The Most Dangerous Game Mood

The Most Dangerous Game

past Richard Connell

The Nearly Dangerous Game, featured in our Mystery Stories, is much more than a hunting story, where the suspense keeps building until the very end. "`What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?' And the answer was, of course, `It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.' 'Only no creature can reason,' objected Rainsford. 'My dearest beau'" said the general, 'there is one that can.'"

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell — The Most Dangerous Game, movie poster, 1932

"OFF THERE to the correct--somewhere--is a large island," said Whitney." Information technology'due south rather a mystery--"

"What island is it?" Rainsford asked.

"The quondam charts call information technology `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 every bit information technology pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.

"You've good eyes," said Whitney, with a express joy," and I've seen you pick off a moose moving in the dark-brown fall bush at four hundred yards, merely fifty-fifty you tin can't see iv miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night."

"Nor 4 yards," admitted Rainsford. "Ugh! It's like moist black velvet."

"It will exist calorie-free enough in Rio," promised Whitney. "We should brand it in a few days. I promise the jaguar guns have come from Purdey'due south. We should have some proficient hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting."

"The all-time sport in the globe," 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?"

"Mayhap the jaguar does," observed Whitney.

"Bah! They've no agreement."

"Even and then, I rather retrieve they understand one thing--fear. The fearfulness of pain and the fear of decease."

"Nonsense," laughed Rainsford. "This hot conditions is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made upward of two classes--the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you lot and I are hunters. Do y'all call up 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. Only it'due south gotten into sailor lore, somehow. Didn't you discover that the coiffure's fretfulness seemed a bit jumpy today?"

"They were a chip foreign, now you lot mention information technology. Even Captain Nielsen--"

"Yes, even that tough-minded one-time Swede, who'd go up to the devil himself and ask him for a lite. Those fishy blue eyes held a expect I never saw there earlier. All I could go out of him was `This place has an evil proper noun among seafaring men, sir.' And then he said to me, very gravely, `Don't you feel anything?'--as if the air near us was actually poisonous. Now, you lot mustn't express mirth when I tell you this--I did feel something similar a sudden chill.

"There was no cakewalk. The body of water was equally flat every bit a plate-glass window. Nosotros 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 crewman can taint the whole ship's visitor with his fear."

"Maybe. Only sometimes I think sailors accept an actress sense that tells them when they are in danger. Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing--with moving ridge lengths, but as sound and lite have. An evil place tin, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil. Anyway, I'm glad we're getting out of this zone. Well, I retrieve I'll turn in now, Rainsford."

"I'thousand not sleepy," said Rainsford. "I'm going to smoke some other pipe upward on the afterdeck."

"Proficient night, so, Rainsford. Run into you at breakfast."

"Correct. Practiced night, Whitney."

At that place was no sound in the night equally Rainsford sat there but the deadened throb of the engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the classy 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 dark was on him." Information technology's and so dark," he thought, "that I could sleep without closing my optics; the dark would be my eyelids--"

An precipitous sound startled him. Off to the right he heard information technology, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not exist mistaken. Over 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 management from which the reports had come, but information technology was like trying to run into through a coating. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, hit a rope, was knocked from his oral cavity. He lunged for information technology; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips every bit he realized he had reached too far and had lost his residuum. The weep was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean area 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 h2o in his open mouth fabricated him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, merely he stopped earlier he had swum fifty feet. A certain coolheadedness had come to him; information technology was not the beginning 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, simply that chance was slender and grew more slender every bit the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his apparel and shouted with all his power. The lights of the yacht became faint and ever-vanishing fireflies; and then 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 deadening, deliberate strokes, conserving his forcefulness. For a seemingly endless time he fought the bounding main. 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 fabricated the sound; he did not try to; with fresh vitality he swam toward the audio. He heard it once more; then it was cut short by another racket, crisp, staccato.

"Pistol shot," muttered Rainsford, pond on.

Ten minutes of adamant endeavor brought some other audio to his ears--the most welcome he had ever heard--the muttering and growling of the ocean breaking on a rocky shore. He was near 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 upward into the opaqueness; he forced himself upward, hand over hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the height. Dense jungle came down to the very edge of the cliffs. What perils that tangle of trees and underbrush might concur for him did not concern Rainsford but and so. All he knew was that he was rubber from his enemy, the sea, and that utter weariness was on him. He flung himself downwards at the jungle edge and tumbled headlong into the deepest slumber of his life.

When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sunday that information technology was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him new vigor; a sharp hunger was picking at him. He looked near him, almost cheerfully.

"Where there are pistol shots, in that location are men. Where in that location are men, in that location is food," he thought. Simply what kind of men, he wondered, in then 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 forth 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; ane patch of weeds was stained crimson. A small, glittering object not far away defenseless Rainsford'due south center and he picked it up. Information technology was an empty cartridge.

"A twenty-two," he remarked. "That's odd. It must have been a fairly large brute too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a calorie-free gun. Information technology's clear that the brute put up a fight. I suppose the starting time three shots I heard was when the hunter flushed his quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he trailed information technology here and finished it."

He examined the basis closely and constitute what he had hoped to discover--the print of hunting boots. They pointed forth the cliff in the direction he had been going. Eagerly he hurried along, now slipping on a rotten log or a loose stone, simply making headway; night was commencement to settle down on the island.

Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them equally he turned a crook in the coast line; and his first thought was that be had come upon a hamlet, for there were many lights. Simply as he forged along he saw to his great astonishment that all the lights were in i enormous building--a lofty structure with pointed towers plunging up into the gloom. His eyes made out the shadowy outlines of a palatial chateau; it was set on a high bluff, and on iii sides of it cliffs dived downward 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 tall spiked atomic number 26 gate. The rock steps were real enough; the massive door with a leering gargoyle for a knocker was real plenty; still in a higher place it all hung an air of unreality.

He lifted the knocker, and information technology creaked up stiffly, as if information technology had never earlier been used. He permit information technology fall, and it startled him with its booming loudness. He thought he heard steps inside; the door remained closed. Again Rainsford lifted the heavy knocker, and let it fall. The door opened then--opened as of a sudden every bit if it were on a spring--and Rainsford stood blinking in the river of glaring gold light that poured out. The get-go thing Rainsford'southward optics discerned was the largest human Rainsford had ever seen--a gigantic animate being, solidly made and black disguised to the waist. In his hand the man held a long-barreled revolver, and he was pointing it straight at Rainsford'southward middle.

Out of the snarl of beard 2 small optics regarded Rainsford.

"Don't exist alarmed," said Rainsford, with a grinning which he hoped was convincing. "I'm no robber. I fell off a yacht. My proper name is Sanger Rainsford of New York City."

The menacing look in the eyes did not change. The revolver pointing every bit rigidly every bit if the giant were a statue. He gave no sign that he understood Rainsford's words, or that he had fifty-fifty 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 heighten with his thumb the hammer of his revolver. Then Rainsford saw the human being'due south 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 downwards the broad marble steps, an cock, slender man in evening clothes. He avant-garde to Rainsford and held out his hand.

In a cultivated vocalisation marked past 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 homo's hand.

"I've read your book about hunting snow leopards in Tibet, you see," explained the man. "I am Full general Zaroff."

Rainsford'due south first impression was that the homo was singularly handsome; his second was that at that place was an original, virtually baroque quality about the general'south face. He was a alpine man past middle historic period, for his pilus was a vivid white; but his thick eyebrows and pointed military mustache were equally blackness as the night from which Rainsford had come. His eyes, likewise, were black and very brilliant. He had high cheekbones, a sharpcut olfactory organ, a spare, dark face--the face of a man used to giving orders, the confront of an aristocrat. Turning to the giant in uniform, the general made a sign. The behemothic put away his pistol, saluted, withdrew.

"Ivan is an incredibly strong young man," remarked the full general, "but he has the misfortune to be deafened and dumb. A simple fellow, but, I'1000 agape, like all his race, a chip of a savage."

"Is he Russian?"

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

"Come," he said, "we shouldn't exist chatting here. We tin talk later. Now yous want clothes, food, residuum. You shall accept them. This is a nigh-restful spot."

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

"Follow Ivan, if yous please, Mr. Rainsford," said the full general. "I was about to have my dinner when you came. I'll wait for you. You'll find that my clothes volition fit you, I think."

The Most Dangerous Game, hunting trophy room, 1920 It was to a huge, beam-ceilinged bedroom with a canopied bed big enough 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 ordinarily cut and sewed for none below 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 august hall of feudal times with its oaken panels, its high ceiling, its vast refectory tables where twoscore men could sit downwards to eat. About the hall were mounted heads of many animals--lions, tigers, elephants, moose, bears; larger or more perfect specimens Rainsford had never seen. At the great tabular array the full general was sitting, alone.

"You'll accept 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 silverish, the prc.

They were eating borsch, the rich, red soup with whipped cream so beloved to Russian palates. One-half apologetically Full general Zaroff said, "We practise our best to preserve the civilities of civilization here. Please forgive whatsoever lapses. We are well off the beaten track, you know. Do you think the champagne has suffered from its long body of water trip?"

"Not in the least," declared Rainsford. He was finding the general a most thoughtful and amiable host, a true cosmopolite. But there was ane small trait of the general'due south that made Rainsford uncomfortable. Whenever he looked upwardly from his plate he constitute the general studying him, appraising him narrowly.

"Perhaps," said General Zaroff, "you lot were surprised that I recognized your proper noun. Yous see, I read all books on hunting published in English language, French, and Russian. I have only ane passion in my life, Mr. Rains. ford, and it is the hunt."

"You have some wonderful heads here," said Rainsford as he ate a especially well-cooked filet mignon. " That Greatcoat buffalo is the largest I ever saw."

"Oh, that boyfriend. Yes, he was a monster."

"Did he charge y'all?"

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

"I've always idea," said Rains{ord, "that the Cape buffalo is the nearly dangerous of all big game."

For a moment the general did non reply; he was smiling his curious red-lipped smile. Then he said slowly, "No. Y'all are wrong, sir. The Greatcoat buffalo is not the near unsafe large game." He sipped his wine. "Here in my preserve on this isle," he said in the aforementioned wearisome tone, "I hunt more than dangerous game."

Rainsford expressed his surprise. "Is there big game on this isle?"

The general nodded. "The biggest."

"Really?"

"Oh, it isn't hither naturally, of class. I accept to stock the island."

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

The general smiled. "No," he said. "Hunting tigers ceased to interest me some years ago. I exhausted their possibilities, y'all see. No thrill left in tigers, no real danger. I live for danger, Mr. Rainsford."

The general took from his pocket a gilt cigarette case and offered his invitee a long blackness cigarette with a silverish tip; it was perfumed and gave off a smell like incense.

"We will have some capital letter hunting, yous and I," said the general. "I shall be almost glad to take your society."

"But what game--" began Rainsford.

"I'll tell you," said the general. "You will be amused, I know. I retrieve I may say, in all modesty, that I have done a rare affair. I take invented a new sensation. May I pour you another glass of port?"

"Give thanks yous, general."

The general filled both spectacles, and said, "God makes some men poets. Some He makes kings, some beggars. Me He made a hunter. My paw was made for the trigger, my male parent 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 onetime he gave me a little gun, specially fabricated 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 starting time bear in the Caucasus when I was x. My whole life has been 1 prolonged hunt. I went into the army--it was expected of noblemen's sons--and for a fourth dimension commanded a sectionalization of Cossack cavalry, but my real interest was e'er the hunt. I have hunted every kind of game in every land. It would be incommunicable for me to tell you how many animals I take killed."

The full general puffed at his cigarette.

"After the debacle in Russia I left the country, for it was imprudent for an officer of the Czar to stay there. Many noble Russians lost everything. I, luckily, had invested heavily in American securities, so I shall never have to open a tearoom in Monte Carlo or drive a taxi in Paris. Naturally, I continued to chase--grizzliest in your Rockies, crocodiles in the Ganges, rhinoceroses in Eastward Africa. It was in Africa that the Cape buffalo hit me and laid me up for six months. As soon as I recovered I started for the Amazon to hunt 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 most him, and a high-powered rifle. I was bitterly disappointed. I was lying in my tent with a splitting headache one night when a terrible thought pushed its way into my mind. Hunting was showtime to bore me! And hunting, recollect, had been my life. I have heard that in America businessmen often become to pieces when they give upward the business that has been their life."

"Yeah, that's so," said Rainsford.

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

"No doubt, General Zaroff."

"So," continued the general, "I asked myself why the hunt no longer fascinated me. You are much younger than I am, Mr. Rainsford, and accept not hunted as much, simply you lot perhaps tin guess the respond."

"What was it?"

"Merely this: hunting had ceased to be what you phone call `a sporting proffer.' It had go also like shooting fish in a barrel. I always got my quarry. Ever. There is no greater bore than perfection."

The general lit a fresh cigarette.

"No brute had a chance with me any more. That is no boast; it is a mathematical certainty. The animal had nothing but his legs and his instinct. Instinct is no match for reason. When I thought of this information technology was a tragic moment for me, I can tell y'all."

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

"Information technology came to me as an inspiration what I must practice," the full general went on.

"And that was?"

The general smiled the quiet grinning of one who has faced an obstacle and surmounted it with success. "I had to invent a new animate being to hunt," he said.

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

"Only the animal, Full general Zaroff?"

"Oh," said the general, "information technology supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. No other hunting compares with information technology for an instant. Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have a quarry with which I can match my wits."

Rainsford'southward cliffhanger showed in his face.

"I wanted the ideal brute to chase," explained the general. "So I said, `What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?' And the answer was, of course, `It must have backbone, cunning, and, above all, it must exist able to reason."'

"But no animal can reason," objected Rainsford.

"My dearest fellow," said the general, "there is 1 that tin."

"Simply you lot can't mean--" gasped Rainsford.

"And why not?"

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

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

"Hunting? Corking Guns, General Zaroff, what yous speak of is murder."

The general laughed with entire good nature. He regarded Rainsford quizzically. "I refuse to believe that so mod and civilized a young human as you seem to be harbors romantic ideas near the value of human life. Surely your experiences in the war--"

"Did not make me condone common cold-blooded murder," finished Rainsford stiffly.

Laughter shook the full general. "How extraordinarily droll you lot are!" he said. "One does not expect nowadays to observe a immature homo of the educated course, even in America, with such a naive, and, if I may say and then, mid-Victorian point of view. It's like finding a snuffbox in a limousine. Ah, well, doubtless yous had Puritan ancestors. And then many Americans announced to have had. I'll wager you'll forget your notions when you lot get hunting with me. Y'all've a 18-carat new thrill in store for you, Mr. Rainsford."

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

"Beloved me," said the full general, quite unruffled, "again that unpleasant give-and-take. Just I think I can evidence you that your scruples are quite ill founded."

"Yes?"

"Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong, and, if needs be, taken by the strong. The weak of the globe were put here to give the strong pleasure. I am potent. Why should I not use my gift? If I wish to hunt, why should I non? 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 tin can reason, after a fashion. So they are dangerous."

"But where practise you get them?"

The general's left eyelid fluttered downward in a wink. "This island is called Ship Trap," he answered. "Sometimes an angry god of the loftier seas sends them to me. Sometimes, when Providence is non so kind, I assist Providence a bit. Come to the window with me."

Rainsford went to the window and looked out toward the bounding main.

"Sentry! Out there!" exclaimed the general, pointing into the dark. Rainsford's eyes saw but blackness, and then, as the general pressed a button, far out to sea Rainsford saw the flash of lights.

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

"Civilized? And you shoot down men?"

A trace of anger was in the general's black optics, but it was in that location for simply a second; and he said, in his near pleasant manner, "Beloved me, what a righteous beau you are! I assure you I exercise non do the matter you suggest. That would be cruel. I treat these visitors with every consideration. They become enough of good food and practice. They get into excellent physical status. You shall run into for yourself tomorrow."

"What exercise yous mean?"

"We'll visit my training schoolhouse," smiled the general. "It's in the cellar. I have most a dozen pupils down in that location now. They're from the Spanish bark San Lucar that had the bad luck to continue the rocks out there. A very junior lot, I regret to say. Poor specimens and more accustomed to the deck than to the jungle." He raised his hand, and Ivan, who served equally waiter, brought thick Turkish coffee. Rainsford, with an effort, held his natural language in check.

"Information technology's a game, you lot see," pursued the general blandly. "I suggest to i of them that we go hunting. I give him a supply of nutrient and an splendid hunting pocketknife. I requite him three hours' offset. I am to follow, armed just with a pistol of the smallest caliber and range. If my quarry eludes me for three whole days, he wins the game. If I observe him "--the general smiled--" he loses."

"Suppose he refuses to exist hunted?"

"Oh," said the general, "I give him his option, of form. He need not 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 Keen 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 general's face up widened. "To appointment I have not lost," he said. Then he added, hastily: "I don't wish y'all to think me a braggart, Mr. Rainsford. Many of them afford only the most unproblematic sort of problem. Occasionally I strike a tartar. One nigh did win. I somewhen had to employ the dogs."

"The dogs?"

"This way, please. I'll show yous."

The general steered Rainsford to a window. The lights from the windows sent a flickering illumination that fabricated grotesque patterns on the courtyard below, and Rainsford could see moving about there a dozen or so huge black shapes; as they turned toward him, their eyes glittered greenly.

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

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

"I promise," said Rainsford, "that you volition excuse me tonight, General Zaroff. I'm really not feeling well."

"Ah, indeed?" the general inquired solicitously. "Well, I suppose that's simply natural, afterward your long swim. You need a good, restful nighttime'due south slumber. Tomorrow you'll feel like a new human, I'll wager. Then nosotros'll hunt, eh? I've i rather promising prospect--" Rainsford was hurrying from the room.

"Sorry yous tin can't get with me this night," called the general. "I expect rather fair sport--a large, strong, black. He looks resourceful--Well, proficient night, Mr. Rainsford; I hope you accept a skilful night's rest."

The bed was good, and the pajamas of the softest silk, and he was tired in every fiber of his beingness, but withal Rainsford could not quiet his brain with the opiate of slumber. He lay, eyes broad open. In one case he idea he heard stealthy steps in the corridor outside his room. He sought to throw open the door; it would not open up. He went to the window and looked out. His room was high upward in one of the towers. The lights of the chateau were out now, and information technology was dark and silent; but there was a fragment of sallow moon, and by its wan lite 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 light-green eyes. Rainsford went back to the bed and lay downwards. By many methods he tried to put himself to sleep. He had accomplished a doze when, just as morning began to come up, he heard, far off in the jungle, the faint report of a pistol.

General Zaroff did non appear until luncheon. He was dressed faultlessly in the tweeds of a country squire. He was solicitous virtually the state of Rainsford's health.

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

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

And so, taking a second helping of crepes Suzette, the full general explained: "The hunting was not skilful last night. The fellow lost his head. He made a straight trail that offered no bug at all. That's the trouble with these sailors; they have dull brains to begin with, and they do non know how to get about in the woods. They exercise excessively stupid and obvious things. Information technology'due south most abrasive. Will y'all have another glass of Chablis, Mr. Rainsford?"

"General," said Rainsford firmly, "I wish to leave this island at once."

The general raised his thickets of eyebrows; he seemed hurt. "Merely, my love fellow," the general protested, "you've merely just come up. You lot've had no hunting--"

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

He filled Rainsford'southward glass with venerable Chablis from a dusty bottle.

"This evening," said the general, "we will chase--yous and I."

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

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

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

"You don't hateful--" cried Rainsford.

"My dearest fellow," said the general, "have I not told you I always mean what I say nearly hunting? This is really an inspiration. I drinkable to a foeman worthy of my steel--at last." The full general raised his glass, but Rainsford saturday staring at him.

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

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

"I'll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeat if I exercise not discover y'all by midnight of the third day," said General Zaroff. "My sloop will identify you on the mainland near a town." The general read what Rainsford was thinking.

"Oh, you lot can trust me," said the Cossack. "I will give y'all my word as a gentleman and a sportsman. Of course yous, in turn, must concur to say goose egg of your visit here."

"I'll concord to nix of the kind," said Rainsford.

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

The general sipped his wine.

Then a businesslike air animated him. "Ivan," he said to Rainsford, "volition supply yous with hunting wearing apparel, food, a knife. I suggest you vesture moccasins; they leave a poorer trail. I suggest, likewise, that yous avoid the large swamp in the southeast corner of the island. We call it Expiry Swamp. There'due south quicksand at that place. One foolish fellow tried it. The lamentable function of information technology was that Lazarus followed him. You can imagine my feelings, Mr. Rainsford. I loved Lazarus; he was the finest hound in my pack. Well, I must beg you to alibi me now. I always have a siesta after lunch. You'll inappreciably 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 than exciting than by solar day, don't you lot remember? Au revoir, Mr. Rainsford, au revoir." Full general Zaroff, with a deep, courtly bow, strolled from the room.

From some other door came Ivan. Under i arm he carried khaki hunting clothes, a haversack of nutrient, a leather sheath containing a long-bladed hunting knife; his right mitt rested on a artsy revolver thrust in the reddish sash about his waist.

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

He had non been entirely clearheaded when the chateau gates snapped shut behind him. His whole idea at first was to put distance betwixt himself and General Zaroff; and, to this end, he had plunged along, spurred on past 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 straight flight was futile; inevitably information technology would bring him confront to face with the sea. He was in a picture with a frame of h2o, and his operations, clearly, must take place within 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 fox hunt, and all the dodges of the fox. Night found him leg-weary, with hands and confront lashed past the branches, on a thickly wooded ridge. He knew it would be insane to blunder on through the nighttime, even if he had the strength. His demand for rest was imperative and he idea, "I have played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable." A big tree with a thick trunk and outspread branches was near by, and, taking care to leave non the slightest marking, he climbed upwardly into the crotch, and, stretching out on one of the wide limbs, after a manner, rested. Rest brought him new confidence and almost a feeling of security. Even so zealous a hunter every bit General Zaroff could non trace him there, he told himself; only the devil himself could follow that complicated trail through the jungle after dark. Just 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. Toward morning when a muddy gray was varnishing the sky, the weep of some startled bird focused Rainsford'due south attending in that direction. Something was coming through the bush, coming slowly, carefully, coming past the same winding way Rainsford had come. He flattened himself down on the limb and, through a screen of leaves almost as thick as tapestry, he watched. . . . That which was budgeted was a man.

Information technology was General Zaroff. He made his way 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's impulse was to hurl himself down like a panther, but he saw that the general'southward right hand held something metallic--a modest automatic pistol.

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

Rainsford held his breath. The general'southward eyes had left the ground and were traveling inch by inch upwardly the tree. Rainsford froze there, every muscle 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 dark-brown face up. Very deliberately he blew a smoke ring into the air; then he turned his dorsum on the tree and walked carelessly away, back along the trail he had come up. The classy of the underbrush against his hunting boots grew fainter and fainter.

The pent-up air flare-up hotly from Rainsford's lungs. His beginning thought made him experience sick and numb. The general could follow a trail through the wood at night; he could follow an extremely hard trail; he must have uncanny powers; just by the merest chance had the Cossack failed to run into his quarry.

Rainsford's 2d thought was even more terrible. Information technology sent a shudder of cold horror through his whole being. Why had the general smiled? Why had he turned back?

Rainsford did non want to believe what his reason told him was true, simply the truth was as evident equally the sunday that had by now pushed through the morn mists. The full general was playing with him! The general was saving him for another day's sport! The Cossack was the true cat; he was the mouse. Then information technology was that Rainsford knew the full meaning of terror.

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

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

The job was finished at terminal, and he threw himself down behind a fallen log a hundred feet away. He did not accept to wait long. The true cat was coming again to play with the mouse.

Following the trail with the sureness of a bloodhound came General Zaroff. Nothing escaped those searching black eyes, no crushed blade of grass, no bent twig, no mark, no thing how faint, in the moss. So intent was the Cossack on his stalking that he was upon the thing Rainsford had made before he saw it. His foot touched the protruding bender that was the trigger. Even as he touched it, the full general sensed his danger and leaped dorsum with the agility of an ape. But he was not quite quick enough; the expressionless tree, delicately adjusted to rest on the cutting living one, crashed down and struck the general a glancing blow on the shoulder as it savage; but for his alertness, he must have been smashed beneath it. He staggered, just he did not fall; nor did he drop his revolver. He stood there, rubbing his injured shoulder, and Rainsford, with fear again gripping his heart, heard the general's mocking express mirth band through the jungle.

"Rainsford," called the full general, "if yous are inside sound of my vocalism, as I suppose you are, let me congratulate you. Not many men know how to make a Malay mancatcher. Luckily for me I, too, have hunted in Malacca. Y'all are proving interesting, Mr. Rainsford. I am going at present to have my wound dressed; it's simply a slight 1. Just I shall exist back. I shall exist back."

When the full general, nursing his bruised shoulder, had gone, Rainsford took upwards 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 bit him savagely.

Then, as he stepped forward, his human foot sank into the ooze. He tried to wrench it back, but the muck sucked viciously at his foot every bit if information technology were a behemothic leech. With a violent attempt, he tore his anxiety loose. He knew where he was now. Decease Swamp and its quicksand.

His easily were tight closed as if his nervus were something tangible that someone in the darkness was trying to tear from his grip. The softness of the earth had given him an idea. He stepped back from the quicksand a dozen anxiety or and then and, like some huge prehistoric beaver, he began to dig.

Rainsford had dug himself in in France when a 2nd'south delay meant death. That had been a placid pastime compared to his digging at present. The pit grew deeper; when it was above 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 up. With flying fingers he wove a crude carpet of weeds and branches and with information technology 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 feet on the soft earth, and the night breeze 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 way along, human foot by foot. Rainsford, crouching there, could not see the general, nor could he see the pit. He lived a year in a infinitesimal. So he felt an impulse to cry aloud with joy, for he heard the precipitous crepitation of the breaking branches as the cover of the pit gave way; he heard the sharp scream of pain equally the pointed stakes plant their mark. He leaped upwardly from his place of concealment. And so he cowered back. 3 anxiety from the pit a man was standing, with an electric torch in his hand.

"You've washed well, Rainsford," the vox of the general called. "Your Burmese tiger pit has claimed one of my best dogs. Again you lot score. I think, Mr. Rainsford, I'll see what you tin can do against my whole pack. I'g going habitation for a rest now. Cheers for a most amusing evening."

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

Rainsford knew he could do one of two things. He could stay where he was and await. That was suicide. He could flee. That was postponing the inevitable. For a moment he stood there, thinking. An idea that held a wild gamble came to him, and, tightening his belt, he headed away from the swamp.

The baying of the hounds drew nearer, then still nearer, nearer, ever nearer. On a ridge Rainsford climbed a tree. Down a watercourse, non a quarter of a mile away, he could encounter the bush moving. Straining his eyes, he saw the lean effigy of Full general Zaroff; just ahead of him Rainsford made out some other figure whose wide shoulders surged through the tall jungle weeds; it was the behemothic Ivan, and he seemed pulled forward by some unseen force; Rainsford knew that Ivan must exist holding the pack in leash.

They would be on him whatsoever infinitesimal now. His mind worked frantically. He idea of a native trick he had learned in Uganda. He slid downwardly the tree. He caught concur of a springy young sapling and to it he fastened his hunting knife, with the blade pointing downwardly the trail; with a scrap of wild grapevine he tied dorsum the sapling. Then he ran for his life. The hounds raised their voices as they hit the fresh scent. Rainsford knew now how an brute at bay feels.

He had to finish to get his breath. The baying of the hounds stopped abruptly, and Rainsford'due south center stopped too. They must have reached the pocketknife.

He shinned excitedly up a tree and looked back. His pursuers had stopped. Only the promise that was in Rainsford's encephalon when he climbed died, for he saw in the shallow valley that General Zaroff was yet on his feet. Simply Ivan was not. The knife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree, had not wholly failed.

Rainsford had hardly tumbled to the ground when the pack took upwardly the cry over again.

"Nerve, nerve, nervus!" he panted, every bit he dashed along. A blue gap showed betwixt the copse expressionless ahead. Ever nearer drew the hounds. Rainsford forced himself on toward that gap. He reached it. It was the shore of the sea. Across a cove he could see the gloomy gray stone of the chateau. Twenty feet below him the ocean rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated. He heard the hounds. Then 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 area of water. He shrugged his shoulders. Then exist sat downwards, took a drink of brandy from a silvery flask, lit a cigarette, and hummed a scrap from Madame Butterfly.

General Zaroff had an exceedingly good dinner in his groovy paneled dining hall that evening. With it he had a bottle of Pol Roger and one-half a canteen of Chambertin. 2 slight annoyances kept him from perfect enjoyment. Ane was the thought that it would exist difficult to supersede Ivan; the other was that his quarry had escaped him; of course, the American hadn't played the game--so thought the general as he tasted his later-dinner liqueur. In his library he read, to soothe himself, from the works of Marcus Aurelius. At x he went up to his bedroom. He was deliciously tired, he said to himself, as he locked himself in. In that location was a lilliputian moonlight, so, earlier turning on his light, he went to the window and looked down at the courtyard. He could come across the slap-up hounds, and he chosen, "Better luck another time," to them. Then he switched on the light.

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

"Rainsford!" screamed the full general. "How in God's proper name did y'all get here?"

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

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

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

The full general made one of his deepest bows. "I run into," he said. "Splendid! One of the states is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On baby-sit, Rainsford." . . .

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

If you lot enjoyed this story of a forced "choice" with morbid consequences, you may also enjoy a different kind of life-or-decease quandary, The Lady, or the Tiger?. For another story almost uncontrollable beasts of the jungle, we advise Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Brazilian Cat. Visit our Mystery Stories for more "whodunnits."

Add The Nigh Dangerous Game to your library.