With this thought in mind, Deveroux knew what he had to do. He opened his mouth to take in as much of the salt-laden sea as he could, so as to cheat Napoleon of his destiny. As his suicidal moment came, he felt a sharp nudge on the left side of his body and felt the skin of an animal, a shark possibly, push against him. Then another, and then still another. As he opened his eyes he saw he was in the middle of a family of dolphins that were playing with him, pushing him first one way and then the other. Suddenly he found himself being pushed toward the one place he didn't want to be, the surface. He kicked and kicked, trying to get the playful animals to let him die in peace, but they still nudged him toward daylight with their hard noses.
"Damn you," he whispered as water flooded his mouth. His imagination and hallucinations then brought his end into perspective--he felt small, soft, almost gelatinlike hands grab at his tattered clothing, keeping him afloat as the dolphins chattered around him.
Deveroux gasped for air as a breaker smashed over his head. He was then pushed back to the surface by the strange, dreamlike hands of angels, with fine hair and silken soft bodies. Were these mermaids of the old tales he had listened to as a boy?
When he managed to open his eyes he saw that he had been pushed almost a mile from the point where he had struck the sea around Chateau d'If. As he weakly treaded water he saw men at the base of the fortress searching the area where he had struck the sea. He laughed for the first time in two years, a hoarse, very desperate-sounding thing. The dolphins joined in with their strange chatter and swam about him as if they were a part of the warped and twisted joke. Of the soft-handed, strangely glowing mermaids, or angels, he saw none.
The tide was taking him farther from land; he could no longer see the coastline. Even the dreaded and cursed fortress was now but a small speck on the horizon.
Floating contentedly, awaiting his new fate, he felt a sharp pain as something hit him from the side once more. As he rolled his thin body over, expecting his playful saviors, he came face-to-face with a large tree trunk, detritus of the ocean. Several of the dolphins had pushed the tree toward him. He decided he would wait for the friendly creatures to leave and then he would allow the sea to do its best. For reasons he did not fathom, the smartest animals in the ocean wanted him to live.
As he floated for hours on end, Deveroux thought about why God was sparing him. He had sent his marvelous creatures, and what Deveroux thought of as angels, to delay the death of this poor man of science for a purpose. The thoughts and memories of his family swirled in his mind as darkness came. He was being swept farther out to sea as the moon rose and set, and then dawn was upon him once more.
The sound of breakers and the coldness of the waters awoke the delirious Deveroux from a nightmare-filled sleep. He had been dreaming not of the murders of his wife or father, but of the evil men who had taken them from him. The dream seethed with hate and a desire for vengeance upon these men and their master. The force of the nightmares had kept his heart beating throughout that cold night and into the hazy morning following. Two days and two nights he floated on the gentle currents of escape.
Now, the sound of normalcy returned to replace the cries of his unjust treatment. The cawing of seabirds strangely mimicked the cries of his dream wife and father as they swooped low to investigate the floating tree trunk. The chatter of his constant companions, the dolphins, made him turn toward their sound. There, a hundred meters away, was a small island. Scanty trees broke up the outline of its rock-strewn shore and made him think for a terrifying moment that he was floating right back into the arms of Chateau d'If.
A large breaker caught his floating tree and pushed him toward what he now knew would be his final moment; the jagged rocks lining the shore came at him at a breakneck pace. However, something strange was afoot; the dolphins were taking the wave with him, jumping and chattering as they rode the wave in. As the waters crested he lost his grip on the tree and found himself being sucked through the rocks and into a cave opening revealed at the low tide of the morning hours. He hadn't seen it from his position behind the breakwater, but as soon as he was swept inside, it was cold and dank, almost as lightless as his onetime prison cell. The dolphins pushed him to a small sandy beach, chattered, then swam away, as if content they had accomplished what they set out to do. Deveroux rolled over, feeling the blessed earth beneath his tattered clothing. He collapsed and allowed a dreamless sleep to overtake him.
When Deveroux awoke, he tried to sit up. The sun outside the cave opening was setting, but in its waning death it allowed light to be cast into the interior. The former prisoner of Napoleon stood on shaky feet but collapsed. Then, more slowly, he rose, braced himself, and looked around.
He tilted his head as he saw something recognizable to his salt-encrusted eyes. Lining the interior walls were torches. He stumbled, righted himself, and approached. They were old--very old. He removed one from the hole that had been carved into the wall and hefted it. He sniffed the burned, dead end and smelled the aroma of grease--old and dry, but grease nonetheless. As he turned to look back at the cave's opening, his bare foot struck something sharp. He reached down and felt the dry sand, running his fingers though it. He hit upon an object and brought it up into the diffused sunlight. It was flint, used at one time to ignite these very torches lining the wall. With flint in hand, he brushed up the cloth-and grease-covered tip of the torch, then he knelt and started striking the flint against the stone wall.
It took him more than thirty minutes and five bloody fingers, but in the end the torch finally smoldered, then caught and flared to life. As he averted his eyes from the brightness of the flame, he saw the skeletal leg in the sand. He stepped back, brought the flame closer, and followed the leg upward. There, lying against the wall, were the remains of a man. He was tied by rope and spike to the very wall where Deveroux had found the torch. The clothing on the skeleton was old and falling apart. The corpse had several gold teeth, and even more were missing. However, there was one feature that made Deveroux look around nervously. This was the fact that this man had been slashed through the head by a sword, shattering the front of the skull. As Deveroux held the torch closer, he could see that the sword had smashed everything from the skullcap through the nasal cavity.
He shook his head and stepped back nervously. The remains had to be more than a hundred years old, in his estimation. The bloused pants, tattered vest, and red shirt made the skeleton look as if he had been a Gypsy, like the flotsam he had seen in the streets of Paris in the past. The bony fingers had rings upon each, even the thumb.
Deveroux brought the torch around and looked farther into the cave. The body was sitting upon a small shelf that seemed to wrap around the large interior. The small cove that rose and fell with the tide was up at that time, so he moved cautiously along the wall, staying high above the water.
He had traveled for what he estimated was a half mile into the bowels of the cave when he came to a huge gate. As he brought the torch to bear on the makeshift wall, he screeched a hoarse bark and stepped back as he saw two more bodies. These were not like the first, which had been tied to the wall and executed. These two skeletons were lying beneath the sharpened points of the bottom of the wall, which was imbedded in the men's torsos, crushing their ribs and spines.
As Deveroux examined the trap, he could see that the wooden device at one time had been placed into a separation in the cave's natural ceiling. These men had somehow triggered the pitfall, and been impaled by the sharpened base of the wall as it crashed down upon them. Deveroux grimaced at the horrible specter before him. The men were dressed as the first man had been. Jewelry of every kind adorned the skeletons. The one major difference--these men had been armed. One still grasped the sword he had more than likely used against the defenseless man Deveroux had discovered tied to the cave wall.