Brody couldn’t tell how many sharks there were in the explosion of water. Fins crisscrossed on the surface, tails whipped the water. Amid the sounds of splashes came an occasional grunt as fish slammed into fish. Brody looked down at his shirt and saw that it was spattered with water and blood.

The frenzy continued for several minutes, until only three large sharks remained, cruising back and forth beneath the surface.

The men watched in silence until the last of the three had vanished.

“Jesus,” said Hooper.

“You don’t approve,” said Quint.

“That’s right. I don’t like to see things die for people’s amusement.” Quint snickered, and Hooper said, “Do you?”

“It ain’t a question of liking it or not. It’s what feeds me.”

Quint reached into an ice chest and took out another hook and leader. The hook had been baited before they left the dock—a squid skewered and tied to the shaft and barb of the hook. Using pliers, Quint attached the leader to the end of the wire line. He dropped the bait overboard, fed out thirty yards of line, and let it drift into the slick.

Hooper resumed his routine of ladling chum into the water. Brody said, “Anybody want a beer?” Both Quint and Hooper nodded, so he went below and took three cans from a cooler. As he left the cabin, Brody noticed two old, cracked, and curling photographs thumbtacked to the bulkhead. One showed Quint standing hip-deep in a pile of big, strange-looking fish. The other was a picture of a dead shark lying on a beach. There was nothing else in the photograph to compare the fish to, so Brody couldn’t determine its size.

Brody left the cabin, gave the others their beers, and sat down in the fighting chair. “I saw your pictures down there,” he said to Quint. “What are all those fish you’re standing in?”

“Tarpon,” said Quint. “That was a while back, when I did some fishing in Florida. I never seen anything like it. We must have got thirty, forty tarpon—big tarpon—in four nights’ fishing.”

“And you kept them?” said Hooper. “You’re supposed to throw them back.”

“Customers wanted ’em. For pictures, I guess. Anyway, they don’t make bad chum, chopped up.”

“What you’re saying is, they’re more use dead than alive.”

“Sure. Same with most fish. And a lot of animals, too. I never did try to eat a live steer.” Quint laughed.

“What’s the other picture?” said Brody. “Just a shark?”

“Well, not just a shark. It was a big white—about fourteen, fifteen feet. Weighed over three thousand pounds.”

“How did you catch it?”

“Ironed it. But I tell you”—Quint chuckled—“for a while there it was a question of who was gonna catch who.”

“What do you mean?”

“Damn thing attacked the boat. No provocation, no nothing. We were sitting out here minding our own business, when whamo! It felt like we was hit by a freight train. Knocked my mate right on his ass, and the customer started screaming bloody murder that we were sinking. Then the bastard hit us again. I put an iron in him and we chased him—Christ, we must have chased him halfway across the Atlantic.”