of the longboats which towed her, she was carried side- 

 wards by the tide, first into one rocky head and then an- 

 other. Several of the twenty bronze cannon with which 

 she was armed were sacrificed as anchors to hold her from 

 drifting into these menacing obstacles. Each time, they 

 caught in the rugged coral on the bottom, and had to be 

 cut loose in order to allow the galleon to continue. By 

 nightfall only a few hundred yards had been gained, and 

 there were still reefs on every side. The admiral gave or- 

 ders to put more of the bronze cannon overboard as anchors 

 to hold the ship fast until daylight. 



Perhaps the ship still would have survived. But in the 

 middle of tlie night a wind sprang up, causing the heavy 

 galleon to tug powerfully against her moorings. The anchor 

 lines, which had been straining for hours against the knife- 

 like coral on the bottom, suddenly began snapping one 

 after the other. 



The Nuestra Senora was aroused from her restless 

 slumbers, and, with a slight tremor through her planking, 

 slowly drifted toward the reefs. She picked up speed as 

 the wind caught the high stern, and when she reached the 

 rocks, she carried upon them sideways with such force as 

 to rip great holes in her hull. 



The galleon hung there awhile. Then, as a particularly 

 large sea rolled in, she freed herself momentarily while 

 the stern drifted around, and grounded again, this time for 

 good, caught in the narrow valley between two reefs. 



Needless to say, a fortune such as was carried by the 

 Nuestra Senora could not be lost to the world for long 

 without efforts being made to find and salvage it. The won- 

 der is that the Spanish did not return immediately to the 

 wreck, led by some of the survivors who had managed to 

 reach Hispaniola. But it was a difiBcult time for Spanish 

 shipping, for the rich traffic between Spain and her colo- 



The Silver Shoals 237 



