The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (53 page)

With a smile in which joy and happiness mingled, he left his
hiding-place, without anyone paying any attention to him, so preoccupied were they with the events of the day, and went down one of those small flights of steps that serve as a landing-stage, crying three times: ‘Jacopo! Jacopo! Jacopo!’

At this, a boat rowed over to him, took him aboard and carried him out to a yacht, superbly fitted out, on to the deck of which he leapt with the agility of a sailor. From there, he looked once again towards Morrel who, weeping with joy, was shaking the hands of everyone in the crowd and vaguely thanking his unknown benefactor whom he seemed to be searching for in the sky.

‘And now,’ said the stranger, ‘farewell, goodness, humanity, gratitude… Farewell all those feelings that nourish and illuminate the heart! I have taken the place of Providence to reward the good; now let the avenging God make way for me to punish the wrongdoer!’

At this, he gave a sign and, as if it had been waiting just for this to set sail, the yacht headed out to sea.

Near the beginning of the year 1838, two young men belonging to fashionable Parisian society, Vicomte Albert de Morcerf and Baron Franz d’Epinay, found themselves in Florence. They had agreed that they would meet to spend that year’s carnival together in Rome, where Franz, who had lived in Italy for nearly four years, would serve as Albert’s guide.

Since visiting Rome for the carnival is no small matter, especially when one does not intend to spend the night in the Piazza del Popolo or the Campo Vaccino, they wrote to Signor Pastrini,
¹
proprietor of the Hôtel de Londres in the Piazza di Spagna, to request him to reserve a comfortable suite for them.

Pastrini replied that he could only offer them two rooms and a drawing-room
al secondo piano
, for which he would accept the modest emolument of a
louis
a day. The two young men accepted; and then, wishing to make use of the intervening period, Albert left for Naples, while Franz remained in Florence.

When he had spent some time enjoying life in the city of the Medici, when he had walked back and forth in that Eden which is known as the Casini, when he had been a guest in the houses of those splendid hosts who do the honours of Florence, he took a fancy – having already seen Corsica, the cradle of Bonaparte – to visit the island of Elba, that great staging-post in the life of Napoleon.

So one evening he untied a barchetta from the iron ring that was attaching it to the docks at Leghorn, settled himself in the stern, wrapped in his cloak, and spoke only these words to the sailors: ‘To Elba!’

The boat left the harbour like a seabird leaving its nest and the next day put Franz down in Porto Ferrajo.

He crossed the imperial island, following every trace that the giant’s footsteps had left there, and embarked at Marciana.

Two hours after leaving land, he touched it again, getting off at Pianosa, where he had been assured that he would find infinite numbers of red partridge.

The hunting proved poor. Franz killed barely a handful of thin birds and, like any huntsman who has tired himself out to no purpose, got back into his boat in rather bad humour.

‘Now, if Your Excellency wishes,’ said the boatman, ‘you could have some good hunting.’

‘Where?’

‘Do you see that island?’ the boatman said, pointing southwards and indicating a conical mass which rose out of the sea, bathed in the loveliest indigo light.

‘What is it?’ Franz asked him.

‘Monte Cristo,’ said the Livornan.

‘But I have no licence to hunt on that island.’

‘Your Excellency does not need permission, the island is deserted.’

‘Well I never,’ said the young man. ‘That’s rare: a desert island in the middle of the Mediterranean.’

‘But natural, Excellency. The island is a mass of rock; there is perhaps not so much as an acre of cultivable land on all its surface.’

‘And to whom does it belong?’

‘To Tuscany.’

‘What game will I find there?’

‘Thousands of wild goats.’

‘Which live by licking the rocks, I suppose,’ Franz said, with an incredulous smile.

‘No, by grazing on the heather, the myrtles and the gum-trees that grow between them.’

‘Where could I sleep?’

‘On the ground, in the caves, or on board in your cloak. In any case, if Your Excellency wishes, we can leave immediately the hunt is over: as Your Excellency knows, we can sail as well by night as by day and, if the wind fails, we can row.’

As Franz still had some time before he needed to meet his friend, and as he was assured of their lodgings in Rome, he accepted this proposal to compensate for the disappointment of his previous hunt. On his assent, the sailors exchanged a few words in a whisper.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘What now? Is there some problem?’

‘No,’ said the master of the boat, ‘but we must advise Your Excellency that the island has been designated contumacious.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that, since Monte Cristo is uninhabited and is sometimes used as a staging-post by smugglers and pirates from Corsica, Sardinia or Africa, if there is any evidence of our having stopped there, we shall be obliged when we return to Leghorn to spend six days in quarantine.’

‘The devil we will! That puts a different complexion on it! Six days! The same time that it took God to create the world. It’s a bit too long, my friends.’

‘But who is to say that His Excellency has been to Monte Cristo?’

‘I certainly shan’t!’ Franz exclaimed.

‘And nor will we,’ said the sailors.

‘In that case, ahoy for Monte Cristo.’

The master ordered them to change course for the island and the boat began to sail in that direction.

Franz waited for the manoeuvre to be completed and, when the new course was set, the wind was filling the sail and the four sailors had resumed their places, three at the bow, one at the rudder, he resumed his conversation with the captain. ‘My dear Gaetano,’ he said, ‘I think you just said that the island of Monte Cristo was a refuge for pirates: this is a rather different game from goats.’

‘Yes, Excellency, that’s a fact.’

‘I knew that there were such people as smugglers, but I thought that since the capture of Algiers
²
and the destruction of the Regency,
there were no pirates left outside the novels of Fenimore Cooper and Captain Marryat.’

‘Your Excellency is wrong. The same is true of pirates as of bandits, who were supposed to have been exterminated by Pope Leo XII, but who nonetheless stop travellers every day right up to the gates of Rome. Did you not hear that barely six months ago the French chargé d’affaires to the Holy See was robbed, five hundred yards from Velletri?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Now, if Your Excellency were to live in Leghorn, as we do, you would hear from time to time that a vessel laden with merchandise, or a pretty English yacht which was expected in Bastia, Porto Ferrajo or Civita Vecchia, has not made port, and that no one knows what has become of it, except that it has doubtless been wrecked on some rock. Well, the rock that it hit was a low narrow-boat, with six or eight men on board, which surprised it and pillaged it, some dark and stormy night off a wild, uninhabited island, just as bandits stop and pillage a mail coach at the entrance to a wood.’

‘But in that case,’ said Franz, still lying back in the boat, ‘why don’t the victims of these accidents complain and bring down the vengeance of the French, Tuscan or Sardinian governments on the head of the pirates?’

‘Why not?’ Gaetano asked with a smile.

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Because first of all they unload everything that is worth taking off the ship or the yacht and put it in their boat; then they tie the hands and feet of the crew, tie a cannonball round the neck of each man, make a hole as big as a barrel in the keel of the captured vessel, go back up on deck, batten down the hatches and return to their own boat. Ten minutes later, the ship starts to moan and groan, then bit by bit it founders. First one side, then the other goes under; then it rises up, then dips down again, slipping lower and lower each time. Suddenly, there is a noise like a cannon shot: that’s the air bursting the deck. Then the vessel struggles like a drowning man, getting heavier with every movement that it makes. Soon the water, trapped under pressure inside, bursts out of every opening, like the spouting liquid from the air-holes of a gigantic whale. Finally it gives its death-cry, rolls over on itself and goes under, leaving a huge funnel in the deep which spins for an instant, then gradually fills and eventually disappears altogether. The result is
that in five minutes only the eye of God Himself could see a trace of the vanished ship beneath the calm surface of the sea.

‘Now do you understand,’ he added, smiling again, ‘why the ship does not return to port and the crew does not lodge a complaint?’

If Gaetano had told him this story before suggesting their expedition, Franz would quite probably have thought twice before agreeing to it; but they were on their way, and he felt it would be cowardly to go back. He was one of those who do not court danger but who, if it presents itself, retain all their composure in confronting it; he was one of those calm-willed men who consider a risk in life as they do an opponent in a duel, measuring his movements, studying his strength, and breaking off long enough to catch their breath, but not enough to appear cowardly. Such men, assessing all their advantages with a single glance, kill with a single blow.

‘Huh!’ he continued. ‘I have crossed Sicily and Calabria, I’ve sailed around the archipelago for two months, and never yet have I seen a trace of any bandit or pirate.’

‘But I did not say that to Your Excellency in order to suggest that you should alter your plans. Your Excellency asked me a question and I replied, nothing more.’

‘Yes, my dear Gaetano, and your conversation is most interesting. So, as I want to enjoy it as long as possible, let’s go to Monte Cristo.’

However, they were quickly nearing the end of the journey. They had a fresh wind in their sails and the boat was making six or seven knots. At their approach, the island seemed to rise up out of the sea. Through the clear atmosphere of the dying rays of the sun they could see, like cannonballs in an arsenal, the mass of rocks piled up, one above the other, with between them the dark red of the heather and the light green of the trees. Though the sailors appeared perfectly calm, it was clear that they were watchful, scanning the vast mirror across which the boat was slipping, its horizon interrupted only by the white sails of a few fishing boats which hovered like seagulls on the crests of the waves.

They were scarcely more than fifteen miles from Monte Cristo when the sun began to set behind Corsica, the mountains of which rose up to their right, darkly serrated against the sky. The mass of stones rose threateningly in front of the boat, like the giant Adamastor,
³
its crest gilded by the sun which was concealed behind
it. Little by little the shadowy figure came up out of the sea and appeared to drive before it the last ray of the dying day, until at last the shaft of light was driven to the very tip of the cone, where it paused for a moment like the flaming plume of a volcano. Finally the darkness, still rising, progressively swept across the summit as it had previously swept across the base, and the island had only the appearance of a mountain, growing constantly a darker shade of grey. Half an hour later, everything was pitch black.

Luckily the sailors were in familiar waters and knew every last rock in the Tuscan archipelago; otherwise, in the midst of this blackness that had enfolded the boat, Franz might not have been altogether easy in his mind. Corsica had vanished entirely and even the island of Monte Cristo had become invisible; but the sailors seemed to have the lynx’s faculty of seeing in the dark, and the pilot, sitting at the rudder, did not show the slightest hesitation.

About an hour had passed since sunset when Franz thought he could see a dark shape, about a quarter of a mile to the left. It was so difficult to distinguish what it could be that, rather than risking the sailors’ mockery by mistaking some passing clouds for land, he said nothing. But suddenly a great light appeared on the shore: the land might resemble a cloud, but this fire was not a meteor.

‘What’s that light?’ he asked.

‘Hush!’ said the boatman. ‘It’s a fire.’

‘But you said that the island was uninhabited.’

‘I said that it had no permanent inhabitants, but I also mentioned that smugglers sometimes put in there.’

‘And pirates?’

‘And pirates,’ said Gaetano, repeating Franz’s words. ‘That’s why I gave the order to sail past the island: as you can see, the fire is behind us.’

‘But surely,’ Franz said, ‘it seems to me that this fire should reassure us rather than otherwise. People who were afraid of being seen would not have lit a fire like that.’

‘Oh, that means nothing,’ said Gaetano. ‘If you could judge the position of the island in the darkness, you would see that the fire is sited in such a way that it cannot be seen from the coast, or from Pianosa, but only from the open sea.’