The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (best book club books .TXT) 📕

This order was also executed; and the vessel passed, as Dantès had predicted, twenty fathoms to windward.

“Bravo!” said the captain.

“Bravo!” repeated the sailors. And they all looked with astonishment at this man whose eye now disclosed an intelligence and his body a vigor they had not thought him capable of showing.

“You see,” said Dantès, quitting the helm, “I shall be of some use to you, at least during the voyage. If you do not want me at Leghorn, you can leave me there, and I will pay you out of the first wages I get, for my food and the clothes you lend me.”

“Ah,” said the captain, “we can agree very well, if you are reasonable.”

“Give me what you give the others, and it will be all right,” returned Dantès.

“That’s not fair,” said the seaman who had saved Dantès; “for you know more than we do.”

“What is that to you, Jacopo?” returned the Captain. “Everyone is free to ask what he pleases.”

“That’s true,” replied Jacopo; “I only make a remark.”

“Well, you would do much better to find him a jacket and a pair of trousers, if you have them.”

“No,” said Jacopo; “but I have a shirt and a pair of trousers.”

“That is all I want,” interrupted Dantès. Jacopo dived into the hold and soon returned with what Edmond wanted.

“Now, then, do you wish for anything else?” said the patron.

“A piece of bread and another glass of the capital rum I tasted, for I have not eaten or drunk for a long time.” He had not tasted food for forty hours. A piece of bread was brought, and Jacopo offered him the gourd.

“Larboard your helm,” cried the captain to the steersman. Dantès glanced that way as he lifted the gourd to his mouth; then paused with hand in midair.

“Hollo! what’s the matter at the Château d’If?” said the captain.

A small white cloud, which had attracted Dantès’ attention, 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 looked at one another.

“What is this?” asked the captain.

“A prisoner has escaped from the Château d’If, and they are firing the alarm gun,” replied Dantès. The captain glanced at him, but he had lifted the rum to his lips and was drinking it with so much composure, that suspicions, if the captain had any, died away.

“Pretty strong rum!” said Dantès, wiping his brow with his sleeve.

“At any rate,” murmured he, “if it be, so much the better, for I have made a rare acquisition.”

Under pretence of being fatigued, Dantès asked to take the helm; the steersman, glad to be relieved, looked at the captain, and the latter by a sign indicated that he might abandon it to his new comrade. Dantès could thus keep his eyes on Marseilles.

“What is the day of the month?” asked he of Jacopo, who sat down beside him.

“The 28th of February.”

“In what year?”

“In what year⁠—you ask me in what year?”

“Yes,” replied the young man, “I ask you in what year!”

“You have forgotten then?”

“I got such a fright last night,” replied Dantès, smiling, “that I have almost lost my memory. I ask you what year is it?”

“The year 1829,” returned Jacopo.

It was fourteen years, day for day, since Dantès’ arrest. He was nineteen when he entered the Château d’If; he was thirty-three when he escaped. A sorrowful smile passed over his face; he asked himself what had become of Mercédès, who must believe him dead. Then his eyes lighted up with hatred as he thought of the three men who had caused him so long and wretched a captivity. He renewed against Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort the oath of implacable vengeance he had made in his dungeon.

This oath was no longer a vain menace; for the fastest sailor in the Mediterranean would have been unable to overtake the little tartan, that with every stitch of canvas set was flying before the wind to Leghorn.

XXII The Smugglers

Dantès had not been a day on board before he had a very clear idea of the men with whom his lot had been cast. Without having been in the school of the Abbé Faria, the worthy master of La Jeune Amélie (the name of the Genoese tartan) knew a smattering of all the tongues spoken on the shores of that large lake called the Mediterranean, from the Arabic to the Provençal, and this, while it spared him interpreters, persons always troublesome and frequently indiscreet, gave him great facilities of communication, either with the vessels he met at sea, with the small boats sailing along the coast, or with the people without name, country, or occupation, who are always seen on the quays of seaports, and who live by hidden and mysterious means which we must suppose to be a direct gift of Providence, as they have no visible means of support. It is fair to assume that Dantès was on board a smuggler.

At first the captain had received Dantès on board with a certain degree of distrust. He was very well known to the customs officers of the coast; and as there was between these worthies and himself a perpetual battle of wits, he had at first thought that Dantès might be an emissary of these industrious guardians of rights and duties, who perhaps employed this ingenious means of learning some of the secrets of his trade. But the skilful manner in which Dantès had handled the lugger had entirely reassured him; and then, when he saw the light plume of smoke floating above the bastion of the Château d’If, and heard the distant report, he was instantly struck with the idea that he had on board his vessel one whose coming and going, like that of kings, was accompanied with salutes of artillery. This made him less uneasy, it must be owned, than if the newcomer had proved to be a customs officer; but this supposition also disappeared like the first, when