Fate lends a hand to Dantès when the captain of the smuggling ship decides to dock at Monte Cristo and make an illegal exchange of goods with a ship from the Levant. His strategy is to remain a smuggler long enough so that he can avoid all suspicion when he finally decides to sail for Monte Cristo and claim his hidden fortune. Two and a half months pass, and Dantès becomes a skillful smuggler (for the boat which rescued him was a smuggler's ship). It is the Isle of Monte Cristo, the isle of his immense, secret fortune. His spirits brighten, though, when he suddenly sees an island appear amidst the soft pink rays of the rising sun. What has happened to his beloved Mercédès in these fourteen years? And what has happened to his father? to Danglars? Fernand and Villefort? His dark eyes flash with hatred at the thought of these last three names.

He is given trousers and a shirt and is hired on as a sailor.įourteen years have passed since Dantès entered prison as a handsome young stripling of nineteen. He tells the captain that he is Maltese, and he explains that he has a six-inch beard and foot-long hair because of a vow that he made to Our Lady of Piedigrotta. Then, in almost disbelief, he sees a single-masted Genoese ship approaching, and snatching up a cap from one of the drowned crew of the fishing ship, he hails the tartan and is taken aboard. Briefly, he wakes long enough to see a small fishing boat smashed against the rocks, its crew lost. Finally, however, Dantès is able to reach the small island of Tiboulen, where, exhausted, he falls asleep on its jagged, rocky shoreline.

The waves around him churn and rise like phantoms. Stunned and almost suffocating, Dantès manages to rip open the shroud-sack with a knife, and then he cuts himself free from the cannon ball that is tied around his feet.

Last line of the count of monte cristo