Peter Benchley - Jaws

“Hooper?” said Quint. “There’s one can left, and we can always drink more beer.”

“No thanks,” said Hooper.

“What’s the problem?”

“Nothing. I just don’t want to shoot, that’s all.”

Quint smiled. “You worried about the cans in the water? That’s an awful lot of tin we’re dropping into the ocean. Probably rust and sink to the bottom and clutter up everything down there.”

“That’s not it,” said Hooper, careful not to rise to Quint’s bait. “It’s nothing. I just don’t feel like it.”

“Afraid of guns?”

“Afraid? No.”

“Ever shot one?”

Brody was fascinated to see Quint press, and pleased to see Hooper squirm, but he didn’t know why Quint was doing it. Maybe Quint got ornery when he was bored and wasn’t catching fish.

Hooper didn’t know what Quint was doing either, but he didn’t like it. He felt he was being set up to be knocked down. “Sure,” he said. “I’ve shot guns before.”

“Where? In the service?”

“No. I…”

“Were you in the service?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Christ, I’d even bet you’re still a virgin.”

Brody looked at Hooper’s face to see his response, and for a split second he caught Hooper looking at him.

Then Hooper looked away, his face beginning to redden. He said, “What’s on your mind, Quint? What are you getting at?”

Quint leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Not a thing,” he said. “Just making a little friendly conversation to pass the time. Mind if I take your beer can when you’re through? Maybe Brody’d like to take another shot.”

“No, I don’t mind,” said Hooper. “But get off my back, will you?”

For the next hour they sat in silence. Brody dozed in the fighting chair, a hat pulled down over his face to protect it from the sun. Hooper sat at the stern, ladling and occasionally shaking his head to keep awake. And Quint sat on the flying bridge, watching the slick, his Marine Corps cap tilted back on his head.

Suddenly Quint said — his voice flat, soft, matter-of-fact — “We’ve got a visitor.”

Brody snapped awake. Hooper stood up. The starboard line was running out, smoothly and very fast.

“Take the rod,” Quint said. He removed his cap and dropped it onto the bench.

Brody took the rod out of the holder, fit it between his legs, and held on.

“When I tell you,” said Quint, “you throw that brake and hit him.” The line stopped running. “Wait. He’s turning. He’ll start again. Don’t want to hit him now or he’ll spit the hook.” But the line lay dead in the water, limp and unmoving. After several moments, Quint said, “I’ll be goddamned. Reel it in.”

Brody cranked the line in. It came easily, too easily. There was not even the mild resistance of the bait.

“Hold the line with a couple fingers or it’ll snarl,” said Quint. “Whatever that was took the bait gentle as you please. Must have kissed it off the line.”

The line came clear of the water and hung at the tip of the rod. There was no hook, no bait, no leader. The wire had been neatly severed. Quint hopped down from the flying bridge and looked at it. He felt the end, ran his fingers around the edges of the break, and gazed out over the slick.

“I think we’ve just met your friend,” he said.

“What?” said Brody.

Hooper jumped down off the transom and said excitedly, “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s terrific.”

“That’s just a guess,” said Quint. “But I’d bet on it. This wire’s been chewed clean through. One try. No hesitation. No other marks on it. The fish probably didn’t even know he had it in his mouth. He just sucked the bait in and closed his mouth and that did it.”

“So what do we do now?” said Brody.

“We wait and see if he takes the other one, or if he surfaces.”

“What about using the porpoise?”

“When I know it’s him,” said Quint. “When I get a look at him and know the bastard’s big enough to be worth it, then I’ll give him the porpoise. They’re garbage-eating machines, these fish, and I don’t want to waste a prize bait on some little runt.”

They waited. There was no movement on the surface of the water. No birds dived, no fish jumped. The only sound was the liquid plop of the chum Hooper ladled overboard. Then the port line began to run.

“Leave it in the holder,” said Quint. “No sense in getting ready if he’s going to chew through this one too.”

Adrenaline was pumping through Brody’s body. He was both excited and afraid, awed by the thought of what was swimming below them, a creature whose power he could not imagine. Hooper stood at the port gunwhale, transfixed by the running line.

The line stopped and went limp.

“Shit,” said Quint. “He done it again.” He took the rod out of the holder and began to reel. The severed line came aboard exactly as had the other one. “We’ll give him one more chance,” said Quint, “and I’ll put on a tougher leader. Not that that’ll stop him if it’s the fish I think it is.” He reached into the ice chest for another bait and removed the wire leader. From a drawer in the cockpit he took a four-foot length of three-eighths-inch chain.

“That looks like a dog’s leash,” said Brody.

“Used to be,” said Quint. He wired one end of the chain to the eye of the baited hook, the other to the wire line.

“Can he bite through that?”

“I imagine so. Take him a little longer, maybe, but he’d do it if he wanted to. All I’m trying to do is goose him a little and bring him to the surface.”

“What’s next if this doesn’t work?”

“Don’t know yet. I suppose I could take a four-inch shark hook and a length of no-shit chain and drop it overboard with a bunch of bait on it. But if he took it, I wouldn’t know what to do with him. He’d tear out any cleat I’ve got on board, and until I see him I’m not going to take a chance and wrap chain around anything important.” Quint flipped the baited hook overboard and fed out a few yards of line. “Come on, you bugger,” he said. “Let’s have a look at you.”

The three men watched the port line. Hooper bent down, filled his ladle with chum, and tossed it into the slick. Something caught his eye and made him turn to the left. What he saw sucked from him a throaty grunt, unintelligible but enough to draw the eyes of the other two men.

“Jesus Christ!” said Brody.

No more than ten feet off the stern, slightly to the starboard, was the flat, conical snout of the fish. It stuck out of the water perhaps two feet. The top of the head was a sooty gray, pocked with two black eyes. At each side of the end of the snout, where the gray turned to cream white, were the nostrils — deep slashes in the armored hide. The mouth was open not quite halfway, a dim, dark cavern guarded by huge, triangular teeth.

Fish and men confronted each other for perhaps ten seconds. Then Quint yelled, “Get an iron!” and, obeying himself, he dashed forward and began to fumble with a harpoon. Brody reached for the rifle. Just then, the fish slid quietly backward into the water. The long, scythed tail flicked once — Brody shot at it and missed — and the fish disappeared.

“He’s gone,” said Brody.

“Fantastic!” said Hooper. “That fish is everything I thought. And more. He’s fantastic! That head must have been four feet across.”

“Could be,” said Quint, walking aft. He deposited two harpoon barbs, two barrels, and two coils of rope in the stern. “In case he comes back,” he said.

“Have you ever seen a fish like that, Quint?” said Hooper. His eyes were bright, and he felt ebullient, vibrant.