visibility of late afternoon and the breaking seas, it was 

 difficult even to spot the coral heads which were scat- 

 tered here and there around us. Ed was finally forced to 

 pick the most open spot in sight for an anchorage, and we 

 dropped our hook, knowing full well we would have a 

 struggle to recover it in the morning. Tomorrow, he said, 

 we would leave the reef harbor still earlier in the after- 

 noon and make a point of seeking a permanent mooring 

 for our nights on the bank. 



As I went aft that night on my way to bed, I was 

 suddenly overwhelmed by the loneliness of our position. 

 The cold crescent of the new moon just above the western 

 horizon and a thick scattering of tropical stars barely 

 lighted the crests of the rolling seas and the white froth 

 of the reefs, which lay less than a half mile to our stem. 

 The prevaihng wind from the southeast blew strongly 

 down Sea Diver's deck and whipped my hair across my 

 face. 



I was conscious as never before of the vast expanse 

 of water surroimding us, a flood of water which somehow 

 served to touch off in me a feeling of kinship with that 

 wild and terrible period in the earth's history when all 

 life lay deep in primordial seas. I shivered, although the 

 wind that assailed me contained only an enveloping 

 warmth. Never, even during those winter nights of cold 

 and violence when Ed and I had braved the Gulf Stream 

 gales alone in our little yawl, had I sensed as now that 

 vast loneliness which the sea sometimes engenders. 



Here we were in the heart of the Silver banks, com- 

 pletely on our own. There were no passing ships, for no 

 captain would knowingly risk his vessel in these dangerous 

 waters. The curling white foam on the north horizon off 

 our stern carried a menacing threat, and in the dark waters 

 around us coral heads hid their tops just beneath the sur- 

 face. 



We must be very sure that in spite of wind or storm 



The Silver Shoals 265 



