Dantes 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 Abbe Faria, the worthy master of The Young Amelia (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 Provencal, 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 Dantes was on board a smuggler.
At first the captain had received Dantes 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 Dantes 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 Dantes had handled the lugger had
entirely reassured him; and then, when he saw the light plume of smoke
floating above the bastion of the Chateau 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 new-comer had proved to be a customs officer; but this
supposition also disappeared like the first, when he beheld the perfect
tranquillity of his recruit.
Edmond thus had the advantage of knowing what the owner was, without the
owner knowing who he was; and however 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 as well as Marseilles,
and held stoutly to his first story. Thus the Genoese, subtle as he
was, was duped by Edmond, in whose favor his mild demeanor, his nautical
skill, and his admirable dissimulation, pleaded. 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 they
should believe.
In this state of mutual understanding, they reached Leghorn. Here
Edmond was to undergo another trial; he was to find out whether he could
recognize himself, as he had not seen his own face for fourteen years.
He had preserved a tolerably good remembrance of what the youth had
been, and was now to find out what the man had become. His comrades
believed that his vow was fulfilled. As he had twenty times touched at
Leghorn, he remembered a barber in St. Ferdinand Street; he went there
to have his beard and hair cut. The barber gazed in amazement at this
man with the long, thick and black hair and beard, which gave his head
the appearance of one of Titian's portraits. At this period it was not
the fashion to wear so large a beard and hair so long; now a barber
would only be surprised if a man gifted with such advantages should
consent voluntarily to deprive himself of them. The Leghorn barber said
nothing and went to work.
When the operation was concluded, and Edmond felt that his chin was
completely smooth, and his hair reduced to its usual length, he asked
for a hand-glass. He was now, as we have said, three-and-thirty years
of age, and his fourteen years' imprisonment had produced a great
transformation in his appearance. Dantes had entered the Chateau d'If
with the round, open, smiling face of a young and happy man, with whom
the early paths of life have been smooth, and who anticipates a future
corresponding with his past. This was now all changed. The oval face
was lengthened, his smiling mouth had assumed the firm and marked
lines which betoken resolution; his eyebrows were arched beneath a brow
furrowed with thought; his eyes were full of melancholy, and from their
depths occasionally sparkled gloomy fires of misanthropy and hatred;
his complexion, so long kept from the sun, had now that pale color
which produces, when the features are encircled with black hair, the
aristocratic beauty of the man of the north; the profound learning
he had acquired had besides diffused over his features a refined
intellectual expression; and he had also acquired, being naturally of
a goodly stature, that vigor which a frame possesses which has so long
concentrated all its force within itself.
To the elegance of a nervous and slight form had succeeded the solidity
of a rounded and muscular figure. As to his voice, prayers, sobs, and
imprecations had changed it so that at times it was of a singularly
penetrating sweetness, and at others rough and almost hoarse. Moreover,
from being so long in twilight or darkness, his eyes had acquired the
faculty of distinguishing objects in the night, common to the hyena and
the wolf. Edmond smiled when he beheld himself: it was impossible that
his best friend--if, indeed, he had any friend left--could recognize
him; he could not recognize himself.
The master of The Young Amelia, who was very desirous of retaining
amongst his crew a man of Edmond's value, had offered to advance him
funds out of his future profits, which Edmond had accepted. His next
care on leaving the barber's who had achieved his first metamorphosis
was to enter a shop and buy a complete sailor's suit--a garb, as we all
know, very simple, and consisting of white trousers, a striped shirt,
and a cap. It was in this costume, and bringing back to Jacopo the shirt
and trousers he had lent him, that Edmond reappeared before the captain
of the lugger, who had made him tell his story over and over again
before he could believe him, or recognize in the neat and trim sailor
the man with thick and matted beard, hair tangled with seaweed, and body
soaking in seabrine, whom he had picked up naked and nearly drowned.
Attracted by his prepossessing appearance, he renewed his offers of an
engagement to Dantes; but Dantes, who had his own projects, would not
agree for a longer time than three months.
The Young Amelia had a very active crew, very obedient to their captain,
who lost as little time as possible. He had scarcely been a week at
Leghorn before the hold of his vessel was filled with printed muslins,
contraband cottons, English powder, and tobacco on which the excise had
forgotten to put its mark. The master was to get all this out of Leghorn
free of duties, and land it on the shores of Corsica, where certain
speculators undertook to forward the cargo to France. They sailed;
Edmond was again cleaving the azure sea which had been the first horizon
of his youth, and which he had so often dreamed of in prison. He left
Gorgone on his right and La Pianosa on his left, and went towards the
country of Paoli and Napoleon. The next morning going on deck, as he
always did at an early hour, the patron found Dantes leaning against
the bulwarks gazing with intense earnestness at a pile of granite rocks,
which the rising sun tinged with rosy light. It was the Island of Monte
Cristo. The Young Amelia left it three-quarters of a league to the
larboard, and kept on for Corsica.
Dantes thought, as they passed so closely to the island whose name was
so interesting to him, that he had only to leap into the sea and in
half an hour be at the promised land. But then what could he do without
instruments to discover his treasure, without arms to defend himself?
Besides, what would the sailors say? What would the patron think? He
must wait.
Fortunately, Dantes had learned how to wait; he had waited fourteen
years for his liberty, and now he was free he could wait at least six
months or a year for wealth. Would he not have accepted liberty without
riches if it had been offered to him? Besides, were not those riches
chimerical?--offspring of the brain of the poor Abbe Faria, had they
not died with him? It is true, the letter of the Cardinal Spada was
singularly circumstantial, and Dantes repeated it to himself, from one
end to the other, for he had not forgotten a word.
Evening came, and Edmond saw the island tinged with the shades of
twilight, and then disappear in the darkness from all eyes but his own,
for he, with vision accustomed to the gloom of a prison, continued to
behold it last of all, for he remained alone upon deck. The next morn
broke off the coast of Aleria; all day they coasted, and in the evening
saw fires lighted on land; the position of these was no doubt a signal
for landing, for a ship's lantern was hung up at the mast-head instead
of the streamer, and they came to within a gunshot of the shore. Dantes
noticed that the captain of The Young Amelia had, as he neared the land,
mounted two small culverins, which, without making much noise, can throw
a four ounce ball a thousand paces or so.
But on this occasion the precaution was superfluous, and everything
proceeded with the utmost smoothness and politeness. Four shallops came
off with very little noise alongside the lugger, which, no doubt, in
acknowledgement of the compliment, lowered her own shallop into the sea,
and the five boats worked so well that by two o'clock in the morning
all the cargo was out of The Young Amelia and on terra firma. The same
night, such a man of regularity was the patron of The Young Amelia, the
profits were divided, and each man had a hundred Tuscan livres, or about
eighty francs. But the voyage was not ended. They turned the bowsprit
towards Sardinia, where they intended to take in a cargo, which was to
replace what had been discharged. The second operation was as successful
as the first, The Young Amelia was in luck. This new cargo was destined
for the coast of the Duchy of Lucca, and consisted almost entirely of
Havana cigars, sherry, and Malaga wines.
There they had a bit of a skirmish in getting rid of the duties; the
excise was, in truth, the everlasting enemy of the patron of The Young
Amelia. A customs officer was laid low, and two sailors wounded; Dantes
was one of the latter, a ball having touched him in the left shoulder.
Dantes was almost glad of this affray, and almost pleased at being
wounded, for they were rude lessons which taught him with what eye he
could view danger, and with what endurance he could bear suffering. He
had contemplated danger with a smile, and when wounded had exclaimed
with the great philosopher, "Pain, thou art not an evil." He had,
moreover, looked upon the customs officer wounded to death, and, whether
from heat of blood produced by the encounter, or the chill of human
sentiment, this sight had made but slight impression upon him. Dantes
was on the way he desired to follow, and was moving towards the end
he wished to achieve; his heart was in a fair way of petrifying in his
bosom. Jacopo, seeing him fall, had believed him killed, and rushing
towards him raised him up, and then attended to him with all the
kindness of a devoted comrade.
This world was not then so good as Doctor Pangloss believed it, neither
was it so wicked as Dantes thought it, since this man, who had nothing
to expect from his comrade but the inheritance of his share of
the prize-money, manifested so much sorrow when he saw him fall.
Fortunately, as we have said, Edmond was only wounded, and with certain
herbs gathered at certain seasons, and sold to the smugglers by the
old Sardinian women, the wound soon closed. Edmond then resolved to
try Jacopo, and offered him in return for his attention a share of his
prize-money, but Jacopo refused it indignantly.
As a result of the sympathetic devotion which Jacopo had from the
first bestowed on Edmond, the latter was moved to a certain degree of
affection. But this sufficed for Jacopo, who instinctively felt that
Edmond had a right to superiority of position--a superiority which
Edmond had concealed from all others. And from this time the kindness
which Edmond showed him was enough for the brave seaman.
Then in the long days on board ship, when the vessel, gliding on with
security over the azure sea, required no care but the hand of the
helmsman, thanks to the favorable winds that swelled her sails, Edmond,
with a chart in his hand, became the instructor of Jacopo, as the poor
Abbe Faria had been his tutor. He pointed out to him the bearings of the
coast, explained to him the variations of the compass, and taught him to
read in that vast book opened over our heads which they call heaven,
and where God writes in azure with letters of diamonds. And when Jacopo
inquired of him, "What is the use of teaching all these things to a
poor sailor like me?" Edmond replied, "Who knows? You may one day be the
captain of a vessel. Your fellow-countryman, Bonaparte, became emperor."
We had forgotten to say that Jacopo was a Corsican.
Two months and a half elapsed in these trips, and Edmond had become
as skilful a coaster as he had been a hardy seaman; he had formed an
acquaintance with all the smugglers on the coast, and learned all the
Masonic signs by which these half pirates recognize each other. He had
passed and re-passed his Island of Monte Cristo twenty times, but not
once had he found an opportunity of landing there. He then formed a
resolution. As soon as his engagement with the patron of The Young
Amelia ended, he would hire a small vessel on his own account--for in
his several voyages he had amassed a hundred piastres--and under some
pretext land at the Island of Monte Cristo. Then he would be free to
make his researches, not perhaps entirely at liberty, for he would be
doubtless watched by those who accompanied him. But in this world we
must risk something. Prison had made Edmond prudent, and he was desirous
of running no risk whatever. But in vain did he rack his imagination;
fertile as it was, he could not devise any plan for reaching the island
without companionship.
Dantes was tossed about on these doubts and wishes, when the patron, who
had great confidence in him, and was very desirous of retaining him in
his service, took him by the arm one evening and led him to a tavern
on the Via del' Oglio, where the leading smugglers of Leghorn used
to congregate and discuss affairs connected with their trade. Already
Dantes had visited this maritime Bourse two or three times, and seeing
all these hardy free-traders, who supplied the whole coast for nearly
two hundred leagues in extent, he had asked himself what power might
not that man attain who should give the impulse of his will to all these
contrary and diverging minds. This time it was a great matter that was
under discussion, connected with a vessel laden with Turkey carpets,
stuffs of the Levant, and cashmeres. It was necessary to find some
neutral ground on which an exchange could be made, and then to try and
land these goods on the coast of France. If the venture was successful
the profit would be enormous, there would be a gain of fifty or sixty
piastres each for the crew.
The patron of The Young Amelia proposed as a place of landing the Island
of Monte Cristo, which being completely deserted, and having neither
soldiers nor revenue officers, seemed to have been placed in the midst
of the ocean since the time of the heathen Olympus by Mercury, the god
of merchants and robbers, classes of mankind which we in modern times
have separated if not made distinct, but which antiquity appears to have
included in the same category. At the mention of Monte Cristo Dantes
started with joy; he rose to conceal his emotion, and took a turn
around the smoky tavern, where all the languages of the known world were
jumbled in a lingua franca. When he again joined the two persons who had
been discussing the matter, it had been decided that they should touch
at Monte Cristo and set out on the following night. Edmond, being
consulted, was of opinion that the island afforded every possible
security, and that great enterprises to be well done should be done
quickly. Nothing then was altered in the plan, and orders were given to
get under weigh next night, and, wind and weather permitting, to make
the neutral island by the following day.
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