Trolling for sea beast

Barge Huntley had never been happier to have a following wind at his back. Not just because his kayak-paddling muscles were way out of shape and it would have been nice to just drift back toward the black sand beach where he'd left his rented truck.

More than that, he'd seen a sea monster, a 300-foot eel, and it was in what Barge considered the most dangerous of conditions -- hungry and injured. Digging the paddle hard and deep into the sea, the yellow kayak sledding along with the wind, Barge felt like a fly lure being trolled for a cranky sea beast the size of a Navy submarine.

He didn't relax even as he reached the mouth of the small bay. The eel had gone berserkowitz apparently trying to slide into a hole in water that Barge judged to be no deeper than 20 to 25 feet.

It was only when he was jumping out and dragging the kayak up the powdery sand that he relaxed. And almost immediately began to tremble with delayed-reaction fear and mortality.

Sitting heavily on the bow of the kayak, he checked the digital images he'd shot ... All he needed to see was the last series, the eel rising head-first out of the water, towering perhaps 100 feet above the surface, dancing like a cobra, fangs bared in pain and shock, blood streaming from it's right eye.

The shakes got worse then and Barge set the camera in the little boat and hugged himself ...

"You OK, brah?"

Barge shot straight up, thinking oh my god, the eel followed me here! And it talks! With a pidgin accent!

"Looks like hypothermia setting in, brah. Here, wrap this around you."

Barge whirled, and there was the big, brown local he'd encountered here earlier! The guy who was about to own this place. He was handing Barge a big towel.

Where the hell had he come from? And the two women behind him? And the Jeep and the chopper parked above the beach?

"Thanks," he said, snapping back to the present, waving off the towel. "I'll be fine."

"You get some good pictures?" one of the women asked. She was new, a brown beauty with lips so full that Barge wanted only for her to continue speaking so he could watch them move.

"The usual, coral and fish," he said. "Hi, I'm Mike Smith. And you?"

"Pua Makua," she said and he semi-swooned as her lips puckered up pronouncing her name. "Ph.D.," she added, and that shook Barge out of his heated reverie.

"You studying this area?"

"Yes," the guy replied for her. "And I hope she'll continue after I sign the papers.

The way they looked at each, Barge guessed plenty would be continuing.