The Most Dangerous Game

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.

His foot touched the protruding bough that was the trigger.

Three hundred yards from his hiding place he stopped where a huge dead tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living one.

"Mirage," thought Rainsford.

Then he added, hastily: "I don't wish you to think me a braggart, Mr. Rainsford.

Surely your experiences in the war--" "Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder," finished Rainsford stiffly.

"After the debacle in Russia I left the country, for it was imprudent for an officer of the Czar to stay there.

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.

Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing--with wave lengths, just as sound and light have.

But it's gotten into sailor lore, somehow.

This is a grisly joke."

Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet.

He was solicitous about the state of Rainsford's health.

Then he straightened up and took from his case one of his black cigarettes; its pungent incenselike smoke floated up to Rainsford's nostrils.

He was finding the general a most thoughtful and affable host, a true cosmopolite.

They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming with slow, deliberate strokes, conserving his strength.

Even as he touched it, the general sensed his danger and leaped back with the agility of an ape.

Part Two 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.

But perhaps the general was a devil-- An apprehensive night crawled slowly by like a wounded snake and sleep did not visit Rainsford, although the silence of a dead world was on the jungle.

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.

The deplorable part of it was that Lazarus followed him.

He executed a series of intricate loops; he doubled on his trail again and again, recalling all the lore of the fox hunt, and all the dodges of the fox.

That had been a placid pastime compared to his digging now.

He saw that straight flight was futile; inevitably it would bring him face to face with the sea.

"So I said, `What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?'

It came out of the darkness, a high screaming sound, the sound of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror.