"Off there to the right--somewhere--is a large island," said Whitney. "It's rather a
mystery--"
"What island is it?" Rainsford asked.
"The old charts call it 'Ship-Trap Island'," Whitney replied. "A suggestive name,
isn't it? Sailors have a curious dread of the place. I don't know why. Some superstition--"
"Can't see it," remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that
was palpable as it pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.
"You've good eyes," said Whitney, with a laugh," and I've seen you pick off a
moose moving in the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can't see four
miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night."
"Nor four yards," admitted Rainsford. "Ugh! It's like moist black velvet."
"It will be light enough in Rio," promised Whitney. "We should make it in a few
days. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey's. We should have some good
hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting."
"The best sport in the world," agreed Rainsford.
"For the hunter," amended Whitney. "Not for the jaguar."
"Don't talk rot, Whitney," said Rainsford. "You're a big-game hunter, not a
philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?"
"Perhaps the jaguar does," observed Whitney.
"Bah! They've no understanding."
"Even so, I rather think they understand one thing--fear. The fear of pain and the fear
of death."
"Nonsense," laughed Rainsford. "This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be
a realist. The world is made up of two classes--the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you
and I are hunters. Do you think we've passed that island yet?"
"I can't tell in the dark. I hope so."
"Why? " asked Rainsford.
"The place has a reputation--a bad one."
"Cannibals?" suggested Rainsford "Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn't live in such a God-forsaken place. But it's gotten
into sailor lore, somehow. Didn't you notice that the crew's nerves seemed a bit jumpy
today?"
"They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even Captain Nielsen--"
"Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who'd go up to the devil himself and ask
him for a light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could get
out of him was 'This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.' Then he said to
me, very gravely, 'Don't you feel anything?'--as if the air about us was actually
poisonous. Now, you mustn't laugh when I tell you this--I did feel something like a
sudden chill.
"There was no breeze. The sea was as flat as a plate-glass window. We were drawing
near the island then. What I felt was a--a mental chill; a sort of sudden dread."
"Pure imagination," said Rainsford.
"One superstitious sailor can taint the whole ship's company with his fear."
"Maybe. But sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense that tells them when they
are in danger. Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing--with wave lengths, just as sound
and light have. An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil. Anyhow, I'm
glad we're getting out of this zone. Well, I think I'll turn in now, Rainsford."
"I'm not sleepy," said Rainsford. "I'm going to smoke another pipe up on the
afterdeck."
"Good night, then, Rainsford. See you at breakfast."
"Right. Good night, Whitney."
There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the
engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the
wash of the propeller.
Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier. The
sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him." It's so dark," he thought, "that I could
sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids--"
An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such
matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in
the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times.
Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in
the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a
blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his
pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry
came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry
was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea dosed over his
head.
He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out, but the wash from the speeding
yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and
strangle. Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the
yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain coolheadedness had come
to him; it was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his
cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew
more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The lights of the yacht became faint and ever-vanishing fireflies; then
they were blotted out entirely by the night.
Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he
swam in that direction, swimming with slow, deliberate strokes, conserving his strength.
For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he could
do possibly a hundred more and then--
Rainsford heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high screaming sound, the
sound of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror.
He did not recognize the animal that made the sound; he did not try to; with fresh
vitality he swam toward the sound. He heard it again; then it was cut short by another
noise, crisp, staccato.
"Pistol shot," muttered Rainsford, swimming on.
Ten minutes of determined effort brought another sound to his ears--the most
welcome he had ever heard--the muttering and growling of the sea breaking on a rocky
shore. He was almost on the rocks before he saw them; on a night less calm he would
have been shattered against them. With his remaining strength he dragged himself from
the swirling waters. Jagged crags appeared to jut up into the opaqueness; he forced
himself upward, hand over hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the
top. Dense jungle came down to the very edge of the cliffs. What perils that tangle of
trees and underbrush might hold for him did not concern Rainsford just then. All he knew
was that he was safe from his enemy, the sea, and that utter weariness was on him. He
flung himself down at the jungle edge and tumbled headlong into the deepest sleep of his
life.
When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the
afternoon. Sleep had given him new vigor; a sharp hunger was picking at him. He looked
about him, almost cheerfully.
"Where there are pistol shots, there are men. Where there are men, there is food," he
thought. But what kind of men, he wondered, in so forbidding a place? An unbroken front
of snarled and ragged jungle fringed the shore.
He saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was
easier to go along the shore, and Rainsford floundered along by the water. Not far from
where he landed, he stopped.
Some wounded thing--by the evidence, a large animal--had thrashed about in the
underbrush; the jungle weeds were crushed down and the moss was lacerated; one patch
of weeds was stained crimson. A small, glittering object not far away caught Rainsford's
eye and he picked it up. It was an empty cartridge.
"A twenty-two," he remarked. "That's odd. It must have been a fairly large animal
too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It's clear that the
brute put up a fight. I suppose the first three shots I heard was when the hunter flushed
his quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he trailed it here and finished it."
He examined the ground closely and found what he had hoped to find--the print of
hunting boots. They pointed along the cliff in the direction he had been going. Eagerly he
hurried along, now slipping on a rotten log or a loose stone, but making headway; night
was beginning to settle down on the island.
Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the
lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line; and his first thought was that be had come upon a village, for there were many lights. But as he forged along he
saw to his great astonishment that all the lights were in one enormous building--a lofty
structure with pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom. His eyes made out the
shadowy outlines of a palatial chateau; it was set on a high bluff, and on three sides of it
cliffs dived down to where the sea licked greedy lips in the shadows.
"Mirage," thought Rainsford. But it was no mirage, he found, when he opened the
tall spiked iron gate. The stone steps were real enough; the massive door with a leering
gargoyle for a knocker was real enough; yet above it all hung an air of unreality.
He lifted the knocker, and it creaked up stiffly, as if it had never before been used.
He let it fall, and it startled him with its booming loudness. He thought he heard steps
within; the door remained closed. Again Rainsford lifted the heavy knocker, and let it
fall. The door opened then--opened as suddenly as if it were on a spring--and Rainsford
stood blinking in the river of glaring gold light that poured out. The first thing
Rainsford's eyes discerned was the largest man Rainsford had ever seen--a gigantic
creature, solidly made and black bearded to the waist. In his hand the man held a longbarreled revolver, and he was pointing it straight at Rainsford's heart.
Out of the snarl of beard two small eyes regarded Rainsford.
"Don't be alarmed," said Rainsford, with a smile which he hoped was disarming.
"I'm no robber. I fell off a yacht. My name is Sanger Rainsford of New York City."
The menacing look in the eyes did not change. The revolver pointing as rigidly as if
the giant were a statue. He gave no sign that he understood Rainsford's words, or that he
had even heard them. He was dressed in uniform--a black uniform trimmed with gray
astrakhan.
"I'm Sanger Rainsford of New York," Rainsford began again. "I fell off a yacht. I
am hungry."
The man's only answer was to raise with his thumb the hammer of his revolver.
Then Rainsford saw the man's free hand go to his forehead in a military salute, and he
saw him click his heels together and stand at attention. Another man was coming down
the broad marble steps, an erect, slender man in evening clothes. He advanced to
Rainsford and held out his hand.
In a cultivated voice marked by a slight accent that gave it added precision and
deliberateness, he said, "It is a very great pleasure and honor to welcome Mr. Sanger
Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home."
Automatically Rainsford shook the man's hand.
"I've read your book about hunting snow leopards in Tibet, you see," explained the
man. "I am General Zaroff."
Rainsford's first impression was that the man was singularly handsome; his second
was that there was an original, almost bizarre quality about the general's face. He was a
tall man past middle age, for his hair was a vivid white; but his thick eyebrows and
pointed military mustache were as black as the night from which Rainsford had come.
His eyes, too, were black and very bright. He had high cheekbones, a sharpcut nose, a
spare, dark face--the face of a man used to giving orders, the face of an aristocrat.
Turning to the giant in uniform, the general made a sign. The giant put away his pistol,
saluted, withdrew.