lish ship wliich had gone down nearly two hundred years 

 ago, lay the remains of a Spanish ship which had struck 

 this same dangerous reef at least a century earher. We 

 later came to realize that this was not surprising, for 

 wherever reefs thrust tliemselves into the sea beyond their 

 fellows, or strong currents carry ships off their course, it 

 is not uncommon to find more than one wreck. 



We went out to Sambo reef again the next morning, 

 hoping to bring up some of the smaller objects, although 

 Ed said that without some sort of dredging equipment to 

 move the rubble, there was little chance of finding much. 



He and Robby went down with the metal detector. 

 They had not been working long when they surfaced, 

 complaining of headaches and nausea. It was an extremely 

 hot day, and we figured that the heat, plus fatigue from 

 the efforts of the past days, had combined to upset 

 them. 



So while they stretched out on the shady side of the 

 deck, Pete put on one of the masks and, picking up the de- 

 tector, went down to continue the search. He was back in 

 a short time, also feeling sick. 



With his return, all endeavor came to a halt. The 

 three men lay about the deck, wondering what had hap- 

 pened to them. When they had recovered sufficiently to 

 get the anchors aboard, we headed back to our dock in 

 Key West, where they spent the remainder of the day 

 resting quietly in their bunks. Their conclusion was that 

 the air compressor had picked up exhaust fumes from the 

 generator, and had pumped the poisonous air down 

 through the hoses into the face masks. No one had thought 

 of such a contingency when the portable compressor had 

 been set down in a sheltered part of the deck, where there 

 was no circulation of air to carry off the fumes. It was a 

 lesson none of us would forget. 



68 Sea Diver 



