第二十一章: 狄波伦岛 The Island of Tiboulen_基督山伯爵

Though stunned and almost suffocated, Dantès still had the presence of mind to hold his breath and since, as we have said, his right hand was prepared for any eventuality, holding the open knife, he quickly slit the cloth and put out his arm, then his head. But then, despite his attempts to raise the cannonball, he felt himself being continually dragged down, so he bent over to search for the rope restraining his legs and, with one last despairing effort, cut it just as he was suffocating. Kicking powerfully, he rose, free, to the surface of the sea, while the weight dragged the coarse linen that had almost become his shroud down into the unknown depths.

When he emerged a second time, he was already at least fifty yards from the place where he had fallen. Above him, he saw a black, lowering sky, across which the clouds were being rapidly swept by the wind, from time to time revealing a small patch of blue from which a star shone. In front of him was a dark, roaring plain, its waves starting to seethe as at the approach of a storm; while behind him, blacker than the sea, blacker than the sky, like a threatening phantom, rose the granite giant, its sombre peak like a hand outstretched to grasp its prey. On the topmost rock was a lantern lighting two human forms.

Now he must find his bearings. Of all the islands around the Château d'If, Ratonneau and Pomègue are the nearest; but Ratonneau and Pomègue are inhabited; so is the little island of Daume. The safest landfall was therefore on either Tiboulen or Lemaire, and these two islands lie a league away from the Château d'If.

It seemed to him that the two forms were bending uneasily over the sea: the strange gravediggers must indeed have heard the cry that escaped him as he flew through the air. So Dantès dived again and swam underwater for a considerable distance; he had once been quite used to doing this and would formerly, in the cove of the Pharo, have attracted many admirers around him, who often proclaimed him the most accomplished swimmer in Marseille.

When he came back to the surface, the lantern had vanished.

Even so, it was one of these two that Dantès decided to make for: but how could he find them in the depth of the night that was deepening moment by moment around him? But then, shining like a star, he noticed the Planier lighthouse. If he swam directly towards the light, he would leave Tiboulen a little to his left; so if he were to swing a small distance to the left, he would be heading for the island.

However, as we have said, it was at least a league from the Château d'If to Tiboulen.

Beneath the heavy, bitter swell, Dantès once more heard these words in his ears, and he hurried back to the surface to plough through the waves and test whether he had indeed lost his power. He was overjoyed to find that his enforced idleness had deprived him of none of his strength and agility, and to find that he was still master of this element in which he had gambolled as a child.

Often, in their prison, Faria had told the young man, when he saw him depressed and languid: "Dantès, you must not give way to this debility. If you do manage to escape and you have failed to keep up your strength, you will drown."

In any event, fear, that swift tormentor, doubled his vigour. Rising on the crest of the waves, he listened to find out if he could hear any noise. Each time that he reached the highest point of a wave, he quickly surveyed the visible horizon and tried to penetrate the blackness. Every wave that climbed a little higher than the rest looked to him like a boat pursuing him, so he strove all the harder, which certainly took him further onward but also threatened to exhaust him more quickly.

An hour passed, during which Dantès, buoyed up by the sense of freedom that had spread through his whole body, continued to drive on through the waves on the course he had set himself.

Yet he did swim; and the fearful fortress had faded somewhat into the mists of night: he could no longer see it, but he felt it still.

The swimmer felt a shudder pass through him. He tried to float for a moment to give himself a rest, but the sea was getting heavier all the time, and he soon realized that such respite, which he had counted on having, was impossible.

"Well, so be it," he said. "I shall go on until the end… until my arms fail, until cramp seizes my whole body… and then I shall sink!" And he began to swim with the energy and urgency of despair.

Suddenly it seemed that the sky, already so dark, grew still darker and that a thick, heavy, impenetrable cloud was coming down over him. At the same time he felt a sharp pain in his knee. His imagination immediately told him that this must be the shock of a bullet and that he would instantly hear the report of a rifle; but there was no explosion. Dantès put out his hand and felt something. He brought up his other leg, and touched solid ground. It was then that he saw what it was he had taken for a cloud.

"Now, let's see," he thought. "I have been swimming for almost an hour, but with a contrary wind I must have lost a quarter of my speed. However, unless I have mistaken the direction, I must now be close to the island of Tiboulen… But what if I am mistaken?"

Twenty yards ahead of him rose a mass of oddly shaped rocks that looked like a vast fire, solidified just at the moment when it was burning most fiercely. This was the island of Tiboulen.

Dantès, with his sailor's eye, had judged rightly. He had landed on the first of the two islands, which is Tiboulen. He knew that it was a naked rock, open to the elements and shelterless. When the storm was over, he would plunge back into the sea and make for the island of Lemaire, no less deserted but wider and consequently more welcoming.

Dantès stood up and took a few steps forward, then he lay down, thanking God, on these points of granite that seemed softer to him at that moment than the softest bed. Then, despite the wind, despite the storm, despite the rain that was starting to fall, exhausted as he was, he fell asleep with that delicious sleep of the man whose body is numbed but whose mind is awake to the knowledge of unhoped-for good fortune.

After an hour, Edmond woke to the sound of an immense clap of thunder. The storm had broken in the heavens and was beating the air with its flashing flight. From time to time a shaft of lightning shot from the sky like a fiery snake, illuminating the waves and the clouds that plunged headlong after each other like the breakers of a vast abyss.

An overhanging rock did offer him some temporary shelter and he took refuge under it. At almost the same moment the storm broke in all its fury.

Edmond felt the rock beneath which he was hiding tremble and the waves, breaking against the base of the huge pyramid, reached his hiding-place. Safe as he was, in the midst of this shattering noise and these blinding flashes of light, he was seized with a sort of dizziness. He felt as though the very island were shaking beneath him and, from one moment to the next, would break its moorings like a vessel at anchor and drag him down with it into the midst of the huge maelstrom.

At this, he remembered that he had not eaten for twenty-four hours: he was hungry and thirsty. He stretched out his hands and his neck, and drank some rainwater from a hollow in the rock.

As he was lifting his head, a shaft of lightning, which seemed to crack open the heavens as far as the foot of God's radiant throne, lit up the scene. By its light Dantès saw a little fishing boat appear, like a phantom slipping from the crest of a wave into the abyss, driven forward both by the waves and by the storm, between the Ile Lemaire and the Cap Croisille, a quarter of a league away from him. A second later the phantom reappeared on the crest of another wave, coming towards him at fearful speed. Dantès wanted to shout; he looked for a scrap of cloth that he could wave in the air, to show them that they were heading for destruction, but they could see it perfectly well for themselves. In the light of another shaft of lightning the young man saw four men hanging on to the masts and the rigging, while a fifth held the bar of a broken helm.

Little by little, the wind subsided. Westwards across the sky rolled huge grey clouds which seemed to have been discoloured by the storm. Patches of blue sky reappeared with stars that shone brighter than ever. Soon, in the east, a long reddish band lit up the undulating blue-black line of the horizon. The waves danced and instantly a light sped across their crests; transforming each one into a mane of gold. Day was breaking.

At the same time he heard a fearful crack and cries of agony. Grasping his rock like a sphinx above the abyss, Dantès glimpsed the little boat in the light of another flash, broken; amid its wreckage, heads with terrified faces and hands reached for the sky. Then darkness returned; the awful scene had lasted the lifetime of a lightning bolt.

Dantès hastened down the slippery rocks, at the risk of himself falling into the sea. He looked, listened, but could hear and see nothing: no more cries, no more human struggle. Only the storm, that great act of God, continued to roar with the wind and to foam with the waves.

No doubt these men whom he saw could also see him, for desperate cries were carried across to him on the whistling gusts. Above the mast, twisted like a reed, a tattered sail was flapping rapidly over and over against the air. Suddenly, the ropes that still held it broke and it vanished, carried away into the dark depths of the sky, like a great white bird silhouetted against a black cloud.

"In two or three hours," Edmond thought, "the turnkey will go into my room, find the body of my poor friend, recognize it, look in vain for me and give the alarm. Then they will find the hole and the tunnel. They will question the men who threw me into the sea, who must have heard me cry out. Immediately, ships full of soldiers will set out in pursuit of the unfortunate fugitive, who cannot have gone far. The cannon will be fired to warn everyone on the coast not to give shelter to any man who appears, naked and starving. The spies and alguazils of Marseille will be informed: they will search the coast while the governor of the Château d'If will be searching the sea. So, hunted down at sea, hemmed in on land, what will become of me? I am hungry and thirsty, I have even lost my life-saving knife, because it hampered me while I was swimming. I am at the mercy of the first peasant who wants to earn twenty francs by handing me in. I have no strength, no ideas, no resolve left. Oh, my God, my God! Haven't I suffered enough? Now, can you do more for me than I can do for myself?"

Dantès remained motionless and silent before this great spectacle, as if seeing it for the first time. Indeed, in all the years that he had been at the Château d'If he had forgotten it. He turned back to look at the fortress, sweeping his eyes across the whole arc of the land and the sea. The dark pile rose out of the midst of the waves with the imposing majesty common to all motionless objects which seem at once to watch and to command. It must have been about five o'clock. The sea was growing calmer all the time.

"Just think!" Edmond exclaimed. "In half an hour I could have reached that ship, if I were not afraid of being questioned, recognized as an escaped prisoner and taken back to Marseille! What can I do, what can I say? What story can I invent to deceive them? These people are all smugglers, nearly pirates. Pretending to ply the coast, they scour it for booty; they would rather sell me than do a good deed for nothing.

Just as Edmond was uttering this ardent prayer, in a sort of delirium due to his exhaustion and the lightness of his head, and anxiously turning towards the Château d'If, he saw off the point of the Ile de Pomègue, its lateen sail against the horizon like a seagull skimming the waves, a little ship which only the eye of a sailor would have recognized as a Genoese tartan which appeared on the still indistinct line of the sea. It was coming from the port of Marseille and heading out to sea, driving the shining spray in front of a sharp prow that cut the sea ahead of its swelling sides.

"Let's wait…

In an instant, Dantès had made up his mind. He plunged back into the sea, swam towards the cap, put it on his head, grasped hold of one of the beams and set a course that would take him to meet up with the boat.

"But it is impossible to wait. I am dying of hunger. In a few hours I shall have exhausted the little strength that remains to me. In any case, the time of the warder's rounds is approaching; the alarm has not yet been sounded, so perhaps they will suspect nothing. I can pretend to be one of the sailors from that little boat which sank last night. This is a plausible enough story. No one will be able to contradict me, since the whole crew is drowned. Let's go."

As he said these words, Dantès looked towards the place where the little ship had foundered, and shuddered. The Phrygian cap of one of the drowned sailors was hanging from the jagged edge of a rock and near it some wreckage from the ship's hull was floating, dead beams that the sea drove against the base of the island which they hammered like powerless battering-rams.

However, the ship and the swimmer were gradually converging. As it tacked in one direction, the little ship even came to about a quarter of a league from Dantès. He rose up in the sea and waved his cap as a distress signal, but no one on the ship saw him and it went about to begin tacking in the other direction. Dantès thought of calling out, but he assessed the distance and realized that his voice would not reach the ship, but would be carried away on the sea breeze and covered by the noise of the waves.

"Now I am saved," he muttered; and the certainty gave him strength.

He soon saw the tartan which, as it was sailing almost directly into the wind, was tacking between the Château d'If and the Tour de Planier. For a moment, Dantès was afraid that, instead of hugging the coast, the little ship would head out to sea, as it would have done, for example, had it been bound for Corsica or Sardinia. But from the way it was manoeuvring, the swimmer soon realized that it intended to pass between the islands of Jarre and Calseraigne.

Now he congratulated himself for having had the foresight to lie on a beam. Weak as he was, he might not have been able to keep afloat until he reached the tartan; and, certainly, if -- as was quite possible -- the tartan passed without seeing him, he would not have been able to reach the shore.

Though he was almost certain of the course that the boat had set, Dantès looked anxiously after it until the moment when he saw it tack again and return towards him. Then he swam to meet it. But before their paths had crossed, the boat began to turn.

Immediately, summoning all his strength, Dantès rose almost out of the water, waved his cap and gave one of those pitiful cries of a sailor in distress which sound like the wailing of some genie of the sea.

This time he was seen and heard. The tartan changed course and turned towards him. At the same time he saw that they were preparing to put a boat into the sea. A moment later, the boat, rowed by two men, their oars striking the sea, was coming towards him. Dantès let go of the beam, thinking he would no longer need it, and swam vigorously to halve the distance between himself and his saviours.

The word reached him just as a wave, which he no longer had the strength to ride above, broke over his head and drenched him in spray. He reappeared, thrashing the sea with the uneven, desperate movements of a drowning man, cried out a third time and felt himself sinking into the sea, as if he still had the fatal cannonball attached to his legs. The water closed over his head and, above the water, he saw a livid sky, speckled with black.

However, he had counted on strength that had almost deserted him. Now he realized how much that piece of wood, already floating inertly a hundred yards away, had helped him. His arms began to stiffen, his legs had lost their suppleness, his movements became forced and jerky, and his chest heaved. He let out a great cry; the two rowers increased their efforts and one called out in Italian: "Coraggio!"

One last, superhuman effort brought him back to the surface of the sea. Then it seemed to him that someone had grasped him by the hair, and he saw and heard nothing more. He had lost consciousness.

As we said, he was lying on the deck. A sailor was rubbing his limbs with a woollen blanket, while another, whom he recognized as the one who had shouted "Coraggio!", was putting the lip of a gourd to his mouth. A third, an old sailor, who was both the pilot and the master, looked at him with the selfish pity that men usually feel towards a misfortune that they escaped only the day before and which might be waiting for them on the following one.

"I am a Maltese seaman," Dantès replied, in broken Italian. "We were sailing from Syracuse, with a cargo of wine and panoline. The squall last night surprised us off Cap Morgiou and we foundered against those rocks that you see over there."

A few drops of rum from the gourd stimulated the young man's heart, while the massage that the other sailor was still giving him with the wool, kneeling in front of him, gave some movement back to his limbs.

Dantès was so exhausted that his exclamation of joy was mistaken for a cry of pain.

When he next opened his eyes, he was on the deck of the tartan, which was under way again. The first thing he did was to look to see what course it was following; it was still sailing away from the Château d'If.

"Who are you?" the master asked in broken French.

"From those same rocks, on which I had the good fortune to wash up, while our poor captain's head was broken against them. Our three companions were drowned. I think I must be the only one left alive. I saw your ship and, fearing that I might have to wait a long time on that isolated desert island, I took my chances on a piece of the wreckage from our boat to try and reach you. Thank you," Dantès went on, "you have saved my life. I was exhausted when one of your sailors grasped me by the hair."

"And where have you come from?"

"Damn it!" said the sailor. "I was almost reluctant to do it. With your six-inch beard and your hair a full foot long, you look more like a brigand than an honest sailor."

"Yes," Dantès said, offering his hand. "Yes, my friend. I thank you once more."

Dantès remembered that he had, indeed, not cut his hair or shaved his beard in the whole time he was in the Château d"If.

"That was me," said a sailor with a frank and open face, framed in long side-whiskers. "It was none too soon; you were going under."

"Yes," he said. "This was a vow that I made to Our Lady of Pie della Grotta, in a moment of danger: to go ten years without cutting my hair or my beard. Today sees the expiation of my vow -- and I nearly drowned on the anniversary of it."

"Alas!" Dantès replied. "You can do what you like. The felucca on which I was sailing is lost, the captain is dead. As you can see, I escaped his fate, but totally naked: luckily I am a fairly good sailor. Put me off at the first port where you make land and I shall always find employment on some merchant vessel."

"Do you know the Mediterranean?"

"Now, what are we going to do with you?" asked the master.

"You know the best anchorages?"

"Well, how about it, patron?" said the sailor who had cried "Coraggio!" to Dantès. "If what this comrade says is true, why shouldn't he stay with us?"

"I have been sailing round it since my childhood."

"There are few ports, even the most difficult, where I could not sail in or out with my eyes closed."

"Yes, if it is true," said the master, looking doubtful. "But in the present state of this poor devil, one may promise a lot, meaning to do what one can."

This order was carried out as the first two had been and the little ship, instead of continuing to tack, began to make for the Ile de Riou, passing near it and leaving it off the starboard side, at about the distance Dantès had predicted.

"Now, make fast!"

"Whenever you wish," Dantès replied, getting up. "Where are you headed?"

"To Leghorn."

The young man sat at the helm, touched it lightly to verify that the boat was responsive; seeing that it was reasonably so, though not of the finest class, he said: "All hands to the rigging!"

"Take the helm, then," said the master, "and let's judge your skill."

"Haul away!"

The master laughed. "We'll see about that."

The four members of the crew ran to their posts, while the master looked on.

"You will be more than a hundred and twenty feet away from it."

"Because we would be heading directly for the Ile de Riou."

"Well, then, instead of tacking and wasting precious time, why don't you simply sail closer into the wind?"

The sailors obeyed quite effectively.

"I shall do even more than I have promised," said Dantès.

"Bravo!" the sailors repeated, all looking with wonder at this man whose face had recovered a look of intelligence and whose body possessed a strength that they had not suspected.

"Bravo!" said the master.

"One man is worth as much as another," said Dantès. "Give me what you give to my companions, and we shall be quits."

"Very well, then," said the master. "We can come to some arrangement if you are reasonable."

"You see," Dantès said, leaving the helm. "I might be of some use to you, at least during the crossing. If you want to leave me in Leghorn, you can do so. I shall repay you for my food up to that time, and for the clothes that you will lend me, out of my first month's pay."

"That's not fair," said the sailor who had pulled Dantès out of the sea. "You know more than we do."

"Well, you would do better to lend this poor lad a pair of trousers and a jacket, if you have any to spare; he is stark naked."

"Who the devil asked you? Is this any of your business, Jacopo?" said the master. "Every man is free to sign on at the rate which suits him."

"Correct," said Jacopo. "I was just commenting."

They brought Dantès a piece of bread, and Jacopo offered him the flask.

"Look there!" the master exclaimed. "What is going on at the Château d'If?"

"A scrap of bread and another draught of that excellent rum that you gave me. I have not eaten for a long time." It was, in fact, around forty hours.

"Do you need anything else?" asked the master.

"Hard a-port!" the captain cried, turning to the helmsman.

Dantès looked in the same direction as he put the flask to his lips, but it stopped half-way.

A second later, the sound of a distant explosion reached the tartan. The sailors looked up and exchanged glances.

"That is all I need," said Dantès. "Thank you, my friend."

Jacopo slid down the hatch and returned a moment later with the two articles of clothing, which Dantès was unspeakably happy to put on.

A little puff of white smoke, which is what had caught Dantès' attention, had just appeared above the battlements of the south tower of the fortress.

"I haven't," said Jacopo, "but I do have a shirt and trousers."

"What does that mean?" the master asked.

"Some prisoner escaped last night," said Dantès, "and they are firing the warning gun."

The master looked at the young man who, as he spoke the words, brought the flask to his lips. He drank the liquid with such calm and satisfaction that, if the master had felt the shadow of a doubt, it would immediately have been dispelled.

"This rum is devilish strong," Dantès said, wiping the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.

Pretending that he was tired, Dantès asked if he could sit at the helm. The helmsman, delighted to be relieved of his job, looked at the master, who nodded to let him know that he could hand the bar over to his new companion. From this vantage point, Dantès could remain with his eyes fixed towards Marseille.

"In any case," the master thought, looking at him, "even if it is him, so much the better. I have gained a fine man."

"What day of the month is it?" Dantès asked Jacopo, who had come to sit next to him, as they lost sight of the Château d'If.

"February the twenty-eighth," he replied.

"What do you mean, what year! Are you asking me what year it is?"

"And what year?"

"Yes," said the young man. "I am asking you the year."

"Of the year 1829," said Jacopo.

"You have forgotten what year we are in?"

"What do you expect! I was so terrified last night," Dantès said, laughing, "I nearly lost my mind. As it is, my memory is troubled. So I am asking you: this is the twenty-eighth of February, of what year?"

Fourteen years earlier, to the day, Dantès had been arrested. He had entered the Château d"If at the age of nineteen and was now emerging from it at thirty-three.

A pained smile crossed his lips: he was wondering what had become of Mercédès during this time, when she must have thought him dead. Then a spark of hatred lit up in his eyes, when he thought of the three men who were responsible for his long, cruel captivity. And once more he vowed that same, implacable oath of vengeance that he had already taken in prison against Danglars, Fernand and Villefort.

But now the oath was no longer an empty threat, because the finest fully-manned sailing ship in the Mediterranean could surely not have overtaken the little tartan which was making for Leghorn at full speed.