The Count of Monte Cristo

Back Forward Menu

Chapter 21. The Island of Tiboulen.

Dantes, although stunned and almost suffocated, had sufficient presence
of mind to hold his breath, and as his right hand (prepared as he was
for every chance) held his knife open, he rapidly ripped up the sack,
extricated his arm, and then his body; but in spite of all his efforts
to free himself from the shot, he felt it dragging him down still lower.
He then bent his body, and by a desperate effort severed the cord that
bound his legs, at the moment when it seemed as if he were actually
strangled. With a mighty leap he rose to the surface of the sea, while
the shot dragged down to the depths the sack that had so nearly become
his shroud.

Dantes waited only to get breath, and then dived, in order to avoid
being seen. When he arose a second time, he was fifty paces from where
he had first sunk. He saw overhead a black and tempestuous sky, across
which the wind was driving clouds that occasionally suffered a twinkling