Explore "The Bird of Paradise" by E. Phillips Oppenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Hamer Wildburn sat suddenly up in his wide and luxurious cabin bed, with the start of the sound sleeper unexpectedly awakened. His hands clasped his pyjama clad knees. He listened intently. Through the wide open porthole opposite came the thirty seconds flash from Antibes lighthouse. From the shore road, which skirted the bay, there was the faint hoot of a belated motor car. Closer at hand the lazy murmur of the sea against the sides of his anchored yacht. Then more distinctly, he heard again the sound which had at first awakened him. This time there was no doubt about it. A human voice from the open space. A woman's cry of appeal. The soft but purposeful splashing of a swimmer keeping herself afloat.The young man hastened out of bed, ran up the companionway, and leaned over the side. What he saw almost immediately below was enough to startle anyone. A woman was floating upon her back, a woman, not in the day-by-day scanty but sufficient bathing dress of the moment, but a woman in evening dress, with the glint even of Jewels around her neck.
"What on earth's the matter?" he called out "Have you fallen in from anywhere?"