"Here, let me see that mask again," he said. He picked 

 up the mask he had just removed and examined it care- 

 fully, holding it up to the light. 



"Here's our trouble," he exclaimed. "Look at the 

 plastic in this mask. It's aU warped out of shape. Some- 

 one's left it in the sun." 



Jack and his party had arrived by this time, and the 

 "duck" was anchored near us. The men returned to the 

 bottom, where they helped rig tackle to the cannon which 

 had been freed by the blast, so that they could be raised 

 on the "duck." By afternoon Jack was ready to set out for 

 shore, the overloaded duck listing heavily to port, stag- 

 gering through the big seas with its burden of tliree can- 

 non, a pile of heavy cannon balls and five people. We 

 watched its slow progress toward shore, fascinated, ex- 

 pecting any moment to see it swamped. To our relief, it 

 reached the quieter waters near shore without mishap. 



We stayed to salvage what we could, hoping to find 

 some smaller objects which would give us further clues to 

 the identity of the wreck. At last I was able to secure a 

 mask and air hose long enough to go down for a look. The 

 bottom was indeed a shambles. Broken coral and rubble 

 lay in piles, punctuated with a scattering of cannon balls. 

 A large gun barrel lay in two pieces, broken apart by the 

 blast, and the mouth of a second cannon protruded from 

 a heap of coral, its muzzle showing black against the sur- 

 roundings, for the coral crust had been cracked away from 

 it by the concussion. 



The three men worked the remainder of the afternoon 

 to free this cannon and bring it to the surface. It was quite 

 a diflFerent shape from the others, and when we finally had 

 it on deck and had removed the coral from its back, we 

 discovered that it bore the date of 1657. Pete said that the 

 barrel was Spanish. 



Thus we learned that beneath the wreck of the Eng- 



The Florida Keys 67 



