The Most Dangerous Game (AmazonClassics Edition) recap

Big-game hunter Sanger Rainsford falls from a yacht and swims to isolated Ship-Trap Island, where the cultivated General Zaroff welcomes him. Zaroff explains that conventional hunting ceased to challenge him, so he now captures stranded sailors and hunts them as human prey. When Rainsford refuses to join him, Zaroff makes Rainsford his next quarry, giving him a head start before following with a pistol and hunting dogs. Rainsford uses his experience to lay traps: one wounds Zaroff, another kills a dog, and a final device kills Zaroff's servant Ivan. Cornered at a cliff, Rainsford jumps into the sea. Zaroff believes him dead and returns home, only to find that Rainsford has swum back and entered his bedroom. Rainsford insists that their contest is unfinished. The story implies that he kills Zaroff in the ensuing fight and ends the night sleeping in the general's bed.

While sailing toward the Amazon, renowned hunter Sanger Rainsford discusses hunting with his companion Whitney near an island feared by sailors. Alone on deck after Whitney retires, Rainsford hears gunshots, falls overboard, and swims to the island. He follows signs of a hunt to a mansion occupied by General Zaroff, a sophisticated Russian exile, and Ivan, Zaroff's armed servant. Zaroff admires Rainsford's hunting career but admits that ordinary animals no longer challenge him. He has therefore turned the island into a hunting ground for shipwrecked sailors, whom he arms and pursues after a short head start. Rainsford refuses an invitation to participate, so Zaroff selects him as the next prey. During the hunt Rainsford doubles back and constructs traps. A falling tree wounds Zaroff, a concealed pit kills one of his dogs, and a knife trap kills Ivan. Zaroff nevertheless tracks him to a seaside cliff with the surviving hounds. Rainsford jumps into the water, leading Zaroff to believe he has died. That night Rainsford confronts Zaroff in the general's bedroom after swimming back to the house. He refuses to regard himself as safe while Zaroff lives, and they fight. Rainsford's later presence in Zaroff's bed implies that he kills the general and survives the game.

After Rainsford's traps kill Ivan and one of the hounds but fail to stop Zaroff, the general closes in with his remaining dogs. Rainsford leaps from a cliff into the sea, and Zaroff assumes that his quarry has escaped the contest by dying. Zaroff returns to his house, where he eats alone and goes to his bedroom. Rainsford is waiting there, having survived the drop and swum around the island. He rejects Zaroff's suggestion that the contest is over, saying that he still considers himself hunted. The two men fight, and the narration then reveals that Rainsford sleeps in Zaroff's bed. The implication is that Rainsford kills Zaroff and wins their final confrontation; the story does not explain what he later does with the island, the prisoners, or Zaroff's remaining staff and hounds.