LePere hadn’t gone far when the rhythmic clank of metal brought him around. Bridger had stopped and was tapping his tank with his knife. When he saw that he had LePere’s attention, he cupped his hand to the place on his hood where his ear would be, and he pointed toward the surface.

LePere listened. He heard it, too. A sound like the distant buzz of a summer cicada. A boat somewhere above them. Where exactly, LePere couldn’t tell. Abruptly, the sound stopped. Bridger shined his light upward. He looked like a man hanging at the end of a luminous icicle. He gestured emphatically, urging them to surface. LePere shook his head just as emphatically. He had only a few minutes left, and he intended to use the whole time for the purpose that had brought them. He turned and started again down the hull, ignoring the angry banging of the knife against Bridger’s tank.

His own Ikelite pierced the dark ahead of him. He took only a couple of minutes to reach the place where the hull ended suddenly in ragged metal. Slipping over the lip, he shined his light into the huge cavern that had been the hold of the ore boat. For a long moment, he hung suspended in the mouth of memory. The hold was empty now and black. But on that night a dozen years before when LePere stood at the edge of the sinking bow section, crying out Billy’s name, the hold had been full of smoke and fire. LePere had stared into the belly of a beast, and the beast had answered his cries with its own deafening scream of rending metal. He’d watched, paralyzed, as the beast tried to mount the deck where he stood, tried to get at him, to crush his bones. Many times after that, in the lonely dark of a drunken night, LePere found himself wishing bitterly the beast had succeeded.

The beam of Bridger’s light swung into the hold beside his own. Bridger signaled toward his watch. They didn’t have much time. Using their lights, they began to inspect the plating along the edge of the opening.