once darkness had set in, it would be impossible to leave 

 our anchorage until morning no matter what might occur, 

 for we would never be able to find our way out of that 

 maze of reefs in the night. In any case we were bound to 

 the bottom as long as our anchor and chain remained en- 

 tangled in the coral, unless in desperation we sawed 

 through the heavy links of the anchor chain and left it, as 

 had many sailing ships in the past when faced with disas- 

 ter. 



Ed and I sat on the rail of the aft deck that night 

 after everyone had gone to bed, gazing at the white 

 circlet of breakers that surrounded us. To our starboard 

 were the broad, flat reefs, almost touching the suface at 

 low tide, near which we thought the Nuestra Senora had 

 gone down. We speculated. How could a ship of its size, 

 carrying over five hundred people and a solid cargo of gold 

 and silver, have disappeared so completely? There just 

 had to be some evidence beneath these waters that she 

 had been there, even though all visible signs had been 

 removed three centuries before. Surely we would be able 

 to find some traces, for even if the remains were com- 

 pletely encased in coral, we had our metal detectors and 

 the magnetometer to seek them out. 



. It was a beautiful spring night. The water inside the 

 reefs was almost still. The soft air was like a caress, and 

 a new moon shone softly on the waves outside the reefs, 

 which broke gently along the edges of the coral with 

 scarcely a sound. 



What must it have been like on that night so long 

 ago? I grieved for those poor souls who, having survived a 

 hurricane and nearly two months at sea on a mangled and 

 badly leaking ship, had suddenly found themselves ship- 

 wrecked on these very reefs which surrounded us. I could 

 picture their panic as the galleon broke loose from its 

 moorings and struck upon these rocks, gouging great holes 



The Silver Shoals 259 



