THE RESCUE
Dante held his breath. He must act quickly or die. With his knife he ripped open the sack and tried to get his feet free from the heavy ball which was pulling him down. He struggled, but he was still sinking. His lungs seemed to be bursting. Gathering all his strength, he bent double and cut the cord around his legs. The cannon ball sank slowly to the bottom of the sea pulling with it the sack which had nearly become his shroud. Dante shot upwards. As soon as he reached the surface he gulped air into his lungs. Then he dived under the water again so that he would not be seen.
He swam about fifty yards under the water and came up again. He looked up at the Chateau d'If and could just see the guards looking down at the spot in the sea where they had thrown him. He dived under the water again and swam farther away.
When he came up the next time, he was so far away that nobody could have seen him. Now he swam on the surface. He swam on and on, and the terrible prison disappeared in the darkness. After swimming for several hours, he came to a small rocky island. No one appeared to live there, for it was quite barren.
Dante was tired out. He pulled himself out of the water and lay down in the shelter of a rock to go to sleep.
Not long afterwards, he was awakened by the noise of thunder. A storm was gathering. Soon he was being lashed by wind and rain. He crawled as far as possible under his sheltering rock, but it was not much protection.
Suddenly a very bright flash of lightning lit up his little island and the sea around it. He caught a glimpse of a fishing boat being driven rapidly towards the island. A minute later there was a cracking noise and the boat was smashed to pieces on the rocks. There were cries from the sailors and, in another flash of lightning, he saw their heads bobbing about in the frothy waters.
Dante left his shelter and ran to the water's edge, hoping to save some of the drowning men. But all he could see was the black swirling water. The fishing boat and all the men on it had disappeared. Dante sadly returned to the shelter of his rock.
When the sun came up the next morning, he went again to the scene of the wreck. The sea was dotted with broken pieces of wood and on a rock near by lay a red fisherman's cap.
Dante looked across the sea. In the distance he could now see the outline of the Chateau d'If. Very soon, they would find out that he had escaped and the alarm would be sounded. The guards would be sent all over the fortress to look for him; boats would go to the nearby islands to search for him and bring him back. It would not be long before he was found.
He looked around him. There was no place to hide. He looked again out to sea, towards the Chateau d'If. As he watched, he saw a sailing ship come out of the harbour of Marseilles. It sailed on, past the Chateau d'If and towards the island on which Dante stood. He could see that it would soon pass by on its way to the open sea.
If he could get on that ship, it would take him far away from the Chateau d'If. He could reach another country from which he could not be brought back to France---back again to prison. He decided to swim out to the ship and to pretend that he was one of the fishermen wrecked in the storm. All the sailors had been drowned, so no one could contradict him.
He quickly seized the fisherman's cap and put it on his head. He jumped into the sea, taking with him a large piece of wooden wreckage from the fishing boat. The wood helped to support him in the water. He needed its help, for he was still tired from his hours of swimming, and the restless night in the storm. He made his way slowly through the water to the place where he knew the sailing ship would pass.
Now the ship was coming closer. When it was only about a hundred yards away, Dante called out for help. The sailors heard him. They lowered a boat and rowed towards him. As they pulled him out of the water, Dante collapsed in their arms.
When he recovered consciousness, he found himself lying on the deck of the sailing ship looking up into the faces of the sailors who had rescued him.
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