She stepped to the engine panel. She knew, from weekend cruises, that the battery switch overrode every circuit in the boat. Once Mike, leaving the vessel, had told her to turn it off.

Familiarity bred contempt. Let them take her out and feed her to the conch if she destroyed their data; she needed her sleep tonight. She took a deep breath and turned the switch to "off."

The booming stopped.

Thank God.

She locked the deckhouse and stepped out onto the wharf. She paused for a moment, looking at the beach.

Ellen was whirling in the moonlight, on a dune above the place where she had left them.

Presumably they'd found the stupid bucket and were waiting for her, goofing around on the beach.

***

The great white was homing in on the deep, throbbing beat that filled his world when suddenly it stopped.

Confused, he drifted. He was perhaps half a mile from the dock where Neptune's Folly rested, and his appetite had been whetted by the booming, which to him had sounded like the heartbeat of a nurse shark or a whale.

All at once he sensed another vibration in the water. It was on the surface, but it lacked the smooth pulsations of an amphibian. A seal—even if there had been any in waters as warm as this—would have been slinking with half the noise and disturbance.

A human, perhaps a small one.

The graceful tail began to sweep again.

***

Mike Brody stood with Louisa in the door of Clarence's house, staring at the writhing dancers. None of them seemed conscious of him. A frozen-faced woman, jerking and lunging across the room, caught herself as she was about to fall, and was suddenly erect, arms up, strutting to the beat of the drum.

"We must get the wanga—Thea's bucket," murmured Louisa, "or he will make her sick again!"

He saw Thea's beach bucket hanging on the pole in the center of the room. Wildly he looked around.

In the far corner, away from the dancing flames that lit the shack, he saw Papa Jacques.

His flat black eyes were glittering. He held his gourd rattle—his asson—in both hands with the blunt end pointed at Michael. He was smiling, and his yellow teeth looked like fangs.

He was chanting something under the beat of the drums. His gleaming eyes were merciless, and Michael could not tear his glance away.

All at once Michael felt the jungle rhythm entering his legs, his arms, his heart, his soul.

He fought for control. Louisa squeezed his hand. "Gardez," she warned. "Do not give in!"

He pulled away and strode into the room. Papa Jacques approached him through the smoke, and there were only the two of them and the merciless drums.

The witch doctor took the bucket from the pole and offered it, as if it were a glass. Mike took it and lifted it.

"Drink, mon ami. It is your daughter's..."