I gave it up and headed for the surface, rising once more into water bladed with sunlight, into the predictable world of wind and salt spray blowing against the mask, of gulls and pelicans gliding overhead, of Batist straining with both hands against a stingray he had foul-hooked through the stomach.

I pulled off my tanks and rubbed my head and face dry with a towel. Batist was stripped to the waist, his back knotted with muscle, his cannonball head popping with sweat as he got the gaff into the stingray and lifted it over the gunwale. The gaff had gone all the way through one of the ray's leathery wings. Batist flopped it on its back, shook the gaff loose, then knelt on one knee and sawed the treble hook out of its stomach. He wiped the blood off his knife, looked at the bent prongs on his hook, then flung the ray overboard with both hands.

'How far down was you, Dave?' he said.

'Thirty or forty feet maybe.'

'Ain't smart. They's a lot of trash down there. They's even trees, yeah, you know that? They float all the way down the Miss'sippi. Some big as your house.'

'I suspect you're right.'

'Well?' He put a cigar in the corner of his mouth.

'What?'

'You found that sub down there?'

'I heard some metal banging around, but I don't know what it is. It's too murky to see anything.'

'Maybe it's a wrecked oil rig down there. You t'ink of that? Maybe you gonna get tangled up in it, lose your life, Dave, all 'cause that Hippo fellow wavin' ten t'ousand dollars around. He want that sub, let him get his fat butt out here and look for it.'

'Okay, Batist.'

'It don't do no good to be rich in the graveyard, no.'

'I'm getting your drift. I really appreciate it.'

'You ax me my opinion.'

'How about we catch some fish?'