Within a day of boarding the ship, Dantès had figured out exactly what kind of crew he'd fallen in with. The captain of La Jeune Amélie, a sleek vessel flying under foreign colors, might not have had formal education, but he was street-smart in ways that mattered. He could speak fragments of every language you'd hear around the Mediterranean ports, from Arabic to the local dialects. This skill meant he didn't need translators, those nosy middlemen who always seemed to know too much for their own good.
It also meant he could communicate easily with anyone they encountered: other ships at sea, coastal fishing boats, or those shady characters who hung around every port, the kind of people with no official job but somehow always had money in their pockets. Dantès quickly realized he was aboard a smuggling vessel.
