Tart III.
MATHIAS SAKDOEF.
to fear. In a foreign country Count Mathias Sandorf
would have nothing to fear from the Austrian police.
There is no extradition for political refugees. But it was
not enough that they should think my life was saved. I
wished them to thiuk I was dead. No one should know
that the last fugitive from the donjon of Pisino had sel
foot on Italian soil.
" What I wished happened.    The day passed without
-adventure.    Night came.    About ten o'clock in the even-
ing I saw a light at regular intervals awav to tbe south-
west.    It was the light-house at  Brindisi.    Two hours
:afterward the steamer was just outside the harbor.
" But then before the pilot came on board, when we
were about a mile from the land, after making a parcel of
my clothes and tying them to my neck, I slipped off the
rudder chain into the sea.
"A minute afterward I had lost sight of the steamer,
whose steam-whistle then began its shrieking. In half
an hour I had reached the shore, hidden among the rocks,
resumed my clothes, and on a bed of sea-weedhad fallen
.asleep. In the morning I entered Brindisi, found one of
the humblest hotels in the place, and there awaited events
before .settling on the plan of an entirely new life.
'' Two days afterward, Pierre, the newspapers informed
mo that the conspiracy of Trieste was at an end. They
said that the search for Count Sandorfs body had been
fruitless. I was held to be deadas dead as if I had
fallen with my two companions, Ladislas Zathmar and
your, father, Stephen Bathory, in the donjon of Pisino.
"I, dead! No, Pierre, and they shall see that I am
living!"
Pierre had listened greedily to the doctor's story. He
was as deeply moved by it as if the story had been told
'him from tbe tomb. Yes! It was Count Mathias Sandorf
who thus had spoken. In the presence of him, the living
portrait of his father, his habitual coldness had gradually
abandoned him, he had revealed his real character, he had
shown himself as he really was, after years of disguise.
What he had said about the audacious voyage across the
Adriatic was true in the minutest details. It was thus that
he arrived at Brindisi, where Mathias Sandorf remained
-dead to the world.
But he had to leave Brindisi without delay. The town
is only a transfer station. People come to it merely to
embark for India or land for Europe. It is generally ex-
cept on the two d.ays of the week when the P. and 0. boats
come in.
If the doctor had no further fear for his life, it was im-
portant that his death should be believed in. Thus ho
thought on the morning after his arrival, as he was walk-
ing at the foot of the terrace, which overlooks the column
of Cleopatra, at the very spot where the old Appian Way
begins. Already he had formed his plans. Ile would go
"to the East in search of wealth and power. But to em-
bark on one of the steam-boats trading to Asia Minor among
:a crowd of passengers of all nations was not what
he wanted. He wanted some more secret means of trans-
port than he could find at Brindisi. And that evening he
;took train for Otranto.
_ In an hour and a half the train reached this town,
situated almost at the end of the heel of the Italian boot.
There, in this almost abandoned port, the doctor agreed
with the captain of a xebec departing for Smyrna. In
-the morning the xebec sailed, and the doctor saw the
light-house of Pun ta di Luca, the extreme point of Italy,
sink beneath the horizon, while on the opposite coast the
Aeroceraunian Mountains were hidden in the mist. A few
days afterward, after a, voyage without incident, Cape
Matifou at the extremity of Southern Greece was doubled
and Smyrna safely reached.
The doctor had succinctly related to Pierre this part of
his voyage, and also how he had learned from the news-
papers of the unexpected deatli of his daughter that had
left him alone in the world.
" At last," he said, " 1 was in the land of Asia Minor,
where for so many years I was to live unknown. It was
in studies of medicine, chemistry, natural science, that I
had delighted during my youth, at the schools and uni-
versities of Hungarywhere your father gained his renown
and it was to these studies that I was to trust to gain
the means of livelihood.
"I was fortunate enough to succeed, and more prompt-
ly than I had hoped, first at Smyrna, where for seven or
eight years I obtained great reputation as a physician
borne unexpected cures brought me into connection with
the richest people of those countries in which the medical
art is still in a rudimentary state. I then made up my
mind to leave the town. And like the doctors of the days
gone by, healing at the same time as I taught the art of
healing studying the almost unknown therapeutics ofthe
talebs of Asia Minor, the pundits of India, I traveled
through the whole of those provinces, stopping here a few
weeks, there a few months, called for and asked for at
Karabissar, Binder, Adaua, Haleb, Tripoli, Damas, al-
ways preceded by a renown which increased without ceas-
ing and brought me a fortune that increased with my re-
nown.                                                                                J
" But that was not enough. What I wanted was un-
bounded power, such as that possessed by the wealthy
rajahs of India, whose knowledge is equal to their wealth.
" My opportunity came.
"There was at Hans in Northern Syria a man dying of
a slow disease. No physician had been able to tell what
was the matter with him. Hence none of them knew how
to treat him. This man was Faz-Rhat, and he had occu-
pied very high posts in the Turkish Empire. He was
then forty-five years of age, and an immense fortune al-
lowed him to enjoy all the pleasures of life.
"Faz-Rhat had heard of me, for at the time my reputa-
tion was at its height. He invited me to Hans, and I ac-
cepted the invitation.
" ' Doctor,' said lie,  the half of mv fortune is yours if
you will give me back my life.'
'' ' Keep the half of your fortune,' I said. 'I will take
care of you and cure you if Heaven permits.'
"I carefully studied the malady the physicians had
abandoned. A few months at the outside was"all they had
given him to live. But I was luckv enough to diagnose
him unmistakably. For three weeks I remained with
Faz-Rhat so as to follow the effects of the treatment Ihad
prescribed. His cure was complete. When he wished to
pay me I would accept onlv what seemed to me to be rea-
sonable.    And then I left Hans.
" Three years later by an accident when hunting, Faz-
Rhat lost his life. He had no relatives whatever, and his
wil] made me the sole heir of all his possessions. Their
value was certainly not less than fifty  millions of florins.
"Thirteen years had then elapsed since the fugitive of
Pisino had taken refuge in Asia Minor. The name of
Dr. Antekirtt, although somewhat legendary, was known
throughout Europe. I had obtained the result I wished,
and now I was" ready to set to work at the obiectof my
life."
CHAPTER III.
THE     PRESENT.
" I had resolved to return to Europe, or at least to
some point on the Mediterranean. I visited the African
coast, and for a considerable sum 1 became the owner of
an important island, rich, fertile, and suitable in every
way for a small colonythis isle of Antekirtta. Here,
Pierre, I am sovereign, absolute master, king without
subjects, but with a people devoted to me body and soul,
with means of defense that will be very formidable when
I have finished them, with means of communication that
link me to different points of the Mediterranean border,
with a flotilla of such speed that I may almost say I have
made this sea my dominion!"
" Where is Antekirtta situated?" asked Pierre.
" In the neighborhood of the Syrtis Major, which has
had an evil reputation from the remotest antiquity, in the
south of the sea which the north wind makes so danger-
ouseven to modern ships, in the deepest bend of the Gulf
of Sidra, whicli cuts back into the African coast between
Tripoli and Barca."
There at the north of the group of the Syrtic Islands;,
is the island of Antekirtta. A few years before the doctor
had traveled through the Tripolitan coasts, and visited
Souz.a, the old port of Cyrene, tbe Barca country, the
towns that have replaced the old Ptolemais, Berenice,
Adrianapolis, and in a word, that old Pentapolis, formerly
Greek, Macedonian, Roman, Persian, Saracenic, and now
Arabian, and belonging to the Pachalik of Tripoli. The
chances of his vovagefor he went to a certain extent