At this, he cautiously dragged himself to the top of a rock that lay between him and the sea, and from there he could see the tartan completing its preparations, raising anchor, hovering elegantly like a seagull about to take flight, and setting sail.
An hour later, it had completely disappeared: at least, from the place where the wounded man was lying, it had vanished from sight.
Then Dantès got up, lighter and more supple than one of the goats that prance around among the gum-trees and myrtle bushes on these savage rocks, took his gun in one hand and his pick in the other and ran to the rock which represented the end of the trail of notches that he had followed.
‘And now!’ he shouted, recalling the story about the Arab fisherman that Faria had told him: ‘and now – open, Sesame!’
XXIV
DAZZLED
The sun had travelled about one-third of its way across the sky and its invigorating May light fell on rocks that themselves seemed responsive to its warmth. Thousands of cicadas, invisible in the heather, produced a continuous, monotonous murmuring, while there was an almost metallic sound from the quivering leaves of the myrtles and the olive-trees. At each step that Edmond took on the hot granite he startled lizards, the colour of emeralds, and in the distance, on the sloping scree, he could see the wild goats that sometimes drew huntsmen to the place. In short, the island was inhabited, bustling with life; yet Edmond felt himself alone here in the hand of God. He experienced an intangible emotion, close to fear: the suspicion of daylight that makes us assume, even in the desert, that inquisitive eyes are upon us.
The feeling was so strong that, as he was about to start work, Edmond stopped, put down his pickaxe, picked up the gun and climbed once more to the top of the highest pinnacle on the island, to take a broad, sweeping look at everything around.
It must be said that what attracted his attention was not the poetical island of Corsica, on which he could almost see the individual houses, or the almost unknown Sardinia that lay beyond it, or the isle of Elba with its associations of majesty, or even the barely perceptible line on the horizon on which the sailor’s practised eye could sense the presence of proud Genoa and busy Leghorn. No: what he saw were the brig, which had left at daybreak, and the tartan, which had just set sail. The first was about to vanish in the straits of Bonifacio while the other, travelling in the opposite direction, was preparing to sail round Corsica.
The sight reassured Edmond. He began to look at the objects in his more immediate vicinity. He was on this highest point on the conical island, a slender statue on a huge pedestal. Beneath him, not a soul; around him, not a ship: nothing except the blue sea lapping round the base of the island and eternally ringing it in silver.
He hurried down, but cautiously, deeply fearing that he might, at such a moment, have a real accident like the one he had so cleverly and successfully pretended to have.
As we said, Dantès had been retracing the notches in the rocks and had seen that the route led to a sort of little creek, hidden like the bath of an antique nymph; however, it was wide enough at its entrance and deep enough at its centre for a little boat, like a speronara, to glide in there and remain hidden. So, by inductive logic, that thread which he had seen in Abbé Faria’s hands guide his mind so ingeniously through the maze of probabilities, he considered that Cardinal Spada, who had reasons for not wishing to be seen, had landed in this creek, hidden his little boat, followed the route traced by the notches and, at the end of this trail, buried his treasure.
As a result of this supposition, Dantès returned to the circular rock.
Just one thing bothered Edmond and upset this train of conclusions: how, without using considerable force, could anyone have lifted this rock, which weighed perhaps five or six milliers, on to the sort of plinth where it stood?
Suddenly, Dantès had an idea: ‘Instead of being lifted,’ he thought, ‘it must have been brought down.’ And he climbed up above the rock, to find where it had originally rested.
Here, in effect, he saw that a slight slope had been made and that the rock had slid on its own base, before coming to a halt. Another rock, as large as a normal building stone, had served as a wedge. Stones and pebbles had been carefully moved to disguise any interference, and this sort of little dry-stone wall had been covered with soil. Grass had grown there, the moss had spread, some seeds of myrtle and mastic had fallen on it – and the old rock looked as though it was soldered to the ground.
Dantès cautiously removed the soil and recognized, or thought he recognized, all the ingenuity of the work. Then he started to attack this temporary wall, which time had cemented in place, with his pickaxe. After ten minutes’ work, the wall gave way, leaving a hole large enough for his arm to pass through it.
Dantès went and cut down the strongest olive-tree that he could find, stripped it of its branches, put it through the hole and used it as a lever. But the rock was too heavy and too solidly wedged against the rock beneath it for any human force, even that of Hercules, to move it. So Dantès decided that it was the wedge itself that had to be attacked.
But how?
He looked around, like a bewildered man, and his eyes lit on a mouflon’s horn full of powder that his friend Jacopo had left him. He smiled: the infernal invention would do his work for him.
With his pick Dantès dug a shaft between the upper rock and the one on which it rested, of the kind that sappers make when they want to save effort, then stuffed it with powder; and, finally, tearing his handkerchief into strips and rolling it in saltpetre, he made a fuse.
After setting fire to this fuse, Dantès stepped back.
The explosion soon came. The upper rock was lifted for an instant by this incalculable force and the lower one burst into pieces. Through the little hole that Dantès had first made, a host of fluttering insects escaped and a huge grass snake, the guardian of this mysterious path, rolled over on its bluish coils and disappeared.
Dantès went across. The higher rock, now with nothing to rest against, was poised in space. The intrepid explorer walked all round it, chose the most unsteady point, fixed his lever in one of its cracks and, like Sisyphus, heaved with all his strength.
Already shaken by the explosion, it trembled. Dantès increased his efforts; he seemed like one of those Titans who pick up mountains in order to cast them at the chief of the gods. Finally the rock gave way, rolled, bounced, crashed and disappeared into the sea.
Where it had been was a circular area, in the midst of which could now be seen an iron ring fixed in the middle of a square paving-stone.
Dantès gave a cry of joy and astonishment. No first attempt had ever been crowned with such magnificent success.
He wanted to go on, but his legs were trembling so much and his heart beating so violently that a burning cloud passed in front of his eyes, and he had to pause.
He did so for only an instant. Then he put his lever into the ring and lifted. The stone, now unsealed, opened and revealed a sort of stairway, descending steeply into the increasingly profound darkness of a cavern. Anyone else would have rushed down it, exclaiming with joy. Dantès stopped and paled, full of doubt.
‘Come now, be a man!’ he thought. ‘We are used to adversity; let’s not be crushed by a mere disappointment, or else I shall have suffered for nothing. The heart breaks when it has swelled too much in the warm breath of hope, then finds itself enclosed in cold reality. Faria was dreaming: Cardinal Spada buried nothing in this cave, perhaps he never even came here or, if he did, Cesare Borgia, that intrepid adventurer, that dark and tireless robber, came after him, found his tracks, followed the same indications as I did, lifted this stone as I have and went down before me, leaving nothing behind him.’
For a moment he stayed, pensive and motionless, staring at the entrance leading away into the darkness.
‘Well, now that I am not counting on anything, now that I have decided it would be senseless to cling to any hope, what happens from now on will merely satisfy my curiosity, nothing
more.’ But he remained thoughtful and motionless.
‘Yes, yes, this is another adventure to be included in the chiaroscuro of that royal bandit’s life, in the web of strange events that went to make up the variegated cloth of his existence. This fabulous event must have been inexorably linked to the rest: yes, Borgia came here some night, with a blazing torch in one hand and a sword in the other, while twenty yards away – perhaps at the foot of that rock – two of his henchmen, dark and threatening, searched the earth, the sky and the sea, while their master went forward as I shall do, dispersing the darkness with his terrible flaming arm.
‘Yes, but what would Cesare have done with the men to whom he had thus revealed his secret?’ Dantès wondered.
‘The same as was done,’ Dantès said with a smile, answering himself, ‘with those who buried Alaric:1 they were buried in their turn.
‘However, if he had come,’ Dantès continued, ‘he would have found the treasure and removed it. Borgia, the man who compared Italy to an artichoke which he devoured leaf by leaf, knew too much about the value of time to waste his own in replacing that rock on its base… Let’s go!’
So he went down, smiling sceptically and muttering the final word in human wisdom: ‘Perhaps!’
Instead of the darkness that he had expected to find and a dense, fetid atmosphere, Dantès saw a gentle glow that was dispersed into bluish daylight: air and light not only came through the opening that he had just made, but also through fissures in the rocks that were invisible from the surface; through them could be seen the blue of the sky and the shivering branches of green oak-trees against it, with beneath them a tangled mass of brambles.
After spending a few seconds in this cave, where the air was warm rather than dank and sweet-smelling rather than stale, bearing the same relationship to the temperature of the island as the blue light did to the sun, Dantès could see into the furthest depths of the cavern, his eyesight (as we have previously mentioned) being accustomed to darkness. The walls were of granite, spangled and faceted so that they sparkled like diamonds.
‘Alas!’ Edmond thought, smiling. ‘These must be the treasures that the cardinal left behind him. The good abbé, when he saw these sparkling walls, was no doubt confirmed in his high hopes.’
But Dantès recalled the exact words of the will, which he knew by heart: ‘In the furthest angle of the second opening,’ it said. He had only reached the first cavern; now he must look for the entrance to the second.
He sought to get his bearings. The second cavern should naturally extend towards the centre of the island. He looked closely at the base of the rocks and tapped on the wall in which, he thought, the opening ought to be, having been disguised for reasons of security.
The pickaxe rang for a moment against the rock, sending back a flat sound, the solidity of which brought sweat to Dantès’ brow. Finally, the persistent miner thought that one section of the granite wall answered his enquiry with a rounder and deeper echo. He studied it with care and, with the instinct of a prisoner, recognized what someone else might have missed: that there must be an opening here.
However, to avoid wasted effort (having, like Cesare Borgia, learned the value of time), he tapped the other walls with his pick, tried the ground with the butt of his gun and cleared the sand in some suspicious places, until, finding nothing, he came back to the section of wall that had given this encouraging sound. He struck it again, with greater force.
Then he perceived something odd, which was that as he struck it a sort of outer coating, like the plaster that is put on walls before painting a fresco, was breaking off and falling in flakes, to reveal a whitish soft stone, like an ordinary building stone. The opening in the rocks had been closed with a different type of stone and this plaster had been spread over it, then painted to imitate the colour and lustre of granite.
Dantès struck the surface with the sharp end of the pick and it sank about an inch into the wall. This was the point at which he should dig.
Because of a mysterious property of the human organism, the more Dantès should have been reassured by this mounting proof that Faria had not been mistaken, the more his heart gave way to doubt and even to discouragement. This new experiment, which should have given him renewed strength, took away the little that remained: the pickaxe dropped towards the ground, almost slipping out of his hands; he put it down, wiped his brow and went back into the daylight, telling himself that this was because he wanted to make sure that no one was spying on him, but in reality because he needed air, feeling as though he were about to faint.
The island was deserted and the sun, at its zenith, seemed to be gazing down with its fiery eye. In the distance, little fishing boats spread their wings over a sea of sapphire blue.
Dantès had eaten nothing so far, but he could not think of wasting time on food at such a moment; he took a swig of rum and went back into the cavern with renewed vigour. The pick that had seemed so heavy had become light again and he raised it like a feather and eagerly returned to work.
After a few blows he noticed that the stones were not cemented but simply laid one on top of the other and covered with the plaster that we mentioned. He inserted the point of the pick into the gap between them, put his weight on the handle and was overjoyed to see the stone fall down at his feet. After that, he only had to pull each stone towards him with the head of the pickaxe and, one by one, they fell down beside the first.
He could have got through as soon as the gap was opened, but by a few minutes’ delay he put off certainty and clung to hope.
Finally, after a last moment of hesitation, Dantès went from the first cavern into the second. It was lower, darker and more frightening than the first. The air, which only came through the opening he had just made, had the musty smell that he had been surprised not to find in the first cavern. Before entering, he allowed the outside air time to freshen this dead atmosphere.
On the left of the opening was a deep, dark corner – though, as we have said, there was no such thing as darkness for Dantès’ eyes. He peered into the second cavern; it was as empty as the first.
The treasure, if there was one, was buried in this dark corner.
The agonizing moment had come. There were two feet of soil to dig: that was all that remained to him between the summit of happiness and the depth of despair.
He went over to the corner and, as if driven by a sudden resolve, attacked the soil boldly. At the fifth or sixth stroke of the pick, iron rang against iron.
Never had a funereal tolling or resounding death-knell produced such an effect on the person who heard it. If Dantès had found nothing, he would undoubtedly not have gone any whiter. He dug again in the same place and met with the same resistance, but not the same sound.
‘It’s a wooden casket, bound in iron,’ he said.
At that moment a shadow passed swiftly across the daylight.
Dantès dropped the pick, grasped his gun, returned through the hole and hurried out into the light. A wild goat had leapt above the main entrance to the caverns and was grazing a few yards away. It was a good opportunity to make sure of his dinner, but Dantès was afraid that the gunshot would attract someone’s attention.
He thought for a moment, then cut a branch from a resinous tree, went to light it at the still-smoking fire where the smugglers had cooked their dinner, and returned with this torch. He did not want to miss a single detail of what he was about to see.
He brought the torch down to the rough hole that he had started to make and confirmed that he had not been wrong: his blows had landed alternately on iron and wood. He planted the torch in the ground and resumed his work.
Rapidly he uncovered an area about three feet long by two feet wide and could see an oak chest bound in wrought iron. In the centre of the lid, on a silver plate that the earth had not tarnished, shone the arms of the Spada family: a sword lying vertically across an oval shield (that being the shape of Italian shields), with a cardinal’s hat above it. Dantès recognized it at
once: Faria had often drawn it for him.
Now there could be no further doubt. This was the treasure. No one would have taken such precautions to hide an empty box in this place.
In a moment he had cleared all round the casket and revealed by turns the lock in the middle, between two padlocks, and the handles at each end. The whole was worked and engraved in the manner of the time, when art made the basest metals precious.
Dantès took the casket by its handles and tried to lift it; it was impossible. He tried to open it; the lock and the padlocks were shut and these faithful guards did not seem to want to give up their treasure.
Finally he put the head of the pickaxe between the box and its lid, and pressed down on the handle. The lid groaned, then broke apart. A wide gap opened in the boards, making the iron bindings unnecessary: they too fell off, though with their tenacious fingers still grasping fragments of the boards. The box was open.
Dantès felt faint. He took his gun, loaded it and placed it beside him. At first he shut his eyes, as children do when they want to count more stars in the shimmering darkness of their imagination than they can in a still light sky; then he opened them and was dazzled.
The casket was divided into three compartments.
In the first were gold écus, gleaming with wild radiance. In the second were unpolished ingots, neatly stacked, with nothing of gold about them – except the weight and worth of gold. Finally, in the third compartment, half full, Edmond plunged his hand into fistfuls of diamonds, pearls and rubies, then let them fall in a shimmering fountain which gave off the sound of hailstones on a window-pane.
After touching, feeling and plunging his trembling hands into the gold and precious stones, Edmond got up and ran through the caves with the wild exultation of a man on the brink of madness. He leapt on to a rock from which he could see the sea, but saw nothing. He was alone, entirely alone, with this incalculable, unimagined, fabulous wealth, and it belonged to him. But was he asleep or awake? Was he inside a dream or grappling with reality?
The Count of Monte Cristo Page 31