A sound from the bowels of that doomed ship, a groan as the ship's spine broke, as the keel gave and the sea forced its way into bilges and holds with a triumphant roar. The barque sank as men struggled to free themselves from ropes that had until now secured them to the deck but now threatened to immure them in the barque's death throes.
She squealed with inhuman glee as each of the mariners tumbled into the maelstrom, clutching at spars and broken timber. Screams and groans were lost in the crash of wind and wave as splashes of crimson spotted the blue-green ocean, then merged into the murk, as all but one the seamen died. The wheel was torn from the ship but not the man from the wheel. He clung to it as it spun across the boiling seas and the man screamed defiance to the elements and the elemental. In blind fury she threw her finned steed at the pitching prey as it swirled and tossed in the spittle of a devouring sea. The shark opened its maw and the wheel and man splintered, cracked and shattered.
She searched for her desire among the sunken tatters of that unlucky barque. She sifted through the detritus of men's lives and deaths to find what she sought. The memory of its glint against his breast burned in her. A locket of inexpensive silver, poorly engraved, but the best a mother could afford. It was given to him when he first went to sea to keep him from a seaman's fear, from drowning. The locket's contents cost more than the silver of which it was made.
A slender hand closed around it. Clouds of silt and seaweed fragments flew as she held it aloft. With greedy fingers, she prised it opened and scraped away the caul that lay within, letting it float on the current. She fastened the locket around her scrawny neck. It might have protected him from drowning but not from greed. With a flip of her tail she vanished into the depths.
