‘The police of Marseilles will be on the alert by land, while the governor pursues me by sea. I am cold, I am hungry. I have lost even the knife that saved me. Oh, my God! I have suffered enough surely. Have pity on me, and do for me what I am unable to do for myself.’ As Dantès . . . uttered this prayer, he saw appear . . . a small bark, that the eye of a sailor alone could recognise as a Genoese tartane. She was coming from Marseilles harbor, and was standing out to sea rapidly, her sharp prow cleaving through the waves.
To the elegance of a lithe and slight physique had succeeded the solidity of a rounded and muscular figure. As to his voice, prayers, sobs, and imprecations had changed it, giving it now soft and singularly touching tone, and now a sound harsh and almost gruff. Moreover, being perpetually in twilight or darkness, his eyes had acquired that singular faculty of seeing objects in the night . . . Edmond smiled when he saw himself: it was impossible that even his best friend— if, indeed, he had any friend left — would have recognized him: he did not recognize himself.
The captain of The Young Amelia proposed as a place of landing the isle of Monte Cristo which, being completely deserted, and having neither soldiers nor revenue officers, seemed to have been placed in the midst of the ocean since the time of the heathen Olympus by Mercury, the god of merchants and robbers . . . At the mention of Monte Cristo Dantès started with joy, he rose to conceal his emotion, and rose to take a turn round the smoky tavern[.]
He glanced around this second grotto; it was, like the first, empty. The treasure, if it existed, was buried in this corner . . . He advanced towards the angle, and summoning all his resolution, attacked the ground with the pickaxe . . . At the fifth or sixth blow the pickaxe struck against an iron substance . . . ‘It is a casket of wood bound with iron,’ thought he . . . There was no longer any doubt that the treasure was there; no one would have been at such pains to conceal an empty chest.
The first object that attracted the attention of Dantès as he landed on the Canebière was one of the crew belonging to the Pharaon. Edmond hailed the appearance of this man, who had served under himself, as a sure test of the safe and perfect change time had worked on his own appearance; going straight towards him, he commenced a variety of questions on different subjects, carefully watching the man’s expression as he did so. But not a word or look implied his having the slightest idea of ever having seen before the individual with whom he was then conversing.
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