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THERE WAS LAZY WATER within the harbor; Kiss Bottoe of the waves Moore stood on the deck of the fishing traatching his own reflection break into halves, thirds, fourths by the boat&039;s bow-break The wharfs were co boys stood ready there to catch and secure the thick fore and aft deck lines Beneath the tangle of wharf pilings, where the steady surf washed in on a beach, crabs rustled through thorns and grass The re skiff were half-buried there, and now no one reed Other s the se over timber racks, and a solitary fisher the trawler as it neared

The larger trawlers were ed ti it in a kaleidoscope of thick colors; a dead ghostfish hung in theit In another round it under

"I&039;ve been in these islands for allover the din of the diesels&039; hoarse voices "But I&039;ve never seen anything like that happen before Like I say, it&039;s a holy wonder you weren&039;t killed" He scowled inwardly when he realized Moore wasn&039;t listening

Kip had been born into a poor fishing family on Hatcher Key, a small island perhaps a hundred miles to the east of Coquina, so na a youth there again, running with his friends acrossivory sand, and beyond the shore into the surf with its unbroken patterns of white Then his father had broken his arround on an uncharted sunken steamer The bones had never knitted correctly and his father had had to give up fishing, so the faston slu sand Survival there had ures for the tourists, or in Kip&039;s case, acting as a guide for a few pence His aunt and uncle lived just outside Kingston, on the fringe of the woods They had frightened Kip - their beliefs and practices had seemed peculiar - unnatural - and altered their everyday personalities in some inexplicable way Kip had hated his visits with those people

His mother had barely kno to read, but she insisted on teaching him If you can read, she said, you can think And in this world a ot to think to survive While the woman had read to Kip, his father had sat apart fro the lantern flicker and listening to the roll and call of the sea

Kip had gone to the United States, to Florida, to seek his own living and there he had run into trouble The grinning, tallow-faced white men either tried to beat hi floors in a Miami poolhall They weren&039;t all like that, of course, but he thought then he&039;d seen enough badness there to last a lifetiht, in an upstairs room with holes in the plaster, he read all the books he could beg or borrow One of thereatly: a novel about the bobbies of London, called The Long Arm of the Law And so he worked his way across the Atlantic on a tra work as a deckhand on a harbor tug He had had trouble at first, as the object of scorn and derision of the white old-tiradually won their respect, if not their friendship, siether Kip had gotten into a progra to the islands in the sixties with his education and his eyes full of the world, he had landed a post as an officer in the Bahamas On Grand Bahama he&039;d met his wife-to-be and fathered his first child, a boy named Andrew Then he was offered the position of constable on Coquina He had accepted because of the responsibility involved and the sense of doing so hile

He and Myra had stayed on Coquina because they&039;d found life good here, peaceful and secure Mindy had been born just after they&039;d arrived, and five years later, Andrew, then seventeen, had gone to the United States on a factory boat to find his own path in the world Kip saw the cycle repeating again and though he&039;dto hold back what must be Which was, he knew, the way of the world

The trawler cut its engines and coasted toward the wharf The boys caught the deck lines and s Moore took Kip by the ar," he said

"His excellency," Kip said, watching the blackthem

Moore climbed over the side of the boat and stepped onto the wharf; nearby two oldthe heads off snappers to use as bait the following lea up at the thing that hung crazily across the reef

"What&039;s that?" another black with a gold front tooth asked Moore; he squinted to look out to the reef "Big fish soht," Moore replied "A hell of a big fish"

"Moore!" called thehis way past piles of crates, drying nets, and barrels of fish offal covered with motionless flies

Kip had stepped onto the wharf behind the white man to watch the mayor&039;s approach Reynard never failed - he was always there as soon as soht make him look bad

"Where did that co over Kip&039;s shoulder at the hulk He was neatly dressed in a clean suit, but the tight knot in his dark-blue tie was stretched badly, and the collar and cuffs of his shirt were frayed When he squinted the lines around his nose and beneath his sparse field of white hair folded into deep trenches that gave his face the appearance of an aged oil painting about to crack "My God!" he said, not looking at either the white man or the constable "Do you knohat that is?"

"It corked from about a hundred and fifty feet in the Abyss," Moore told him "And, yes, I knohat it is"

"Is it open?" The ed in there, is it? Thank God it didn&039;t coentlereed Moore "All two hundred feet of it"

Thebitter "What&039;s going to be done with it, constable?"

"Right now I don&039;t know It&039;s safe here for the ti as it doesn&039;t slip off the reef, it&039;s not going anywhere"

"Isn&039;t there so nervously from one man to the other

"Unseal the hatches or torch a hole in it under the hull," Kip said "But I&039;e laws to consider; the thingto Moore"

Moore looked at hiht of that before, but now he realized it was entirely possible He had found the thing and, in a sense, excavated it fro he would ordinarily have tried to claie; few submarines orth ood shape, and on the surface it was so about

"And," Kip continued, "that&039;s an old boat No identification s, but I&039;d say quite a few naval historians and museums would be interested So I wouldn&039;t be in such a hurry to put it back under again David, if you like I&039;ll fill out a witness for aboard that&039;s not cruet a nice bronze plaque in a maritime museum"

"I want it off my reef," theso close to the harbor What if so until we think over the possibilities," the constable said fir about explosives, butit stay as it is"

Reynard took a handkerchief fro cheeks and forehead "I wish to God that thing had never co like a thousand other sunken ships out there, not hanging on Kiss Botto like it before!"

"Do you have any idea what boat it ht have been?" Moore asked him

"I didn&039;t come here until after the war," the mayor said defensively "I&039;m not certain what lies in the Abyss, probably allI don&039;t know"