The Most Dangerous Game Text

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The Well-nigh Dangerous Game

past Richard Connell (1893-1949)

Approximate Word Count: 8426

"OFF THERE to the right--somewhere--is a large island," said Whitney." It'south rather a mystery--"

"What island is it?" Rainsford asked.

"The old charts call it 'Ship-Trap Island,"' Whitney replied." A suggestive name, isn't information technology? Sailors accept a curious dread of the identify. I don't know why. Some superstition--"

"Can't see information technology," remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that was palpable as information technology pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.

"Y'all've good eyes," said Whitney, with a laugh," and I've seen you lot choice off a moose moving in the brown autumn bush at four hundred yards, merely even yous can't come across 4 miles or and so through a moonless Caribbean night."

"Nor 4 yards," admitted Rainsford. "Ugh! Information technology's similar moist black velvet."

"Information technology volition exist lite enough in Rio," promised Whitney. "We should brand it in a few days. I promise the jaguar guns have come from Purdey's. We should have some good hunting upward the Amazon. Swell 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?"

"Possibly the jaguar does," observed Whitney.

"Bah! They've no understanding."

"Even so, I rather think they understand one thing--fear. The fright of pain and the fear of death."

"Nonsense," laughed Rainsford. "This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The earth is made up of ii classes--the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are hunters. Do you think we've passed that island however?"

"I tin can't tell in the night. I hope so."

"Why? " asked Rainsford.

"The identify has a reputation--a bad one."

"Cannibals?" suggested Rainsford.

"Hardly. Fifty-fifty cannibals wouldn't live in such a God-forsaken identify. But it's gotten into sailor lore, somehow. Didn't you notice that the coiffure's fretfulness seemed a bit jumpy today?"

"They were a bit strange, at present you mention it. Even Captain Nielsen--"

"Yes, fifty-fifty that tough-minded old Swede, who'd go upward to the devil himself and inquire him for a light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could leave of him was 'This identify has an evil name amidst seafaring men, sir.' So he said to me, very gravely, 'Don't you feel annihilation?'--as if the air about us was actually poisonous. Now, you mustn't laugh when I tell you this--I did feel something similar a sudden chill.

"There was no breeze. The bounding main was equally apartment equally a plate-drinking glass window. Nosotros were drawing near the island so. What I felt was a--a mental chill; a sort of sudden dread."

"Pure imagination," said Rainsford.

"One superstitious crewman can taint the whole ship's visitor with his fear."

"Perchance. But sometimes I think sailors take an extra sense that tells them when they are in danger. Sometimes I recall evil is a tangible thing--with wave lengths, simply every bit sound and low-cal have. An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil. Anyway, I'thousand glad nosotros're getting out of this zone. Well, I think I'll plow in now, Rainsford."

"I'one thousand not sleepy," said Rainsford. "I'm going to smoke another pipe upwardly on the afterdeck."

"Good nighttime, then, Rainsford. Meet you at breakfast."

"Correct. Good nighttime, Whitney."

There was no sound in the nighttime as Rainsford saturday there but the muffled throb of the engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the launder 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'south so dark," he thought, "that I could slumber without closing my optics; the dark would be my eyelids--"

An abrupt audio startled him. Off to the correct 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 apace to the runway, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was similar trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and counterbalanced himself at that place, to get greater superlative; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his oral cavity. 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 Bounding main dosed over his caput.

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 table salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Badly he struck out with potent strokes subsequently the receding lights of the yacht, merely he stopped earlier he had swum 50 anxiety. A certain coolheadedness had come up to him; information technology was not the first time he had been in a tight place. In that location was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, merely that hazard 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; and so they were blotted out entirely past the night.

Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and adamantly he swam in that direction, swimming with slow, deliberate strokes, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the body of water. He began to count his strokes; he could do possibly a hundred more than and so--

Rainsford heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high screaming audio, the sound of an animate being in an extremity of ache 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; so it was cut short past another noise, crisp, staccato.

"Pistol shot," muttered Rainsford, swimming on.

Ten minutes of determined attempt brought another sound to his ears--the most welcome he had always 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 dark less calm he would have been shattered confronting them. With his remaining force 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 superlative. Dense jungle came down to the very edge of the cliffs. What perils that tangle of copse and underbrush might hold for him did non concern Rainsford simply so. 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 optics he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him new vigor; a precipitous hunger was picking at him. He looked nearly him, about cheerfully.

"Where at that place are pistol shots, in that location are men. Where there are men, at that place is food," he thought. But what kind of men, he wondered, in and 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 copse; it was easier to go on the shore, and Rainsford floundered along past the water. Not far from where he landed, he stopped.

Some wounded thing--by the evidence, a large animal--had thrashed well-nigh in the underbrush; the jungle weeds were crushed downwards and the moss was lacerated; one patch of weeds was stained crimson. A small, glittering object non far abroad caught Rainsford'due south heart and he picked it upwardly. Information technology was an empty cartridge.

"A xx-ii," he remarked. "That's odd. Information technology must have been a fairly large animal too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. Information technology'due south articulate that the animate being put upward 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 footing 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 forth, now slipping on a rotten log or a loose rock, but making headway; night was beginning to settle down on the isle.

Bleak darkness was blacking out the bounding main and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the declension line; and his first thought was that exist had come up 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 up into the gloom. His eyes made out the shadowy outlines of a palatial chateau; information technology was set on a high bluff, and on iii sides of information technology cliffs dived down to where the sea licked greedy lips in the shadows.

"Mirage," thought Rainsford. But information technology was no mirage, he found, when he opened the alpine spiked atomic number 26 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 information technology creaked upward 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 allow it fall. The door opened and so--opened every bit suddenly as if it were on a spring--and Rainsford stood blinking in the river of glaring gold light that poured out. The commencement thing Rainsford's optics discerned was the largest man Rainsford had ever seen--a gigantic creature, solidly made and black bearded to the waist. In his mitt the man held a long-barreled revolver, and he was pointing it straight at Rainsford'due south heart.

Out of the snarl of bristles ii small optics 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 proper noun is Sanger Rainsford of New York Urban center."

The menacing wait in the optics did not change. The revolver pointing as rigidly as if the behemothic 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 grayness astrakhan.

"I'm Sanger Rainsford of New York," Rainsford began again. "I cruel off a yacht. I am hungry."

The homo's but reply was to raise with his pollex the hammer of his revolver. Then Rainsford saw the man's costless mitt go to his forehead in a military salute, and he saw him click his heels together and stand at attending. Another man was coming downwards the broad marble steps, an erect, slender homo in evening clothes. He avant-garde to Rainsford and held out his mitt.

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 accolade to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home."

Automatically Rainsford shook the man's mitt.

"I've read your volume well-nigh hunting snow leopards in Tibet, you come across," explained the man. "I am General Zaroff."

Rainsford'due south first impression was that the man was singularly handsome; his second was that there was an original, virtually bizarre quality about the full general'south face. He was a tall homo past middle age, for his hair was a vivid white; but his thick eyebrows and pointed military mustache were as blackness as the night from which Rainsford had come. His eyes, likewise, were blackness and very brilliant. He had loftier cheekbones, a sharpcut nose, a spare, night face--the face of a man used to giving orders, the confront of an aristocrat. Turning to the giant in uniform, the full general made a sign. The giant put away his pistol, saluted, withdrew.

"Ivan is an incredibly strong beau," remarked the general, "simply he has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb. A uncomplicated fellow, simply, I'thousand agape, like all his race, a bit of a barbarous."

"Is he Russian?"

"He is a Cossack," said the general, and his smile showed red lips and pointed teeth. "So am I."

"Come up," he said, "we shouldn't exist chatting here. We can talk later. At present you want clothes, food, residual. You shall have them. This is a most-restful spot."

Ivan had reappeared, and the general spoke to him with lips that moved but gave forth no sound.

"Follow Ivan, if you delight, Mr. Rainsford," said the general. "I was about to have my dinner when you came. I'll look for you. You'll find that my clothes will fit you, I think."

It was to a huge, beam-ceilinged bedroom with a canopied bed big plenty for six men that Rainsford followed the silent giant. Ivan laid out an evening adapt, and Rainsford, as he put it on, noticed that it came from a London tailor who normally cutting and sewed for none beneath the rank of duke.

The dining room to which Ivan conducted him was in many ways remarkable. There was a medieval magnificence about it; it suggested a baronial hall of feudal times with its oaken panels, its high ceiling, its vast refectory tables where xl men could sit to consume. Near the hall were mounted heads of many animals--lions, tigers, elephants, moose, bears; larger or more than perfect specimens Rainsford had never seen. At the great table the general was sitting, alone.

"You'll have a cocktail, Mr. Rainsford," he suggested. The cocktail was surpassingly good; and, Rainsford noted, the table apointments were of the finest--the linen, the crystal, the silver, the red china.

They were eating borsch, the rich, red soup with whipped cream so dear to Russian palates. Half apologetically General Zaroff said, "We practice our best to preserve the amenities of civilization here. Please forgive any lapses. Nosotros are well off the beaten track, yous know. Do you lot recollect the champagne has suffered from its long sea trip?"

"Not in the least," alleged Rainsford. He was finding the full general a most thoughtful and affable host, a truthful cosmopolite. Only there was one minor trait of the general's that fabricated Rainsford uncomfortable. Whenever he looked up from his plate he found the general studying him, appraising him narrowly.

"Perhaps," said General Zaroff, "you were surprised that I recognized your proper name. You run across, I read all books on hunting published in English, French, and Russian. I have but 1 passion in my life, Mr. Rainsford, and it is the hunt."

"Yous have some wonderful heads here," said Rainsford every bit he ate a particularly well-cooked filet mignon. " That Cape buffalo is the largest I ever saw."

"Oh, that young man. Yes, he was a monster."

"Did he accuse you?"

"Hurled me against a tree," said the general. "Fractured my skull. But I got the beast."

"I've always thought," said Rainsford, "that the Cape buffalo is the most dangerous of all big game."

For a moment the general did non reply; he was grinning his curious red-lipped smile. And so he said slowly, "No. Yous are incorrect, sir. The Cape buffalo is non the virtually dangerous big game." He sipped his wine. "Here in my preserve on this island," he said in the same slow tone, "I hunt more dangerous game."

Rainsford expressed his surprise. "Is there large game on this island?"

The general nodded. "The biggest."

"Actually?"

"Oh, it isn't here naturally, of course. I take to stock the island."

"What take y'all imported, general?" Rainsford asked. "Tigers?"

The general smiled. "No," he said. "Hunting tigers ceased to interest me some years ago. I wearied their possibilities, you encounter. No thrill left in tigers, no real danger. I live for danger, Mr. Rainsford."

The full general took from his pocket a gilt cigarette case and offered his invitee a long black cigarette with a silverish tip; information technology was perfumed and gave off a odor like incense.

"We volition take some capital hunting, you lot and I," said the general. "I shall exist most glad to take your social club."

"Merely what game--" began Rainsford.

"I'll tell you," said the general. "Yous will be amused, I know. I call up I may say, in all modesty, that I accept done a rare thing. I have invented a new sensation. May I pour you another glass of port?"

"Cheers, general."

The full general filled both glasses, and said, "God makes some men poets. Some He makes kings, some beggars. Me He made a hunter. My hand was fabricated for the trigger, my father said. He was a very rich man with a quarter of a million acres in the Crimea, and he was an ardent sportsman. When I was only five years old he gave me a little gun, peculiarly made in Moscow for me, to shoot sparrows with. When I shot some of his prize turkeys with it, he did not punish me; he complimented me on my marksmanship. I killed my first behave in the Caucasus when I was 10. My whole life has been one prolonged chase. I went into the regular army--information technology was expected of noblemen'due south sons--and for a time commanded a division of Cossack cavalry, but my real interest was always the hunt. I have hunted every kind of game in every country. It would be impossible for me to tell y'all how many animals I have killed."

The general puffed at his cigarette.

"Afterwards the debacle in Russia I left the country, for it was imprudent for an officer of the Czar to stay at that place. Many noble Russians lost everything. I, luckily, had invested heavily in American securities, so I shall never accept to open a tearoom in Monte Carlo or drive a taxi in Paris. Naturally, I continued to chase--grizzlies in your Rockies, crocodiles in the Ganges, rhinoceroses in East Africa. It was in Africa that the Cape buffalo hit me and laid me upwardly for six months. Every bit shortly as I recovered I started for the Amazon to chase jaguars, for I had heard they were unusually cunning. They weren't." The Cossack sighed. "They were no lucifer at all for a hunter with his wits about him, and a high-powered rifle. I was bitterly disappointed. I was lying in my tent with a splitting headache ane night when a terrible thought pushed its way into my mind. Hunting was beginning to bore me! And hunting, remember, had been my life. I take heard that in America businessmen ofttimes go to pieces when they give up the concern that has been their life."

"Yes, that'due south so," said Rainsford.

The general smiled. "I had no wish to go to pieces," he said. "I must do something. Now, mine is an analytical heed, Mr. Rainsford. Doubtless that is why I enjoy the problems of the chase."

"No dubiousness, General Zaroff."

"So," continued the general, "I asked myself why the chase no longer fascinated me. You are much younger than I am, Mr. Rainsford, and have non hunted equally much, but you lot perhaps can judge the answer."

"What was it?"

"Just this: hunting had ceased to be what y'all call 'a sporting proffer.' Information technology had go as well easy. I always got my quarry. E'er. There is no greater bore than perfection."

The general lit a fresh cigarette.

"No animal had a chance with me any more than. That is no boast; it is a mathematical certainty. The animate being had naught simply his legs and his instinct. Instinct is no friction match for reason. When I thought of this it was a tragic moment for me, I can tell you."

Rainsford leaned beyond the table, absorbed in what his host was saying.

"It came to me as an inspiration what I must do," the general went on.

"And that was?"

The general smiled the placidity smile of one who has faced an obstacle and surmounted it with success. "I had to invent a new animal to chase," he said.

"A new beast? You're joking."

"Not at all," said the general. "I never joke about hunting. I needed a new animal. I found one. So I bought this isle built this house, and here I do my hunting. The island is perfect for my purposes--there are jungles with a maze of traits in them, hills, swamps--"

"But the animate being, General Zaroff?"

"Oh," said the general, "it supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. No other hunting compares with it for an instant. Every twenty-four hours I chase, and I never abound bored at present, for I have a quarry with which I can lucifer my wits."

Rainsford's cliffhanger showed in his face.

"I wanted the ideal animal to hunt," explained the general. "So I said, 'What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?' And the answer was, of form, 'It must have courage, cunning, and, in a higher place all, information technology must exist able to reason."'

"But no brute tin reason," objected Rainsford.

"My beloved fellow," said the general, "in that location is one that tin."

"But yous can't mean--" gasped Rainsford.

"And why not?"

"I can't believe y'all are serious, General Zaroff. This is a grisly joke."

"Why should I not be serious? I am speaking of hunting."

"Hunting? Great Guns, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder."

The general laughed with entire good nature. He regarded Rainsford quizzically. "I decline to believe that so modern and civilized a immature human being equally y'all seem to be harbors romantic ideas virtually the value of man life. Surely your experiences in the war--"

"Did non make me condone cold-blooded murder," finished Rainsford stiffly.

Laughter shook the general. "How extraordinarily droll you are!" he said. "I does not expect nowadays to discover a young man of the educated class, even in America, with such a naïve, and, if I may say so, mid-Victorian point of view. Information technology's like finding a snuffbox in a limousine. Ah, well, doubtless you had Puritan ancestors. Then many Americans appear to have had. I'll wager y'all'll forget your notions when you go hunting with me. You've a genuine new thrill in shop for you, Mr. Rainsford."

"Cheers, I'm a hunter, not a murderer."

"Dear me," said the general, quite unruffled, "again that unpleasant word. But I recollect I can show you lot that your scruples are quite ill founded."

"Yes?"

"Life is for the potent, to exist lived past the stiff, and, if needs be, taken by the stiff. The weak of the globe were put here to requite the strong pleasure. I am strong. Why should I non use my gift? If I wish to hunt, why should I not? I hunt the scum of the earth: sailors from tramp ships--lassars, blacks, Chinese, whites, mongrels--a thoroughbred horse or hound is worth more than a score of them."

"But they are men," said Rainsford hotly.

"Precisely," said the general. "That is why I use them. Information technology gives me pleasure. They can reason, after a style. So they are dangerous."

"Simply where do you become them?"

The full general's left eyelid fluttered down in a wink. "This island is called Ship Trap," he answered. "Sometimes an angry god of the high seas sends them to me. Sometimes, when Providence is not so kind, I help Providence a bit. Come to the window with me."

Rainsford went to the window and looked out toward the sea.

"Watch! Out there!" exclaimed the full general, pointing into the dark. Rainsford's eyes saw only blackness, and and then, every bit the general pressed a button, far out to sea Rainsford saw the wink of lights.

The general chuckled. "They indicate a channel," he said, "where at that place's none; giant rocks with razor edges hunker like a sea monster with wide-open up jaws. They can crush a ship every bit easily equally I beat this nut." He dropped a walnut on the hardwood floor and brought his heel grinding down on it. "Oh, yes," he said, casually, as if in answer to a question, "I have electricity. We endeavour to exist civilized here."

"Civilized? And you shoot downwards men?"

A trace of anger was in the general'southward blackness eyes, but information technology was there for but a 2nd; and he said, in his most pleasant manner, "Dear me, what a righteous swain you are! I assure you lot I do not do the thing y'all suggest. That would be barbarous. I treat these visitors with every consideration. They get enough of good food and exercise. They go into fantabulous physical condition. You shall run into for yourself tomorrow."

"What do you mean?"

"Nosotros'll visit my training school," smiled the general. "It's in the cellar. I have about a dozen pupils downwards there now. They're from the Castilian bark San Lucar that had the bad luck to go on the rocks out there. A very inferior lot, I regret to say. Poor specimens and more accepted to the deck than to the jungle." He raised his hand, and Ivan, who served as waiter, brought thick Turkish coffee. Rainsford, with an effort, held his natural language in bank check.

"It'southward a game, yous see," pursued the general blandly. "I suggest to one of them that nosotros go hunting. I give him a supply of food and an excellent hunting knife. I give him iii hours' start. I am to follow, armed only with a pistol of the smallest caliber and range. If my quarry eludes me for iii whole days, he wins the game. If I find him "--the general smiled--" he loses."

"Suppose he refuses to exist hunted?"

"Oh," said the general, "I give him his option, of course. He need non play that game if he doesn't wish to. If he does not wish to hunt, I turn him over to Ivan. Ivan once had the honor of serving as official knouter to the Smashing White Arbiter, and he has his ain ideas of sport. Invariably, Mr. Rainsford, invariably they choose the hunt."

"And if they win?"

The smile on the full general's face widened. "To date I have not lost," he said. Then he added, hastily: "I don't wish you to call up me a braggart, Mr. Rainsford. Many of them beget only the most simple sort of problem. Occasionally I strike a tartar. One well-nigh did win. I eventually had to use the dogs."

"The dogs?"

"This style, please. I'll testify you."

The general steered Rainsford to a window. The lights from the windows sent a flickering illumination that fabricated grotesque patterns on the courtyard beneath, and Rainsford could come across moving nearly in that location a dozen or and so huge black shapes; equally they turned toward him, their optics glittered greenly.

"A rather good lot, I think," observed the general. "They are let out at vii every night. If anyone should try to get into my firm--or out of it--something extremely regrettable would occur to him." He hummed a snatch of song from the Folies Bergere.

"And now," said the general, "I want to bear witness you my new collection of heads. Will you lot come with me to the library?"

"I hope," said Rainsford, "that you will excuse me tonight, Full general Zaroff. I'1000 really non feeling well."

"Ah, indeed?" the general inquired solicitously. "Well, I suppose that'due south only natural, after your long swim. You demand a good, restful nighttime'due south sleep. Tomorrow you'll experience like a new man, I'll wager. Then nosotros'll hunt, eh? I've one rather promising prospect--" Rainsford was hurrying from the room.

"Sorry you can't go with me tonight," chosen the general. "I wait rather off-white sport--a large, strong, black. He looks resourceful--Well, good night, Mr. Rainsford; I hope you have a skillful night's residue."

The bed was skilful, and the pajamas of the softest silk, and he was tired in every cobweb of his being, but nevertheless Rainsford could not serenity his encephalon with the opiate of sleep. He lay, eyes broad open. Once he thought he heard stealthy steps in the corridor exterior his room. He sought to throw open the door; information technology would not open. He went to the window and looked out. His room was loftier up in one of the towers. The lights of the chateau were out at present, and it was dark and silent; merely there was a fragment of sallow moon, and by its wan low-cal he could see, dimly, the courtyard. There, weaving in and out in the pattern of shadow, were black, noiseless forms; the hounds heard him at the window and looked up, expectantly, with their green eyes. Rainsford went back to the bed and lay down. By many methods he tried to put himself to sleep. He had achieved a doze when, merely as morning began to come, he heard, far off in the jungle, the faint report of a pistol.

General Zaroff did not appear until tiffin. He was dressed faultlessly in the tweeds of a country squire. He was solicitous virtually the state of Rainsford'due south health.

"Every bit for me," sighed the full general, "I exercise not feel so well. I am worried, Mr. Rainsford. Last nighttime I detected traces of my old complaint."

To Rainsford'southward questioning glance the general said, "Ennui. Boredom."

Then, taking a second helping of crâpes Suzette, the full general explained: "The hunting was non skillful last night. The fellow lost his head. He fabricated a straight trail that offered no bug at all. That's the trouble with these sailors; they take wearisome brains to brainstorm with, and they exercise non know how to get about in the woods. They do excessively stupid and obvious things. It'south nearly annoying. Volition you take some other drinking glass of Chablis, Mr. Rainsford?"

"General," said Rainsford firmly, "I wish to go out this island at in one case."

The general raised his thickets of eyebrows; he seemed hurt. "But, my dear swain," the general protested, "you've only merely come up. You've had no hunting--"

"I wish to go today," said Rainsford. He saw the dead black eyes of the full general on him, studying him. General Zaroff's face suddenly brightened.

He filled Rainsford's glass with venerable Chablis from a dusty canteen.

"This evening," said the general, "we will hunt--you and I."

Rainsford shook his head. "No, general," he said. "I will non hunt."

The general shrugged his shoulders and delicately ate a hothouse grape. "As you wish, my friend," he said. "The selection rests entirely with yous. Only may I not venture to suggest that you lot will find my thought of sport more diverting than Ivan's?"

He nodded toward the corner to where the giant stood, scowling, his thick arms crossed on his hogshead of breast.

"Y'all don't mean--" cried Rainsford.

"My honey fellow," said the general, "have I non told you I e'er hateful what I say about hunting? This is really an inspiration. I drink to a foeman worthy of my steel--at final." The general raised his drinking glass, simply Rainsford sat staring at him.

"You'll find this game worth playing," the full general said enthusiastically." Your brain against mine. Your woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina against mine. Outdoor chess! And the stake is non without value, eh?"

"And if I win--" began Rainsford huskily.

"I'll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeat if I practice not find you past midnight of the third day," said General Zaroff. "My sloop will place y'all on the mainland about a town." The full general read what Rainsford was thinking.

"Oh, yous can trust me," said the Cossack. "I will give yous my word as a admirer and a sportsman. Of form you, in turn, must agree to say nix of your visit here."

"I'll concord to nothing of the kind," said Rainsford.

"Oh," said the general, "in that case--But why discuss that now? Three days hence we tin discuss it over a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, unless--"

The general sipped his wine.

Then a pragmatic air blithe him. "Ivan," he said to Rainsford, "will supply you with hunting wearing apparel, food, a knife. I suggest y'all article of clothing moccasins; they leave a poorer trail. I suggest, too, that you avert the big swamp in the southeast corner of the isle. We call it Death Swamp. There'south quicksand there. 1 foolish fellow tried it. The deplorable part of it was that Lazarus followed him. Y'all can imagine my feelings, Mr. Rainsford. I loved Lazarus; he was the finest hound in my pack. Well, I must beg you to excuse me now. I always' take a siesta after dejeuner. You'll hardly have time for a nap, I fear. You'll want to start, no doubt. I shall not follow till dusk. Hunting at night is so much more exciting than past 24-hour interval, don't you lot think? Au revoir, Mr. Rainsford, au revoir." General Zaroff, with a deep, courtly bow, strolled from the room.

From another door came Ivan. Nether one arm he carried khaki hunting clothes, a haversack of food, a leather sheath containing a long-bladed hunting knife; his correct hand rested on a artsy revolver thrust in the crimson sash about his waist.

Rainsford had fought his fashion through the bush for ii hours. "I must keep my nerve. I must go on my nervus," he said through tight teeth.

He had not been entirely clearheaded when the chateau gates snapped close backside him. His whole idea at first was to put distance between himself and Full general Zaroff; and, to this stop, he had plunged along, spurred on by the sharp rowers of something very like panic. At present he had got a grip on himself, had stopped, and was taking stock of himself and the situation. He saw that direct flying was futile; inevitably it would bring him face to confront with the sea. He was in a picture with a frame of water, and his operations, clearly, must take identify inside that frame.

"I'll give him a trail to follow," muttered Rainsford, and he struck off from the rude path he had been following into the trackless wilderness. He executed a series of intricate loops; he doubled on his trail again and again, recalling all the lore of the play a trick on chase, and all the dodges of the fox. Night found him leg-weary, with hands and confront lashed by the branches, on a thickly wooded ridge. He knew information technology would be insane to blunder on through the dark, even if he had the force. His need for rest was imperative and he thought, "I have played the fox, at present I must play the cat of the fable." A big tree with a thick torso and outspread branches was near by, and, taking care to leave not the slightest mark, he climbed up into the crotch, and, stretching out on one of the broad limbs, later a fashion, rested. Rest brought him new confidence and almost a feeling of security. Notwithstanding zealous a hunter as Full general Zaroff could non trace him there, he told himself; only the devil himself could follow that complicated trail through the jungle after night. Just possibly the full general was a devil--

An apprehensive dark crawled slowly past like a wounded snake and sleep did non visit Rainsford, although the silence of a dead world was on the jungle. Toward morning when a dingy greyness was varnishing the sky, the cry of some startled bird focused Rainsford'southward attending in that direction. Something was coming through the bush-league, coming slowly, carefully, coming by the same winding way Rainsford had come. He flattened himself down on the limb and, through a screen of leaves almost as thick every bit tapestry, he watched. . . . That which was approaching was a man.

It was General Zaroff. He made his style along with his eyes stock-still in utmost concentration on the footing before him. He paused, almost beneath the tree, dropped to his knees and studied the footing. Rainsford'southward impulse was to hurl himself down like a panther, but he saw that the general's right hand held something metallic--a pocket-sized automatic pistol.

The hunter shook his head several times, as if he were puzzled. Then he straightened up and took from his case 1 of his black cigarettes; its pungent incenselike fume floated up to Rainsford's nostrils.

Rainsford held his jiff. The general'southward eyes had left the ground and were traveling inch by inch up the tree. Rainsford froze at that place, every musculus tensed for a spring. Only the sharp eyes of the hunter stopped before they reached the limb where Rainsford lay; a smile spread over his brownish confront. Very deliberately he blew a smoke ring into the air; then he turned his back on the tree and walked carelessly away, back along the trail he had come. The swish of the underbrush confronting his hunting boots grew fainter and fainter.

The pent-upwardly air burst hotly from Rainsford's lungs. His showtime thought fabricated him feel sick and numb. The general could follow a trail through the forest at night; he could follow an extremely difficult trail; he must have uncanny powers; only by the merest chance had the Cossack failed to see his quarry.

Rainsford's second thought was even more terrible. It sent a shudder of cold horror through his whole being. Why had the general smiled? Why had he turned back?

Rainsford did not desire to believe what his reason told him was truthful, simply the truth was equally evident as the sun that had past now pushed through the morning mists. The full general was playing with him! The general was saving him for some other 24-hour interval's sport! The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then information technology was that Rainsford knew the full pregnant of terror.

"I will not lose my nerve. I will not."

He slid down from the tree, and struck off again into the wood. His face was set and he forced the mechanism of his mind to function. Three hundred yards from his hiding place he stopped where a huge expressionless tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living one. Throwing off his sack of food, Rainsford took his pocketknife from its sheath and began to work with all his energy.

The job was finished at last, and he threw himself down behind a fallen log a hundred feet away. He did non have to wait long. The true cat was coming once more to play with the mouse.

Following the trail with the sureness of a bloodhound came Full general Zaroff. Nothing escaped those searching black eyes, no crushed blade of grass, no aptitude twig, no marker, no matter how faint, in the moss. So intent was the Cossack on his stalking that he was upon the affair Rainsford had made before he saw it. His foot touched the protruding bough that was the trigger. Even every bit he touched it, the general sensed his danger and leaped back with the agility of an ape. But he was non quite quick enough; the dead tree, delicately adjusted to remainder on the cut living ane, crashed down and struck the full general a glancing blow on the shoulder as information technology vicious; merely for his alertness, he must have been smashed beneath it. He staggered, but he did not fall; nor did he drop his revolver. He stood there, rubbing his injured shoulder, and Rainsford, with fright once more gripping his center, heard the full general'due south mocking laugh ring through the jungle.

"Rainsford," called the general, "if you are within sound of my voice, equally I suppose you are, let me congratulate yous. Not many men know how to make a Malay mancatcher. Luckily for me I, too, take hunted in Malacca. You are proving interesting, Mr. Rainsford. I am going at present to have my wound dressed; information technology'southward only a slight one. But I shall be dorsum. I shall exist dorsum."

When the full general, nursing his bruised shoulder, had gone, Rainsford took up his flight again. It was flying now, a desperate, hopeless flight, that carried him on for some hours. Dusk came, then darkness, and still he pressed on. The footing grew softer under his moccasins; the vegetation grew ranker, denser; insects flake him savagely.

And so, as he stepped forrad, his foot sank into the ooze. He tried to wrench it back, just the muck sucked viciously at his foot every bit if it were a giant leech. With a trigger-happy attempt, he tore his feet loose. He knew where he was now. Death Swamp and its quicksand.

His hands were tight airtight every bit if his nerve were something tangible that someone in the darkness was trying to tear from his grip. The softness of the earth had given him an thought. He stepped back from the quicksand a dozen feet or then and, like some huge prehistoric beaver, he began to dig.

Rainsford had dug himself in in French republic when a 2d's delay meant death. That had been a placid pastime compared to his digging now. The pit grew deeper; when it was in a higher place his shoulders, he climbed out and from some hard saplings cutting stakes and sharpened them to a fine point. These stakes he planted in the bottom of the pit with the points sticking upwardly. With flight fingers he wove a rough carpet of weeds and branches and with it he covered the mouth of the pit. Then, wet with sweat and aching with tiredness, he crouched behind the stump of a lightning-charred tree.

He knew his pursuer was coming; he heard the padding sound of anxiety on the soft earth, and the night cakewalk brought him the perfume of the general's cigarette. It seemed to Rainsford that the general was coming with unusual swiftness; he was not feeling his fashion along, foot by foot. Rainsford, crouching there, could not see the general, nor could he run across the pit. He lived a year in a minute. Then he felt an impulse to cry aloud with joy, for he heard the sharp crackle of the breaking branches as the cover of the pit gave style; he heard the sharp scream of pain as the pointed stakes found their mark. He leaped upwards from his place of concealment. Then he cowered dorsum. Three feet from the pit a man was standing, with an electric torch in his paw.

"You've done well, Rainsford," the voice of the full general called. "Your Burmese tiger pit has claimed 1 of my best dogs. Again y'all score. I think, Mr. Rainsford, I'll run into what you lot can practise against my whole pack. I'm going home for a rest at present. Thanks for a most agreeable evening."

At daybreak Rainsford, lying nearly the swamp, was awakened by a sound that made him know that he had new things to learn about fear. It was a afar audio, faint and wavering, but he knew it. It was the baying of a pack of hounds.

Rainsford knew he could practise one of 2 things. He could stay where he was and wait. That was suicide. He could flee. That was postponing the inevitable. For a moment he stood in that location, thinking. An idea that held a wild chance came to him, and, tightening his belt, he headed abroad from the swamp.

The baying of the hounds drew nearer, then withal nearer, nearer, ever nearer. On a ridge Rainsford climbed a tree. Downward a watercourse, non a quarter of a mile abroad, he could encounter the bush moving. Straining his optics, he saw the lean figure of General Zaroff; just ahead of him Rainsford made out some other figure whose broad shoulders surged through the tall jungle weeds; it was the giant Ivan, and he seemed pulled frontwards by some unseen forcefulness; Rainsford knew that Ivan must be holding the pack in ternion.

They would be on him any infinitesimal now. His heed worked frantically. He thought of a native play a joke on he had learned in Uganda. He slid downwardly the tree. He caught hold of a springy young sapling and to it he attached his hunting pocketknife, with the blade pointing down the trail; with a bit of wild grapevine he tied back the sapling. So he ran for his life. The hounds raised their voices equally they hit the fresh olfactory property. Rainsford knew now how an beast at bay feels.

He had to stop to get his jiff. The baying of the hounds stopped abruptly, and Rainsford's eye stopped as well. They must have reached the knife.

He shinned excitedly up a tree and looked back. His pursuers had stopped. But the hope that was in Rainsford's brain when he climbed died, for he saw in the shallow valley that Full general Zaroff was still on his feet. But Ivan was not. The pocketknife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree, had not wholly failed.

Rainsford had hardly tumbled to the ground when the pack took up the weep again.

"Nerve, nervus, nervus!" he panted, as he dashed along. A blue gap showed between the copse dead ahead. Ever nearer drew the hounds. Rainsford forced himself on toward that gap. He reached information technology. It was the shore of the sea. Beyond a cove he could run into the gloomy grey rock of the chateau. Twenty feet beneath him the body of water rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated. He heard the hounds. And so he leaped far out into the sea. . . .

When the general and his pack reached the place past the sea, the Cossack stopped. For some minutes he stood regarding the blue-dark-green expanse of water. He shrugged his shoulders. And so he sat down, took a beverage of brandy from a argent flask, lit a cigarette, and hummed a scrap from Madame Butterfly.

General Zaroff had an exceedingly good dinner in his great paneled dining hall that evening. With it he had a canteen of Pol Roger and half a canteen of Chambertin. 2 slight annoyances kept him from perfect enjoyment. One was the thought that it would be hard to replace Ivan; the other was that his quarry had escaped him; of course, the American hadn't played the game--so idea the general every bit he tasted his later on-dinner liqueur. In his library he read, to soothe himself, from the works of Marcus Aurelius. At ten he went up to his sleeping room. He was deliciously tired, he said to himself, every bit he locked himself in. In that location was a little moonlight, and so, earlier turning on his light, he went to the window and looked down at the courtyard. He could run into the not bad hounds, and he called, "Better luck another time," to them. Then he switched on the lite.

A man, who had been hiding in the curtains of the bed, was standing there.

"Rainsford!" screamed the general. "How in God's name did yous become hither?"

"Swam," said Rainsford. "I found it quicker than walking through the jungle."

The full general sucked in his jiff and smiled. "I congratulate you," he said. "You have won the game."

Rainsford did non smile. "I am still a beast at bay," he said, in a low, hoarse vocalisation. "Get ready, General Zaroff."

The full general made one of his deepest bows. "I see," he said. "Excellent! One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other volition sleep in this very splendid bed. On guard, Rainsford."

. . .

He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.

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