142 Natural History Bulletin. 



to the deck, swept along the bulwark, and almost caught the 

 two men, in which case they would have been cut in half 

 against the break in the rail. The rope began sawing through 

 the rail, and the dredging machine seemed about to be torn 

 from its bolts and taken bodily overboard, which would have 

 ended our dredging once for all. All of these disasters 

 occurred within eight or ten seconds. — so suddenly that we 

 were fairlv dazed, giving us the impression that everything 

 aloft was falling about our ears, and that the fearful strength 

 of our iron rope was going to wreck the vessel. 



B\- this time the schooner was firmly anchored by the 

 dredge, and the danger would have been over were it not for 

 the strong current of the Gulf Stream and the terrible strain 

 caused bv the rolling of the schooner. Captain Flowers was 

 equal to the emergencv. however, and with the help of some 

 of his men and our boys, managed to get the rope under 

 control again, after which we succeeded in breaking the 

 dredge from the bottom, and finally reeled in all the rope 

 without the loss of a single foot of it. nor so much as a serious 

 kink, which is nearly as bad as a break. When the dredge 

 came up it contained what appeared to be fragments of badly 

 corroded iron plates, evidence that it had caught on a sunken 

 wreck. The dredge was fouled man}- times during the 

 cruise, but on no other occasion did it catch so firmly and sud- 

 denlv as then. The coral rock and conglomerate on the 

 Pourtales Plateau would have \ielded more promply to the 

 strain. 



It is the unexpected that happens, and no better illustration 

 could be found than in our experience. Who would have 

 thought that the onlv reallv serious dangers encountered dar- 

 ing our cruise would have been a mad dog on deck and an 

 old forgotten wreck a hundred fathoms below the surface on 

 the Pourtales Plateau? 



That evening we ran into Key West for a new dredging 

 spar. The broken spar had cost two dollars in Baltimore, 

 but at Key W^est they wanted fifteen dollars for a fifteen-foot 

 pole without irons. Captain Flowers pronounced this pure 



