She hadn't seen him drunk in years, but she was too frightened to care.

Boom... boom... boom...

Suppose what she had heard the previous night on the beach was the heartbeat of the shark?

"Mrs. Brody?" Witherspoon said, prodding her and indicating the microphone.

She ignored him. "Mike," she called, "I turned off that loudspeaker last night!"

He sobered instantly. Jake came awake and half rose from his chair.

"What?"

"Mrs. Brody!" protested Witherspoon. A buzz ran through the audience. The mayor gave up, shrugged, stepped to the statue, and yanked off the cover, as the conductor of the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band rapped on his music stand.

She heard gasps as the sail fell away. Mike vaulted to the stand.

"Why?" he demanded.

"We had to sleep!"

"Oh, my God!" Mike moaned. For an instant he stared into her eyes. Then he yanked the microphone from the mayor.

But the Royal Police Band had been restrained too long. The bandleader tapped his music stand and raised his baton. He brought it down. The cymbals clashed, the clarinets blared, the tubas throbbed.

"Clear the water!" shouted Mike. "Get them out!"

In the blast of brass and the rumble of snares, hardly anyone on the stand, and no one on the beach, could hear.

The parade of vessels began to flow by King Neptune on the barge.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Ellen Brody watched the banana boat pull away from the beach, fighting the dread that grabbed her whenever she saw a Brody in the water.

First she had said no. But the shattered look in Thea's eyes when she learned that she could not go with the others had brought Ellen back to Amity after the time of the first shark.

Brody had passed an edict: No more swimming for the boys off Amity Beach.

Sean had been easy to convince; he remembered the first shark and wouldn't go near the water, anyway.

But with Mike, it had been different; he'd begun a hunger strike. It had started because of a printed application form for a scuba-diving course. His friend Andy had picked up two copies at the Amity Sport Diving Center and given one to Mike. Andy's father had signed Andy's, and Brody refused to sign.

So Mike went without two meals in a row. Ellen told Brody. Brody found him lying on his bed in his room, reading Skin Diver magazine.

The magazine was the top issue on a pile a foot high. Brody, trying to bring up the subject of the missed breakfast and lunch, leafed through one of them. He stopped at a full-page ad from U.S. Divers.

A macho diver, who wore a husky mustache, dripped with seawater and gleaming new equipment. A model, who looked as if her wet suit had been sprayed on her, gazed at him, wet-eyed with lust.

"What are you going to do, burn them?" complained Mike, addressing the ceiling. "It's not porn."