ht moved
rapidly on, though there did not appear to be sufficient wind to ruffle
the curls on the head of a young girl. Standing on the prow was a tall
man, of a dark complexion, who saw with dilating eyes that they were
approaching a dark mass of land in the shape of a cone, which rose
from the midst of the waves like the hat of a Catalan. "Is that Monte
Cristo?" asked the traveller, to whose orders the yacht was for the time
submitted, in a melancholy voice.

"Yes, your excellency," said the captain, "we have reached it."

"We have reached it!" repeated the traveller in an accent of
indescribable sadness. Then he added, in a low tone, "Yes; that is the
haven." And then he again plunged into a train of thought, the character
of which was better revealed by a sad smile, than it would have been by
tears. A few minutes afterwards a flash of light, which was extinguished
instantly, was seen on the land, and the sound of firearms reached the
yacht.

"Your excellency," said the captain, "that was the land signal, will you
answer yourself?"

"What signal?" The captain pointed towards the island, up the side of
which ascended a volume of smoke, increasing as it rose. "Ah, yes," he
said, as if awaking from a dream. "Give it to me."

The captain gave him a loaded carbine; the traveller slowly raised it,
and fired in the air. Ten minutes afterwards, the sails were furled, and
they cast anchor about a hundred fathoms from the little harbor. The
gig was already lowered, and in it were four oarsmen and a coxswain.
The traveller descended, and instead of sitting down at the stern of the
boat, which had been decorated with a blue carpet for his accommodation,
stood up with his arms crossed. The rowers waited, their oars half
lifted out of the water, like birds drying their wings.

"Give way," said the traveller. The eight oars fell into the sea
simultaneously without splashing a drop of water, and the boat, yielding
to the impulsion, glided forward. In an instant they found themselves
in a little harbor, formed in a natural creek; the boat grounded on the
fine sand.

"Will your excellency be so good as to mount the shoulders of two of our
men, they will carry you ashore?" The young man answered this invitation
with a gesture of indifference, and stepped out of the boat; the sea
immediately rose to his waist. "Ah, your excellency," murmured the
pilot, "you should not have done so; our master will scold us for it."
The young ma