“Most likely, the way he’ll come will be following his nose—right up the slick, either on the surface or just below. And that’s where we’ll have a little trouble. The squid isn’t enough to keep him interested. Fish that size’ll suck a squid right down and not even know he’s et it. So we’ll have to give him something special that he can’t turn down, something with a big ol’ hook in it that’ll hold him at least until we can stick him once or twice.”

“If the hook’s too obvious,” said Brody, “won’t he avoid the bait altogether?”

“No. These things don’t have the brains of a dog. They eat anything. If they’re feeding, you could throw a bare hook down at ’em and they’ll take it if they see it. A friend of mine had one come up once and try to eat the outboard motor off his dinghy. He only spat it out ’cause he couldn’t get it down in one swallow.”

From the stern, where he was ladling chum, Hooper said, “What’s something special, Quint?”

“You mean that special treat he can’t turn down?” Quint smiled and pointed to a green plastic garbage can nestled in a corner amidships. “Take a look for yourself. It’s in that can. I’ve been saving it for a fish like the one we’re after. On anything else it’d be a waste.”

Hooper walked over to the can, flipped the metal clasps off the sides, and lifted the top. His shock at what he saw made him gasp. Floating vertically in the can full of water, its lifeless head swaying gently with the motion of the boat, was a tiny bottle-nosed dolphin, no more than two feet long. Sticking out from a puncture on the outside of the jaw was the eye of a huge shark hook, and from a hole in the belly the barbed hook itself curled forward. Hooper clutched the sides of the can and said, “A baby.”

“Even better,” Quint said with a grin. “Unborn.”

Hooper gazed into the can for a few more seconds, then slammed the top back on and said, “Where did you get it?”

“Oh, I guess about six miles from here, due east. Why?”

“I mean how did you get it?”

“How do you think? From the mother.”

“You killed her.”

“No.” Quint laughed. “She jumped into the boat and swallowed a bunch of sleeping pills.” He paused, waiting for a laugh, and when none came he said, “You can’t rightly buy them, you know.”

Hooper stared at Quint. He was furious, outraged. But he said only, “You know they’re protected.”

“When I fish, son, I catch what I want.”

“But what about laws? Don’t—”

“What’s your line of work, Hooper?”

“I’m an icthyologist. I study fish. That’s why I’m here. Didn’t you know that?”

“When people charter my boat, I don’t ask questions about them. But okay, you study fish for a living. If you had to work for a living—I mean the kind of work where the amount of money you make depends on the amount of sweat you put in—you’d know more about what laws really mean. Sure, those porpoise are protected. But that law wasn’t put in to stop Quint from taking one or two for bait. It was meant to stop big-time fishing for them, to stop nuts from shooting them for sport. So I’ll tell you what, Hooper: You can bitch and moan all you want. But don’t tell Quint he can’t catch a few fish to help him make a living.”