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salami sandwich I put on the table with obvious relish. And when we had finished our coffee, he settled back for a while with his pipe. Shortly he got up.
    â€œWe’d better pick up the line,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon.”
    â€œYou think there’ll be anything on it?” I asked in a voice that must have shown my nervousness.
    â€œWell, I hope there’ll be,” he said in his slow soft voice. “We just do the best we can.”
    I started up the engine and headed the
Blue Fin
backalongside the first marker. May pulled the keg and the pole aboard and the set line followed. I leaned out of the wheelhouse window and squinted down into the water watching as it came up from the bottom. I could see the line bending away into the clear blue darkness and a few bare hooks swinging on the ganions from the taut manila. Then from out of the depths I could see the long, gray-brown body of a soupfin emerge slowly into the underwater sunlight. Further down was another. I jumped back to the wheel, cut the engine to an idle and headed the boat along the line. Then I grabbed a gaff and pulled the shark up onto the deck.
    I don’t remember how long it took to get the set in, but I remember that it got dark and that either May or I turned on the deck light. Beyond that there was a weird, dreamlike quality about everything, the white light overhead, the quick liquid reflections on the black water, the irregular sput and gurgle of the underwater exhaust, some dim stars rotating in drunken circles and the feel of the steel gaff driving into hard live flesh. And there were strange sounds like grunts and sighs, at once human and unearthly, of fleshy turning and twisting, of the fleshy thud of the axe head, the squeak of rubber boots on blood, the impotent slapping and bumping of heavy bodies from the black hold. Yet through the delirium of twisting, sighs and thumpings, the unreality of steel in live flesh, black blood glistening, the thick ammonia stench rising and all enacted in that disk of hard light entombed in night sea darkness, a part of my mind, with machine-like accuracy, was counting . . . one two . . . two . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . five . . . five . . . six . . . 
until finally four hundred and eighteen . . . four hundred and eighteen. It was not until I had stumbled into the wheelhouse and scratched the number on a corner of the chart that I came up out of the depths of whatseemed an evil, exalting trance and, clinging to the wheel, breathing heavily, I felt for the first time the burning in my back and in my arms and down through my thighs.
    When I heard the hollow thump of the buoy keg on the deck, I turned up the throttle and, still in a daze, headed the
Blue Fin
east toward land. For quite some while I could hear May moving about and then the splashing of water as he sluiced down the deck. Presently he was standing beside me, folding his black skull cap preparatory to putting it into his trouser pocket. On his clean tanned face I could detect a slight flush that might have been excitement. But there was no fatigue, no sign of weariness. He could well have just finished a brisk morning walk the way he quietly filled his pipe.
    â€œWe can lay in behind Año Nuevo,” he said. “It’s a rocky bottom but your big kedge anchor will hold all right.”
    He lit his pipe and the sweet, sharp smell of tobacco filled the wheelhouse. “You go below and rest a bit,” he said, and taking the wheel swung it over so that the three quick flashes that were the Año Nuevo Island light came up over the
Blue Fin
’s bow. “Thanks,” I mumbled, embarrassed by my evident exhaustion, but happy to stretch out for a few minutes. “Thanks a lot.”
    Below, the heavy stench of the sharks had already begun to