‘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.

The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea dosed over his head.

Rainsford, crouching there, could not see the general, nor could he see the pit. He lived a year in a minute.

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.

The wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag

and strangle. Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped

before he had swum fifty feet.

For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea.

Your brain against mine. Your woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina

against mine. Outdoor chess!

The sea licked greedy lips in the shadows.

He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like

trying to see through a blanket.

He had not been entirely clearheaded when the chateau gates snapped shut behind him.

He was a tall man past middle age, for his hair was a vivid white; but his thick eyebrows

and pointed military moustache were as black as the night from which Rainsford had come.