THE SMUGGLERS
Dante sat up.
'Who are you?' asked the captain of the ship, 'and why were you floating in the sea on a piece of wreckage?'
'I am a Maltese sailor,' answered Dante, 'My ship was wrecked in the storm last night and all my ship-mates were drowned. I would also have been drowned, but your sailors saved me.'
At this moment he looked back towards Marseilles and saw a small white cloud appear above the Chateau d'If. Then the faint report of a gun was heard. The captain looked back.
'Hullo! What's the matter at the Chateau d'If?' he said.
'Oh, a prisoner must have escaped and they are firing the alarm gun,' said Dante calmly. He picked up a jar of wine which the sailors had placed by his side and began to drink from it. The captain looked closely at Dante with his long hair and matted beard, and wondered whether he could be the escaped prisoner. Dante was not even looking at the Chateau d'If. He was drinking his wine.
'Well, if he is the escaped prisoner,' thought the captain to himself, 'so much the better.'
His ship was no ordinary sailing ship. It was a smugglers' ship. The captain was always afraid that any stranger coming on board might be a customs officer sent to spy on him. If Dante was the escaped prisoner, he had nothing to worry about.
Being an experienced sailor, Dante soon made himself useful on the Young Amelia, which was the name of the ship which had rescued him. Before long the captain was very pleased that he had picked him up.
The very first day on the ship, Dante made friends with a young sailor named Jacopo.
'What day of the month is it?' said Edmond to Jacopo.
'The 28th of February.'
'In what year?'
'In what year! Why do you ask me in what year?' said Jacopo.
'I was so frightened in the storm last night,' said Dante, 'that I seem to have lost my memory. What year is it?'
'Why,' said Jacopo, 'it is the year 1829!'
Dante was amazed. He had been a prisoner for exactly fourteen years. When he went into the Chateau d'If, he was nineteen years old. Now he was thirty-three.
Jacopo took Dante below the deck and showed him the place where he would sleep. Dante looked at his face in a mirror. He found that his appearance had completely changed. When he went into prison, he had been a young man with a round and happy face. Now his face was thin and long, with a stern mouth. His eyes were deep, with a burning light in them. His voice had a different tone and his complexion, which had been brown from the sun, now was deathly pale from his years of living in a dark cell. Because he had been so long in the darkness, he could see things at night which other people could not see. He now had the sight of a wolf or a hyena. Also, because he had gained so much learning from the Abbe Faria, he had a very intelligent look about him. Dante smiled. Even his best friend would not recognise him now. He could hardly recognise himself.
Dante spent many months on this smuggling ship, sailing from ports in Italy to other ports all over the Mediterranean sea. Whenever they landed their cargo at night on some lonely coast and the captain received his money for it, a good share was handed out to the crew. Dante saved his money and hoped that some day he would have enough to buy a small boat. When he had a boat, he would sail to the island of Monte Cristo to look for Faria's 'treasure'.
One day the captain of the Young Amelia arranged to take over some cargo from another smuggling ship coming from Turkey. The Turkish ship would have to land the goods in a lonely place and the Young Amelia would go there to pick them up. The captain of the Turkish ship suggested landing the cargo on the island of Monte Cristo, which was very lonely and used only by smugglers. The captain of the Young Amelia agreed.
When Dante heard of it, he could hardly wait for the Young Amelia to set sail. At last he would be able to see the island of Monte Cristo, and perhaps he would have a chance to find out whether Faria's 'treasure' really existed.
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