Tentatively, Hooper stuck a hand through the bars and touched the flank. It felt cold and hard, not clammy but smooth as vinyl. He let his fingertips caress the flesh — past the pectoral fins, the pelvic fin, the thick, firm genital claspers — until finally (the fish seemed to have no end) they were slapped away by the sweeping tail.
The fish continued to move away from the cage. Hooper heard faint popping noises, and he saw three straight spirals of angry bubbles speed from the surface, then slow and stop, well above the fish. Bullets. Not yet, he told himself. One more pass for pictures. The fish began to turn, banking, the rubbery pectoral fins changing pitch.
The fish rammed through the space between the bars.
“What the hell is he doing down there?” said Brody. “Why didn’t he jab him with the gun?”
Quint didn’t answer. He stood on the transom, harpoon clutched in his fist, peering into the water. “Come up, fish,” he said. “Come to Quint.”
“Do you see it?” said Brody. “What’s it doing?”
“Nothing. Not yet, anyway.”
The fish had moved off to the limit of Hooper’s vision — a spectral silver-gray blur tracing a slow circle. Hooper raised his camera and pressed the trigger. He knew the film would be worthless unless the fish moved in once more, but he wanted to catch the beast as it emerged from the darkness.
Through the viewfinder he saw the fish turn toward him. It moved fast, tail thrusting vigorously, mouth opening and closing as if gasping for breath. Hooper raised his right hand to change the focus. Remember to change it again, he told himself, when it turns.
But the fish did not turn. A shiver traveled the length of its body as it closed on the cage. It struck the cage head on, the snout ramming between two bars and spreading them. The snout hit Hooper in the chest and knocked him backward. The camera flew from his hands, and the mouthpiece shot from his mouth. The fish turned on its side, and the pounding tail forced the great body farther into the cage. Hooper groped for his mouthpiece but couldn’t find it. His chest was convulsed with the need for air.
“It’s attacking!” screamed Brody. He grabbed one of the tether ropes and pulled, desperately trying to raise the cage.
“God damn your fucking soul!” Quint shouted.
“Throw it! Throw it!”
“I can’t throw it! I gotta get him on the surface! Come up, you devil! You prick!”
The fish slid backward out of the cage and turned sharply to the right in a tight circle. Hooper reached behind his head, found the regulator tube, and followed it with his hand until he located the mouthpiece. He put it in his mouth and, forgetting to exhale first, sucked for air. He got water, and he gagged and choked until at last the mouthpiece cleared and he drew an agonized breath. It was then that he saw the wide gap in the bars and saw the giant head lunging through it. He raised his hands above his head, grasping at the escape hatch.
The fish rammed through the space between the bars, spreading them still farther with each thrust of its tail. Hooper, flattened against the back of the cage, saw the mouth reaching, straining for him. He remembered the power head, and he tried to lower his right arm and grab it. The fish thrust again, and Hooper saw with the terror of doom that the mouth was going to reach him.
The jaws closed around his torso. Hooper felt a terrible pressure, as if his guts were being compacted. He jabbed his fist into the black eye. The fish bit down, and the last thing Hooper saw before he died was the eye gazing at him through a cloud of his own blood.
“He’s got him!” cried Brody. “Do something!”
“The man is dead,” Quint said.
“How do you know? We may be able to save him.”
“He is dead.”
Holding Hooper in its mouth, the fish backed out of the cage. It sank a few feet, chewing, swallowing the viscera that were squeezed into its gullet. Then it shuddered and thrust forward with its tail, driving itself and prey upward in the water.
“He’s coming up!” said Brody.
“Grab the rifle!” Quint cocked his hand for the throw.
The fish broke water fifteen feet from the boat, surging upward in a shower of spray. Hooper’s body protruded from each side of the mouth, head and arms hanging limply down one side, knees, calves, and feet from the other.
In the few seconds while the fish was clear of the water, Brody thought he saw Hooper’s glazed, dead eyes staring open through his face mask. As if in contempt and triumph, the fish hung suspended for an instant, challenging mortal vengeance.
Simultaneously, Brody reached for the rifle and Quint cast the harpoon. The target was huge, a field of white belly, and the distance was not too great for a successful throw above water. But as Quint threw, the fish began to slide down in the water, and the iron went high.
For another instant, the fish remained on the surface, its head out of water, Hooper hanging from its mouth.
“Shoot!” Quint yelled. “For Christ sake, shoot!”
Brody shot without aiming. The first two shots hit the water in front of the fish. The third, to Brody’s horror, struck Hooper in the neck.
“Here, give me the goddam thing!” said Quint, grabbing the rifle from Brody. In a single, quick motion he raised the rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off two shots. But the fish, with a last, vacant gaze, had already begun to slip beneath the surface. The bullets plopped harmlessly into the swirl where the head had been.
The fish might never have been there. There was no noise, save the whisper of a breeze. From the surface the cage seemed undamaged. The water was calm. The only difference was that Hooper was gone.
“What do we do now?” said Brody. “What in the name of God can we do now? There’s nothing left. We might as well go back.”
“We’ll go back,” said Quint. “For now.”
“For now? What do you mean? There’s nothing we can do. The fish is too much for us. It’s not real, not natural.”
“Are you beaten, man?”
“I’m beaten. All we can do is wait until God or nature or whatever the hell is doing this to us decides we’ve had enough. It’s out of man’s hands.”
“Not mine,” said Quint. “I am going to kill that thing.”
“I’m not sure I can get any more money after what happened today.”
“Keep your money. This is no longer a matter of money.”
“What do you mean?” Brody looked at Quint, who was standing at the stern, looking at the spot where the fish’s head had been, as if he expected it to reappear at any moment clutching the shredded corpse in its mouth. He searched the sea, craving another confrontation.
Quint said to Brody, “I am going to kill that fish. Come if you want. Stay home if you want. But I am going to kill that fish.”
As Quint spoke, Brody looked into his eyes. They seemed as dark and bottomless as the eye of the fish. “I’ll come,” said Brody. “I don’t guess I have any choice.”
“No,” said Quint. “We have no choice.” He took his knife from its sheath and handed it to Brody. “Here. Cut that cage loose and let’s get out of here.”
When the boat was tied up at the dock, Brody walked toward his car. At the end of the dock there was a phone booth, and he stopped beside it, prompted by his earlier resolve to call Daisy Wicker. But he suppressed the impulse and moved on to his car. What’s the point? he thought. If there was anything, it’s over now.
Still, as he drove toward Amity, Brody wondered what Ellen’s reaction had been when the Coast Guard had called her with the news of Hooper’s death. Quint had radioed the Coast Guard before they started in, and Brody had asked the duty officer to phone Ellen and tell her that he, at least, was all right.
By the time Brody arrived home, Ellen had long since finished crying. She had wept mechanically, angrily, grieving not so much for Hooper as in hopelessness and bitterness at yet another death. She had been sadder at the disintegration of Larry Vaughan than she was now, for Vaughan had been a dear and close friend. Hooper had been a “lover” in only the most shallow sense of the word. She had not loved him. She had used him, and though she was grateful for what he had given her, she felt no obligation to him. She was sorry he was dead, of course, just as she would have been sorry to hear that his brother, David, had died. In her mind they were both now relics of her distant past.