In Darkest Depths

“I know,” Shakespeare said.

“But what if—”

“Would you rather she were dead? Hurry, Horatio!”

Zach did not understand why his father hesitated. Lou had stopped breathing. They must not delay a single instant. “If you don’t, I will,” he said, and again began to climb in.

Nate did as McNair had instructed, pumping his arms in and out, gouging his knuckles deep. He did it half a dozen times, but he might as well have been squeezing a tree for all the good it did. Dread rising, he pumped harder and faster. He willed himself not to think of her possible condition and what this might do to her. In and out, in and out, he rammed his fists nearly to her spine.

“Please, Lou,” Zach said. “Please.”

Nate despaired of reviving her. On an impulse, he stood up, causing the canoe to wobble and tilt. He might have gone over the side had Zach not held on to the gunwale to steady it. Upright, he tried again. Lou was bent almost in half, her head hanging low.

Nate rammed his fists once, twice, a third time, and suddenly water gushed from Lou’s mouth. She weakly stirred, and groaned. “It’s working!” he cried, and in his excitement, rammed his fists into her harder than ever.

Something other than water spewed from Lou’s open mouth and spattered the canoe. She coughed and wheezed and flailed, her eyes snapping open in alarm. “What? Where?”

“You are safe,” Nate said, and eased her down as Zach swung a leg up and over and squatted on the other side of her, his arm around her shoulders.

“Lou? It’s me, Zach. Are you all right?”

Unable to stop coughing, Lou wagged a hand at him and bent over again. Her shoulders shook and she moaned.

“Thanks, Pa,” Zach said. “You saved her.”

Nate did not reply. He was thinking of something else.

“Lou?” Zach tried again. “You nearly drowned. Pa had to almost break you in two to get you to breathe.”

Gasping in breaths, Louisa said, “It feels like he did.” But she raised her head and smiled at Nate. “Thank you. I thought I might be a goner when I went under.”

Zach kissed her on the cheek and stroked her hair. “You had me worried for a bit there.”

Lou stared at his dripping buckskins. “Was it you who jumped in and got me out?”

“I couldn’t let you sink,” Zach said. “You owe me a backrub.”

Lou caressed his brow, then had to bend over again. The wet sounds gave way to dry, racking heaves. At length she subsided and swiped at her dripping mouth with a sleeve. “Lordy, if I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have eaten so much breakfast.”

“We have to get you to shore, little lady,” Shakespeare said.

Lou shook her head. “Don’t be silly. I am fine. We have to keep after whatever did this to me.”

“You’re the one being silly,” Zach said. “We are taking you home so you can rest, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Since when did you get so bossy?”

Winona was easing her canoe in closer. “I agree with my son,” she said. “You need a hot bath, and then you should climb into bed and stay there until tomorrow morning.”

“But it’s not even noon yet!” Louisa objected. “I refuse to let you make a fuss over me.”

“When you married my son you became my daughter, and my daughters always do as I say”

Their argument was interrupted by Wakumassee and Degamawaku, who had drifted in from the west. They commenced pointing excitedly, and yelling.

“Look! Look! There!”

The thing was coming back.

A Glimpse of Mystery

Shakespeare McNair refused to let anyone else be hurt. They were out on the lake at his bidding, their lives imperiled because of his belief the creature posed a threat. Louisa had very nearly drowned, and if the lake beast rammed another of their craft—Shakespeare was not about to let that happen. Suddenly pushing away from the others, he paddled his canoe into the path of the oncoming swell.

“What are you doing?” Nate demanded.

“Carcajou!” Blue Water Woman cried.

Shakespeare ignored them. He swung his canoe broadside to the swell and snatched up one of the harpoons. Rising, he balanced precariously on the balls of his feet and tensed for the throw.

Shakespeare had never been on a whaling vessel, but like most people, he was well aware of the particulars of the trade. The industry had existed since the late 1600s when Nantucket fishermen first began hunting whales for their livelihood. Half a century later, thanks to the valuable oil in their heads, sperm whales became the favorite catch.

Many a youth, inspired by dreams of an exciting life at sea and the big money to be made, yearned to be a whaler. Shakespeare himself caught the whaling fever; for a while he had been torn between his hankering for a life at sea and his yearning to travel west of the Mississippi. As fate would have it, the mountains and the prairie won out over the oceans, but it was a close thing.

Now, with the hissing swell sweeping toward him, Shakespeare prepared to cast his harpoon as a whaler would. He sought in vain to see the animal he had come to slay, but all he could see was a dark shape.

“Carcajou!” Blue Water Woman screamed a second time.

Shakespeare cast the harpoon with all the power in his frame. He was old, but he was far from puny, and he had every hope that could he but pierce its head or body, he could put an end to the thing.

The harpoon flew true. It struck the swell right where Shakespeare wanted it to, at the point where the silhouette suggested the head should be. By rights, the tip should have sheared through the water and cleaved the beast underneath. But it was swept aside. Whether the rushing water deflected it or it glanced off the creature, Shakespeare couldn’t say. He heard his wife shout something, and then the swell slammed into his canoe with the impact of a charging bull buffalo. Shakespeare felt the canoe rise up under him and tip. He threw himself out, or tried to, in an attempt to dive clear. Instead, jarring pain shot up both his legs, and the next thing he knew, he was under the water with a riot of frothing bubbles all around him.

And that was not all.

Shakespeare was aware of the canoe on its side above him, and of the gargantuan shape that had flipped it over. The thing had slowed and was turning.

It was coming back for him.

Levering his arms and legs, Shakespeare rose. He had to swim wide of the canoe, and he was still under the surface when his lower legs were struck a heavy blow. The forced knocked him back and down. Racked with pain, he glanced at his legs—and there it was.

The water devil, the creature, the thing was just below him. It was huge. He was willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that it was twenty feet long if it was an inch. Although his lungs were shrieking for air, Shakespeare did not rise. Not yet. Bending, he tried to pierce the gloom, made darker by the shadow of the canoe. Then a glimmer of sunlight penetrated, casting the thing’s silhouette in relief against its watery domain.

It was a fish.

There could be no doubt. Shakespeare saw fins. Front fins and rear fins, a fin on top and possibly on the bottom toward the tail. The tail itself was split in the middle. The top half and the bottom half were not the same size, as in most fish. The top was twice as big and three times as long.

Shakespeare strained his eyes, but he could not tell what kind of fish it was. He started to rise, wondering if it would attack him, when suddenly the giant exploded into motion. But not toward him. It shot down into the