The Count of Monte Cristo

Navigation Lessons

In the long days on board ship, when the vessel glides with security over the azure sea requiring no care but the hand of the helmsman, thanks to favorable winds, Edmond, with a chart in his hand, becomes the instructor of Jacopo, as the poor Abbé Faria had been his tutor. He points out to him the bearings of the coast, explains to him the variations of the compass, and teaches him to read in that vast book opened over their heads which they call heaven, and where God writes in azure with letters of diamonds. When Jacopo asks, “What is the use of teaching all these things to a poor sailor like me?” Edmond replies, “Who knows? You may one day be the captain of a vessel. Your fellow-countryman, Bonaparte, became emperor.” Jacopo is a Corsican.

The Monte Cristo Plan

Two and a half months elapse in these trips. Edmond has become as skilful a coaster as he was a hardy seaman; he has formed an acquaintance with all the smugglers on the coast and learned all the Masonic signs by which these half-pirates recognize each other. He has passed and repassed his Island of Monte Cristo twenty times, but not once found an opportunity to land there. He forms a resolution: as soon as his engagement with the patron of La Jeune Amélie ends, he will hire a small vessel on his own account—for in his several voyages he has amassed a hundred piastres—and under some pretext land at the Island of Monte Cristo. Then he would be free to make his researches, perhaps not entirely at liberty, for he would be doubtless watched by those who accompanied him. But in this world we must risk something. Prison has made Edmond prudent, and he is desirous of running no risk whatever. But in vain he racks his imagination; fertile as it is, he cannot devise any plan for reaching the island without companionship.

The Tavern Conference

Dantès is tossed about on these doubts and wishes when the patron, having great confidence in him and being very desirous of retaining him, takes him by the arm one evening and leads him to a tavern on the Via del’ Oglio, where the leading smugglers of Leghorn congregate to discuss affairs connected with their trade. Dantès has already visited this maritime Bourse two or three times, and seeing all these hardy free-traders who supply the coast for nearly two hundred leagues, he has asked himself what power might not that man attain who should give the impulse of his will to all these contrary and diverging minds. This time a great matter is under discussion, connected with a vessel laden with Turkey carpets, stuffs of the Levant, and cashmeres. It is necessary to find some neutral ground for an exchange and then try to land these goods on the coast of France. If successful, the profit would be enormous—fifty or sixty piastres each for the crew. The patron of La Jeune Amélie proposes as a landing place the Island of Monte Cristo, which being completely deserted and having neither soldiers nor revenue officers, seems to have been placed in the midst of the ocean by Mercury, the god of merchants and robbers. At the mention of Monte Cristo, Dantès starts with joy; he rises to conceal his emotion and takes a turn around the smoky tavern where all the languages of the known world are jumbled in a lingua franca.

Decision to Land

When he again joins the two persons discussing the matter, it has been decided that they should touch at Monte Cristo and set out the following night. Edmond, being consulted, is of opinion that the island affords every possible security and that great enterprises to be well done should be done quickly. Nothing is altered in the plan, and orders are given to get under weigh the next night, and, wind and weather permitting, to make the neutral island by the following day.