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"There was no breeze. The sea was as flat as a plate-glass window. We 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 sailor can taint the whole ship's company with his fear."

"Maybe.

But sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense that tells them when they are in danger.

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

An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil.

Anyhow, I'm glad we're getting out of this zone.

Well, I think I'll turn in now, Rainsford."

"I'm not sleepy," said Rainsford. "I'm going to smoke another pipe up on the afterdeck."

"Good night, then, Rainsford. See you at breakfast."

"Right. Good night, Whitney."

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.

Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier. 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-"

An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. 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 direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket.

He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth.

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.

The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea closed 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 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.

A certain coolheadedness had come to him; it was not the first time he had been in a tight place.

There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on.

He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power.

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