Quint walked over to the starboard gunwale and began to pull in the rope. “He either bit right through the chain, or else… uh-huh, that’s what I figured.” He leaned over the gunwale and grabbed the chain. He pulled it aboard. It was intact, the clip still attached to the eye of the hook. But the hook itself had been destroyed. The steel shaft no longer curled. It was nearly straight, marked by two small bumps where once it had been tempered into a curve.
“Jesus Christ!” said Brody. “He did that with his mouth?”
“Bent it out nice as you please,” said Quint. “Probably didn’t slow him down for more than a second or two.”
Brody felt light-headed. His fingertips tingled. He sat down in the chair and drew several deep breaths, trying to stifle the fear that was mounting inside him.
“Where do you suppose he’s gone?” said Hooper, standing at the stern and looking at the water.
“He’s around here somewhere,” said Quint. “I imagine he’ll be back. That porpoise wasn’t any more to him than an anchovy is to a bluefish. He’ll be looking for more food.” He reassembled the harpoon, recoiled the rope, and set them on the transom. “We’re just gonna have to wait. And keep chumming. I’ll tie up some more squid and hang ’em overboard.”
Brody watched Quint as he wrapped twine around each squid and dropped it overboard, attached to the boat at cleats, rod-holders, and almost anything else around which he could tie a knot. When a dozen squid had been placed at various points and various depths around the boat, Quint climbed to the flying bridge and sat down.
Hoping to be contradicted, Brody said, “That sure does seem to be a smart fish.”
“Smart or not, I wouldn’t know,” said Quint. “But he’s doing things I’ve never seen a fish do before.” He paused, then said — as much to himself as to Brody — “but I’m gonna get that fucker. That’s one thing for sure.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I know it, that’s all. Now leave me be.”
It was a command, not a request, and though Brody wanted to talk — about anything, even the fish itself, as long as he could steer his mind away from the image of the beast lurking in the water below him — he said nothing more. He looked at his watch: 11.05.
They waited, expecting at any moment to see the fin rise off the stern and cut back and forth through the water. Hooper ladled chum, which sounded to Brody, every time it hit the water, like diarrhea.
At eleven-thirty, Brody was startled by a sharp, resonant snap. Quint leaped down the ladder, across the deck, and onto the transom. He picked up the harpoon and held it at his shoulder, scanning the water around the stern.
“What the hell was that?” said Brody.
“He’s back.”
“How do you know? What was that noise?”
“Twine snapping. He took one of the squid.”
“Why would it snap? Why wouldn’t he chew right through it?”
“He probably never bit down on it. He sucked it in, and the twine came tight behind his teeth when he closed his mouth. He went like this, I imagine" — Quint jerked his head to the side — “and the line parted.”
“How could we hear it snap if it snapped under water?”
“It didn’t snap under water, for Christ sake! It snapped right there.” Quint pointed to a few inches of limp twine hanging from a cleat amidships.
“Oh,” said Brody. As he looked at the remnant, he saw another piece of twine — a few feet farther up the gun-wale — go limp. “There’s another one,” he said. He stood and walked to the gunwale and pulled in the line. “He must be right underneath us.”
Quint said, “Anybody care to go swimming?”
“Let’s put the cage overboard,” said Hooper.
“You’re kidding,” said Brody.
“No, I’m not. It might bring him out.”
“With you in it?”
“Not at first. Let’s see what he does. What do you say, Quint?”
“Might as well,” said Quint. “Can’t hurt just to put it in the water, and you paid for it.” He put down the harpoon, and he and Hooper walked to the cage.
They tipped the cage onto its side, and Hooper opened the top hatch and crawled through it. He removed the scuba tank, regulator, face mask, and neoprene wet suit, and set them on the deck. They tipped the cage upright again and slid it across the deck to the starboard gunwale. “You got a couple of lines?” said Hooper. “I want to make it fast to the boat.” Quint went below and returned with two coils of rope. They tied one to an after cleat, one to a cleat amidships, then secured the ends to the bars on top of the cage. “Okay,” said Hooper. “Let’s put her over.” They lifted the cage, tipped it backward, and pushed it overboard. It sank until the ropes stopped it, a few feet beneath the surface. There it rested, rising and falling slowly in the swells. The three men stood at the gunwale, looking into the water.
“What makes you think this’ll bring him up?” said Brody.
“I didn’t say ‘up,’” said Hooper. “I said ‘out.’ I think he’ll come out and have a look at it, to see whether he wants to eat it.”
“That won’t do us any damn good,” said Quint. “I can’t stick him if he’s twelve feet under water.”
“Once he comes out,” said Hooper, “maybe he’ll come up. We’re not having any luck with anything else.”
But the fish did not come out. The cage lay quietly in the water, unmolested.
“There goes another squid,” said Quint, pointing forward. “He’s there, all right.” He leaned overboard and shouted, “God damn you, fish! Come out where I can have a shot at you.”
After fifteen minutes, Hooper said, “Oh well,” and went below. He reappeared moments later, carrying a movie camera in a waterproof housing, and what looked to Brody like a walking stick with a thong at one end.
“What are you doing?” Brody said.
“I’m going down there. Maybe that’ll bring him out.”
“You’re out of your goddam mind. What are you going to do if he does come out?”
“First, I’m going to take some pictures of him. Then I’m going to try to kill him.”
“With what, may I ask?”
“This.” Hooper held up the stick.
“Good thinking,” Quint said with a derisive cackle. “If that doesn’t work you can tickle him to death.”
“What is that?” said Brody.
“Some people call it a bang stick. Others call it a power head. Anyway, it’s basically an underwater gun.” He pulled both ends of the stick, and it came apart in two pieces. “In here,” he said, pointing to a chamber at the point where the stick had come apart, “you put a twelve-gauge shotgun shell.” He took a shotgun shell from his pocket and pushed it into the chamber, then rejoined the two ends of the stick. “Then, when you get close enough to the fish, you jab it at him and the shell goes off. If you hit him right — in the brain’s the only sure place — you kill him.”
“Even a fish that big?”
“I think so. If I hit him right.”
“And if you don’t? Suppose you miss by just a hair.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I would be, too,” said Quint. “I don’t think I’d like five thousand pounds of pissed-off dinosaur trying to eat me.”
“That’s not my worry,” said Hooper. “What concerns me is that if I miss, I might drive him off. He’d probably sound, and we’d never know if he died or not.”
“Until he ate someone else,” said Brody.
“That’s right.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” said Quint.
“Am I, Quint? You’re not having much success with this fish. We could stay here all month and let him eat your bait right out from under us.”