We felt very much alone after the fun and excitement 

 of the past two weeks, and not a little disappointed that 

 we had failed to turn up anything of consequence in our 

 meanderings. But I had forgotten the odd-shaped chunks 

 of coral-covered metal which we had picked up at Bur- 

 rows cay until I stubbed my toe on one of them as I hur- 

 ried forward to help get Sea Diver under way for the 

 all-night crossing to Miami. 



"What do you suppose is under that coral?" I ques- 

 tioned Ed as I took the wheel, while he and Clayton made 

 ready to haul in the anchor. It was not the first time we 

 had speculated over the identity of these salvaged objects 

 which we had dynamited loose from the shallow bottom 

 off Burrows cay. 



Dick had taken us to the wreck on our way from Cay 

 Gorda to West End. He told us that a remote Spanish an- 

 cestor of his had been shipwrecked on the island and that 

 this was how it had received its name. We had anchored 

 Sea Diver some distance from the small cay and gone in 

 on the skiff, for the remains were in only about a fathom 

 of water. There was little wreckage to be seen, but in the 

 coral rock which formed the bottom we could faintly dis- 

 cern a few stubby cylindrical shapes which appeared to 

 be short pieces of pipe or broken sections of cannon. 



Ed and Barney had blasted out two of them and la- 

 boriously transferred them aboard Sea Diver. They were 

 heavily encased in coral, which we had left on to protect 

 the inner metal until we reached Florida and could im- 

 merse them in fresh water. They were apparently very 

 old, for a chunk of coral which had broken off from one 

 end was more than an inch thick. 



Although the night's crossing was uneventful, the 

 summer sky dazzling with stars above the fluorescent sur- 

 face of the sea, it will always linger in my mind. We were 

 barely out of sight of the Bahamas when we first picked 



The Bahama Islands 121 



