combed with caves, rising from a white-sand floor, topped 

 by pinnacles bizarrely fashioned hke something from the 

 Arabian nights. There were vast outcroppings of every 

 kind of coral — tangled jungles of branch coral like berry 

 bushes in a pasture, solid beds of lettuce coral, waving 

 Gorgonia and sea fans, and topping all, the lovely yellow- 

 brown stag coral, forming shady parasols for the teeming, 

 colorful small fish beneath it. Not only were the reefs a 

 tumbled mass of coral, but the whole ocean floor was scat- 

 tered with these formations, some close to the bottom but 

 many towering thirty and forty feet. 



It was in bottom such as this that we discovered that 

 Sea Diver's anchor and chain had become ensnared, as we 

 cruised over them on our return, after a solid hour of un- 

 successful search. No amount of pulling or hauling would 

 ever free them. Ed, the only deep-water diver in the party, 

 would have to go down, unwind the chain from the coral 

 with which it was entangled and clear the anchor. 



But because it was aheady late in the day and the 

 weather seemed good, he decided we should stay in the 

 little reef harbor overnight. It would take some time for 

 us to find a good anchorage on the banks outside, and the 

 sun was aheady getting low. 



That evening Kemp prepared a delicious fish chowder 

 for our supper from a kingfish and half a tuna he had 

 caught on his trolling line in the morning as we crossed 

 the banks. Half a tuna because, before he discovered that 

 he had a fish on his line, the rear half of the tuna had 

 been gobbled by a passing barracuda. 



While the chowder was cooking and we were sitting 

 around the table in the deck cabin enjoying a drink, we 

 heard a shout from Vital on the aft deck. He was dancing 

 up and down in his excitement as he hauled with all his 

 strength on the heavy fishing line he had just put over- 

 board, baited with the entrails from Kemp's fish. We ar- 



The Silver Shoals 257 



