I was along the south shore of Loch Ness, fishing for brown trout, looking almost directly into Urquhart Bay, when I saw something break the surface, then disappear. I kept watching, keeping an eye out, fishing gently, when a great elephantlike shape rose from the water. It was a large black object… a whalelike object. It submerged, then reappeared a matter of seconds later, and I noticed it had rotated, turning before surfacing.

I called to my friend, Willie Frazer, who himself had a sighting a year earlier, almost to the day. He saw it, too, and we realized it was moving toward us, moving against the current. It was two hundred meters away, and people on the other side of the Loch were watching it, too. It remained along the surface for fifty minutes, the longest sighting on record.

—IAN CAMERON, FORMER SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NORTHERN POLICE FORCE, JUNE 1965

Chapter 29

Urquhart Bay

David waved to the reenergized crowd, then climbed over the starboard rail, his rubber-soled shoes slipping along the wet surface. "Newman, hand me that fishing gaff, then hold on to my belt so I don't fall in."

"I need to check the array."

"You'll check it in a minute. First I want to hook the bait rope."

Michael Newman handed him the reach pole, then grabbed him about the waist. "This is a mistake. The Nothosaur should be dragging the bait, not us."

"We need them to cut off the plesiosaur's escape."

"Wake up, Caldwell. Sonar says the creature's fifty-two feet long. That's almost twice the size of this rickety old tub."

"Will you relax. Once it enters the bay, we can always cut the rope. You eggheads worry too much."

"At least we know better than to be playing with an aluminum reach pole out on the water during a lightning storm."

"Chill, mom." David leaned out, slapping the hook end of the fishing gaff at the buoy's submerged rope. "Got it, first try, too. Here, grab the pole while I climb back over, and don't lose it, it's a lot heavier than it looks."

Gripping the aluminum pole, Newman pulled the hooked rope toward him. "Geez, it weighs a ton. What's on the end of this?"

"Dead cow. Hoagland sawed off its legs so it would bleed a nice trail. Here, help me guide the rope back toward the stern, then we'll tie it off."

Struggling with the gaff, it took them another five minutes before they gained enough slack to loop the rope around a metal cleat.

Newman wiped his wet hands on David's sweatshirt. "There. You can cut the line to the buoy without me, I'm checking the array." The engineer reentered the pilothouse, searching the sonar grid.

The red blip was gone.

"Not good."

"What's not good?" Brandy asked.

"I lost the monster. It disappeared somewhere along the shoreline."

"So find it." She pushed down on the throttle, feeling the Nessie III's engine strain to drag the dead cow through the water.