Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22
The Smugglers.

Dantes had not been a day on board before he had a very
clear idea of the men with whom his lot had been cast.
Without having been in the school of the Abbe Faria, the
worthy master of The Young Amelia (the name of the Genoese
tartan) knew a smattering of all the tongues spoken on the
shores of that large lake called the Mediterranean, from the
Arabic to the Provencal, and this, while it spared him
interpreters, persons always troublesome and frequently
indiscreet, gave him great facilities of communication,
either with the vessels he met at sea, with the small boats
sailing along the coast, or with the people without name,
country, or occupation, who are always seen on the quays of
seaports, and who live by hidden and mysterious means which
we must suppose to be a direct gift of providence, as they
have no visible means of support. It is fair to assume that
Dantes was on board a smuggler.

At first the captain had received Dantes on board with a
certain degree of distrust. He was very well known to the
customs officers of the coast; and as there was between
these worthies and himself a perpetual battle of wits, he
had at first thought that Dantes might be an emissary of
these industrious guardians of rights and duties, who
perhaps employed this ingenious means of learning some of
the secrets of his trade. But the skilful manner in which
Dantes had handled the lugger had entirely reassured him;
and then, when he saw the light plume of smoke floating
above the bastion of the Chateau d'If, and heard the distant
report, he was instantly struck with the idea that he had on
board his vessel one whose coming and going, like that of
kings, was accompanied with salutes of artillery. This made
him less uneasy, it must be owned, than if the new-comer had
proved to be a customs officer; but this supposition also
disappeared like the first, when he beheld the perfect
tranquillity of his recruit.

Edmond thus had the advantage of knowing what the owner was,
without the owner knowing who he was; and however the old
sailor and his crew tried to "pump" him, they extracted
nothing more from him; he gave accurate descriptions of
Naples and Malta, which he knew as well as Marseilles, and
held stoutly to his first story. Thus the Genoese, subtle as
he was, was duped by Edmond, in whose favor his mild
demeanor, his nautical skill, and his admirable
dissimulation, pleaded. Moreover, it is possible that the
Genoese was one of those shrewd persons who know nothing but
what they should know, and believe nothing but what they
should believe.

In this state of mutual understanding, they reached Leghorn.
Here Edmond was to undergo another