“Arthur, now you.” Jackson helped Arty get one trunk-like leg up on the gunwale, and between he and Philippe they managed to get him wedged into the cage.

Jackson sat astride the gunwale, and one of the deck hands handed him a three-foot fish – it was a fresh tuna, sliced open and starting to drip deep red blood onto the deck. Jackson groaned under its weight. A natural fiber rope was tied around its tail, and he lowered into the cage, for Philippe. Jackson then opened a dive pocket on his vest, and felt for the waterproof tracker. In a moment he saw the orange blip – a mile out and three hundred feet down, but closing – good.

He pulled his facemask down and turned to give his crew a wave, before sliding in through the cage door. He closed it, and went to the cage’s winch controls and pressed the red button to take them down – they immediately began to be lowered into even darker water. Time was racing them now, and Betty had been known to rise up, not see them, and then turn tail, as if worried about the coming sunlight. The last thing Jackson wanted was to have to suffer their rich fool passenger one minute longer than necessary.

The cage gently lowered. The deck spotlights that were angled down into the water created a giant halo around the boat, but as they sank below the hull it quickly became dark with just a blush of light coming from above. Philippe’s camera was loaded with light-sensitive film, and the lenses could be relied on to provide excellent depth, but still, they needed Betty to be as close as they could get her.

At twenty feet, Jackson stopped their descent and floated closer to Arty, and gently took hold of him, pulling him close so he could look into his eyes. They were wide, and he could immediately tell he was sucking oxygen too fast. Good grief, Jackson thought, what was he going to be like when a twenty-plus foot behemoth came out of the shadowy depths? He’d fill his damn wetsuit. He tapped the man on the head and gave him a thumbs-up. Arty nodded and returned the gesture.

He supposed it didn’t master if he chewed through his oxygen in half the time; after all they had enough air for an hour, and they should only be down for twenty minutes if Betty was on time. Jackson floated back to the controls and started them down again, the electronic whine of the winches a background hum as they were lowered to their destination depth of forty feet below the keel.