CHAPTER XXIV
THE SECRET CAVE
HE sun had nearly reached the third of his course, and his warm and vivifying rays fell full on the rocks, which seemed themselves sensible of the heat. Thousands of grasshoppers, hidden in the bushes, chirped with a monotonous and continuous note; the leaves of the myrtle and olive trees waved and rustled in the wind. At every step that Edmond took on the burning granite, he disturbed the lizards glittering with the hues of the emerald; afar off he saw the wild goats, which sometimes attracted sportsmen, bounding from crag to crag. In a word, the isle was inhabited, yet Edmond felt himself alone, guided by the hand of God.
He felt an indescribable sensation somewhat akin to dread — that dread of the daylight which even in the desert makes us fear we are watched and observed.
This feeling was so strong, that at the moment when Edmond was about to commence his labor, he stopped, laid down his pickaxe, seized his gun, mounted to the summit of the highest rock, and from thence gazed round in every direction.
But it was not upon poetic Corsica, the very houses of which he could distinguish; nor on almost unknown Sardinia; nor on the isle of Elba, with its historical associations; nor upon the imperceptible line that to the experienced eye of a sailor alone revealed the coast of Genoa the proud, and Leghorn the commercial, that he gazed. It was at the brigantine that had left in the morning, and the tartan that had just set sail, that Edmond fixed his eyes.
The first was just disappearing in the straits of Bonifacio; the other, following an opposite direction, was about to round the island of Corsica.
This sight re-assured him. He then looked at the objects near him. He saw himself on the highest point of the cone-like isle, a statue on
279
