Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea dosed over his head. 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. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him.' It's so dark,' he thought, 'that I could sleep without closing my eyes the night would be my eyelids-'ДЄn abrupt sound startled him. Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier. There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the wash of the propeller. 'I'm going to smoke another pipe up on the afterdeck.' Well, I think I'll turn in now, Rainsford.' Anyhow, I'm glad we're getting out of this zone. An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil. Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing-with wave lengths, just as sound and light have. But sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense that tells them when they are in danger. 'One superstitious sailor can taint the whole ship's company with his fear.' What I felt was a-a mental chill a sort of sudden dread.' The sea was as flat as a plate-glass window. Now, you mustn't laugh when I tell you this-I did feel something like a sudden chill. All I could get out of him was `This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.' Then he said to me, very gravely, `Don't you feel anything?'-as if the air about us was actually poisonous. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. 'Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who'd go up to the devil himself and ask him for a light. 'They were a bit strange, now you mention it.

Didn't you notice that the crew's nerves seemed a bit jumpy today?' But it's gotten into sailor lore, somehow. Even cannibals wouldn't live in such a God-forsaken place. Do you think we've passed that island yet?' The world is made up of two classes-the hunters and the huntees. 'This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. 'Even so, I rather think they understand one thing-fear. 'Perhaps the jaguar does,' observed Whitney. 'You're a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. 'Don't talk rot, Whitney,' said Rainsford. 'The best sport in the world,' agreed Rainsford. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey's. 'It will be light enough in Rio,' promised Whitney.

'You've good eyes,' said Whitney, with a laugh, 'and I've seen you pick off a moose moving in the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can't see four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night.' '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. 'A suggestive name, isn't it? Sailors have a curious dread of the place. 'The old charts call it 'Ship-Trap Island,'' Whitney replied. OFF THERE to the right-somewhere-is a large island,' said Whitney.

It is an extremly long pasta, so if you don't have time to read this, please try later. This story was published by Richard Connell on January 19, 1924.

Moose life is feudal wiki