Chapter 17 - Page 2

wide and eighteen long; they were all carefully
numbered and closely covered with writing, so legible that
Dantes could easily read it, as well as make out the sense
-- it being in Italian, a language he, as a Provencal,
perfectly understood.

"There," said he, "there is the work complete. I wrote the
word finis at the end of the sixty-eighth strip about a week
ago. I have torn up two of my shirts, and as many
handkerchiefs as I was master of, to complete the precious
pages. Should I ever get out of prison and find in all Italy
a printer courageous enough to publish what I have composed,
my literary reputation is forever secured."

"I see," answered Dantes. "Now let me behold the curious
pens with which you have written your work."

"Look!" said Faria, showing to the young man a slender stick
about six inches long, and much resembling the size of the
handle of a fine painting-brush, to the end of which was
tied, by a piece of thread, one of those cartilages of which
the abbe had before spoken to Dantes; it was pointed, and
divided at the nib like an ordinary pen. Dantes examined it
with intense admiration, then looked around to see the
instrument with which it had been shaped so correctly into
form.

"Ah, yes," said Faria; "the penknife. That's my masterpiece.
I made it, as well as this larger knife, out of an old iron
candlestick." The penknife was sharp and keen as a razor; as
for the other knife, it would serve a double purpose, and
with it one could cut and thrust.

Dantes examined the various articles shown to him with the
same attention that he had bestowed on the curiosities and
strange tools exhibited in the shops at Marseilles as the
works of the savages in the South Seas from whence they had
been brought by the different trading vessels.

"As for the ink," said Faria, "I told you how I managed to
obtain that -- and I only just make it from time to time, as
I require it."

"One thing still puzzles me," observed Dantes, "and that is
how you managed to do all this by daylight?"

"I worked at night also," replied Faria.

"Night! -- why, for heaven's sake, are your eyes like cats',
that you can see to work in the dark?"

"Indeed they are not; but God his supplied man with the
intelligence that enables him to overcome the limitations of
natural conditions. I furnished myself with a light."

"You did? Pray tell me how."

"l separated the fat from the meat served to me, melted it,
and so made oil -- here is my lamp." So saying, the abbe
exhibited a sort of torch very similar to those used in
public illuminations.

"But light?"

"Here are two flints and a piece of burnt linen."

"And