Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/266

246 "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 Dantès 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 away!"

And at the same instant Dantès felt himself flung into the air like wounded bird, falling, falling, with a rapidity that made his blood curdle. Although drawn downward by the same heavy weight which hastened his rapid descent, it seemed to him as if the time were a century. At last, with a terrific dash, he entered the ice-cold water, and he did so he uttered a shrill cry, stifled in a moment by his immersion beneath the waves.

Dantès had been flung into the sea, into whose depths he was dragged by a thirty-six pound shot tied to his feet.

The sea is the cemetery of the Château d'If.