If they anchored a sonobuoy near the wreck, and another near the barge, they'd be able to triangulate. Then they could track Papa Conch and his harem for months, until the battery failed. Long before that, he'd send Mike down to retrieve their BPST.

But the double signal, erratic and out of phase, told him that the signal was echoing off the freighter's hull. He couldn't read the pulse.

He pushed back from the table, thinking. Michael was his best friend—perhaps, outside of his girl, Louisa—the only one left, because his fellow islanders had ostracized him since he'd hired a white.

And maybe they were right. Whites, even Mike, must surely hate to take orders from the seed of their forebears' slaves.

Jake knew that he had hired a brilliant student but a poor employee. Mike thought the minuscule wages the project paid their deckhands—William and Clarence—were barbarous and didn't hesitate to say so.

Clarence and William, happy to be working at all, had so far only smiled. Their own solution would have been to fire Mike and split his salary, but the last thing the underfunded project needed was a shop steward.

Now he considered whether to order Mike to reclaim their device from the conch. Mike could be a stubborn man, did not suffer mistakes gladly, and hated to redo work.

Besides, he was probably getting cold on the bottom.

The death of his brother had shaken him, and he was worried about his mother. Today, of all days, was no time to push him too hard.

Maybe Papa Conch would migrate, with his harem, away from the freighter's plates?

The bop-bop... bop-bop... was growing fainter. He turned up the volume. It did no good at all. Perhaps the conch had moved to the other side of the freighter, where they'd never get a fix.

Still, the temptation to let it ride, in the careless island way, was almost overwhelming.

No! He hadn't fought his way to a Ph.D. from a stilted shack in the canebrake by letting things slide. Mike would have to swallow the bullet and do it all over again.

He picked up the microphone. He mouthed his words distinctly; it took months to learn to speak understandably on underwater acoustic devices, and half the time the voices came through wrong.

"Michael, mon, you're damn well not going to like this, but..."

He told him to remove the device. There was a long silence, and for a moment Jake feared that he had finally torn their fragile bond.

When Mike spoke, it was as if from the bottom of a distant well. His voice was garbled and indistinct, but Jake heard no anger at all.

"Okay, Jake, I think you're right."

Jake arose from the chart table. He stepped on deck, into the bright Bahama sun. He stretched, smiling. The world was good.

He'd get Michael his Ph.D. if it killed him.

***