"Where do you find horse meat?" Mike demanded, almost afraid to ask. Jake admitted he had stolen the harpoon from a restaurant and seemed capable of horse thievery if pushed.

"We eat the stuff where I come from," said Jake. Mike did not know if he was kidding or not. "You don't think Carla's buying beef at the Kingston Butcher Shop?"

Mike peered into the water, following the bloody trail. He thought he saw a light-colored shape but lost it in the glitter of the afternoon sun on the waves.

He hefted the harpoon in his hand. It was heavy with the weight of the BPST near its head, bound tightly to the haft with stainless-steel wire. The transducer head of the device, a rounded dome, was placed so that if the point of the harpoon penetrated the shark to a depth of one full foot, it would rest against its skin; presumably it would pick up the heartbeat of a shark if it could work on the feeble pulse of a conch at sixty feet.

Jake had tested it by pressing it against his own wrist, while Mike, at the computer, turned up the volume and the gain. It thumped beautifully over the speaker, sixty times a minute—they could hear it from bow to stern—and left a fine trace of marching mountain peaks on the screen.

The last thing Jake had done to the harpoon was to saw its shaft six inches above the transmitter, but only halfway through, so that it would break off at impact, leaving the point and BPST embedded safely in the flesh.

Now Mike shifted uncomfortably on the bowsprit. He felt exposed and had the sense that something, somewhere, was watching him. "Bad-luck boat," William had said....

"William," said Jake in exasperation, "get your black ass out of that hatch and help me."

Reluctantly William climbed the rest of the way out of the hatch and stood irresolutely on deck.

"Clarence say be careful," he muttered. "He say Papa Jacques put a wanga on this boat. Look, mon, what has hoppen to the little submarine!"

"What the hell's a wanga?" asked Mike, scanning the water.

"Evil charm," explained Jake, heaving a cut of shoulder off the bow with a splash. "That's Papa Jacques's whole pitch. You play along with his voodoo cure, or you step on a thorn and die."

"Everybody says you shouldn't have t'rew his asson on the ground, Mike," said William moodily. "Everybody in Prince George Town!"

"I'll throw his bloody asson on the ground," Jake said with a growl, "if I ever see him near."

All at once Mike saw something rushing from the depths, a great white shape rising like a reef out of the sea. He recoiled on the bowsprit, slipped, and clutched the headstay, flailing helplessly with his harpoon for balance.