chills ran through his whole body, and clutched his heart in a grasp
of ice. Then he thought he was going to die. Yet the hours passed on
without any unusual disturbance, and Dantes knew that he had escaped
the first peril. It was a good augury. At length, about the hour the
governor had appointed, footsteps were heard on the stairs. Edmond
felt that the moment had arrived, summoned up all his courage, held
his breath, and would have been happy if at the same time he could
have repressed the throbbing of his veins. The footsteps--they
were double--paused at the door--and Dantes guessed that the two
grave-diggers had come to seek him--this idea was soon converted
into certainty, when he heard the noise they made in putting down the
hand-bier. The door opened, and a dim light reached Dantes' eyes through
the coarse sack that covered him; he saw two shadows approach his bed,
a third remaining at the door with a torch in its hand. The two men,
approaching the ends of the bed, took the sack by its extremities.
"He's heavy though for an old and thin man," said one, as he raised the
head.
"They say every year adds half a pound to the weight of the bones," said
another, lifting the feet.
"Have you tied the knot?" inquired the first speaker.
"What would be the use of carrying so much more weight?" was the reply,
"I can do that when we get there."
"Yes, you're right," replied the companion.
"What's the knot for?" thought Dantes.
They deposited the supposed corpse on the bier. Edmond stiffened himself
in order to play the part of a dead man, and then the party, lighted by
the man with the torch, who went first, ascended the stairs. Suddenly he
felt the fresh and sharp night air, and Dantes knew that the mistral was
blowing. It was a sensation in which pleasure and pain were strangely
mingled. The bearers went on for twenty paces, then stopped, putting
the bier down on the ground. One of them went away, and Dantes heard his
shoes striking on the pavement.
"Where am I?" he asked himself.
"Really, he is by no means a light load!" said the other bearer, sitting
on the edge of the hand-barrow. Dantes' first impulse was to escape, but
fortunately he did not attempt it.
"Give us a light," said the other bearer, "or I shall never find what I
am looking for." The man with the torch complied, although not asked in
the most polite terms.
"What can he be looking for?" thought Edmond. "The spade, perhaps." An
exclamation of satisfaction indicated that the grave-digger had found
the object of his search. "Here it is at last," he said, "not without
some trouble though."
"Yes," was the answer, "but it has lost nothing by waiting."
As he said this, the man came towards Edmond, who heard a heavy metallic
substance laid down beside him, and at the same moment a cord was
fastened round his feet with sudden and painful violence.
"Well, have you tied the knot?" inquired the grave-digger, who was
looking on.
"Yes, and pretty tight too, I can tell you," was the answer.
"Move on, then." And the bier was lifted once more, and they proceeded.
They advanced fifty paces farther, and then stopped to open a door, then
went forward again. The noise of the waves dashing against the rocks on
which the chateau is built, reached Dantes' ear distinctly as they went
forward.
"Bad weather!" observed one of the bearers; "not a pleasant night for a
dip in the sea."
"Why, yes, the abbe runs a chance of being wet," said the other; and
then there was a burst of brutal laughter. Dantes did not comprehend the
jest, but his hair stood erect on his head.
"Well, here we are at last," said one of them. "A little farther--a
little farther," said the other. "You know very well that the last was
stopped on his way, dashed on the rocks, and the governor told us next
day that we were careless fellows."
They ascended five or six more steps, and then Dantes felt that they
took him, one by the head and the other by the heels, and swung him to
and fro. "One!" said the grave-diggers, "two! three!" And at the same
instant Dantes felt himself flung into the air like a wounded bird,
falling, falling, with a rapidity that made his blood curdle. Although
drawn downwards by the heavy weight which hastened his rapid descent, it
seemed to him as if the fall lasted for a century.
At last, with a horrible splash, he darted like an arrow into the
ice-cold water, and as he did so he uttered a shrill cry, stifled in a
moment by his immersion beneath the waves.
Dantes had been flung into the sea, and was dragged into its depths by
a thirty-six pound shot tied to his feet. The sea is the cemetery of the
Chateau d'If.
Chapter 21. The Island of Tiboulen.
Dantes, although stunned and almost suffocated, had 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 shot, 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 when it seemed as if he were actually
strangled. With a mighty leap he rose to the surface of the sea, while
the shot dragged down to the depths the sack that had so nearly become
his shroud.
Dantes waited only to get breath, and then dived, 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, across
which the wind was driving clouds that occasionally suffered a twinkling
star to appear; before him was the vast expanse of waters, sombre 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
phantom-like the vast stone structure, whose projecting crags seemed
like arms extended to seize their prey, and on the highest rock was a
torch lighting two figures. He fancied that these two forms were looking
at the sea; doubtless these strange grave-diggers had heard his cry.
Dantes dived again, and remained a long time beneath the water. This was
an easy feat to him, for he usually attracted a crowd of spectators in
the bay before the lighthouse at Marseilles when he swam there, and was
unanimously declared to be the best swimmer in the port. When he came up
again the light had disappeared.
He must now get his bearings. Ratonneau and Pomegue are the nearest
islands of all those that surround the Chateau d'If, but Ratonneau
and Pomegue are inhabited, as is also the islet of Daume. Tiboulen and
Lemaire were therefore the safest for Dantes' venture. The islands
of Tiboulen and Lemaire are a league from the Chateau d'If; Dantes,
nevertheless, determined to make for them. But how could he find his
way in the darkness of the night? At this moment he saw the light of
Planier, gleaming in front of him like a star. By leaving this light
on the right, he kept the Island 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 Chateau d'If to this island. Often
in prison Faria had said to him, when he saw him idle and inactive,
"Dantes, 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 Dantes' 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, clogged Dantes' efforts. He listened for
any sound that might be audible, and every time that he rose to the top
of a wave he scanned the horizon, and strove to penetrate the darkness.
He fancied that every wave behind him was a pursuing boat, and he
redoubled his exertions, increasing rapidly his distance from the
chateau, but exhausting his strength. He swam on still, and already the
terrible chateau had disappeared in the darkness. He could not see it,
but he felt its presence. An hour passed, during which Dantes, 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 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
recuperation.
"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 still darker and more dense,
and heavy clouds seemed to sweep down towards him; at the same time he
felt a sharp pain in his knee. He fancied for a moment that he had been
shot, and listened for the report; but he heard nothing. Then he put out
his hand, and encountered an obstacle and with another stroke knew that
he had gained the shore.
Before him rose a grotesque mass of rocks, that resembled nothing
so much as a vast fire petrified at the moment of its most fervent
combustion. It was the Island of Tiboulen. Dantes 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 utter exhaustion.
At the expiration of an hour Edmond was awakened by the roar of thunder.
The tempest was let loose and beating the atmosphere with its mighty
wings; from time to time a flash of lightning stretched across the
heavens like a fiery serpent, lighting up the clouds that rolled on in
vast chaotic waves.
Dantes had not been deceived--he had reached the first of the two
islands, which was, in fact, 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.
Edmond felt the trembling of the rock beneath which he lay; the waves,
dashing themselves against it, wetted him with their spray. He was
safely sheltered, and yet he felt dizzy in the midst of the warring 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 moorings, and bear him off into the centre
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 to rive the remotest
heights of heaven, illumined the darkness. By its light, between the
Island of Lemaire and Cape Croiselle, a quarter of a league distant,
Dantes saw a fishing-boat driven rapidly like a spectre before the power
of winds and waves. A second after, he saw it again, approaching with
frightful rapidity. 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 undoubtedly, for their cries were carried to
his ears by the wind. Above the splintered mast a sail rent to tatters
was waving; 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. Dantes
from his rocky perch saw the shattered vessel, and among the fragments
the floating forms of the hapless sailors. Then all was dark again.
Dantes ran down the rocks at the risk of being himself dashed to pieces;
he listened, he groped about, but he heard and saw nothing--the cries
had ceased, and the tempest continued to rage. By degrees the wind
abated, vast gray clouds rolled towards the west, and the blue firmament
appeared studded with bright stars. Soon a red streak became visible in
the horizon, the waves whitened, a light played over them, and gilded
their foaming crests with gold. It was day.
Dantes stood mute and motionless before this majestic spectacle, as if
he now beheld it for the first time; and indeed since his captivity
in the Chateau d'If he had forgotten that such scenes were ever to be
witnessed. He turned towards the fortress, and looked at both sea and
land. The gloomy building rose from the bosom of the ocean with imposing
majesty and seemed to dominate the scene. It was about five o'clock. The
sea continued to get calmer.
"In two or three hours," thought Dantes, "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 tunnel 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. O my God, I have
