Chapter 55: The Great Escape: III
Gradually, the wind began to die down. The heavy gray clouds drifted westward, revealing a star-filled sky. Soon, a ribbon of red appeared on the horizon as the waves calmed and began to sparkle with golden light.
Dawn had broken.
Dantès stood motionless, overwhelmed by the beauty of the sunrise. After fourteen years in a windowless prison cell, he’d almost forgotten that such magnificent sights existed. He turned toward the fortress that had been his hell for so long. It rose from the ocean like a monument to human cruelty, as imposing and terrible as ever.
It was about five in the morning. The sea was growing calmer by the minute.
’In a few hours,’ he thought, ’the guards will enter my cell and find my cellmate’s body. They’ll recognize him, search for me, and raise the alarm. Then they’ll discover our tunnel. The men who threw me into the sea, they heard my shout, so they’ll be questioned. After that, boats full of armed soldiers will hunt for me. They’ll fire warning cannons to make sure no one helps a naked, starving fugitive. The police in town will search on land while the prison warden pursues me by sea.’
He shivered, suddenly aware of his desperate situation. ’I’m freezing, I’m starving, and I’ve lost the knife that saved my life. God, haven’t I suffered enough? Please, help me do what I can’t do alone.’
As he finished this prayer, gazing toward the fortress, something caught his eye. A small boat with triangular sails was skimming across the water near another island, moving like a seagull hunting for fish. His experienced sailor’s eye recognized it immediately, a trading vessel from Genoa. It was leaving the harbor and heading out to sea, its sharp bow cutting cleanly through the waves.
"Oh God," Dantès whispered, "I could reach that ship in half an hour! But if they question me, discover who I am, and take me back to port..." He clenched his fists in frustration. "What story could I possibly tell? These traders are probably smugglers anyway, they’d rather sell me out than help me. I should wait for a better opportunity."
He paused, feeling his empty stomach cramping with hunger.
"But I can’t wait. I’m starving. In a few more hours I’ll be too weak to swim at all. Besides, maybe they haven’t even discovered I’m missing yet. I could pretend to be one of the sailors from that wrecked boat. There’s no one left alive to contradict my story."
As he spoke, Dantès looked toward where the fishing boat had been destroyed. His heart leaped, there was a red sailor’s cap caught on a pointed rock, and some wooden planks from the boat’s hull were floating nearby.
In an instant, his plan formed.
He dove into the water, swam to the cap, and placed it on his head. Then he grabbed one of the wooden planks and began swimming on an intercept course with the trading vessel.
"I’m saved!" he whispered to himself, and this surge of hope gave him new strength.
The ship was fighting a headwind, zigzagging between the fortress and another lighthouse. For a terrifying moment, Dantès thought it might head out to the open ocean instead of staying close to shore. But then he saw its true course, like most ships bound for Italy, it would pass between two smaller islands.
Slowly but surely, the ship and the swimming man drew closer together. When the vessel came within a quarter-mile of him, Dantès raised himself high on the waves and waved frantically. But no one aboard noticed him, and the ship changed direction again.
’Thank God I grabbed this plank,’ he thought. ’Without it, I’d never reach the ship, and I’d definitely never make it back to shore if this doesn’t work.’
Though he was fairly sure of the ship’s course, Dantès watched anxiously as it tacked back and forth. When it finally turned toward him again, he began swimming hard to close the distance. But before they could meet, the ship changed direction once more.
With a desperate effort, he launched himself half out of the water, waving his cap and shouting the distinctive call that sailors used to hail other ships.
This time, they saw him! The trading vessel immediately changed course to head straight for him, and he could see them preparing to lower a small boat.
Within minutes, a rowing boat with two men aboard was racing toward him. Dantès released his makeshift life preserver and swam hard to meet them, but he’d overestimated his remaining strength. Without the wooden plank to help him float, his arms began to stiffen and his legs felt like dead weight. He could barely breathe.
He shouted again. The two sailors rowed even harder, and one of them called out in Italian, "Courage! Hold on!"
That word reached him just as a wave he no longer had the strength to climb rolled over his head. He surfaced again, fighting with the last desperate energy of a drowning man, managed one final cry, and felt himself sinking as if the cannonball were still tied to his feet.
Water closed over his head. The sky turned gray. One last convulsive movement brought him back to the surface just as strong hands grabbed his hair. Then everything went black.
When Dantès regained consciousness, he was lying on the deck of the trading ship. His first thought was to check their direction, they were sailing rapidly away from the fortress. He was so exhausted that his cry of joy came out as barely a whisper.
A sailor was rubbing his limbs with a wool cloth to restore circulation. Another, the one who had shouted "Courage!", was holding a container of rum to his lips. The third man, clearly the captain, watched with the detached pity people feel for disasters that happened to someone else.
A few drops of rum revived him, and the massage restored feeling to his arms and legs.