The Most Dangerous Game 3

An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and hisears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard thesound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired agun three times. Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. Hestrained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, butit was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail andbalanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking arope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse crycame from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had losthis balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters ofthe Caribbean Sea dosed over his head. He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out, but the wash fromthe speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in hisopen mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out withstrong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stoppedbefore he had swum fifty feet. A certain coolheadedness had come to him;it was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was achance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, butthat chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. Hewrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. Thelights of the yacht became faint and ever-vanishing fireflies; then theywere blotted out entirely by the night.