Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 1).djvu/274

254 his cap, and uttering a loud shout of distress peculiar to sailors, that seems the cry of some spirit of the deep. This time he was both seen and heard, and the tartan instantly steered toward him. At the same time, he saw they were about to lower the boat.

An instant after, the boat, rowed by two men, advanced rapidly toward him. Dantès abandoned the beam, which he thought now useless, and swam vigorously to meet them. But he had reckoned too much upon his strength, and then he felt how serviceable the beam had been to him. His arms grew stiff, his legs had lost their flexibility, and he was almost breathless.

He uttered a second cry. The two sailors redoubled their efforts, and one of them cried in Italian, "Courage!"

The word reached his ear as a wave which he no longer had the strength to surmount passed over his head. He rose again to the surface, supporting himself by one of those desperate efforts a drowning man makes, littered a third cry, and felt himself sink again, as if the fatal bullet were again tied to his feet. The water passed over his head, and through it the sky seemed livid. A violent effort again brought him to the surface. He felt as if something seized him by the hair, but he saw and heard nothing. He had fainted.

When he opened his eyes, Dantès found himself on the deck of the tartan. His first care was to see what direction they were pursuing. They were rapidly leaving the Château d'If behind. Dantès was so exhausted that the exclamation of joy he uttered was mistaken for a sigh.

As we have said, he was lying on the deck. A sailor was rubbing his limbs with a woolen cloth; another, whom he recognized as the one who had cried out "Courage!" held a gourd full of rum to his mouth; whilst the third, an old sailor, at once the pilot and captain, looked on with that egotistical pity men feel for a misfortune that they have escaped yesterday and which may overtake them to-morrow.

A few drops of rum restored suspended animation, whilst the friction of his limbs restored their elasticity. "Who are you?" said the pilot, in bad French.

"I am," replied Dantès, in bad Italian, "a Maltese sailor. We were coming from Syracuse laden with grain. This storm of last night overtook us at Cape Morgiou, and we were wrecked on these rocks." "Where do you come from?"

"From these rocks that I had the good luck to cling to whilst our captain was lost. My three comrades are drowned, and I am the sole survivor. I saw your ship, and fearful of being left to perish on the desolate island, I swam off on a fragment of the vessel in order to try