briefly in the channel, we went on to customs clearance, 

 and by nine o'clock were in the yacht basin in downtown 

 Miami. 



We were just tying up when Pete hailed us. Tossing 

 his duffle aboard, he helped to set the spring lines, then 

 joined us on deck. We showed him the few pieces we had 

 recovered from the Bahama waters — the iron balustrade 

 that looked like a bedpost; the stubby, cylindrical-shaped 

 iron pipes which might be broken gun barrels; a battered 

 grenade; and some metallic ballast from the wreck oflF Cay 

 Gorda. 



To our surprise he evinced a great interest in the 

 cylinders. "Where's a mallet? Let's see what's under this 

 coral," he said. 



As the coral fell away, we saw what appeared to be 

 the muzzle end of a small cannon. The piece was so short 

 I felt sure it was broken, yet both ends were as smooth and 

 finished as the ends of a pipe. The second piece proved to 

 be similar, though larger in circumference. 



"Are these all you have of it?" Pete queried, as he laid 

 the two pieces on the deck with a space between. 



"Well, there were some other pieces in the coral on the 

 bottom," Ed said, "but we didn't know what they were, 

 and they were apparently all alike, so I only brought a 

 couple of them along." 



"You could get the rest of it then?" Pete seemed re- 

 lieved. I wondered at his constant use of the singular. 



"Do you know what you have here?" he questioned. 



He told us that these pieces were part of an ancient 

 cannon called a lombard, which was in common use until 

 the middle of the sixteenth century. After that time it was 

 replaced by the type of barrel we know today, which is 

 molded all in one piece. The earlier guns, he said, were 

 made exactly like a barrel, the wrought-iron bars bound 

 together with metal hoops which were shrunk around them 



The Bahama Islands 123 



