nks
contentedly. This frequently happened. Dantes, cast from solitude into
the world, frequently experienced an imperious desire for solitude; and
what solitude is more complete, or more poetical, than that of a ship
floating in isolation on the sea during the obscurity of the night, in
the silence of immensity, and under the eye of heaven?

Now this solitude was peopled with his thoughts, the night lighted up by
his illusions, and the silence animated by his anticipations. When the
patron awoke, the vessel was hurrying on with every sail set, and every
sail full with the breeze. They were making nearly ten knots an hour.
The Island of Monte Cristo loomed large in the horizon. Edmond resigned
the lugger to the master's care, and went and lay down in his hammock;
but, in spite of a sleepless night, he could not close his eyes for a
moment. Two hours afterwards he came on deck, as the boat was about
to double the Island of Elba. They were just abreast of Mareciana, and
beyond the flat but verdant Island of La Pianosa. The peak of Monte
Cristo reddened by the burning sun, was seen against the azure sky.
Dantes ordered the helmsman to put down his helm, in order to leave La
Pianosa to starboard, as he knew that he should shorten his course by
two or three knots. About five o'clock in the evening the island was
distinct, and everything on it was plainly perceptible, owing to that
clearness of the atmosphere peculiar to the light which the rays of the
sun cast at its setting.

Edmond gazed very earnestly at the mass of rocks which gave out all the
variety of twilight colors, from the brightest pink to the deepest blue;
and from time to time his cheeks flushed, his brow darkened, and a mist
passed over his eyes. Never did a gamester, whose whole fortune is staked
on one cast of the die, experience the anguish which Edmond felt in his
paroxysms of hope. Night came, and at ten o'clock they anchored. The
Young Amelia was first at the rendezvous. In spite of his usual command
over himself, Dantes could not restrain his impetuosity. He was the
first to jump on shore; and had he dared, he would, like Lucius Brutus,
have "kissed his mother earth." It was dark, but at eleven o'clock the
moon rose in the midst of the ocean, whose every wave she silvered,
and then, "ascending high," played in floods of pale light on the rocky
hills of this second Pelion.

The island was familiar to the crew of The Young Amelia,--it was one of
her reg