Croom Relives the Horror; Takes a Bow

Aye, but we floated with character...

The scene: aboard the Orca, first light just creeping over the horizon. The ship's three passengers are weary. After a long night of drinking, the crew still has the refrain of "Oh what shall we do with you seven Spanish ladies" running through their heads. A delirious, somber mood has suddenly overtaken them, as the reality of their predicament settles in again. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnd Scene:

Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus/Greg Byrne) - "You were on the Indianapolis?"

Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider/Mark Keenum) - "What happened?"

Quint (Robert Shaw/Sly Croom) - "Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin' back from a win in Starkville over Petrino. A week away from the offseason. Solid class comin' in. We'd just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. One game left, see. Smooth sailin, right? Well, eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 15 minutes.

Didn't see the first shark for about five minutes. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week.

Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that shark he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Wide receiver. Boson's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later they started to pick us up. Called the game. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, November 28, 2008.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb. I'll just leave you men to yourselves now.

:Quint/Croom exits the hull, jumps overboard:

:Lights slowly fade to black, leaving the two men in stunned silence: