They reached the place from which the Brazilians had thrown the rope. They could hear the quiet plash of the water in the cleft. Piled against a low-lying rock were the funnel and other debris of the Andromeda. The black hull was plainly visible beneath the surface. Even while they were looking at the wreck a huge fish curled his ten feet of length with stealthy grace from out some dim recess; it might be, perhaps, from out the crushed shell of the chart-room.
Hozier glanced at his companion. He half expected her to shrink back appalled at this sinister sight; it was her destiny to surprise him not once but many times during that amazing period.
"Is that a shark?" she asked quietly.
"Yes.… You stipulated for candor, you know."
"I had no notion that such a monster could move with so great elegance. I think I would rather be eaten by a shark than lie at the bottom of the sea like our poor vessel there."
"Even a shark would appreciate the compliment," he said.
Her eyes continued to watch the terrifying apparition until it prowled into hidden depths again.
"I am not sorry I have seen it," she murmured. "It helps one to understand. We are glib concerning the laws of nature, and seem to regard them much as the printed regulations stuck on hackney carriages, whatsoever they may be. Yet, how cruelly just they are! I suppose that the finding of the ship's booty by that huge creature has given a new span of life to some weaker fish."
Hozier did not know whether or not she had realized the shark's real quest. Her next words enlightened him.
"If we follow the others, will the soldiers throw our dead bodies into the sea?" she asked.