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vessels. Evidently we’d come at a bad time; despite Eleazer’s friendly hail, the boats’ passengers spared us barely a glance. I recognized Molly’s curly red hair aboard the Ira B . Her partner, Carl, looked completely different, perhaps because he was beet red and his eyes were bulging out of his head.
    “You’re not going to get this one, Gerald.”
    “Settle down, Carl,” Gerald said from the deck of the Lorelei . He oozed an irritating blend of confidence and condescension.
    “Just because you have friends in high places doesn’t mean the entire ocean belongs to you,” Carl fumed.
    Eleazer glanced at me. “We came at a bad time, it seems.”
    “Jurisdiction quarrel,” I said.
    His eyebrows went up. “Jurisdiction? It’s not just the university out here?”
    “That one,” I said, pointing to the Lorelei , “belongs to a company called Iliad. And that one,” I said, gesturing to the smaller, utilitarian-looking Ira B , “belongs to the University of Maine.”
    Eleazer’s face hardened. “I’ve heard of Iliad. Made a mess of a Spanish galleon a few years back. Why are they here?”
    “They’re hoping to find artifacts and make money selling them, I imagine.”
    “I’ll bet they are—but I’m not going to let them steal that ship.” Eleazer looked fierce. “That’s our history there under that water. I’ll not stand by and watch it pillaged by outsiders.”
    “I think Carl agrees with you,” I said, nodding toward the archaeologist, who was now an unhealthy purplish color and shouting at the top of his lungs. “You’re a crook! A vulture!”
    The other man turned and issued a few commands to his crew. I gathered they had experienced this kind of thing before, for they seemed utterly unconcerned by the invective being hurled at them by the archaeologist.
    “You can’t just retrieve artifacts without mapping the site!” Carl yelled as Audrey donned a dry suit and reached for an oxygen tank. “You don’t have permission. You’re desecrating the site!”
    Eleazer stood up in the skiff. One hand, I noted uneasily, was on the hilt of the cutlass. “The man’s right,” he called to Gerald. “You have no business here. This ship belongs to the people of Maine!”
    The man turned to look at Eleazer, while I tried to make myself as small as possible. As much as I might agree with the islander, the man he was haranguing was, unfortunately, my guest. I was distinctly uncomfortable being—quite literally—in the same boat with him.
    Gerald, unruffled by Eleazer’s and Carl’s verbal attacks, surveyed the little skiff; I hunched down in my jacket. “According to the Abandoned Shipwreck Act,” he said in a clipped voice, “the wreck does not fall within territorial waters, and is almost certainly not a ship that belonged to the U.S. government. Therefore, it is not the property of the state, and is—as the saying goes—‘fair game’.”
    “I’m no lawyer, and what you say may be true, but it’s still not right, and you know it,” Eleazer said. “In any case, you didn’t find it. Whatever happened to finders keepers? It should be up to whoever found it in the first place.”
    “Fortunately, we were, in fact, invited here by the individual who found the ship,” Gerald said coolly. “As such, there is no reason for us not to continue our operation. If it is any consolation, you have my assurances that I will do everything to preserve the site,” he said.
    “Adam Thrackton called you?” Eleazer said, looking stunned.
    “No,” he said. “Evan Sorenson, the young man who pulled up the timber, contacted us. He specifically requested our presence.”
    “You’re a rotten, dirty liar,” Eleazer said. “It was Adam what found that ship, and that’s a piece of our heritage you’re trying to lay claim to. You’re a pirate, plain and simple.” There was a menace to his voice that I’d never heard from mild-mannered Eli. “And do you remember what used to happen to