Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 2).djvu/68

48 "The devil! that is quite another thing; rather a long time too."

"But who will say your excellency has been to Monte-Cristo?"

"Oh, I shall not," cried Franz.

"Nor I, nor I," chorused the sailors.

"Then steer for Monte-Cristo."

The captain gave his orders, the helm was put up, and the bark was soon sailing in the direction of the island. Franz waited until all was finished, and when the sail was filled, and the four sailors had taken their places,—three forward and one at the helm,—he resumed the conversation.

"Graetano," said he to the captain, "you tell me Monte-Cristo serves as a refuge for pirates, who are, it seems to me, a very different kind of game from the goats."

"Yes, your excellency; and it is true."

"I knew there were smugglers, but I thought that since the capture of Algiers, and the destruction of the regency, pirates only existed in the romances of Cooper and Captain Marryat."

"Your excellency is mistaken; there are pirates, like the bandits who were believed to have been exterminated by Pope Leo XII., and who yet every day rob travelers at the gates of Rome. Has not your excellency heard that the French chargé d'affaires was robbed six months ago within five hundred paces of Velletri?"

"Oh, yes, I heard that."

"Well, then, if, like us, your excellency lived at Leghorn, you would hear, from time to time, that a little merchant vessel, or an English yacht that was expected at Bastia, at Porto Ferrajo, or at Civita Vecchia, has not arrived. No one knows what has become of it, but, doubtless, it has struck on a rock and foundered. Now, this rock it has met has been a long and narrow boat, manned by six or eight men, who have surprised and plundered it, some dark and stormy night, near some desert and gloomy isle, as bandits plunder a carriage at the corner of a wood."

"But," asked Franz, who lay wrapped in his cloak at the bottom of the bark, "why do not those who have been plundered complain to the French, Sardinian, or Tuscan governments!"

"Why?" said Gaetano, with a smile.

"Yes, why?

"Because, in the first place, they transfer from the vessel to their own boat whatever they think worth taking; then they bind the crew hand and foot, they attach to every one's neck a four-and-twenty-pound ball, a large hole is pierced in the vessel's bottom, and then they leave her. At the end of ten minutes the vessel begins to roll, labor, and then sink;