Mike whipped the snarling Evinrude into life. Standing at the tiller in his wet suit, he set a course toward Masthead Point, taking spray over the bulbous rubber bow. He took a compass bearing with a hand-held pelorus on Masthead Light, and a second on the Prince George Channel buoy. Distantly he could see the end of Spanish Galleon Cay. He took a bearing on that, too, and marked them on the chart.

He picked up the first sonobuoy. Into its microphone he said, "Neptune's Folly from Neptune's Dolly! How do you read me, Jake?"

"Five by five, partner. Let her rip."

He tossed over a rusty dinghy anchor and played out its line to the bottom. He tested to see if it would hold and secured the sonobuoy to the line.

He tossed in the sonobuoy. It bobbed, nodding, in the waves. Ten feet down, through crystal-clear water, he could see the microphone dangling.

If some conch diver didn't steal the rig to sell it back to the Ministry, sonobuoy number one was set. He did the same thing with sonobuoys numbers two and three, anchoring one of them off Prince George Inlet, and the other near Hog Bottom Cut. Now they could hear the great white shark as it exited Masthead Sound.

All they had to do now was get a BPST aboard the great white shark, and assuming that the damn thing had a heart that beat, they could track him all day long.

If he hadn't left for cooler water sometime during the night.

***

Jake McCay sat at his workbench in the Neptune's Folly deckhouse. His grindstone screamed, and sparks cascaded from the harpoon point.

He had gotten the ancient whaling harpoon from the Inn of the Happy Whale, a tourist trap on Kingston Street downtown. Unwilling to risk refusal, he had borrowed it at three A.M. by jimmying open the window over the ladies' room and snaking his enormous shoulders through the hole.

He had never bee a thief save by necessity, when as a child he had had to steal to eat. He felt badly about the harpoon—Louisa would kill him if she knew.

But, after all, if the shark was not tagged and its presence had to be revealed before the festival, the Happy Whale, like every other enterprise on Whiskey Cay, would turn its belly up and sink in bankruptcy tomorrow, sure as hell.

He had been sharpening the point of the harpoon and its rusty tines for half an hour. The old Bedford whalers had demanded rugged stuff; the iron was of a quality one never saw today. It took an edge like a straight razor, and a point like a cactus plant. Unless the shark was wearing armor plate, the transmitter would stick.

He ran his finger along the newly sharpened barbs. They were razor-sharp and cut him. He cursed and flicked his fingers; blood splattered on the deck.