XXI. L'île de Tiboulen.

XXI

The Island of Tiboulen.

Dantès, stunned and almost suffocating, nevertheless had the presence of mind to hold his breath, and, as his right hand, as we have said, prepared as he was for every eventuality, held his knife fully open, he rapidly slit the sack, freed his arm, then his head; but then, despite his movements to lift the cannonball, he continued to feel himself being dragged down; then he arched his back, seeking the rope that bound his legs, and, with a supreme effort, cut it precisely at the moment when he was suffocating; then, giving a vigorous kick, he rose free to the surface of the sea, while the cannonball dragged into its unknown depths the coarse fabric that had nearly become his shroud.

Dantès took only the time to breathe, and plunged again a second time; for the first precaution he had to take was to avoid being seen.

When he reappeared for the second time, he was already at least fifty paces from the spot where he had fallen; he saw above his head a black and tempestuous sky, across which the wind swept some rapid clouds, now and then revealing a small corner of azure heightened by a star; before him stretched the dark and roaring plain, whose waves were beginning to boil as if at the approach of a storm, while behind him, blacker than the sea, blacker than the sky, rose, like a threatening phantom, the giant of granite, whose dark peak seemed an outstretched arm to recapture its prey; upon the highest rock was a lantern lighting two shadows.

It seemed to him that those two shadows were leaning over the sea with anxiety; indeed, those strange gravediggers must have heard the cry he had uttered as he traversed the air. Dantès dived again, therefore, and made a rather long passage beneath the surface; this maneuver had once been familiar to him, and had usually drawn around him, in the cove of Pharo, numerous admirers, who had often proclaimed him the most skilled swimmer of Marseille.

When he returned to the surface of the sea, the lantern had disappeared.

He needed to get his bearings: of all the islands surrounding the Château d'If, Ratonneau and Pomègue are the nearest; but Ratonneau and Pomègue are inhabited; the same is true of the small island of Daume; the safest island was therefore that of Tiboulen or Lemaire; the Islands of Tiboulen and Lemaire are a league from the Château d'If.

Dantès nevertheless resolved to make for one of these two islands; but how to find those islands in the middle of the night, which grew thicker around him with every moment!

At that moment, he saw shining like a star the lighthouse of Planier. By steering straight for that lighthouse, he left the island of Tiboulen a little to the left; by bearing a little to the left, he ought therefore to encounter that island on his way.

But, as we have said, there was at least a league from the Château d'If to that island.

Often, in prison, Faria would repeat to the young man, seeing him dejected and idle:

"Dantès, do not give way to this softness; you will drown yourself, if you try to escape, and your strength has not been maintained."

Beneath the heavy and bitter wave, those words had come ringing in Dantès's ears; he had been eager then to rise again and cleave the billows to see if, indeed, he had lost none of his strength; he saw with joy that his forced inactivity had taken nothing from his power and agility, and felt that he was still master of the element in which, as a child, he had sported.

Moreover, fear, that swift persecutor, doubled Dantès's vigor; he listened, leaning on the crest of the waves, to see if any murmur reached him. Each time he rose to the crest of a wave, his swift glance embraced the visible horizon and tried to plunge into the thick darkness; each wave a little higher than the others seemed to him a boat in pursuit, and then he redoubled his efforts, which doubtless carried him away, but whose repetition must soon wear out his strength.

He swam on, however, and already the terrible castle had somewhat dissolved in the nocturnal vapor: he did not distinguish it but he still felt it.

An hour passed during which Dantès, exalted by the sense of freedom that had invaded his whole being, continued to cleave the waves in the direction he had set himself.

"Come," he said to himself, "it is nearly an hour that I have been swimming, but as the wind is against me I must have lost a quarter of my speed; however, unless I have mistaken my line, I cannot be far from Tiboulen now.... But, if I had mistaken it!"

A shudder passed through the whole body of the swimmer; he tried to float on his back for a moment to rest; but the sea was growing rougher and rougher, and he soon understood that this means of relief, on which he had counted, was impossible.

"Well," said he, "be it so, I will go to the end, until my arms weary, until cramps invade my body, and then I will sink to the bottom!"

And he set to swimming with the strength and impulse of despair.

Suddenly, it seemed to him that the sky, already so dark, grew darker still, that a thick, heavy, compact cloud was lowering toward him; at the same time he felt a violent pain in his knee: imagination, with its incalculable speed, told him then that it was the impact of a bullet, and that he was about to hear the explosion of the gunshot; but the explosion did not sound. Dantès stretched out his hand and felt a resistance; he drew his other leg to him and touched land; then he saw what was the object he had taken for a cloud.

Twenty paces from him rose a mass of bizarre rocks that one would take for an immense furnace petrified at the moment of its fiercest combustion: it was the island of Tiboulen.

Dantès rose, took a few steps forward, and stretched himself, thanking God, upon those granite points, which seemed to him at that hour softer than the softest bed had ever appeared to him.

Then, despite the wind, despite the tempest, despite the rain that began to fall, broken as he was with fatigue, he fell asleep with that delicious sleep of the man whose body grows numb but whose soul watches with the consciousness of an unhoped-for happiness.

At the end of an hour, Edmond awoke beneath the rumbling of an immense clap of thunder: the tempest was unchained in space and beat the air with its bursting flight; from time to time a flash of lightning descended from the sky like a serpent of fire, illuminating the waves and the clouds that rolled toward one another like the billows of an immense chaos.

Dantès, with his seaman's eye, had not been mistaken: he had landed on the first of the two islands, which is indeed that of Tiboulen. He knew it to be bare, exposed and offering not the least shelter; but when the tempest should be calmed he would take to the sea again and gain by swimming the island of Lemaire, equally arid, but broader, and consequently more hospitable.

A overhanging rock offered Dantès a momentary shelter; he took refuge there, and almost at the same instant the tempest burst forth in all its fury.

Edmond felt the rock tremble beneath which he sheltered; the waves, breaking against the base of the gigantic pyramid, recoiled as far as him; safe though he was, he was in the midst of that profound noise, in the midst of those fulgurant dazzlements, seized with a kind of vertigo: it seemed to him that the island trembled beneath him, and that from moment to moment it would, like a vessel at anchor, break its cable, and drag him into the midst of the immense whirlwind.

He then remembered that, for twenty-four hours, he had not eaten: he was hungry, he was thirsty.

Dantès stretched out his hands and head, and drank the water of the tempest in the hollow of a rock.

As he rose again, a flash of lightning that seemed to open the sky to the foot of the dazzling throne of God illuminated space; by the light of that flash, between the island of Lemaire and Cape Croisille, a quarter of a league from him, Dantès saw appear, like a specter gliding from the crest of a wave into an abyss, a small fishing vessel borne away at once by the storm and the billow; a second after, at the crest of another wave, the phantom reappeared, approaching with a frightful rapidity. Dantès wished to cry out, sought some rag of linen to wave in the air to make them see that they were being lost, but they saw him well enough themselves. By the light of another flash, the young man saw four men clinging to the masts and shrouds; a fifth held the broken rudder. Those men whom he saw saw him also doubtless, for desperate cries, borne away by the whistling gust, reached his ear. Above the mast, twisted like a reed, a tattered sail cracked in the air with hurried blows; suddenly the cords that still held it broke, and it disappeared, carried into the dark depths of the sky, like those great white birds that are outlined against the black clouds.

At the same moment a frightful cracking was heard, cries of agony reached Dantès. Clinging like a sphinx to his rock, from which he plunged upon the abyss, a fresh flash showed him the small vessel broken, and, among the debris, heads with despairing faces, arms stretched toward heaven.

Then all returned to night; the terrible spectacle had lasted the length of the lightning.

Dantès precipitated himself upon the slippery slope of the rocks, at the risk of rolling himself into the sea; he looked, he listened, but he heard and saw nothing more: no more cries, no more human efforts; the tempest alone, that great thing of God, continued to roar with the winds and to foam with the waves.

Little by little, the wind fell; the sky rolled toward the west heavy gray clouds, and, so to speak, faded by the storm; the azure reappeared with stars more scintillating than ever; soon, toward the east, a long reddish band traced upon the horizon undulations of a blue-black; the waves bounded, a sudden gleam ran over their crests and changed their foamy crests into manes of gold.

It was day.

Dantès remained motionless and mute before that great spectacle, as if he saw it for the first time. Indeed, since the time he had been at the Château d'If, he had forgotten it. He turned toward the fortress, questioning at once with a long circular gaze the land and the sea.

The somber building rose from the bosom of the waves with that imposing majesty of immovable things, which seem at once to watch over and to command.

It might have been five in the morning; the sea continued to grow calm.

"In two or three hours," said Edmond to himself, "the jailer will enter my chamber, will find the corpse of my poor friend, will recognize him, will seek me in vain and will give the alarm. Then they will find the hole, the gallery; they will question those men who hurled me into the sea and who must have heard the cry I uttered. At once, boats filled with armed soldiers will run after the unhappy fugitive whom they know well is not far off. The cannon will warn the whole coast that no shelter is to be given to a man who may be met, naked and famished. The spies and constables of Marseille will be warned and will beat the coast, while the governor of the Château d'If will have the sea beaten. Then, hunted upon the water, surrounded upon the land, what will become of me? I am hungry, I am cold, I have let go even the saving knife that embarrassed me for swimming; I am at the mercy of the first peasant who wishes to earn twenty francs by delivering me up; I have no longer either strength, or idea, or resolution. O my God! my God! see if I have suffered enough, and if you can do for me more than I can do for myself."

At the moment when Edmond, in a kind of delirium occasioned by the exhaustion of his strength and the emptiness of his brain, pronounced, anxiously turned toward the Château d'If, this ardent prayer, he saw appear, at the point of the island of Pomègue, tracing its lateen sail upon the horizon, and like a gull flying skimming the wave, a small vessel that the eye of a seaman alone could recognize for a Genoese tartan upon the still half-obscure line of the sea. It came from the port of Marseille and made for the open sea, pushing the sparkling foam before its sharp prow that opened an easier road for its rounded sides.

"Oh!" cried Edmond, "to think that in half an hour I might have reached that ship if I had not feared being questioned, recognized as a fugitive and taken back to Marseille! What is to be done? what to say? what fable to invent in which they may be deceived? These people are all smugglers, half-pirates. Under pretext of coasting trade, they scour the shores; they will prefer to sell me rather than do a sterile good action.

"Let us wait.

"But to wait is impossible: I am dying of hunger; in a few hours, the little strength left me will be gone: besides, the hour of the visit approaches; the alarm is not yet given, perhaps they suspect nothing: I may pass myself off for one of the sailors of that small vessel which was broken this night. This tale will not lack likelihood; no one will come to contradict me, they are all well engulfed. Let us go."

And, as he said these words, Dantès turned his eyes toward the spot where the small vessel had broken, and shuddered. Upon the edge of a rock there had remained caught the Phrygian cap of one of the shipwrecked sailors, and very near there floated some debris of the keel, inert beams that the sea pushed and repelled against the base of the island, which they battered like impotent rams.

In an instant, Dantès's resolution was taken; he returned to the sea, swam toward the cap, covered his head with it, seized one of the beams and directed himself to cut the line that the vessel must follow.

"Now, I am saved," he murmured.

And this conviction restored his strength to him.

Soon, he perceived the tartan, which, having the wind almost ahead, was running tacks between the Château d'If and the tower of Planier. For a moment, Dantès feared lest, instead of hugging the coast, the small vessel should make for the open sea, as it would have done, for example, if its destination had been Corsica or Sardinia: but, by the way it maneuvered, the swimmer soon recognized that it wished to pass, as is the habit of vessels going to Italy, between the island of Jaros and the island of Calasereigne.

However, the vessel and the swimmer were insensibly approaching one another; in one of its tacks, the small vessel even came to about a quarter of a league from Dantès. He then raised himself upon the waves, waving his cap as a sign of distress; but no one saw him upon the vessel, which went about and began a new tack. Dantès thought of calling out; but he measured the distance with his eye and understood that his voice would not reach the ship, being borne away and covered beforehand by the sea breeze and the noise of the billows.

It was then that he congratulated himself on the precaution he had taken of stretching himself upon a beam. Weakened as he was, perhaps he could not have sustained himself upon the sea until he had rejoined the tartan; and, surely, if the tartan, as was possible, passed without seeing him, he could not have regained the coast.

Dantès, though he was almost certain of the route the vessel followed, accompanied it with his eyes with a certain anxiety, until he saw it make its tack and return toward him.

Then he advanced to meet it; but before they had joined, the vessel began to go about.

Thereupon Dantès, by a supreme effort, rose almost upright upon the water, waving his cap, and uttering one of those lamentable cries such as sailors in distress give, and which seem the plaint of some genius of the sea.

This time, he was seen and heard. The tartan interrupted its maneuver and turned its course toward him. At the same time, he saw that they were preparing to lower a boat into the sea.

An instant after, the boat, manned by two men, directed itself toward him, beating the sea with its double oar. Dantès then let the beam glide from him, of which he thought he had no further need, and swam vigorously to spare half the way to those who came to him.

However, the swimmer had counted on forces almost absent; it was then that he felt of what usefulness that piece of wood had been to him, which already floated, inert, a hundred paces from him. His arms began to stiffen, his legs had lost their flexibility; his movements became hard and jerky, his chest was panting.

He gave a great cry, the two rowers redoubled their energy, and one of them cried to him in Italian:

"Courage!"

The word reached him at the moment when a wave, which he no longer had the strength to overcome, passed over his head and covered him with foam.

He reappeared beating the sea with those unequal and desperate movements of a drowning man, gave a third cry, and felt himself sinking into the sea as if he still had the deadly cannonball at his foot.

The water passed over his head, and through the water he saw the livid sky with black spots.

A violent effort brought him back to the surface of the sea. It seemed to him then that someone seized him by the hair; then he saw nothing more, he heard nothing more; he had fainted.

When he opened his eyes again, Dantès found himself upon the deck of the tartan, which continued on its way; his first glance was to see what direction it followed: they continued to draw away from the Château d'If.

Dantès was so exhausted, that the exclamation of joy he made was taken for a sigh of pain.

As we have said, he was lying upon the deck: a sailor was rubbing his limbs with a woolen blanket; another, whom he recognized for him who had cried to him: "Courage!" was introducing the mouth of a gourd into his mouth; a third, an old seaman, who was at once pilot and master, looked at him with the selfish sentiment of pity that men in general feel for a misfortune from which they escaped the day before and which may reach them the next day.

A few drops of rum, which the gourd contained, revived the failing heart of the young man, while the friction that the sailor, kneeling before him, continued to perform with wool restored elasticity to his limbs.

"Who are you?" demanded the master in bad French.

"I am," answered Dantès in bad Italian, "a Maltese sailor; we came from Syracuse, we were laden with wine and pitch. The squall of this night surprised us at Cape Morgiou, and we were broken against those rocks that you see yonder.

"Where do you come from?"

"From those rocks where I had the good fortune to cling, while our poor captain broke his head there. Our three other companions were drowned. I think I am the only one left alive; I perceived your vessel, and, fearing to have long to wait upon this isolated and desert island, I ventured upon a fragment of our vessel to try to come to you. Thanks," continued Dantès, "you have saved my life; I was lost when one of your sailors seized me by the hair."

"It was I," said a sailor with an open and frank countenance, framed in long black whiskers; "and it was time, you were sinking."

"Yes," said Dantès, holding out his hand to him, "yes, my friend, and I thank you a second time."

"My faith!" said the sailor, "I almost hesitated; with your beard six inches long and your hair a foot long, you had more the air of a bandit than an honest man."

Dantès indeed remembered that since he had been at the Château d'If, he had not cut his hair, nor shaved his beard.

"Yes," said he, "it is a vow I had made to Notre-Dame del Pie de la Grotta, in a moment of danger, to be ten years without cutting my hair or my beard. This is the expiration of my vow, and I nearly drowned for my anniversary."

"Now, what shall we do with you?" demanded the master.

"Alas!" answered Dantès, "what you will: the felucca I sailed in is lost, the captain is dead; as you see, I escaped the same fate, but absolutely naked: fortunately, I am a good enough sailor; throw me into the first port where you touch, and I shall always find employment upon a merchant vessel."

"You know the Mediterranean?"

"I have navigated it since my childhood."

"You know the good anchorages?"

"There are few ports, even the most difficult, in which I cannot enter or from which I cannot depart with my eyes shut."

"Well, then, say, master," asked the sailor who had cried courage to Dantès, "if the comrade speaks true, who prevents him from staying with us?"

"Yes, if he speaks true," said the master with an air of doubt "but in the state the poor devil is in, one promises much, free to keep what one can."

"I shall keep more than I have promised," said Dantès.

"Oh! oh!" made the master laughing, "we shall see that."

"When you wish," resumed Dantès, rising. "Where are you going?"

"To Leghorn."

"Well, then, instead of running tacks that make you lose precious time, why do you not simply hug the wind close-hauled?"

"Because we should go straight upon the island of Rion."

"You will pass it at more than twenty fathoms."

"Take the helm, then," said the master, "and let us judge of your skill."

The young man went to sit at the helm, assured himself by a slight pressure that the vessel was obedient; and, seeing that, without being of the first fineness, it did not refuse:

"To the braces and bowlines!" said he.

The four sailors who formed the crew ran to their posts, while the master watched them do it.

"Haul!" continued Dantès.

The sailors obeyed with tolerable precision.

"And now, make fast!"

This order was executed like the two first, and the small vessel, instead of continuing to run tacks, began to advance toward the island of Rion, near which it passed, as Dantès had predicted, leaving it, to starboard, at some twenty fathoms.

"Bravo!" said the master.

"Bravo!" repeated the sailors.

And all looked, wonder-struck, at this man whose glance had recovered an intelligence and whose body had recovered a vigor far from being suspected in him.

"You see," said Dantès, quitting the helm, "that I may be of some use to you, at least during the passage. If you do not want me at Leghorn, well, you will leave me there; and, upon my first months' pay, I will repay you my keep up to then and the clothes you are going to lend me."

"That is well, that is well," said the master, "we can arrange if you are reasonable."

"One man is worth another," said Dantès; "what you give the comrades, you will give me, and all is said."

"That is not just," said the sailor who had drawn Dantès from the sea, "for you know more than we do."

"What the devil do you meddle with? Does that concern you, Jacopo?" said the master; "everyone is free to engage for the sum that suits him."

"That is just," said Jacopo; "it was a simple observation I was making."

"Well, you would do still better to lend this brave fellow, who is quite naked, a pair of trousers and a jacket, if indeed you have any to spare."

"No," said Jacopo, "but I have a shirt and a pair of trousers."

"That is all I need," said Dantès; "thanks, my friend."

Jacopo let himself slip down the hatchway, and came up again an instant after with the two garments, which Dantès put on with an ineffable happiness.

"Now, do you need anything else?" asked the master.

"A piece of bread and a second sip of that excellent rum of which I have already tasted; for it is a long time since I have taken anything."

Indeed, it was about forty hours. They brought Dantès a piece of bread, and Jacopo presented the gourd to him. "Helm to port!" cried the captain, turning toward the steersman. Dantès cast a glance the same way, raising the gourd to his mouth, but the gourd remained halfway.

"Hullo!" said the master, "what is happening at the Château d'If?"

Indeed, a small white cloud, a cloud that had attracted Dantès's attention, had just appeared, crowning the battlements of the south bastion of the Château d'If.

A second after, the noise of a distant explosion came to die aboard the tartan.

The sailors raised their heads, looking at one another.

"What does that mean?" asked the master.

"Some prisoner must have escaped this night," said Dantès, "and they are firing the alarm cannon."

The master cast a glance upon the young man, who, in saying these words, had raised the gourd to his mouth; but he saw him savor the liquor it contained with such calm and satisfaction, that, if he had had any suspicion whatever, that suspicion only crossed his mind and died at once.

"That is devilishly strong rum," made Dantès, wiping with the sleeve of his shirt his brow streaming with sweat.

"In any case," murmured the master, looking at him, "if it is he, so much the better; for I have there made the acquisition of a fine man."

Under pretext that he was tired, Dantès then asked to sit at the helm. The steersman, delighted to be relieved in his functions, consulted the master with his eye, who signed to him with his head that he might hand the helm to his new companion.

Dantès thus placed could remain with his eyes fixed toward Marseille.

"What day of the month is it?" Dantès asked Jacopo, who had come to sit near him, as the Château d'If disappeared from view.

"The 28th of February," answered the latter.

"Of what year?" asked Dantès again.

"How, of what year! You ask of what year?"

"Yes," resumed the young man, "I ask you of what year."

"You have forgotten the year we are in?"

"What would you have! I was so greatly frightened this night," said Dantès laughing, "that I nearly lost my mind; so that my memory has remained quite troubled by it: I ask you then the 28th of February of what year we are in?"

"Of the year 1829," said Jacopo.

It was fourteen years, day for day, since Dantès had been arrested.

He had entered the Château d'If at nineteen years of age; he left it at thirty-three.

A painful smile passed over his lips; he asked himself what had become of Mercédès during that time when she must have believed him dead.

Then a flash of hatred kindled in his eyes, thinking of those three men to whom he owed so long and so cruel a captivity.

And he renewed against Danglars, Fernand and Villefort that oath of implacable vengeance which he had already pronounced in his prison.

And that oath was no longer a vain threat, for, at that hour, the swiftest sailer of the Mediterranean could certainly not have overtaken the little tartan which was sailing at full canvas toward Leghorn.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”