while the hull was still more or less intact beneath the 

 water. 



As the centuries passed and greedy teredo worms 

 chiseled the ancient beams until they broke into pieces 

 and were swept away by the sea, I could imagine the 

 contents of the upper cabins gradually sifting down 

 through the moldering timbers to lie atop the ballast 

 pile. Meanwhile the more prosaic furnishings aboard, pots 

 and pans, pottery and glass and china, must have settled 

 downward also, to be crumbled and broken beneatli the 

 heavier wreckage of the ship. 



Now all that remained visible was this pile of crusted 

 stones, resting on heavy broken timbers buried in sand. 

 And even these few timbers would have disappeared long 

 ago had they not been protected over the centuries by their 

 covering of sand. 



Between the piles of rounded ballast stones, cemented 

 securely together through the years with a binding of coral 

 sand, were crevasses in which now lived huge black sea 

 urchins, spotted yellow and black morays and pinkish, 

 thick-fingered anemones. Over the ballast pile hovered 

 drifts of small silver bait fish, impelled first in one direction 

 and as suddenly in another by some unseen force; and at 

 my approach, myriads of bright-colored little fish darted 

 into their holes within. 



Through the screen of milling fingerlings, at the far 

 side of the wreck, I could see the slower, more ponderous 

 movements of yard-long black groupers, which inhabited 

 the wreck-fashioned coral reef in numbers. Constantly in 

 evidence, like sentinels patrolling the wreck's perimeter, 

 were a half dozen king mackerel, identifiable by the fine 

 black line which marked their white sides laterally. 



After we had inspected the 150-foot length of the bal- 

 last heap, Ed returned topsides to get the metal detector. 



The Florida Keys 89 



