Renewed Engagement
The captain of La Jeune Amélie, eager to retain a man of such value, offers to advance Edmond funds from future profits. After completing his transformation at the barber, Dantès purchases a complete sailor’s costume—white trousers, a striped shirt, and a cap. Appearing before the captain in this neat attire, having returned the borrowed shirt and trousers to Jacopo, Edmond looks nothing like the man with thick matted beard, seaweed-tangled hair, and seabrine-soaked body who had been picked up naked and nearly drowned. Attracted by his prepossessing appearance, the captain renews his offers of engagement, but Dantès, with his own projects, agrees only for three months.
First Smuggling Success
La Jeune Amélie* has a very active crew, very obedient to their captain, who loses as little time as possible. Scarce a week at Leghorn before the hold fills with printed muslins, contraband cottons, English powder, and tobacco on which the excise has forgotten to put its mark. The master is to get all this out of Leghorn free of duties and land it on the shores of Corsica, where certain speculators will forward the cargo to France.
Voyage to Corsica
They sail, and Edmond is again cleaving the azure sea that had been the first horizon of his youth, which he had so often dreamed of in prison. He leaves Gorgone on his right and La Pianosa on his left, voyaging toward the country of Paoli and Napoleon.
Sighting Monte Cristo
The next morning, going on deck at his usual early hour, the patron finds Dantès leaning against the bulwarks, gazing with intense earnestness at a pile of granite rocks that the rising sun tinges with rosy light. It is the Island of Monte Cristo. La Jeune Amélie passes three-quarters of a league to larboard and continues toward Corsica. Dantès thinks as they pass so closely that he has only to leap into the sea and in half an hour be at the promised land. But what could he do without instruments to discover the treasure, without arms to defend himself? What would the sailors and patron think? He must wait. Fortunately, Dantès has learned how to wait—he waited fourteen years for his liberty and can wait six months or a year for wealth. The letter of Cardinal Spada remains singularly circumstantial in his memory.
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