Most of the fish large enough to be his prey had sensed his presence and deserted the sound. Skates, dolphin fish, tarpons, and sand sharks had scattered far and wide.

Ashore, Prince George Town was awakening to its annual island festival. In cabins and shacks in the palm groves and mansions on the hill, scissors were snipping, and men, women, and children were pulling on crepe-paper costumes for the Junkanoo Parade.

Tourists were arriving from Nassau on the early ferry and by plane; Romeo, who had an appointment at nine-thirty to meet Hoagie Newcombe at the Inn of the Happy Whale, on a matter far more important than the tourist trade, had grown so busy shuttling between the town and the airstrip that he feared he'd be late.

By nine A.M. the bell on the Anglican steeple was tolling continually. Family street stalls—assigned when America was a colony hardly more valuable to the British Crown than this lonely island chain—were set up on Kingston Street and on the beach.

By nine-thirty, artists—American, British, and native had their paintings set up along Old Town Plaza. Shell engravers and woodcarvers were hawking their wares on the steps of Town Hall.

Village boys were selling Goombay Punch, pineapple-flavored soda, from boxes strapped around their necks, and natives from the bush had set up stalls to peddle fruit.

Speedboats, which would offer parachute rides along the beach, were arriving from across Tongue of the Ocean. Owners of fishing boats for the Prince George Cup Race were hoisting their ragged sails to air them in the sun.

The Aquatic Club of Prince George Town was setting its buoys off the beach for the swimming race. A long yellow inflatable sled, shaped like a banana and meant to be straddled like a horse by a half dozen riders clinging to handholds, arrived from Nassau. Towed by a waterskiing boat, it offered two-dollar rides.

Over it all, the jungle rhythms of Africa's Gold Coast boomed from the shore. The goombay drums of steel or wooden kegs, covered with goatskin and kept heated and taut by tiny fires inside, talked to each other from one end of the island to the other. The rhythms of the songs throbbed of their Bantu past.

On Princess Square by New Town Dock, the masqueraders were assembling. Cowbells clanged, tin whistles shrieked, poinciana-pod rattles whirred, and lignum vitae sticks clicked like castanets.

But it was the drums, pulsing with the rhythm torn from African roots two hundred years before, that pulsed through palm groves, over beaches, and in the gentle turquoise waters on the island's festive day.

They excited the great white shark and made his hunger grow.

***

Hoagie Newcombe sat with his back to the bar at the of the Happy Whale, watching the masked islanders, with their crazy musical instruments, hurry past.

He looked at his watch. Ten o'clock? Where was Romeo?