f his
sudden apprehension, Rick couldn't help wishing for his camera.

The sharks rushed again, and the falling object was lifted from the sand
by the disturbed water. This time, Rick recognized it. A chicken! It was
tied to a length of string from which dangled a lead sinker. The bird
was dead, but apparently freshly so. He knew that it was the chicken
blood that had brought the sharks--and a giant barracuda! The great
fish, a full six feet in length, slashed past the sharks and tore a
chunk out of the bird.

The leopard shark made a fast pass at the barracuda, then turned and
snapped at a black tip. Rick gulped. A hole suddenly appeared in the
black's side, as smooth as though scooped out of ice cream. And then the
other sharks hit the wounded black tip.

There were many sharks now, worrying the chicken and the wounded black
tip like fierce dogs over scraps of meat. Rick thought, "We'd better get
out of here!" He hooted twice at Scotty, the signal to ascend. Scotty
motioned to him to retreat. Rick picked up the dumbbell-shaped object.
It was heavy, but not too heavy to handle, and he started a slow retreat
along the sand.

The sharks were paying no attention to the boys, but Rick wasn't at all
sure that they wouldn't, once the supply of chicken and wounded shark
were exhausted. His mind raced. Where had the chicken come from? Whoever
had tossed it into the water would have known that the blood would bring
sharks. It wasn't a casual toss, either. Not when the chicken had been
weighted with a fishing sinker big enough to carry it to the bottom.
Tony and Zircon would never do such a thing. Besides, they had no
chickens.

Rick and Scotty backed far enough away so that the sharks could no
longer be seen. Then, heading toward the reef, they started for the
surface. Scotty was slightly in the lead, and Rick kept glancing back in
case one of the big fish decided to follow. But they reached the surface
without incident and broke water about two hundred feet from their
floats. There was no boat in sight.

Replacing aqualung tubes with snorkels, they swam on the surface, faces
down, alert for sharks. When they reached the floats, Scotty kept watch
from the surface while Rick dove to untie the lines.

As they climbed on the floats and lifted masks, Scotty and Rick pointed
and yelled "Hey!" simultaneously.

But they had seen different things. Rick had seen the _Water Witch_ pass
through the reef and head for them. Scotty