The Count of Monte-Cristo/Volume 1/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
THE ISLE OF TIBOULEN
ANTÈS, although giddy and almost suffocated, had yet sufficient presence of mind to hold his breath; and as his right hand (prepared as he was for every chance) held his knife open, he rapidly ripped up the sack, extricated his arm, and then his body; but, in spite of all his efforts to free himself from the bullet, he felt it dragging him down still lower. He then bent his body, and by a desperate effort severed the cord that bound his legs, at the moment he was suffocating. With a vigorous spring he rose to the surface of the sea, whilst the bullet bore to its depths the sack that had so nearly become his shroud.
Dantès merely paused to breathe, and then dived again, in order to avoid being seen. When he arose a second time, he was fifty paces from where he had first sunk. He saw overhead a black and tempestuous sky, over which the wind was driving the fleeting vapors that occasionally suffered a twinkling star to appear; before him was the vast expanse of waters, somber and terrible, whose waves foamed and roared as if before the approach of a storm. Behind him, blacker than the sea, blacker than the sky, rose, like a threatening phantom, the giant of granite, whose projecting crags seemed like arms extended to seize their prey; and on the highest rock was a torch that lighted two figures.
He fancied these two forms were looking at the sea; doubtless these strange grave-diggers had heard his cry. Dantès dived again, and remained a long time beneath the water. This manœuvre was already familiar to him, and usually attracted a crowd of spectators in the bay before the lighthouse at Marseilles who, with one accord, pronounced him the best swimmer in the port. When he re-appeared the light had disappeared.
It was necessary to lay out a course. Ratonneau and Pomègue are the nearest isles of all those that surround the Château d'If; but Ratonneau and Pomègue are inhabited, together with the islet of Daume; Tiboulen or Lemaire were the most secure. The isles of Tiboulen and Lemaire are a league from the Château d'If; Dantès, nevertheless, determined to make for them. But how could he find his way in the darkness of the night?
At this moment he saw before him, like a brilliant star, the lighthouse of Planier. By swimming straight to this light, he kept the isle of Tiboulen a little on the left; by turning to the left, therefore, he would find it. But, as we have said, it was at least a league from the Château d'If to this island. Often in prison Faria had said to him, when he saw him idle and inactive:
"Dantès, you must not give way to this listlessness; you will be drowned if you seek to escape, and your strength has not been properly exercised and prepared for exertion."
These words rang in Dantès' ears, even beneath the waves; he hastened to cleave his way through them to see if he had not lost his strength. He found with pleasure that his captivity had taken away nothing of his power, and that he was still master of that element on whose bosom he had so often sported as a boy.
Fear, that relentless pursuer, doubled Dantès' efforts. He listened if any noise was audible; each time that he rose over the waves his looks scanned the horizon, and strove to penetrate the darkness. Every wave seemed a boat in his pursuit, and he redoubled exertions that increased his distance from the château, but the repetition of which weakened his strength. He swam on still, and already the terrible château had disappeared in the darkness. He could not see it, but he felt its presence.
An hour passed, during which Dantès, excited by the feeling of freedom, continued to cleave the waves.
"Let us see," said he, "I have swum above an hour, but, as the wind is against me, that has retarded my speed; however, if I am not mistaken, I must be close to the isle of Tiboulen. But what if I were mistaken?"
A shudder passed over him. He sought to tread water, in order to rest himself; but the sea was too violent, and he felt that he could not make use of this means of repose.
"Well," said he, "I will swim on until I am worn out, or the cramp seizes me, and then I shall sink." And he struck out with the energy of despair.
Suddenly the sky seemed to him to become darker and more dense, and compact clouds lowered toward him; at the same time he felt a violent pain in his knee. His imagination, with its inconceivable rapidity, told him a ball had struck him, and that in a moment he would hear the report; but he heard nothing. Dantès put out his hand, and felt resistance; he then drew up his leg, and felt the land, and in an instant guessed the nature of the object he had taken for a cloud.
Before him rose a mass of strangely formed rocks, that resembled nothing so much as a vast fire petrified at the moment of its most fervent combustion. It was the isle of Tiboulen. Dantès rose, advanced a few steps, and, with a fervent prayer of gratitude, stretched himself on the granite, which seemed to him softer than down. Then, in spite of the wind and rain, he fell into the deep sweet sleep of those worn out by fatigue; whose soul is still awake with the consciousness of unexpected good fortune. At the expiration of an hour Edmond was awakened by the roar of the thunder. The tempest was unchained and let loose in all its fury; from time to time a flash of lightning stretched across the heavens like a fiery serpent, lighting up the clouds that rolled on like the waves of an immense chaos.
Dantès with his sailor's eye had not been deceived — he had reached the first of the two isles, which was, in reality, Tiboulen. He knew that it was barren and without shelter; but when the sea became more calm, he resolved to plunge into its waves again, and swim to Lemaire, equally arid, but larger, and consequently better adapted for concealment.
An overhanging rock offered him a temporary shelter, and scarcely had he availed himself of it when the tempest burst forth in all its fury. Edinond felt the rock beneath which he lay tremble; the waves, dashing themselves against the granite rock, wetted him with their spray. In safety, as he was, he felt himself become giddy in the midst of this war of the elements and the dazzling brightness of the lightning. It seemed to him that the island trembled to its base, and that it would, like a vessel at anchor, break her moorings, and bear him off into the center of the storm.
He then recollected that he had not eaten or drunk for four and twenty hours. He extended his hands, and drank greedily of the rainwater that had lodged in a hollow of the rock. As he rose, a flash of lightning, that seemed as if the whole of the heavens were opened, illumined the darkness. By its light, between the isle of Lemaire and Cape Croiselle, a quarter of a league distant, Dantès saw, like a specter, a fishing-boat driven rapidly on by the force of the winds and waves. A second after, he saw it again, approaching nearer with terrible speed. Dantes cried at the top of his voice to warn them of their danger, but they saw it themselves. Another flash showed him four men clinging to the shattered mast and the rigging, while a fifth clung to the broken rudder. The men he beheld saw him, doubtless, for their cries were carried to his ears by the wind. Above the splintered mast a sail rent to tatters was flapping; suddenly the ropes that still held it gave way, and it disappeared in the darkness of the night like a vast sea-bird.
At the same moment a violent crash was heard, and cries of distress. Perched like a sphinx on the summit of the rock, Dantès saw, by the lightning, the vessel in pieces; and amongst the fragments were visible the agonized features of the unhappy sailors. Then all became dark again. The dreadful spectacle had lasted only the time of the lightning-flash.
Dantès ran down the rocks at the risk of being himself dashed to pieces; he listened, he strove to examine, but he heard and saw nothing — all human cries had ceased, and the tempest alone continued to rage and foam. By degrees the wind abated, vast gray clouds rolled toward the west, and the blue firmament appeared studded with bright stars. Soon a red streak toward the east became visible in the horizon, the waves whitened, a light played over them, and gilded their foaming crest with gold. It was day.
Dantès stood silent and motionless before this vast spectacle, as if he saw it for the first time, for since his captivity he had forgotten it. He turned toward the fortress, and looked both at the sea and the land. The gloomy building rose from the bosom of the ocean with that imposing majesty of inanimate objects that seems at once to watch and to command. It was about five o'clock. The sea continued to grow calmer.
"In two or three hours," thought Dantès, "the turnkey will enter my chamber, find the body of my poor friend, recognize it, seek for me in vain, and give the alarm. Then the passage will be discovered; the men who cast me into the sea, and who must have heard the cry I uttered, will be questioned. Then boats filled with armed soldiers will pursue the wretched fugitive. The cannon will warn every one to refuse shelter to a man wandering about naked and famished. The police of Marseilles will be on the alert by land, whilst the governor pursues me by sea. I am cold, I am hungry. I have lost even the knife that saved me. I am at the mercy of the first boor who would like to make twenty francs by giving me up; I have neither strength, ideas, nor courage. O my God! I have suffered enough, surely. Have pity on me, and do for me what I am unable to do for myself."
As Dantes (his eyes turned in the direction of the Château d'If) uttered this prayer in a kind of delirium, he saw appear, at the extremity of the isle of Pomegue, like a bird skimming over the sea, a small bark, with its lateen sail, that the eye of a sailor alone could recognize as a Genoese tartan. She was coming out of Marseilles harbor, and was standing out to sea rapidly, her sharp prow cleaving through the waves.
"Oh!" cried Edmond, "to think that in half an hour I could join her, did I not fear being questioned, detected, and conveyed back to Marseilles! What can I do? What story can I invent? Under pretext of trading along the coast, these men, who are in reality smugglers, will prefer selling me to doing a good action. I must wait. But I cannot — I am starving. In a few hours my strength will be utterly exhausted; besides, perhaps I have not been missed at the fortress; the alarm has not been given. I can pass as one of the sailors wrecked last night. This story will pass current, for there is no one left to contradict me."
As he spoke, Dantès looked toward the spot where the fishing vessel had been wrecked, and started. The red cap of one of the sailors hung to a point of the rock, and some beams that had formed part of the vessel's keel floated at the foot of the crags. In an instant Dantès' plan was formed. He swam to the cap, placed it on his head, seized one of the beams, and struck out so as to cross the line the vessel was taking.
"I am saved!" murmured he. And this conviction restored his strength.
He soon perceived the vessel, which, having the wind right ahead, was tacking between the Château d'If and the tower of Planier. For an instant he feared lest the bark, instead of keeping in shore, should stand out to sea, as she would have done if bound for Corsica or Sardinia; but he soon saw by her manœuvres that she wished to pass, like most vessels bound for Italy, between the islands of Jaros and Calaseraigne.
However, the vessel and the swimmer insensibly neared one another, and in one of its tacks the bark approached within a quarter of a mile of him. He rose on the waves, making signs of distress; but no one on board perceived him, and the vessel stood on another tack. Dantès would have cried out, but he reflected that the wind and the dash of the waves would drown his voice.
It was then he rejoiced at his precaution in taking the beam, for without it he would have been unable, perhaps, to reach the vessel — certainly to return to shore, should he be unsuccessful in attracting attention.
Dantès, although almost sure as to what course the bark would take, had yet watched it anxiously until it tacked and stood toward him. Then he advanced; but before they had met, the vessel again changed her direction. By a violent effort he rose half out of the water, waving his cap, and uttering a loud shout of distress peculiar to sailors, that seems the cry of some spirit of the deep. This time he was both seen and heard, and the tartan instantly steered toward him. At the same time, he saw they were about to lower the boat.
An instant after, the boat, rowed by two men, advanced rapidly toward him. Dantès abandoned the beam, which he thought now useless, and swam vigorously to meet them. But he had reckoned too much upon his strength, and then he felt how serviceable the beam had been to him. His arms grew stiff, his legs had lost their flexibility, and he was almost breathless.
He uttered a second cry. The two sailors redoubled their efforts, and one of them cried in Italian, "Courage!"
The word reached his ear as a wave which he no longer had the strength to surmount passed over his head. He rose again to the surface, supporting himself by one of those desperate efforts a drowning man makes, littered a third cry, and felt himself sink again, as if the fatal bullet were again tied to his feet. The water passed over his head, and through it the sky seemed livid. A violent effort again brought him to the surface. He felt as if something seized him by the hair, but he saw and heard nothing. He had fainted.
When he opened his eyes, Dantès found himself on the deck of the tartan. His first care was to see what direction they were pursuing. They were rapidly leaving the Château d'If behind. Dantès was so exhausted that the exclamation of joy he uttered was mistaken for a sigh.
As we have said, he was lying on the deck. A sailor was rubbing his limbs with a woolen cloth; another, whom he recognized as the one who had cried out "Courage!" held a gourd full of rum to his mouth; whilst the third, an old sailor, at once the pilot and captain, looked on with that egotistical pity men feel for a misfortune that they have escaped yesterday and which may overtake them to-morrow.
A few drops of rum restored suspended animation, whilst the friction of his limbs restored their elasticity. "Who are you?" said the pilot, in bad French.
"I am," replied Dantès, in bad Italian, "a Maltese sailor. We were coming from Syracuse laden with grain. This storm of last night overtook us at Cape Morgiou, and we were wrecked on these rocks." "Where do you come from?"
"From these rocks that I had the good luck to cling to whilst our captain was lost. My three comrades are drowned, and I am the sole survivor. I saw your ship, and fearful of being left to perish on the desolate island, I swam off on a fragment of the vessel in order to try and gain your bark. You have saved my life, and I thank you," continued Dantès. "I was lost when one of your sailors caught hold of my hair."
"It was I," said a sailor of a frank and manly appearance; "and it was time, for you were sinking."
"Yes," returned Dantès, holding out his hand, "I thank you again."
"I almost hesitated though," replied the sailor; "you looked more like a brigand than an honest man, with your beard six inches and your hair a foot long."
Dantès recollected that his hair and beard had not been cut all the time he was at the Château d'If.
"Yes," said he, "I made a vow to our Lady del Pie de la Grotto not to cut my hair or beard for ten years if I were saved in a moment of danger; but to-day the vow expires."
"Now, what are we to do with you?" said the captain.
"Alas! anything you please. My captain is dead; I have barely escaped; but I am a good sailor. Leave me at the first port you make; I shall be sure to find employment."
"Do you know the Mediterranean?"
"I have sailed over it since my childhood."
"You know the best harbors?"
"There are few ports that I could not enter or leave with my eyes blinded."
"I say, captain," said the sailor who had cried "Courage!" to Dantès, "if what he says is true, what hinders his staying with us?"
"If he says true," said the captain doubtingly. "But in his present condition he will promise anything, and take his chance of keeping it afterward."
"I will do more than I promise," said Dantès.
"We shall see," returned the other, smiling.
"Where are you going to?" asked Dantès.
"To Leghorn."
"Then, why, instead of tacking so frequently, do you not sail nearer the wind?"
"Because we should run straight on to the island of Rion."
"You shall pass it by twenty fathoms."
"Take the helm, and let us see what you know."
The young man took the helm, ascertaining by a slight pressure if the vessel answered the rudder, and seeing that, without being a first-rate sailer, she yet was tolerably obedient.
"To the braces," said he. The four seamen, who composed the crew, obeyed, whilst the pilot looked on. "Haul taut."
They obeyed.
"Belay." This order was also executed; and the vessel passed, as Dantès had predicted, twenty fathoms to the right.
"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 vigor they were far from suspecting.
"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 all will be arranged," returned Dantès.
"That's not fair," said the seaman who had saved Dantes; "for you know more than we do."
"What is that to you, Jacopo?" returned the captain. "Every one is free to ask what he pleases."
"That's true," replied Jacopo; "I only made a remark."
"Well, you would do much better to lend 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.
"Port your helm," cried the captain to the steersman. Dantès glanced to the same side as he lifted the gourd to his mouth; but his hand stopped.
"Halloa! 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 his suspicions, if he had any, died away.
"Pretty strong rum!" said Dantès, wiping his brow with his sleeve.
"At any rate," murmured the captain, "if it be, so much the better, for I have made a rare acquisition."
Under pretense of being fatigued, Dantès asked to take the helm; the steersman, enchanted 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 have been so frightened 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 sailer 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.