and the silence riven with his promises.

When the master woke up, the ship was proceeding under full sail; there was not an inch of canvas that was not swollen by the wind. They were travelling at more than two and a half leagues an hour. The island of Monte Cristo was rising before them on the horizon.

Edmond handed the ship back to its owner and went to take his turn in his hammock. Despite a night without sleep, he could not shut his eyes for an instant.

Two hours later, he returned on deck. The ship was just rounding Elba. They were abreast of Mareciana and had just passed the flat green island of La Pianosa. The blazing summit of Monte Cristo could be seen, reaching into the heavens.

Dantès ordered the helmsman to turn to port, so that they would leave La Pianosa on their right. He had reckoned that this manoeuvre would shorten the distance by two or three knots.

Around five in the evening, they could see the whole of the island. Every detail of it was clear, thanks to that clarity of the air which is peculiar to the light of the dying sun. Edmond gazed hungrily on the mass of rocks as they passed through all the colours of sunset, from bright pink to dark blue. From time to time, he flushed warmly, his forehead became congested and a purple haze crossed
before his eyes. No gambler whose whole fortune is staked on a single roll of the dice has ever experienced the agony that Edmond did in his paroxysms of hope.

Night fell. At ten o’clock they dropped anchor. The
Jeune-Amélie
was the first to reach the rendez-vous.

Despite his usual self-control, Dantès could not contain himself. He was the first to leap on shore and, if he had dared, he would have kissed the soil like Brutus.

It was pitch black; but at eleven o’clock the moon rose over the sea, throwing a silver light on every crest; then, as it rose higher, its rays began to tumble in white cascades of light over the piled rocks of this other Pelion.
¹

The crew of the
Jeune-Amélie
were familiar with the island; it was one of their usual points of call. Dantès, on the other hand, had recognized it from each of his voyages to the Near East, but had never stopped off here.

He questioned Jacopo.

‘Where are we going to spend the night?’

‘On board, of course,’ the sailor replied.

‘Wouldn’t we be better in the caves?’

‘What caves?’

‘The ones on the island.’

‘I don’t know any caves,’ Jacopo said.

A cold sweat broke out on Dantès’ forehead.

‘There are no caves on Monte Cristo?’ he asked.

‘No.’

For a moment he was stunned, then he thought that the caves might have been filled in by some accident or even been blocked by Cardinal Spada himself, as an extra precaution.

The main thing, in that case, would be to find the lost entrance. There was no point in looking at night, so Dantès put off his search until the next day. In any case, a signal displayed by a boat some half a league out to sea, to which the
Jeune-Amélie
responded immediately with the same, showed that the time had come to set to work.

The second ship, reassured by the signal which told the late arrival that it was safe to make land, soon appeared, white and silent as a ghost, and dropped anchor, a cable’s length from the shore. The transfer of goods began immediately.

As he worked, Dantès thought of the shout of joy that he could
have brought from all these men with a single word if he had spoken aloud the thought that hummed incessantly in his ears and in his heart. But, far from revealing the marvellous secret, he was already afraid he might have said too much or that, by his coming and going, his repeated questions, his minute observations and his constant preoccupation, he might have aroused some suspicion. It was fortunate, at least in these circumstances, that an unhappy past had stamped his features with an indelible air of sadness and that one could perceive only brief flashes of the lights of merriment hovering beneath this cloud.

No one suspected anything and when, the next day, Dantès took a gun, some shot and powder, and said he would like to go and shoot one or two of the wild goats that could be seen leaping from rock to rock, his expedition was ascribed purely to love of hunting and a desire for solitude. Only Jacopo insisted on following him. Dantès did not want to object, fearing that any reluctance to take a companion with him might awaken suspicion. But they had gone hardly a quarter of a league when, seizing the opportunity to shoot a kid, he told Jacopo to take it back to the crew, suggesting that they should cook it, then signal to him that it was ready for him to share, by firing a shot. Some dry fruit and a flagon of Montepulciano would complete the meal.

Dantès continued, turning from time to time. Reaching the summit of a rock, he saw his companions a thousand feet below him; Jacopo had just joined them and they were already engaged in preparing a dinner which, thanks to Edmond’s skill, now had a main dish. He watched them for a moment with a sad, gentle smile of superiority.

‘In two hours,’ he said, ‘these men will leave, richer by fifty
piastres
, and proceed to risk their lives to gain fifty more. Finally, when they have six hundred
livres
, they will go and squander this fortune in some town or other, as proud as sultans and as arrogant as nabobs. Today, hope means that I despise their wealth, which seems to me like the most abject poverty; tomorrow, perhaps disappointment may mean that I shall be forced to consider that abject poverty as the height of happiness… Oh! no,’ he cried, ‘it cannot be. The wise, the infallible Faria cannot have been mistaken on this one point. In any event, better to die than to go on living this sordid and base existence.’

So Dantès, who three months earlier had wanted nothing except
freedom, felt already not free enough, but wanted wealth. It was not the fault of Dantès, but of God who, while limiting the power of man, has created in him infinite desires! Meanwhile Dantès had approached the place where he supposed the caves to be situated, going along a road hidden between two walls of rock and down a path cut by the torrent, which, in all likelihood, no human foot had ever trodden. Following the line of the shore and examining everything minutely, he thought he could see on certain rocks marks which had been made by human hands.

Time casts its mossy mantle over physical objects and a mantle of forgetfulness on non-physical ones, and it seemed to have respected these marks, made with some regularity, probably with the aim of tracing a route; but occasionally they disappeared under great bunches of myrtle, heavy with flowers, or under clinging lichens. Edmond would then have to push aside the branches or lift the moss to discover the clues that led him into this new labyrinth. In any case, these marks had given Edmond hope. Why should it not be the cardinal who had made them, so that, in the event of some misfortune which he could not have imagined so absolute, they could serve to guide his nephew? This solitary place seemed designed for a man who wished to hide a treasure. But could these treacherous marks have attracted eyes other than those for which they were intended; had the dark and wonderful island guarded its marvellous secret faithfully?

Arriving at a point only about sixty yards from the port, but still hidden from his companions by the rocks, Edmond thought that the scratches had come to an end; but they did not lead to any kind of cave. The only point to which they seemed to direct him was a large round rock settled on a solid base. Edmond thought that, instead of having reached the end of the trail, he might, on the contrary, be only at the beginning, so he decided to take the opposite course and retrace his steps.

Meanwhile his companions had been preparing dinner, getting water from the spring, carrying bread and fruit ashore and cooking the kid. Just as they were taking it off its improvised spit, they saw Edmond leaping from rock to rock, as light and daring as a chamois; so they fired a shot as a signal to him. The huntsman immediately changed direction and ran back to them. But, just as they were all watching him as he leapt through the air – and accusing him of pushing his skill beyond the limits of caution – as if to justify their
fears, Edmond lost his footing. They saw him totter on the peak of a rock, cry out and disappear.

All of them dashed forward at once, because they were all fond of Edmond, despite his superiority; but it was Jacopo who arrived first.

He found Edmond lying on the ground, covered in blood and almost unconscious: he must have tumbled from a height of twelve to fifteen feet. They put a few drops of rum in his mouth, and this medicine, which had already proved so effective with him, had the same result the second time.

Edmond re-opened his eyes, complained of a sharp pain in the knee, a great weight on his head and an unbearable stabbing in the small of the back. They tried to carry him to the beach, but when they touched him, even though Jacopo was directing operations, he groaned and said that he did not feel strong enough to be moved.

Of course, there was no question of him taking food, but he insisted that the others, not having the same reason as he did to fast, should go back to their dinner. For himself, he declared that he only needed a little rest and that they would find him better when they returned. Old sea-dogs do not stand on ceremony: the sailors were hungry and the smell of kid was wafting up to them, so they did not wait to be asked twice.

An hour later they returned. All that Edmond had managed to do was to drag himself about ten yards so that he was leaning against the mossy rock. But the pain, instead of lessening, actually seemed to have increased. The old master, who was obliged to leave that morning so that he could put off his cargo on the frontier of France and Piedmont, between Nice and Fréjus, insisted that Dantès try to get up. Dantès made a superhuman effort to comply, but every time fell back, pale and groaning.

‘His back is broken,’ the master whispered. ‘No matter, he’s a good comrade and we can’t abandon him. Let’s try to carry him to the tartan.’

But Dantès announced that he would rather die where he was than suffer the terrible pain that he felt at the slightest movement.

‘Well, then,’ said the master, ‘whatever happens, it will not be said that we left a good comrade like yourself without help. We’ll delay our departure until this evening.’

This suggestion astonished the sailors, though none of them opposed it; on the contrary. The master was a man of such rigid
ideas that this was the first time they had seen him give up a project, or even delay it. But Dantès did not want such a serious breach of the ship’s rules to be made on his behalf.

‘No, no,’ he told the master. ‘I was clumsy and it is right that I should suffer for my own carelessness. Leave me a small supply of biscuits, a gun, powder and shot to kill goats – or even to defend myself – and a pickaxe so that I can build some kind of house, in case you are too long in returning to fetch me.’

‘You will starve,’ said the master.

‘Better that,’ Edmond answered, ‘than to suffer the unspeakable pain that I feel at the slightest movement.’

The master turned to look at the ship, swaying at anchor in the little harbour with its sails partly set, ready to head out to sea as soon as the rest of its canvas had been raised.

‘What can we do, Maltese?’ he said. ‘We cannot abandon you here, but we can’t stay, either.’

‘Leave, leave!’ Dantès cried.

‘We’ll be gone for at least a week, and even then we shall have to turn off course to pick you up.’

‘Listen,’ said Dantès, ‘if, two or three days from now, you meet some fishing boat or other that is sailing near here, let them know about me and I shall pay them twenty-five
piastres
to take me back to Leghorn. If you don’t pass any such vessel, then come back yourselves.’