sailed;
Edmond was again cleaving the azure sea which had been the first horizon
of his youth, and which he had so often dreamed of in prison. He left
Gorgone on his right and La Pianosa on his left, and went towards the
country of Paoli and Napoleon. The next morning going on deck, as he
always did at an early hour, the patron found Dantes leaning against
the bulwarks gazing with intense earnestness at a pile of granite rocks,
which the rising sun tinged with rosy light. It was the Island of Monte
Cristo. The Young Amelia left it three-quarters of a league to the
larboard, and kept on for Corsica.

Dantes thought, as they passed so closely to the island whose name was
so interesting to him, that he had only to leap into the sea and in
half an hour be at the promised land. But then what could he do without
instruments to discover his treasure, without arms to defend himself?
Besides, what would the sailors say? What would the patron think? He
must wait.

Fortunately, Dantes had learned how to wait; he had waited fourteen
years for his liberty, and now he was free he could wait at least six
months or a year for wealth. Would he not have accepted liberty without
riches if it had been offered to him? Besides, were not those riches
chimerical?--offspring of the brain of the poor Abbe Faria, had they
not died with him? It is true, the letter of the Cardinal Spada was
singularly circumstantial, and Dantes repeated it to himself, from one
end to the other, for he had not forgotten a word.

Evening came, and Edmond saw the island tinged with the shades of
twilight, and then disappear in the darkness from all eyes but his own,
for he, with vision accustomed to the gloom of a prison, continued to
behold it last of all, for he remained alone upon deck. The next morn
broke off the coast of Aleria; all day they coasted, and in the evening
saw fires lighted on land; the position of these was no doubt a signal
for landing, for a ship's lantern was hung up at the mast-head instead
of the streamer, and they came to within a gunshot of the shore. Dantes
noticed that the captain of The Young Amelia had, as he neared the land,
mounted two small culverins, which, without making much noise, can throw
a four ounce ball a thousand paces or so.

But on this occasion the precaution was superfluous, and everything
proceeded with the utmost smoothness and politeness. Four shallops came
off with very little noise alongside the lugger, which, n