The Count of Monte Cristo

News of the Pharaon’s Loss

A noise on the stairs—people moving hastily, half-stifled sobs—interrupts the meeting. Morrel, trembling, identifies only two people with a key to his door: Cocles and Julie. The second door opens to reveal Julie, her eyes bathed in tears. “Oh, father!” she cries, “forgive your child for being the bearer of evil tidings.” Morrel asks hoarsely if the Pharaon has gone down, and Julie silently confirms. The crew, however, has been saved by the vessel that has just entered the harbor. Morrel raises his hands to heaven with resignation: “Thanks, my God, at least thou strikest but me alone.” Moved, the phlegmatic Englishman wipes a tear. Madame Morrel enters weeping, followed by Emmanuel, and in the antechamber appear seven or eight half-naked sailors. At the sight of these men, the Englishman starts, advances a step, then restrains himself and retreats to the darkest corner of the room. The Englishman remains unidentified for now, an enigmatic figure observing the family’s grief.

Penelon’s Tale of the Wreck

Morrel asks how the disaster happened, and Emmanuel calls on the old seaman Penelon to tell the tale. Sun-bronzed Penelon advances, twirling the remains of a hat, and greets Morrel as casually as if he had just returned from Aix or Toulon. The captain, he reports, has stayed behind sick at Palma but should recover soon. Penelon then launches into his story, beginning between Cape Blanc and Cape Boyador, where a fair south-south-west breeze followed a week’s calm. Captain Gaumard, noting fast-rising black clouds, orders the crew to take in studding-sails and stow the flying jib, then to lower the mainsail as the squall hits. The vessel heels under mizzen-topsails and top-gallant sails, but Penelon warns the captain there is still too much canvas; the captain agrees they are in for a gale—or a tempest. As the wind comes on like dust at Montredon, the captain orders two reefs taken in the topsails and the top-gallant sails hauled out on the yards. The Englishman, listening, inserts a criticism—that for those latitudes he would have taken four reefs in the topsails and furled the spanker—his firm, sonorous, unexpected voice startling everyone. Penelon politely replies that they did better: they put the helm up and ran before the tempest, struck the topsails, and scudded under bare poles. The old vessel pitched heavily for twelve hours until she sprang a leak, with three feet of water rising in the hold despite desperate pumping, setting the stage for the captain’s drastic measures with his brace of pistols.